by Laura Quimby
Dad pulled up beside the other snowmobile and cut the engine. Ivan’s snowmobile had apparently hit a large chunk of ice, because the front end was badly damaged. It sat there, abandoned. There was no one around. The site was quiet except for the gnawing wind that howled like a lost dog. I scanned the area. Where was Ivan? Where had he taken Charlie?
A scream shattered the cold air. Dad tensed and I gasped. We both turned toward the sound.
“It came from the tent,” Dad said. “You wait here.”
Was he serious? I was not about to sit by the snowmobile and wait. I crept along behind him, ignoring his order to wait behind. He tried to shoo me off, but I mouthed, “I’m coming.”
Nothing remained inside the tent but a few crates, random supplies, and equipment too heavy to move by hand. And Ivan. He was crouched on the ground, hunched over like a shrunken troll. The fearsome man had been reduced to a frozen mess, clutching his arms around himself. His face was covered in a thin coating of frost and ice shavings. There was so much snow on his beard that it looked gray. With his goggles off and his face mask pulled down, his skin looked bluish. He’d been outside too long. His eyes were so vacant that at first I wasn’t sure if he was alive. Dad grabbed my arm.
“Stay behind me. And keep quiet.”
I nodded and receded into the shadows. Dad could deal with Ivan—I wanted to find Charlie. He had to be here somewhere.
Dad spoke in a low voice to Ivan. The large Russian’s eyes moved toward him, watched him, while the rest of his body stayed perfectly still. I was afraid if I moved, I would startle the wild beast that lurked behind his shifting gaze. Of all the people at the station, Ivan looked like a strong one, but it seemed the Arctic had taken its toll.
But it wasn’t just the Arctic. I knew better. It was Charlie that frightened him. He feared the winged boy and what he might represent. When Ivan saw Charlie, he saw an angel. He was in awe of the powerful, mystical figure, and also afraid of it. Ivan had reacted to him based on his superstitions.
That’s when I saw the body. It was wrapped in plastic, lying in the hole where the ice block had been removed. I could see a blurred face through the clear plastic. It was Charlie!
His breath formed a misty fog on the plastic surface. It reminded me of when he was frozen in the block of ice, and we didn’t know if he was alive or not. Ivan had tied him up and put him in the hole that he had once been taken from. Madness. How could Ivan do that?
“Dad!” I screamed. “Charlie’s here! He’s alive.”
“I know. Stay calm.” Dad had seen. He knew Charlie was being held captive. Dad was a rock, the steady anchor of our family. He would handle this. I tried to calm my racing heart, but it pounded in my chest. My body trembled.
“Ivan, he’s just a boy,” Dad said. “Charlie won’t hurt anyone.”
“We must put him back where we found him!” Ivan said. “He isn’t ours to keep.”
Ivan hadn’t taken Charlie back to Russia after all. He hadn’t come to the dig site to hide. He came here to put Charlie back into the ground.
Ivan hiccupped. “He needs to stay right here. Terrible things will happen if we take him away.”
“He can’t go back into the ground. It’s too late.” Dad moved toward Charlie. Ivan staggered to his feet and then lurched forward.
Dad held up his hands and spoke to me quietly. “I’m going to help him get some air.”
A tinge of fear bloomed inside of me. I wanted to get Charlie out of the hole and go home. Dad slipped his knife out of his pack. I inched closer and drew Ivan’s attention away from Charlie and Dad. Ivan’s dark eyes followed me, tracking my movements through the tent. The star-shaped white scar stood out on his cheek.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’s your fault.” He speared me with his gaze. I was shaking with cold, and yet I was sweating under my snowsuit. “A little white witch,” he said, pointing at me. “An old child is a bad omen.” Ivan was scaring me, but I knew I wasn’t the problem.
I took a deep breath. “You’re being superstitious, Ivan. I’m not an omen or a witch.”
Ivan snorted. “And a winged boy is just a boy. You and I don’t believe that.”
He had a point. Charlie wasn’t just a boy. But he wasn’t cause for such irrational fear, either.
