I wake up with a start, sensing an absence that wasn’t there before.
“Colin?” My mouth is like cotton. The air that finds its way into my lungs is cold, so cold. If only my father had taught us how to build indoor fires.
Without the penlight, the lean-to is steeped in darkness. I fumble around for it, careful to avoid the boys’ tiny bodies. Their soft sighs and restless legs confirm their presence. At least they’re all accounted for.
“Looking for this?”
Colin turns on the light, a feeble glow that nonetheless makes me feel better. He places the penlight in my hands, his calloused palm brushing mine.
“Have you been awake this whole time?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “I slept while you were awake.”
“Liar.”
He peels off his coat and hands it to me. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine.”
“Please—”
“No, Colin.” I put the coat back in his lap.
We sit across from each other such that our legs are side by side, but not quite touching. Two inches is the most distance we can manage in these tight quarters.
“Tim saw a cabin,” I say.
He searches my face for clarification, but the word itself holds so much promise. Cabin. Food, shelter, supplies. It needs no further explanation.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“He saw it right before dark. There was nothing we could have done anyway.”
“We have a light.”
“A penlight.” I wait until he looks up. “Colin, don’t even think about it. It’s too far.”
“How far?”
“Across the lake.”
“Directly across?”
I nod.
“So a day’s hike, or an hour’s swim.”
“Less than an hour for you.”
“Not in these conditions,” he says. “In any case, you’re the distance swimmer.”
So he remembers. I stuff my hands in my lap.
“It’s too cold,” I say, which is a fine, acceptable excuse. Except Colin doesn’t believe it. He sensed my hesitation on the shore this afternoon; he senses it now.
“I think I should try,” he says.
“Colin, no.” It feels like an affront.
“I know you could make it, but you’ve already gone in the water twice. It’s my turn.”
“What if you drown? What if you get there and can’t make it back?”
“I’ll make it back.”
“You don’t have to go. We could just wait for more suitcases to wash up onshore. It’s happened a few times already—”
“I have to go.”
He puts his coat at my feet, yet another offering that makes me feel weak and incapable. I know that later, when sleep takes hold of me again, he’ll drape it over my shoulders. There is nothing I can do or say to change his mind about swimming for that cabin. About anything, really. He will do anything for those boys.
When I wake at dawn, the coat sits on my shoulders, and Colin is gone.
•
He scrawled a message on a two of hearts:
I have to try.
I rip the playing card off the paneling and stuff it in my pocket. My first instinct is rage; the second is terror. His conviction straddles the line between risk and insanity.
The fuselage dips and groans with every gust. The morning sky has gone a deep, angry gray, leaden with snow. Aayu navigates a restless sleep, while Liam dozes, oblivious to the storm raging inches from his body.
Tim watches me with sleepless eyes. “Tim, over here,” I say, trying to keep my voice down so the others won’t wake up. “Come on.”
He crawls over, hands and feet padding a swath of towels we rescued from someone’s shopping bag. I pull him into my side and adjust the makeshift ski mask on his head so his ears are covered.
“Where’s Colin?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I lie. Out there.
“His stick is gone.”
Colin told the boys the stick was like a sword, but Tim suspects its real purpose: fending off unwelcome creatures. Bears, wolves, mountain lions. I hope to never see or hear one. When we were sitting by the fire, I always faced the lake.
“I’m going to go out and see.” I check Tim’s coat to make sure every button is fastened. “Stay here and be brave, okay?”
“No,” he cries, tugging on my shirt. His eyes are wet, his ski mask damp with snot.
“I won’t go far. You’ll be able to see me the whole time.”
His fingers grip the hem of my coat as I shuffle outside. At the door, I turn and take his hands, trying to warm them, even though his color is good. I do it because my mom used to do it for me, and it always made me feel better.
Tim’s sobs turn to sniffles, and the tension in his little body slowly drains away. I blow on his hands a few more times to warm them.
“You’re so brave, Tim,” I tell him. “Braver than me, that’s for sure.”
The wind prickles the skin on the back of my neck. Tim pulls my hat down, careful to avoid tugging on my hair. “Don’t go far,” he says. “Please.”
“I won’t.”
My first step outside is a savage one. A blitz of arctic air drives straight to the core, like falling through ice. Snow lashes my skin. The lake is barely visible in the distance, the forest an alien dimension with a thousand entrances and no exit.
“Colin!” I call out, screaming from the depths of my lungs to generate volume. The wind drowns out my voice, reducing it to a dry wheeze.
