Our Song

by Dani Atkins

  Just seconds later the baking analogy took a much less appealing turn when I saw the snow beneath my skis begin to shift and change in format. It looks like sifted icing sugar, I remember thinking, not realising the significance of what I was seeing. Then the sound began, it was like a thundering rumble of a freight train rapidly hurtling down the mountain behind me. I could hear its roar, even above the sound of blood pounding in my ears and that of my own suddenly increased heartbeat. I risked a brief glance over one shoulder and instantly regretted it. The top of the mountain, so majestic and still just moments earlier, had come to life, like a slumbering white behemoth. An enormous snow cornice had broken away and was sliding and rippling with ever-growing momentum down the slope behind me, swallowing the snow in its path and belching it back out in a huge white wall of approaching danger. I crouched lower and tried to increase my speed, still not realising that to outrun it was an impossibility.

  The air around me became heavy and laden with snowy particles, all racing to try to get to the bottom of the slope ahead of me. I knew it would only be a matter of seconds before the monster chasing behind me took the lead. Then through the haze of snow I saw a dark blue flash materialise from out of nowhere, or so it seemed. The shape crossed my path about ten metres ahead of me. It was another skier, man or woman it was impossible to tell, but like me they were about to be swallowed up by one of nature’s most deadly and hungry predators. The skier ahead of me glanced behind them, and I saw then that it was a man; a split second later he turned away from the approaching avalanche and back to me. Everything seemed to slow down as adrenaline kicked in and I saw the skier in blue nod his head towards the drop-off to the left, even as he angled his own skis in that direction. He nodded again, as though urgently asking me a question. He was telling me to jump. To leap over the edge, down God-knows-how-many metres to the snow-packed ground below, to escape the avalanche. Something even colder than the icy terrain I was hurtling over gripped my heart. I skied, but I didn’t jump. I never had, and today certainly didn’t seem like a good time to start. He nodded one last time, even more imperatively, swerved slightly in one final change of direction and then flew off the edge of the slope. For a second he appeared to hover in mid-air, like a large blue hummingbird surrounded by skis and poles, and then he plummeted out of sight.

  The sound behind me was now deafening and my skis no longer felt as though they were gliding over snow, but more as though they were tripping and stumbling upon it. Unless I was willing to risk being buried beneath tons of snow and debris, I had run out of options. I swerved so abruptly that I almost lost my balance and fell, but at the last moment managed to stay upright. The precipice was approaching at speed. I had no idea what lay below: trees, rocks, the broken and battered body of the other skier? No sane and sentient person would even consider jumping. I jumped.

  I felt the snow disappear from under me and suddenly there was air beneath my skis. My own speed and momentum meant that my trajectory wasn’t straight downward, but instead – for just a few exhilarating moments – I was airborne, virtually free-falling like a skydiver. Then physics or gravity or some other damn scientific ruling intervened and I was going down, in an uncontrolled and desperate tangle of poles and flailing arms. I could see the ground approaching, thankfully devoid of rocks, but directly ahead of me were the trees that suddenly didn’t look small, innocuous, or anything at all like cake decorations. Which was really unfortunate, because I was practically certain there was no way to avoid crashing straight into them.

  I almost landed on my skis. I don’t know how, sheer luck I guess. I hit the snow with a whump which jarred every single one of my internal organs with such force that I felt sure a few of them were probably repositioned by the impact. Miraculously I appeared to have missed colliding into the densest section of the thicket of trees, but there was still one last fir ahead of me. If it had grown just half a metre or so to the left a few hundred years ago, or if I’d jumped just one second later that day, I might have made it. I tried to veer away, but I hadn’t regained my balance from my landing, and in my panic I lost control as my skis crossed and I cartwheeled into the air before crashing into the snow. Pain – like I had never experienced in my life – exploded within me as my left ski clipped an exposed root of the tree as I hurtled past.

