JAWBONE
C-cold . . .
Heavy snow falls through the zyme light in shining green veils. I’ve been hanging here for hands of time, waiting for night to come and the handholds and footholds to freeze solid. I found a place near the bottom of the bulge where I’m slightly protected from the waterfalls cascading over the cliff, but I’m drenched and shaking hard. Won’t be long now. I can feel my handholds freezing up, though my footholds are still filled with water. My hide cape and shirt cling to my body as though made of sculpted granite. They’re so heavy it’s hard to lift my arm to feel for the next handhold.
When I look up, I see gaps in the clouds, so the storm has broken. For the moment, the campfires of the dead blaze in the open patches of pale green night sky. I have to start climbing again or very soon my fingers will be too numb to feel the ice.
Concentrate. Probe the glacier beneath my fingertips. Find each dimple and crack. Hook my fingers over the tiniest ice ledge. I can’t see it in the flickering zyme light, but it feels like a handhold. Just another hair’s breadth. I drag myself up the frozen wall toward the second children’s camp that nestles inside the crack fifty hand-lengths above me.
Shaking. Really shaking hard.
The crack in the glacier grins like a toothy maw for as far as I can see to the north and south. If I can just get to it, I’ll crawl to the rear, find the hides, and rest. Start again tomorrow when my strength returns. Or maybe even wait until day after tomorrow.
When I try to pull my foot from the foothold, it won’t budge. My wet boot has frozen along with the puddle. Grunting, I have to wrench it loose before I can reach for the next handhold, then my fingers break through the skim of ice and sink into slush. Gods, I’m freezing, but the cliff face isn’t as slick as it was. Zyme-light has turned the blue ice into a shimmering jade-colored wall, veined with tiny black cracks. The quest trail is almost invisible—just pockmarks of shadow. I shove upward and reach for the biggest shadow.
“M-Must be a hand h-hold,” I whisper through chattering teeth and keep climbing.
Gripping the ledge of the ice cave with my left hand, I hold tight with my right and shove with my feet until I can drag myself over the lip and into the second children’s camp.
Lightheaded with relief, I just lie on my belly and breathe as I look around. Wood is neatly arranged in the firepit, and several pieces of driftwood are stacked beside it. As well, the hide bag hangs from the tripod and below it are two boiling stones. Strange. Usually, all the things a child needs are stocked in the rear of the cave. Perhaps the last child who made it to this camp prepared the fire and teabag for the next child? I can’t remember who was here last. My brain seems as frozen as the rest of me, but I’m so grateful it brings tears to my eyes.
I stagger toward the hides stacked in the rear. It’s not an easy journey. Ice stiffens my pants. With each step I take, chunks crack off and shatter on the floor.
“G-gods, just l-let me make it back to the firepit.” Gripping a hide with half-frozen fingers, I pull it over my shoulders and turn to make my way back.
This cave overlooks the zyme-covered shore and the towering cliff as it winds northward toward the highest peaks of the Ice Giants. The entire cliff is alive with reflections. From where I stand, they could be an endless troupe of dancing ghosts.
Dropping to the floor beside the dead fire, I close my eyes, trying to will myself to stop shaking, but it’s not going to happen until I warm up. I fumble with the ties on my belt pouch and remove my firesticks. I can’t even feel my fingers as I spin the hardwood stick in the holes drilled in the punky stick . . . but finally the punky wood reddens and I dump it out atop the dry kindling. Blowing softly, I wait until flames lick through the wood, before I allow myself to suck in a deep and relieved breath. In the frail light, I can see into the tea bag. It’s already filled with chunks of ice. Just have to heat the boiling stones.
I panic slightly when I realize my boots have frozen to my legs.
“Get th-them off.”
I have to jerk hard to complete the task, then I discover my bison wool socks are solid ice. Stripping them from my feet, I carefully place them on the hearthstones to warm.
“Ev-everythin’s all r-right now. Just have to . . . warm up.”
All across the ocean, hundreds of icebergs cut swaths through the luminous zyme, shining like enormous green sails.
