Further:

by Travis Mohrman

  Coopers smile broke. He was slightly embarrassed for smiling in that situation at all, but it was amazing to see. Staring out in the blackness, he though he saw something else also.

  It almost looked like a bright star, but it was much too low. From where he was standing, it looked to be at ground level. He thought that it looked like a lit torch, except that it didn’t appear to flicker and it seemed to be white instead of orange. He thought about bringing it up to Handro, but he didn’t seem to be in a conversational mood anymore.

  Handro crawled back into the shelter to sleep and Cooper promised to stay up a little longer, adding more wood to the fire. He grabbed the large flap inside of his pack and used it to shield his head from the snow. He was wearing a covering over his head to keep it warm, but he didn’t want it to get wet.

  As he sat outside, watching the snow fall, his attention kept turning back to the strange light at the far end of the field. It almost seemed to be twinkling now, but he couldn’t tell if it was because of the snowflakes growing to a larger size.

  He almost wandered across the field to see what it was. He remembered walking all the way across it the day before and how long it took to get there. The distance was very deceiving. Still, he was getting ready to go until he thought of Handro and the dogs, asleep in the tiny house. If he walked out there and got injured somehow, there would be no coming back. He wasn’t that interested in what he assumed to be some trick of the falling snow anyway.

  17

  They next morning brought the pair even worse news. As they both climbed outside, they could feel it was still bitterly cold. Worse than that, the snow had fallen all night long and was piled high all over the land. It came up half the distance to Cooper’s knee as he pushed through it.

  Cooper couldn’t tell if it was still snowing or if the howling wind was just blowing around everything that was already down. The magic that he had felt for the snow when it first started to fall had quickly melted out of his mind. Cooper now viewed it only as another obstacle.

  Still, he enjoyed watching the dogs run through it. They had a totally different way of running in the snow. As he watched them cross the field, he saw it was really a series of jumps to bounce up and over the white stuff. As Cooper tried to walk through it, he saw why it worked for them. He quickly dismissed the idea for himself, not being built to bound like that, after all. He did find it easier to lift his feet high out of it as he walked rather than shuffle through it.

  Handro emerged from the tent ready to leave. He had lost the aggravation from the day before and regained his calm persona. Cooper was thankful for this. As he turned around to talk to Handro, his breath caught in his throat.

  Staring out to where the river should be, he saw only another sea of white. It looked the same as the field on the other side of them. His heart sank as he turned to Handro. “That’s not good.”

  Handro’s scowl returned in an instant. “No, it is not. We can’t break the ice up if we don’t even really know where the water is. We could hit a rock and never know it. The boat would sink so easily if it hit any of those rocks.”

  Cooper agreed. He only saw one way out at this point. He opened his mouth to speak but a gust of frigid wind stole the words out of his mouth as he nestled his chin against his neck, trying to stay warm in the wind.

  Handro beat him to it anyway. “We walk out. We need to leave soon. We can make it to where the river is moving swiftly and make a raft. It shouldn’t be frozen there. We can float back downstream on that.”

  Cooper’s experience with a makeshift raft had been a good one, but under very different conditions. He voiced his concern without hesitation. “Rafts are very wet. With this cold I don’t see that going well.”

  Handro turned his dark eyes towards Cooper. “I didn’t say it would be easy, but it’s what must be done. Let’s get our things together and head out.” He was nearly growling as he spoke.

  Cooper had serious misgivings about building a raft in cold water, but arguing now seemed pointless. They could always adapt the plan. He had a greater concern though. “Handro, we don’t know if this is normal? It might just be a storm. It may get warm and melt all this stuff tomorrow!”

  “Even better for raft building then. Listen Cooper, I will not leave without you, but I know a bad situation when I see one. We need to leave now. If it gets warm, we can walk back, if we really want to, and try the boat again. Right now, we need to walk out of here or risk never leaving.”

  That was a chilling thought that Cooper had been trying to avoid. He knew these conditions could kill a man who was not prepared. Another smack of icy wind blew snow directly into his eyes. He squinted them nearly shut as a great shiver moved from the top of his head to his toes, then all the way back up. “Let’s get started then.”

  +++

  After putting on as many layers as they could, the pair of men trudged away from their small camp. Cooper was pleased with how comfortable the pack was on his back. Wearing that many shirts, he barely felt it at all.

  As they walked, the snow continued to blow into their faces and was starting to pile up in large drifts. They were trying to avoid these drifts, but it was very difficult to see. The land had so few trees that there was nothing around to break the wind, and they happened to be walking directly into it.

  It was slow going for sure, but with all the activity Cooper, wasn’t cold. In fact, he was starting to sweat a little and it was making him feel very uncomfortable. At first, it just felt like normal sweat, but then he started feeling both hot and cold at the same time. It almost felt like he was cooking underneath all those layers of clothing.

  Cooper stopped to shed some of his layers and Handro did the same. With an extra shirt, he wrapped this one around the front of his face, making two small holes to see out of. It looked very odd, but it stopped the wind from pummeling his exposed nose and cheeks.