I stumble toward the lake, slipping on snow-covered rocks and ice. Any hope of seeing Colin’s red shirt in the distance vanishes with the onslaught of blowing snow.
A small voice calls to me from the lean-to. “I heard something!” Tim half shouts, half whispers.
He points toward the trees behind him and, beyond that, a gaping void of shadows. I don’t see anything. Just trees and blowing snow. “Where?”
“Over there!” He points again, same direction. A shudder rolls through me, but I don’t know why. The only thing there is wilderness.
Or is there?
When the wind eases for a moment, I put my fingers to my lips and try to whistle. A sharp pain rattles my rib cage, but it doesn’t compare to the thought of losing Colin. Nothing compares to losing Colin. I should never have told him about the cabin.
Then, in the distance: a second whistle. At first it sounds like an echo, but this one goes on longer, like it originated from someone with twice my lung capacity. The strange thing is, Tim was pointing in the other direction.
I scramble toward the woods, remembering too late that Tim is watching. He pushes open the scrap of fuselage and crawls out, but he has the good sense to close it behind him.
“Go back inside, Tim! You’ll freeze!”
He pauses, probably a knee-jerk reaction to a command from an adult. I turn back toward the trees. Snow hits me from every direction—above me, around me, even from below. The wind kicks it up, whips it into a frenzy. When I turn back around, Tim is gone.
“Tim!” I stumble back toward the lean-to, squinting into the haze. “Tim—”
He barrels into me, all elbows and knees and soft sobs. I scoop him up and hug him, even though he’s tall for a six-year-old and his legs dangle almost to my shins. I wonder if he feels the desperation in my arms, the relief in my voice.
“Tim, you can’t be out here.”
“I want to help.”
His nose is red and his lips a worrisome plum, but otherwise, his skin is covered with scarves, hats, gloves—anything I could find. Good. At least I did something right.
“I know you do. But I can’t . . . We can’t . . .”
The determined look in his eyes turns sympathetic. “We can do it,” he says. “I heard the whistle.”
“You did?”
“Out there.” He gestures vaguely toward the trees.
“I thought you said you heard something from over there,” I say, pointing south, using the lean-to as a landmark. He’s looking north.
“I did . . .” He furrows his brow. “I thought I did.”
I whistle again. Tim counts to five. A second whistle carries through the stillness, and Tim claps his hands. “See? It’s coming from over there!”
Over there doesn’t make me feel any better. The only thing in that direction is woods, an endless sprawl of woods.
We’re only a few yards from the lean-to, but the blowing snow makes it feel like miles. I keep glancing at the door, waiting for Aayu or Liam to poke their heads out. If they do, I’ll have to herd them inside and hope Colin finds his way back. I can’t be out here with three little kids.
“Whistle again,” Tim says.
So I do. Every inhale hurts more than the last—a raw, splitting pain that grips my chest and shocks the bones all the way up in my shoulders. Tough it out, Avery.
Every time I whistle, the answering whistle is a little louder. A little closer.
And then, suddenly, it stops.
My eyes well with freezing tears. Snow gathers in the wetness under my nose, melting with each breath. My ribs ache like I’ve been kicked.
Tim’s desperate screams for Colin have faded to a whisper. I have to get him back inside, but my feet refuse to move. I have to find him. I need to find him.
“There!” Tim whirls around, tugging on my arm. “The noise I heard before.” He points dead ahead. The brush rustles underfoot, a deliberate shifting of branches and sticks.
The shadow is all wrong. Steady, constant, in a way that shadows shouldn’t be. It hovers in the frail light of dawn, as if suspended there.
“Tim,” I say, surprised by the eerie calm in my voice. “Get back inside.”
“But I want—”
“Now, Tim.”
His innate response to adult authority wins out, but not before he reaches into his pocket and hands me his favorite toy: the avalanche transceiver. It feels heavier than before. Batteries?
“Maybe this’ll work,” he says.
“Tim, it’s broken—”
“Just try.” He dashes back inside.
Clarity washes over me, through me. I bend over to retrieve the razor-sharp scrap of fuselage Colin had been using to cut bungee cords. The metal looked dull in the waning sunlight, but out here in this world of white, it shines. I tap it against a rock: tentative at first, then louder. Faster. I start talking. It’s the same story I told hours earlier, the one about Ophelia and the mer-people and Holly-Sea. But the cadence is all wrong. Chillingly low. Steady. Controlled. This isn’t a story for children.
It’s for bears.