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Wispy fog streamed past him, silent and still.
As if he were looking through a window and the clouds were outside. Corded muscles writhed beneath him; short hairs bristled under his hands. Legs yoked over a swollen belly, Ryder grabbed a fistful of hide. The clouds weren’t outside.
I’m in them.
Ronin’s head bobbed up and down, neck straining in a silent gallop. Specks of frozen precipitation shot past. There was no wind howling in his ears; no bitter cold scouring his cheeks. The air warped around the antlers. Ronin tipped his head and put one black eye on them. A hoarse bark escaped his throat. He went back to pedaling the wind, a missile piercing the sky.
It’s a magnetic field.
The antlers had shifted the blurred space when he turned his head, reshaping the spitting specks of ice and billowy clouds streaming past in foggy ribbons. A magnetic force field protected them from the thin and frozen air. Warmth seeped from Ronin’s hide like a furnace was burning below.
Cherry rested her chin on his shoulder.
Her breath was in his ear. He put one hand over hers and squeezed. This was too surreal to relax. This could be a game room illusion. It could be a dream. But neither of those events had filled him with wonder like this.
The last thing he remembered was being on the ground when Ronin charged. They had cowered in the snow just before the world started spinning. A long wound glistened along Ronin’s flank, the hide damp and matted.
They were still climbing.
Ronin’s belly huffed and bellowed wider and hotter with each breath. Below, patches of green land streaked past occasional openings in the cloud cover. Ryder’s legs ached, his hands firmly clenched against the reindeer’s back. Ears pinned back, Ronin silently galloped higher. They rose into the thick interior of the clouds, where they were swallowed. Once hidden, he stretched his legs and glided. His belly fully inflated.
Ryder turned around. Cherry’s cheeks were ruby and scuffed, nose cold and runny. Beyond her, the back end was empty.
Gallivanter was still at Kringletown.
***
The furnace was still working.
Ryder woke with bristling fur on his nose. A frigid breeze was sneaking down his coat. His legs were painfully aching like a wishbone was breaking. Cherry lay across his back, her fingers laced around his stomach.
The clouds were icy and cracked.
He wiped his eyes. Cherry groaned as he pushed upright. Those weren’t clouds. They were soaring in the open. The black sky was above and snowy dunes below. Open leads exposed cracks in the ice that spidered over the Arctic Ocean like a network of veins.
The Pole.
Ronin was pawing at thin air, his strokes short and rapid. His breath was a rattling tailpipe. Wind was leaking through the magnetic field like an icy draft sneaking through a cracked windshield.
The antlers were flickering.
Ryder rubbed the reindeer’s ears. Ronin gave a hoarse cry and his belly expanded. They rose higher, but it didn’t last. They were dropping as the panting grew louder.
“Stay down,” he told Cherry.
Ryder hugged Ronin. She hunkered down behind him. There was nothing but ice. They were dressed for the Arctic, but it was still so cold.
The ice was several feet below them when Ronin stretched his legs out. The flaps of hide billowed between his legs. They soared up as his belly inflated one last time. And then little by little, they leaked back down.
His front hooves sprayed snow.
It splashed through the magnetic field. Ryder held on with his eyes closed, listening to the dampened impact of four hooves plowing through deep snow. The magnetic field vanished. Frigid air cut through him. He gasped for his next breath as a wave of snow fell over them.
They crashed.
Ryder dug his way out with choppy breath and numb cheeks. Cherry was crawling toward him, her hair gray with a fresh dusting of winter. He held her as she stumbled and sank. They ducked behind a cresting dune.
“You all right?”
He pulled her against him. His eyelashes crackled. They squatted deeper into the snow. A path had been carved like a snowplow was searching for the road. They worked their way toward it and saw the massive antlers.
“Ronin.”
Together, they rushed to the reindeer’s side. The wind cut away all the feeling in Ryder’s hands. It felt like someone was pinching his ears and nose. They dropped against Ronin’s belly, the furnace still warm. But like a balloon from a long past birthday, it was losing air.
Ronin raised his front leg and pulled them deeper into cover. He curled his head around them, tongue slowly lapping the snow from their stiff pant legs. Ryder wrapped his arms around his furry snout.
“His nose is cold.”
A clod of fear dropped in his stomach. The weather was scrubbing the world into a barren landscape of white nothingness. They weren’t dressed to survive. And Ronin was exhausted and hurt.
How did he make it this far?
Ryder crawled over to Cherry and pressed her into the nook of Ronin’s neck. He put his arms around her and pulled Ronin’s shaggy chin against them. The night sky was deep, black and bruised with swirling bands of green and red. The Northern Lights decorated the nighttime like ribbons around a gift.
Ryder couldn’t feel his body.
Everything that had happened in his life and here he was, trapped somewhere on top of the world with Cherry in his arms and a reindeer around them. Fear suddenly flushed from him like an ocean breeze cleansing something wrong and rotten. He felt clean. He felt okay, just to be here and now, watching something as magical as this. They had escaped Kringletown.
There was no other place he’d rather be.
“I’m not scared anymore.”
He nestled deeper. Cherry was curled beneath him, her chest rising and falling. She was practicing her meditation. Ronin’s belly rose and fell in long, easy breaths that matched hers. Together, Ryder fell into the same rhythm.
As one, they breathed.
Peace fell on them as a soft and comforting blanket. It didn’t matter what had happened or where he was from, if none of this made sense. Whether this was a dream or not. The night sky watched them accept the cold hand of winter with a million starry eyes. If anyone found them, a smile would be frozen on his face. He liked that idea as dreamy thoughts spilled across the landscape of his mind. He felt the colors of the Northern Lights and tasted the touch of spitting snowflakes.
He heard singing.
It was high and joyful. It blended in harmony. Voices were carried on the wind and sifted into his head like fairy dust.
Cherry shuddered beneath him.
Fresh snow cascaded beneath his collar. The warm wall of furry hide pulled away. Ronin stretched his neck and pawed through the snow until he found the hard purchase of ice.
He stumbled onto all fours.
Suddenly exposed, Ryder and Cherry shielded each other from the wind. They squinted against the squall of frozen bullets pelting their cheeks. His vision was blurred.
“Ronin!”
The reindeer seemed to falter with weakness and indecision. There was nowhere to go. He didn’t need to protect Ryder anymore. He’d done enough. It wasn’t fair for him to use his last breath trying to save them when they could just be together.
His antlers vanished.
Ryder fought the ice crystals bleeding through his eyelashes and smearing his eyesight. He peered between split fingers.
“Where—” The wind momentarily stole the words from Cherry. “Where did he go?”
Ryder was half-frozen and abandoned in the coldest part of the world without a spit of land in sight. A reindeer had flown them there and now had disappeared right in front of them. Maybe he was dreaming.
That didn’t explain why he still heard singing.