  With the face mask on, visibility was even worse and Cooper found himself slipping in the snow every so often. The problem was that they couldn’t see where the rocks or dips in the ground were until they hit them. The snow covered everything.

  After walking most of the morning, the wind began to ease up and the snow wasn’t blowing in every which direction. They were able to move slightly faster through the white expanse. Cooper tried to place his feet soundly, but still slid around.

  It was Handro who took a nasty fall. With Cooper in the lead, he barely heard the man shout as he went down. Turning around, Cooper saw him lying in the snow, grabbing at his ankle.

  “Are you okay? What happened?” Cooper said, removing his face mask so he could see the situation better. Handro was sitting beside a partially uncovered, chunky gray stone. The marks along the side of the stone were evidence of how fast his foot had slid.

  “My foot twisted, I just need to rest for a second. Go ahead if you like, I will catch up.” Handro’s face was doing a bad job of covering up the pain he was in.

  “No way am I walking away from you out here. Let’s just relax for a second and see how it feels.”

  The dogs had finally caught up to them. Cooper had no idea how they had been able to find them through the blowing snow and cold. He knew that his nose didn’t seem to work in this cold, and assumed their abilities were similarly muted. Still, there they were, tails high in the air, snow nearly all the way up their furry legs.

  While Cooper was scratching at Rufus’s head, Handro attempted to stand up. With a groan, he was able to stand tall again, but as he put his weight on that foot, he quickly collapsed back into the snow. The dogs ran over to advantage of the opportunity lick his head.

  Handro didn’t care for that, but was in too much pain to do anything about it. Cooper walked over and brushed the dogs away. He helped Handro lean his back against the rock and stared into his dark eyes.

  “We need to go back to our campsite. We can’t keep walking here. There isn’t even enough wood here to build a structure and all the grass is buried.” Cooper exclaime
d. “You can lean on me and we’ll hobble back.”

  Handro had not needed help from anyone since he was a boy. He started to protest but Cooper quickly shot him down. “Either we both stumble back to our campsite and give that injury the time it needs, or we both die right here. It’s your call.” The redhead had grown cold waiting there and didn’t have the patience anymore. In their current situation, time would not fix this trouble, it would just end it. Cooper wanted to get moving again.

  The dark skinned man stood back up with a grimace and draped a big arm over Cooper. The smaller man stood up straight and held the weight. They began a slow shuffle back to the campsite.

  +++

  It had taken most of the rest of the day to get back to their little shelter. Cooper could see where the wind had piled snow against one side of it, but it was still standing strong. Cooper had put all the extra firewood underneath the boat to keep it dry and was happy to find it still safe and sound.

  After helping Handro into the structure, he started building a fire. First he cleared the snow off the fire area. He knew the coals had all grown cold so he started some grass on fire underneath the boat and moved it to the right spot. The last thing he needed to do was burn the boat!

  In short order, He had a raging fire going and the men were sitting around it. As the sun went down, the wind went with it and they felt much better. That frigid wind seemed to have a way of magnifying the cold and allowing it access to his bones.

  In the firelight, Cooper looked over Handro’s injury. It wasn’t his foot, but his ankle. The normally skinny area just above his foot was swollen large and had taken on a myriad of colors. He couldn’t imagine the level of pain the man must have dealt with on the walk back to the camp.

  Cooper took one of the strips of cloth from his bag and asked if he should tie it up. He thought about making a joke out of asking where he could find a cold rag, but thought better of it. This man had been through a world of hurt today.

  “In my bag I have large green leaves. Please get them out. They are smoking herbs and they will dull the pain if you put them under the wrapping.” The man was exhausted and needed to sleep.

  Cooper hurried through his pack until the found the leaves and wrapped up Handro’s lower leg. Then, he helped him into the shelter where he immediately fell asleep. The dogs also seemed tired from their trip and fell fast asleep nestled on either side of the dark-skinned man.

  Cooper was fatigued as well. He didn’t remember ever feeling this tired in his life. It was almost as if he was too tired to sleep. He sat staring into the flickering tongues of fire shooting their warmth out to him. It was then that he thought to look across the field again.

  It wasn’t snowing tonight and with the wind gone nothing was impeding his view. As he allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he saw it again. There, all the way across the field, was that same white star. There was no twinkling, no colors, just bright white, like a star had fallen from the sky to lean against a hill.

  Cooper stood to walk over there and felt the muscles in his leg plead otherwise. He wasn’t thinking straight. He needed to rest too, or he would end up in the same position as Handro. He removed his wet outer layers and climbed into the shelter with no memory of his head hitting the soft grass before falling asleep.

  18

  In the morning, Cooper checked Handro’s injury. He said it didn’t hurt as much and the swelling certainly seemed to have gone down but he still couldn’t put any pressure on it.

  He knew it would be some time before the man was able to undertake the kind of foot journey they had in front of them. Cooper lamented not being able to just use the boat, but he knew that harping on that wouldn’t change the situation.