  A kaleidoscope of colours filled my head. Red: blood pulsing, the bright vivid red of pain. I could feel it everywhere, but mostly in my left leg. Then there was blue: flashing beside me, leaning down over me, dark blue, the colour of a ski suit – not mine, I was in pink. The last colour was white. White everywhere: over me, under me, pressed against my goggles, inside my mouth and nostrils as I came to a halt, face down in the snow.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Those were his first ever words to me. Later I’d always felt there should have been something more memorable or less prosaic to that first introduction than just that shouted command. Still, it did the trick. I stopped trying to struggle to move and let my head flop back down on its frozen cold pillow. I exhaled sharply, blowing the snow from my nose and spitting it from my mouth. It came out tinged with pink, like an exotic piece of marbling. Except there was nothing at all exotic about internal bleeding.

  He knelt beside me, but all I could see of him was the blue waterproof material of his ski pants. His voice was surprisingly calm and steady. ‘Where are you hurt?’

  ‘Everywhere,’ I gasped, my lips grazing the snow beneath my face as I spoke. ‘Has it gone? Is it over?’ Raw panic had turned my voice into the screeching cry of a terrified bird.

  ‘It is. It’s finished.’ I strained my ears, but the cacophony of nature had fallen silent. ‘We were lucky,’ he continued. ‘If we hadn’t jumped when we did . . .’

  Face down in the snow, with my left leg feeling as though it was being consumed in a fiery furnace, I couldn’t say I felt particularly lucky.

  ‘What if it starts again? What if there’s an aftershock?’

  ‘That’s earthquakes,’ he replied, his voice measured and placating. ‘I think we’ve got enough to worry about for the moment; let’s not invent new reasons to panic.’ He shifted his weight and bent down a little closer towards me, but still I couldn’t see his face. ‘Now, where does it hurt most?’

  ‘My left leg . . .’ I replied, my voice wobbling as shock flooded through my veins, washing away the last dregs of adrenaline, ‘. . . it really hurts.’

  ‘I’m just going to check you for any other injuries, okay?’ My helmeted head gave a small, terrified bob. I felt his hands upon me then, gentle as they carefully ran down my spine, and then travelled the length of each arm from shoulder to wrist.

  ‘Are you . . . are you a doctor?’ I asked as he continued what appeared to me to be an extremely thorough examination. My voice was a hopeful whisper, echoing hoarsely in the snowy valley.

  ‘No,’ he said, shifting from my field of vision as he shuffled downwards and ran his hands from the top of my thigh down to the ankle of my right leg. Thankfully he stayed far away from its counterpart. ‘But I did a get a first-aid badge when I was in the Boy Scouts,’ he added.

  It was a little too soon for levity, given the circumstances, especially when the reassurance that I was in safe hands had just dissolved away like a spring thaw. Not that I needed a qualified medic to tell me what I already knew.

  ‘My leg’s broken, isn’t it?’

  ‘It might just be your ankle,’ he replied, as though that might somehow cheer me up. ‘It is kind of at a funny angle.’

  That’s never what you want to hear. ‘Let me see,’ I said, struggling to raise my body from the bed of snow. His strong hands came out and gently pressed on my shoulders, pinioning me down. ‘You shouldn’t move. You could make it worse.’

  ‘Akela tell you that, did he?’

  ‘Are you always this feisty, or is it just on avalanche days?’

  There was something about him that was quite engaging, and in any other situation I’m sure I would really appreciate his
brand of humour. Just not today.

  ‘No, it’s usually only after I fly a hundred metres or so through the air, and then collide with a tree that does it. Now are you going to help me turn over, or are you just going to sit there and watch me struggle to do it myself?’

  He gave a deep sigh, and I knew he didn’t quite know how to deal with my determined streak. That was okay. Very few people did.

  ‘It was nowhere near that distance,’ he corrected, moving to stand beside me. I felt his hands burrowing in the snow beneath me, creating two little troughs. ‘I’m going to lift you up, and carry you over to those trees back there.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, suddenly subdued.

  ‘It’s going to hurt like crazy.’

  ‘Understood,’ my voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘I still think this is a terrible idea.’

  ‘Duly noted. I won’t sue you or the Boys’ Brigade for malpractice.’