“Never s-seen so many at once.” Talking aloud makes me feel better, not so alone.
The arrival of summer always brings surprises. As the zyme closes in and creeps over the shore, Sealion people turn from fishing to netting birds and hunting the big game that grazes the tundra grasses and wildflowers. One moon ago, when the ice floes first started to break up, we found a bizarre bear floating through the zyme on a sheet of ice. It had a pointed snout and hump on its back. When the bear finally got desperate, it dove into the zyme and tried to swim for shore, but the zyme dragged it down and we never saw it surface again.
My fingers start to tingle wildly. I can feel my hands! It’s thrilling. Finally, I pull my extra boots and socks from my pockets and shove my numb feet into them, then I huddle close to the fire with my hands extended to the flames.
I’m so exhausted, I barely notice when the sea breeze picks up and snow drifts out of the sky. It’s just a few big flakes at first, but then powerful gusts strafe the cliff and the snow turns to a blinding wall of white.
“Just a squall,” I whisper. “It will pass.”
With a stick of driftwood, I shove my boiling stones into the coals and toss the stick on the flames. Holding tight to the hide around my shoulders, I curl up on my side facing the fire and watch the snow fall while I wait for the stones to heat.
One moment, I’m just lying there, staring at the flames, and the next I’m shaking so hard I’m afraid one of my spells is about to come over me. I don’t know what to do. Crying out for Mother or Father would be pointless. They’d never hear me in the roaring wind.
“Be a m-man,” I tell myself and curl into a tighter ball, trying to will it to go away.
Besides, I know that when a person is really cold, shivering hard is a good sign, means his muscles are warming up. That’s all this is.
I tuck my head beneath the hide, and breathe warm air into the cocoon. I can still see a slit of firelight around the curly buffalo fur and I try to stay with it. Don’t let go. Stay here! No flying to the stars.
The flames sizzle and snap. Our greatest shamans can understand the language of flames. Someday, I hope to be among them. Strange. The sizzling sounds oddly rhythmic. Like the beat of a pot drum or . . . wings beating against the storm.
Shoving aside the hide, I look around.
“Hello?” I call out. “Flame Bird? I’m right here!”
Flap, flap, flap . . .
I sit up and smile into the darkness, waiting for silver wings to appear out of the snow. This is the hardest moment, the waiting, the being alone in the dark and spinning snow.
Listening harder, I try to separate the wingbeats from the sounds of wind and distant groans of the Ice Giants. Sometimes it’s perfectly clear, other times gone.
When I hear it again . . .
I realize it’s not wings.
My eyes are drawn to the lip of the cave, where snow has accumulated in a firelit rime. Ice crackles down below. Something’s climbing the trail.
Rising to my feet with the hide clutched around my shoulders, I stagger to the edge of the precipice and look down. “Hello? Mother? Father?”
It’s impossible that they could be climbing up from the shore. The last time I saw them they were standing just outside the parents’ shelter on the cliff top, waving to me. Besides, this doesn’t sound like an adult climbing. The panting is too rapid. The steps not heavy enough.
Leaning out over the snowy lip of the cave, I struggle to see anything. The only visible handholds are right beside me to my left and they’re quickly filling up with snow. In a little while, they will be invisible. By tomorrow morning, the cliff face will be a smooth white wall. I’ll be trapped here until the snow melts.
Soft breathing from below. Then muffled weeping.
Sounds like . . . a child.
“Hello!” I cry. “Who are you?”
A dark splotch appears and disappears through the snow. Like a huge black spider, it’s hanging on the wall twenty hand-lengths below me.
Boots scrape for purchase as it climbs closer. The splotch congeals into a human shape.
“Wait!” I cry and rush to flatten out on my belly on the rim with my arm extended as far as I can. “Take my hand. I’ll help you!”
The shape sways, looks up. He’s so close, his face flickers with firelight.
The other boy reaches for my hand, and my heart stops. The knowledge of centuries shines in those blue eyes.