Dad cut Charlie out of the plastic and untied him. The two of them crawled slowly out of the hole. Charlie was not smiling. He rubbed his wrists where the rope had left red marks in his skin. I went to him, but he pulled away, not recognizing me. “It’s OK, Charlie. We’re here now to take you back to the station.”
Ivan jerked his head around and saw what Dad had done. “No, no, no! He can’t leave here. He must go back to where we found him.”
Dad pulled the radio out of his pack. “Look, Ivan. I’m going to radio Randal and have him send the guys out, and then we can all head back to the station together. We’ll forget all this happened.” Dad slowly backed out of the tent, pulling us along with him.
In a burst of movement, Ivan stood up from his crouch and lunged at Dad, grabbing the radio right out of his hand. He smashed it to the ground and stomped on it. The radio shattered. Now our only means of communicating with the station was gone.
“Ivan, no!” my dad yelled, startling Charlie.
Charlie darted out of the tent and Ivan staggered after him. Before Dad could join the chase, he grabbed me. “You stay here. Promise me, Maya! I can’t keep track of you out there. Stay in the tent until I get back.”
I nodded and waited just inside the flap. They were about thirty yards away when it happened.
Charlie ran and Ivan followed, but Dad caught up to them. Dad and Ivan struggled, pushing and shoving. Ivan towered over Dad, who was trying to hold the big man back from Charlie. Then Ivan pulled away and ran. Dad stumbled after him across the rough terrain.
Then I don’t know what happened, exactly. I heard a loud noise like a crack. Then it was like Dad was moving in slow motion. His body fell forward with his arms outstretched, but his leg caught on something and it twisted underneath him. He went down. He hit the ice with a smack, and then he just lay there, motionless.
I screamed to him, but he didn’t move.
I ran across the jagged icy surface as fast as I could.
Ivan didn’t even stop. He headed straight to the snowmobile, climbed aboard, and took off. By the time I reached Dad, Ivan was driving away. Panic filled me when I realized that he had taken our undamaged snowmobile.
“Hey, wait!” I yelled. I ran a few feet, but it was pointless trying to chase a snowmobile. Then I fell to my knees by Dad’s side.
The sight of the blood stopped me, sucked the air out of my lungs. There was red everywhere. Bloody red all over the whiteness of the snow. Red overwhelmed me.
Dad wasn’t moving. I lifted his goggles. His eyes were closed, and blood ran down the side of his head. There was a rough chunk of bloody ice on the ground. He must have hit his head when he fell.
I turned him over onto his back. His leg was twisted the wrong way. I had a bad feeling it was broken. I swallowed and tried to breathe. Keep breathing.
I sensed a person walking up, and then Charlie was kneeling down beside me.
“Dad’s hurt, Charlie. Get me a pack. Get the first-aid kit.” My voice wobbled in my throat. I tried to swallow my emotions.
Charlie sprang to action, burrowing into the backpack and pulling out everything inside. I grabbed the kit and focused on helping Dad. I had to stop the bleeding on his head. It was so cold that the blood had crusted up around his hairline. I packed gauze over the cut and pulled his hat down over the quickly dressed wound. I had to keep him warm and protected.
“Help me get him inside one of the domes,” I said. “Get something to help me lift him.” I looked around for some abandoned material that would help us move Dad.
Charlie found an old sled that Justice must have left behind and he lifted Dad onto it
. We slid him inside one of the domes. I felt relieved to be inside, even if there was no heat, because at least we now had some shelter. I cradled Dad’s head in my lap and tried to keep him warm.
Charlie stared out of the small window. “He’s gone. He’s gone.”
I guessed that he was talking about Ivan. I didn’t know. I didn’t care about Ivan or about Charlie anymore. I just cared about Dad. The radio was smashed, and I was stranded with my unconscious father, with no way to get word back to Randal and the station.