  ‘You’re funny,’ he said, and although I couldn’t see his face, I thought he might be smiling. ‘Okay, on the count of three. One . . . two . . .’

  He lifted me on two, the bastard. But it probably didn’t matter. I had already passed out from the pain by the time he had got to his feet.

  I’m not sure how long I was unconscious. Long enough for him to have climbed up to the top of the precipice and driven both of our crossed skis into the snow to act as a marker. I came to with a long moan of pain.

  ‘Told you it was a bad idea,’ were his opening words. He was crouched down beside me, still panting from the exertion of having climbed the slope. Slowly I turned my head towards him. Very little of his face was visible. The navy woollen beanie was pulled down low and the snow goggles – which presumably he’d worn for the climb up the slope – were still in place, so all I could really see was his mouth and chin, with a hint of dark stubble shadowing upon it. ‘How’s your leg?’

  ‘Still broken.’

  He smiled, and the whole lower half of his face was instantly transformed. His teeth were dentist-advert white and perfectly straight. Good genes or expensive orthodontia, I wasn’t sure which.

  He had propped me up against the broadest of the tree trunks and had carefully extended my legs flat out in front of me. I looked down at my two limbs encased in the bright pink snow-suit. Already the ankle of the left leg was beginning to swell, bulging the fabric outwards and making my snow boot cut painfully into the flesh.

  ‘I think it’s just my ankle,’ I conceded. ‘Should we take the boot off?’

  ‘Definitely not. In fact, we shouldn’t even think of moving you again until they get here.’

  ‘They who? Your friends?’

  He shook his head, ‘No. The ski patrol. We’re staying right here until they find us.’

  ‘But . . . but that could take ages. Wouldn’t it be better if you carried on down the slope and went for help?’

  He lowered himself onto the ground beside me. ‘Firstly, you don’t leave a casualty alone after an accident,’ he said, pushing the goggles from his face and pulling off his woollen hat to run his fingers through his thick shock of black hair. ‘And secondly,’ he continued, turning to face me, ‘There’s no path left to ski down.’

  The breath caught in my throat, and I never did figure out if it was his words or the sheer perfection of how he looked that caused it. He had the type of face you seldom saw in real life; it was normally smiling back at you from the pages of a glossy magazine, or filling a twenty-metre-wide cinema screen. His eyes were the most amazingly clear blue, like sunlight shining on an ocean, or polished sapphires in a jewelled crown. I felt like I’d seen them somewhere before . . . perhaps in an advert for tinted contacts?

  ‘I . . . I don’t understand what you’re telling me. Explain.’

  He lifted one of my pink-mitted hands and held it between both of his. Any comment which required hand-holding to deliver it couldn’t be good. ‘The trail has gone. It’s all rocks, tree stumps and deep drifts. Even if I could leave you, I don’t think I could ski down it, and I don’t know any other way to get out of here.’

  His words hung in the air between us, like deadly icicles, as the seriousness of our situation finally began to dawn on me.

  ‘But how will they know to come looking for us?’

  He smiled gently at my slightly idiotic comment. I guess my powers of reasoning weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders. ‘Because the guys I was with will have alerted them. If they followed the trail we took yesterday, they should all have got safely to the bottom before the avalanche came down.’

  ‘And if they didn’t?’

  A look of genuine concern darkened his face, and clouded the blue of his eyes. ‘I can’t let myself think of that.’ He turned from me then, and stared unseeingly across the snowy expanse of the clearing. ‘My younger brother was among them. He was one of the last skiers to set off.’

  Inside my head something clicked, and the pieces of the puzzle revolved, rotated and then fell neatly into place. No wonder his blue eyes had seemed familiar. ‘You’re Rob’s bossy older brother, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not the name I usually go by,’ he said, his attractive mouth twisting in a half smile. ‘Usually people just call me David. And you are . . . ?’

  ‘Confused,’ I said. ‘Rob told me to hang back before following your group. He was the last person to set off towards the trail. So how come they left you behind?’

  David squinted slightly as a dazzling beam of bright sunlight caught him directly in the face, illuminating a look I couldn’t easily identify.

