Beck’s every muscle tensed and he strained his eyes at where it had been. Where he thought it had been. It might have been whirling snowflakes, his brain interpreting them as a particular shape. He had barely thought about it for ages now, but it had looked awfully like a wolf.
However, the coming storm was much more lethal than a wolf, and Beck knew a wolf on its own was unlikely to attack. It wouldn’t even want to share their cave. Wolves had their own fur coats.
‘Deep enough?’ Tikaani called behind him, snapping Beck back to the present. He would worry about wolves if he had to, later. Right now he wouldn’t worry Tikaani at all. He climbed back into the hole. It was a metre deep, warm and already pleasantly quiet. The snow insulated them from the sound of the storm as well as its strength. It was so tempting to curl up and go to sleep . . . but not yet.
‘It’s deep enough in this direction,’ he agreed, peering around. ‘Now we start digging up again . . .’
And so their digging angled upwards, beneath the surface of the snow, careful not to break out into fresh air again. It took another hour to dig out the cave to Beck’s liking, but the urgency was gone. Once they were safely inside, they could widen their excavation. When they finished they were covered in powdered snow, but that was easy to brush off and they could admire their handiwork.
The final chamber was almost three metres wide and one and a half high. The floor was a flat platform big enough for the two of them to sleep side by side. Because they had dug upwards beneath the snow, it was higher than the entrance. The wind was blocked out by Beck’s snow wall and their rucksacks, which provided an extra barrier between them and the outside (and would also keep out any wolves that came visiting, Beck thought). The air was warm and still. The sound of the storm was a distant echo, there if they listened out for it. It could have been on the other side of some good double glazing.
‘Cold air sinks,’ Beck said, pointing back at the entrance. Even to his own ears his voice sounded muffled. The snow was absorbing vibrations. ‘Up here we’ll be good and warm. But help me smooth down the walls, or it’ll drip on us.’
They worked together silently for a while. Tikaani blew out of his mouth a couple of times. It swirled in front of him. ‘I can still see my breath,’ he said.
‘Good.’ Beck smoothed down the final patch of snow and looked around. ‘If it gets too warm, it’ll collapse. But it’ll be warm enough for us. It’ll never drop below zero inside here, anyway. You’d better put your wet clothes out, by the way. They’ll have frozen dry by the morning.’
‘Compared to out there it’s the tropics,’ Tikaani agreed, with a nod back at the entrance. He opened up his rucksack for his wet things. ‘Where do we put the jacuzzi?’
Beck chuckled as he laid out the tarpaulin where they were going to sleep. The floor was made of snow. They still needed insulation or the heat would be sucked out of their bodies. ‘We’ll do that tomorrow, right after we install the flat-screen TV and cable.’
‘Hey, excellent! I can catch up on some good TV.’
Beck took all the loose items from their rucksacks and laid them inside the tarpaulin; spare clothes – even the rope – would keep them off the snow. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out his water bottle. He shook it and heard the contents slosh around. As promised, the snow had melted.
‘And we have fresh water on demand,’ he pointed out. ‘Purer and cheaper than anything you could buy in a bottle back home.’
‘Hey, yeah.’ Tikaani took a long swig from his own bottle. ‘Maybe we should have dug a bathroom too. This lot will come out eventually.’
‘We have a bathroom.’ Beck pointed down at the entrance.
Tikaani looked unenthusiastic. ‘Yeah, I was hoping to avoid going outside again . . .’
Beck shook his head. ‘Not outside. It’s not worth losing the warmth. Just go down there. Let the snow absorb it.’ He looked at where Tikaani’s clothes were spread out. ‘Just try not to go on those.’
It was nearly dark outside now, and even darker in, with no torch or fire. And they were both tired. They lay down on the tarpaulin and Beck heard Tikaani stretch luxuriously.
‘I don’t care that we’re in a hole in some snow on the top of a mountain. This is better than any hotel.’
Beck smiled to himself in the darkness. It wasn’t how he had intended to end the second day of their journey, but it was better than it might have been.
‘They taught you this when you were in Finland?’ Tikaani asked.
‘This? No. This comes from a weekend in the Cairngorms.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Scotland. Closer to home.’
‘Oh.’ Then: ‘My ancestors really did know their stuff, didn’t they?’ Tikaani sounded more thoughtful, going back to their conversation earlier.
‘You know it too,’ Beck answered. ‘It just takes a while to come back.’
‘Yeah.’ Tikaani yawned. ‘Bit by bit,’ he mumbled . . .
And soon after that, it was obvious from his regular breathing that he was fast asleep. Beck lay and listened to the storm for a bit longer. He didn’t invite sleep because he knew it would come naturally.
Like the previous night, he thought of Al. He hadn’t thought so much of his uncle during the day – there had been enough on his mind to keep him occupied. How was Al doing? Had the storm hit him too? His little shelter should be OK. He would be in serious trouble if the fire went out, though. Beck just had to trust that Al knew enough to look after himself.
In his last waking moments, he sent up a silent prayer that the storm wouldn’t last long. They didn’t have enough food or water to survive a long imprisonment.
They could be warm, and dry, and sheltered, and still starve. Their warm cave could just as easily become an icy tomb.