I sat shivering. All the supplies had been packed up. The dome felt like a hollow shell. Dad grew colder and colder in my arms. There was no heat, no generator, no power. But with Ivan probably headed back to camp on the snowmobile, they would soon figure out that we were missing. We should just wait it out … wait for help. But when was help going to come? How long could we last in this dome? Would we freeze before help came? When Dad and I didn’t return, Randal would surely send someone—right? I half expected West to come bounding across the ice any second. I would be fine waiting. But it wasn’t me I was worried about.
Questions raced through my mind. How long would Dad last without medical attention? How bad was his leg? And was I just going to sit there and do nothing?
Not a chance.
It felt as if we were on the surface of the moon, desolate and alone, stranded among craters of ice. Charlie was no help. He perched himself on top of the silvery dome like an owl. He was the lookout, but for what I didn’t know. He just stared up at the sky.
He was wearing white snow pants, boots, and a T-shirt. Apparently, the freezing temperatures, snow, and frigid wind had no effect on him or his skin. But that wasn’t true for Dad or me. Dad’s face looked pasty. Even with his face mask on, his cheeks were cold to the touch. His breathing was so shallow that not even a feather would float above his lips.
Fear gripped me. The air was rough and frozen in my throat. Without heat, we wouldn’t last the night. I had to get Dad out of there and back to the station. As the sky darkened, our options dwindled. We couldn’t stay in the tomblike death dome, which felt more and more like a silvery crypt where mythical snow princesses buried their fallen fathers.
The sled was our best bet. Charlie and I could pull Dad back to the station. But the more I thought about it, the more problems there were with the idea. Venturing out in the snow without GPS or a guide was foolish. It was ten miles back to the station, a long way to travel by foot. We could get turned around and lost even as the rescue party showed up at the excavation site. Plus, Charlie and I were both pretty runty.
Still, my greatest fear was Dad dying during the night. I couldn’t let that happen. I would rather freeze to death, pulling him on a sled, than stay at the skeleton site and die doing nothing. Besides, we might run into West on the way. He was probably about to send out a team to find us. Maybe Jake would film the rescue effort.
Dad needed help.
I bundled him up with extra blankets and covered him with a discarded tarp. I could barely see him under all the covering. The sled was ready. I just had to get Charlie to help me pull.
“Come down!” I yelled. “Please, Charlie. We need to go home.”
“Home,” he yelled back. “I want to go home!” His voice echoed.
A shiver went up my spine that had nothing to do with the cold. Charlie stood on the dome and leaped to the ground, landing in the snow a few feet away from me. Once he hit the ground, he began spinning around in circles with his arms outstretched, trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue, which would have been really cute under normal circumstances.
But not now. Not since our rescue plan had fallen apart.
“Aren’t you going to help me?” I asked.
“Help me,” he parroted. “Are you going to help me, snow ghost?”
Strange. There were times when I thought Charlie knew exactly what he was saying and then he would go back to joking around or mimicking my words. I couldn’t understand it. “I’m not a snow ghost.”
“I know you aren’t a snow ghost.” He tilted his head at me. “You are Old Girl.”
I stood in the doorway of the dome. I didn’t have time to be anyone. “Please, come over here and help me pull the sled.” My voice caught in my throat. I swallowed hard. “We don’t have time to play games. We have to go.”
“I will help you. I will help you stay alive. Like you helped me escape the ice and the scarred man.” Charlie helped me maneuver the sled out of the dome, and then once outside, he ran up behind the sled and gave it a strong push.
“Mush!” he yelled. “Mush!” One moment he was so serious and then the next he was playing in the snow like a little kid.
“Stop it! Just stop it!” I snapped. I didn’t want to yell at him, but I couldn’t take it anymore. “Be serious.”
He raced up beside me and began pulling. The momentum was just what we needed, and the sled glided along on the ice pack. We followed the tracks of the snowmobile. But the wind had kicked up, and I knew we didn’t have much time before the tracks would be blown away. We just needed to keep going.
“What are you?” I asked. Through my ice-crusted goggles, Charlie looked perfect. His hair was fluttering in the wind. His cheeks were rosy, his eyes bright. “You’re not like us. Look at you.” I pointed to him. “You aren’t even cold. The snow doesn’t affect you at all.”
“I’m Charlie.” He touched the tag on his ear. “I’m here, now.”