  ‘I wasn’t left behind. I stayed.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, already afraid I knew the answer. Yes, there it was in his eyes. ‘For me? You stayed behind for me?’ He gave a small shrug as though it was no big deal, which we both knew was one big fat lie. ‘You got caught in an avalanche . . . you could have died on that slope, for me?’ David looked altogether uncomfortable as I pieced together what had happened. ‘Your brother told you I couldn’t handle the trail, didn’t he?’

  David tried to look nonchalant, and failed totally. ‘Rob was just . . . concerned . . . that’s all. So I hung back to check you were okay.’

  ‘And nearly got killed in the process.’

  ‘No one died here,’ he said, trying to steer the conversation back onto a more light-hearted footing. ‘Or even came close. Jeez, you do like to exaggerate, don’t you?’

  It took them seven hours to find us and stretcher me off the mountain. It took only half of that time for me to fall for David. Not that I ever considered for a single moment telling him how I felt. Obviously. But even through the fear, trauma and panic of waiting to be rescued, the attraction between us was undeniable. Something happened that day on the mountain. Something neither of us could have planned for or predicted . . . or have prevented.

  ‘So, Mystery Girl, you never told me your name. Are you a holidaying Snow Bunny or a humble Chalet Girl?’

  ‘I’m here on vacation with my parents, actually. And my name is Charlotte.’

  ‘So Charlie Girl,’ he teased, a twinkle in his eyes at his humorous play on words. ‘Where are you from? Where’s home?’

  ‘Everywhere . . . nowhere,’ I said, with a sigh. ‘In the last eight years I’ve lived in six different countries and been the “new girl” in the international school in each of them. My father’s job takes him all around the world, and where he goes, we go. But maybe not for much longer.’ I snapped my lips on the admission, knowing I shouldn’t be sharing such personal family details with someone I had only just met, but somehow I felt sure he could be trusted.

  I waited for him to troll out the expected response, about how great it must be to have seen so much of the world. But he surprised me. ‘That must have been hard on you,’ he said, accurately piercing through the tough outer carapace I wore as protection. ‘And lonely.’

  ‘It is hard to maintain lasting friendships when you’re constantly on the move,’ I admitted, pretending I cou
ldn’t see the look of sympathy in his eyes.

  It was a long day. We talked for most of it. I slept a little, which was a blissful escape from the pain. But there were some moments I knew would stay with me for ever. Like when he lifted the ski helmet from my head, and his fingers lingered for just a moment too long as he smoothed down the statically charged long blonde strands of hair, brushing them from my face with a gentleness that woke an unknown sensation within me. Or when I’d complained of the cold and he’d unzipped his jacket and pulled me against the warmth of his body, wrapping the sides of the thick quilted material around me like a cloak. We’d stayed like that for hours, my heart beating in tandem with his, his expelled breath gently fanning my face.

  It felt as though we had both been trapped within a perfect miniature snow globe, where nothing we did or said could be touched by the outside world. And when the combination of pain and fear made me tearful, it had felt completely natural for him to reach down and gently tilt my chin up towards him. His wind-chilled lips lowered and fastened on mine, but his tongue was warm, as his experienced mouth taught me that – despite what I thought – I had never, ever been properly kissed before. He kissed me like a man, and my easily given and broken seventeen-year-old heart never forgot that.

  We never acknowledged what was happening, but something fiery and alive was born that day in the ice and snow. Something so powerful that I felt no relief, just regret, when finally two red-jacketed figures skied into the clearing, pulling the toboggan stretcher that would carry me off the mountain down to the waiting ambulance below.

  Chapter 6

  Charlotte

  Ally had her back to me, staring out of the window when I re-entered the Relatives’ Room. She turned, startled, and for a second it was hard to believe that almost a decade had passed since we’d first met. The years had been kind to her, and silhouetted against the black pane of glass, in her skin-tight jeans and fitted jumper, she could easily have still passed for the fresh-faced, enthusiastic music student who haunted my past, my present and my future. Even her figure hadn’t changed, despite the fact I knew she and her husband had at least one child.