We climb through a beautiful, silent, and pristine wilderness of snow and ice. The shapes and colors, contours and wind patterns seem endless, and it would be a magical uphill hike with all my nearest and dearest if it weren’t so cold and dangerous.
Gisco claims that his saliva is freezing inside his mouth, and even though the hound is given to hyperbole, I’m not sure he’s exaggerating. Eko warns us to watch out for crevasses and moulins—hidden shafts in the ice where water drains out. It’s hard to enjoy winter scenery and a reunion of old friends when you’re tracking the Dark Lord and the Omega Box across a frozen ice sheet that may open and swallow you at any moment.
Kidah and my dad are certain that we’re hot on the Dark Lord’s trail, or maybe I should say cold on his trail, since a frozen wind has begun to whip around us. It makes walking even harder, and when it gusts, snow sprays up into our faces and we get twenty-second bursts of whirling whiteout. I’m still wearing my protective coat from the far future, but even so the cold is numbing. P.J. shivers beneath her parka and when she stumbles I take her hand and offer to trade coats.
“Eko gave me five layers and they’re keeping me pretty warm,” she tells me. But I notice that she keeps hold of my hand. “Jack, we don’t get much time together,” she says. “Talk to me for a minute. Where exactly did you go when you vanished from New York without saying goodbye?”
“You can’t blame me for that,” I tell her, noticing how the rest of our group has moved a short distance ahead, perhaps to give us a little room to catch up. Eko hangs back near us for a few seconds, and then, almost reluctantly, joins the leaders. “I ducked into a florist on Broadway to buy you flowers,” I tell P.J. “Then some goons from the future drugged me and—”
“Hold on a minute,” P.J. interrupts, sounding dubious. “You never brought me flowers in your life. Not even on Valentine’s Day.”
“I was buying you a dozen red roses. I was a construction worker and you were an elusive college girl, but I was trying my best.”
P.J. flashes me a smile from under her parka hood. “Really? Red roses.”
“Look what it got me,” I continue. “They put me in some kind of cellular whip-o-matic and I re-formed a thousand years in the future in the middle of a burning-hot sandstorm.”
“What’s the future like?” P.J. asks. “Is it as bad as Eko says?”
I watch the snow swirling across the ice sheet, and I remember the sandstorms and the glagour and the barren kill zone where the Garden of Eden once bloomed. “Yeah. As bad as it could be.”
We trudge along in silence for a few moments, and then P.J. asks, “Did you meet your mom?”
“Yes. We went on a weeklong journey together.”
“Meeting her for the first time must have been a little strange.”
“Luckily I was only half-conscious. She came into my hospital room and took my hand and sang to me, and we both started weeping. Later, we talked and she tried to explain why they sent me away. I was angry with her, but I started to understand . . .” I break off for a second.
P.J. nods to show that she understands, and then she asks softly, “Did you tell your mom about me?”
“There wasn’t much time to talk. We were on a mission, fighting for our lives.”
She’s watching me closely. “I thought you went on a weeklong trip together?”
“Sure, battling giant lizards and ducking flying snakes.”
“So you didn’t tell her about me?”
I stop walking and look at her. “No,” I admit. “It feels like I have two different lives. She’s part of one. You’re part of the other. It’s easiest if I keep them separate.”
“Easier for who?” P.J. asks. “Aren’t your two lives converging? They have been ever since that man looked at you in the Hadley diner the night after the football game. Now we’re all here together, your dad, your girlfriend from the future, and me, on the same ice sheet. Which is your real life?” she asks. “Which is the real Jack Danielson?”
I look into her hazel eyes and whisper back, “This feels real to me. Walking next to you. Holding your hand. In Hadley or on an ice sheet in Greenland. But there’s also something I have to do. I was born to do it and I can’t run away from it. That’s all I know, P.J.” I bend and give her a kiss on the cheek. “If it’s not good enough for you, you should go back to New York and try to forget me, and hang out with that lacrosse player.”
She shivers, and for some reason I don’t think it’s just from the cold. “I’m with the guy I want to be with,” she whispers. “I helped Eko find the Star of Dann. I held it in my hand. I saw. I understood. And I want to help, too. Now, let’s catch up with the others.”
But as we hike on in silence, her questions keep pulling at me. Why didn’t I tell my mom about her? Which is my real life? Why do I feel like I belong in a world a thousand years from now that I barely know, and that this epoch I grew up in is just a visiting place for me, a temporary stop before my true life’s work begins?
Kidah, Gisco, my father, and Eko are waiting for us by the side of a gleaming blue lake. As P.J. and I join them, Eko watches us carefully with her glittering eyes.
I look back at her for a moment. We shared a great deal together, and I can’t hide the fact that I have strong feelings for her. She gives me a little smile of understanding. I smile back. We’re both in difficult positions, now that P.J. has joined our mission. I can see that Eko is trying to balance her feelings for me with her duties to the group.
Be careful, she advises me telepathically.
I’m doing the best I can, I answer her. It’s an awkward situation for everyone. You know how much I care about you.
She means be careful of moulins, Jack, Gisco warns me, and I remember that I’m surrounded by telepaths. This lake was made from melting snow, the dog explains, and it’s draining out now.
How far does it drain? I ask him.
All the way to the ground rock, which is twelve thousand feet beneath us. We’re walking over one hundred thousand winters of accumulated snow and ice. But it’s melting now, faster and faster.
I look over to warn P.J., but just as I do, she lets out a scream as the ice shelf opens beneath her and she slips into a hole. I keep tight hold of her hand, and am yanked in after her!