“But you’re special,” I said. “When we found you, you had wings. You could fly. Then you changed your own body to look like Kyle. You could do more than just pull the sled if you wanted to.”
“But I want to pull the sled,” he said.
“You’re stronger than me. You could really help us. You could save my dad.” My focus shifted to the ground and every step I took.
“Save you,” he said, and tilted his head toward me, but I didn’t look up. “Save you.”
“Yes,” I said. I was getting tired. White was a heavy color. The sky settled on my shoulders like a great white stone.
“I’m young, too young,” Charlie said.
“You’re young? Like for your species?” It never occurred to me that Charlie was young, like a puppy of his own kind. No wonder his mind wandered.
“Species?” he asked.
“Species is a way to group creatures that are similar. They share the same basic biology. Like mammals or reptiles or birds. And humans, except we don’t have wings. Like you did. You are special—a species like none other.” I exhaled. My head ached. I couldn’t think about it anymore.
We walked along in silence for a while. Every step was an effort. The ground was rough and uneven, even jagged in places. I kept picturing Dad falling and hitting his head. The cold knifed through my body.
Time melted, step-by-step. An hour passed, maybe two. We had slowed down. The sled got heavier and heavier. I had to conserve energy. I didn’t know how much longer I could go on. Finally, I had to stop. I knelt down in the snow, exhausted. No one had come for us. I was alone with Dad and a strange boy. The white world surrounded me. I hated white. I hated the way it ganged up on me.
I didn’t want to cry. Even under my face mask, the tears would freeze to my face, and I couldn’t stand that. I tried to stand but sank back down. I crawled over to check on Dad. He was breathing, at least. That was something.
“Dad, I’m not strong enough. I’m not like Mom or like you. I can’t make it.”
“Strong,” Charlie raised his voice. “You need strong?”
“I’m not talking to you,” I snapped. My head fell to Dad’s chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Strong?” Charlie repeated.
“Yes, I need to be stronger. But I’m not. I’m not strong. I’m tired and cold.” I rested my head on the tarp. When I looked up, Charlie was gone.
Great. What a perfect time to abandon ship. Dad was still out like a light. I didn’t know how long I had been walking or how far. I had to
keep going, but I was so tired. My head sagged, my shoulders caved in, pitching me forward against Dad’s chest. I closed my eyes and slid into the darkness.
My face was numb under my goggles and face mask. I wondered if my skin was windburned like West’s face, the elements scrubbing away a layer of me at a time.
I don’t know how long I had been sitting when I heard the growling.
When I looked up, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Standing up on its hind legs was a huge white polar bear.
I didn’t remember seeing or hearing it approach. It must have stumbled upon us. I had forgotten that it was migration season—something I’d read in a book, but that hadn’t sunk in until that moment.
The great bear stood a few feet away from the sled. Even on its haunches, it towered over me. It roared, and a cloud of smoke billowed from its gaping maw filled with razor-sharp teeth.
My mind went blank.
I wasn’t sure what to do. Roll up into a ball and play dead? That wouldn’t be hard. I was halfway there already. Besides, I couldn’t run and leave Dad alone on the sled. So I just stared, and the bear stared back at me with its black, alien eyes that somehow looked familiar and kind. Maybe the bear was just curious and wanted to see who this strange creature was pulling a sled across its home.
The perfect ending to a terrible day. I was going to be eaten by a polar bear.
It dropped to all fours and ambled toward me.
“No!” I yelled. The bear could eat me if it wanted to, but I wasn’t about to let it hurt Dad. “No! Go away!” I waved my arms, but the bear just stared at me. It roared again. Its hot breath was a puff of smoke in the cold air.
“Ya! Ya! Get out of here!” I tried to shoo the bear away, but it just moved closer to the sled until finally it was right on top of us. It was so close that I could touch its fur. I fell back in the snow, scrambling, trying to move as far away as possible, but there was no way that I could outrun a polar bear on the ice and snow. He was built for this environment—tough and strong, with claws for gripping the ice and lots of protection from the cold.