  The day was bright, with deep blue skies. He couldn’t see any signs of clouds anywhere and decided to gather more firewood and perhaps set some traps to see if they could catch any rodents.

  He hadn’t seen any rodents up here, but assumed they were around. Those critters seemed to be everywhere.

  After making sure that Handro was warm enough, and getting a quick refresher course in the best types of snares and pitfall traps, Cooper headed out into the snow. First, he went down by the river and set a few simple deadfall traps. A critter would come up to sniff the tiny piece of a nut he was leaving and hit the small ‘trigger stick’. This would cause a heavy rock to drop onto the animal, crushing it. Cooper liked those kinds of traps because he could check them whenever he came by, without fear of the animal escaping.

  After setting some traps and creating several piles of firewood, he headed towards the edge of the field to set snares. The snares would be used by animals leaving the field to head up into the hills. At least, that was how it worked in the village. He really had no idea how the animals this far north behaved, but barring any evidence to the contrary, he went with what he knew.

  As he got to the field edge, he saw tracks in the snow! Cooper was ecstatic because this was not only proof that animals were living up here in this icebox, but now he knew right where they traveled.

  The snow was very helpful for showing him what the critters had been doing. He could see that they had come out of the hills and then dug into the snow, all the way down to the ground. They seemed to choose the areas where the wind had blow the snow away so it was not as deep. Cooper wondered if they would be too smart for his snares!

  After he had set nearly a dozen snare lines along the many routes he had seen, he looked back across the field. He could just barely see the overturned hull of the boat at the far end. The smoke coming off the fire was highly visible, so he had no worries of getting turned around in this land of white powder.

  Looking across the field caused him to realize exactly where he was. Whatever he had been seeing after dark should be around this area, somewhere. Cooper got excited to possibly solve a mystery. He hoped it wasn’t just some trick of the firelight reflecting off something out here, but even that would be a benefit. Nothing he had seen thus far would be reflective, so maybe it was made by people, just like the white square Handro had found in the river.

  As he walked along the edge of the field, he looked at all the hills. They were covered in raggy outcroppings of rock covered with snow. The terrain rose gently up above him, but he could see in the distance where it got much higher. The whole land mass just seemed to be lifting up towards the sky in small increments. Cooper thought it was almost pretty the way the craggy rocks formed undulating but ever increasing waves over and over again.

  When he hit the river he realized that he hadn’t been paying as much attention to the hillside directly in front of him, but instead staring off into the distance. He had to walk that same way to get back though, so he didn’t mind too much. He knew he should be getting back to Handro soon. He didn’t want him to run out of firewood and he feared that may happen around midday.

  Looking out over the river that vexed their journey home, he couldn’t help taking in what he was really seeing. It was totally frozen over and the snow had now blown all over its surface. In many areas there was no snow covering at all. He knew just under that ice was the last set of rollers they had seen before the lake froze.

  He found that interesting. The rollers ended right where the field ended. They had decided the field must be man-made too, so it made sense. Still, he started paying much closer attention to the bank of the river. He hoped to find something showing what those rollers were doing down there.

  After walking up and down a good length of the river bank at the far end of the field, he decided it was time to quit; he was just wasting time at that point. He had started walking back along the rocky field edge when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. Angled so he didn’t see it when he walked past the first time was an obvious door. Up above that was a large dome, slightly bigger than his own head. He had seen domes like that in his old city and knew it was a light, except the ones that he was familiar with never put out any actual light.

  He approached it carefully
and saw that the door was large and looked to be made of metal. It was encased in that same smooth stone that the elders had told him man used to make. Seament, they had called it. This was chipping in a few places around the corners and in one spot a large chunk looked to have fallen flat on the ground. Where it had been he saw the edges of the same soft, white substance that had floated down the river!

  Cooper was ecstatic. He had found where it had come from. This had been the whole point of the trip in the first place! It took everything he had not to run back to the camp and tell Handro immediately, but he wanted to look at things a bit more. He wished he had his sketch pad so he could make an image of it to show Handro, but he knew that as soon as he was able, the man would walk down here to see it himself.

  He approached closer to the door and saw that it was actually set back in a little bit from the seament frame. On both sides of the frame were small, square boxes. He tried touching them and found them to just be cold, black metal. He had no idea what they were there for.

  As he stepped up right next to the door to search for any writing that may be on it, he heard a loud beep beep and jumped back. The door slowly slid away through the frame and appeared to actually go into the hillside. Cooper was immediately hit with a blast of warm, slightly moist air. Cooper’s eyes had already gone as wide as they possibly could, but as he watched those domed lights pop on, illuminating a long hallway, he nearly fell over.

  As he was running back to Handro across the field, he could have sworn he heard a very strange voice say something, but convinced himself it was probably his own heartbeat thumping heavily inside his ears.

  +++

  When Cooper finally reached the camp, he was totally out of breath. The dogs had noticed him running across the field and they had run out to greet him. As he tried to slow his breathing, they thought it was some kind of game and were still jumping around him.