Into the Woods

by Lyn Gardner

  The snow became so clotted that Aurora could see no further ahead than her own hand and she felt completely disorientated. She looked around blindly. She could see the indentation of Storm’s foot in front of her but the snow was falling so thickly that the impression was filling up fast. Aurora took a step forward and then another, trying to move quickly through the enveloping blanket of white. Her breath came in panicky little gasps. She saw another faint imprint ahead. She stepped into it and cast around for the next, but the expanse of snow in front of her was completely smooth. She took a tentative step forward, hoping desperately that the ice beneath her was thick enough to bear her weight. It held firm. She shuffled forward again. The ground felt blessedly solid. She took a third panicky step. As soon as she did so, Aurora realized she had made a terrible mistake. Her foot passed through the drifting snow like a hot knife through butter, and instead of finding solid ice it found thin air. She didn’t even have time to call out as she fell through the mouth of the crevasse into the gaping dark hole below.

  Up ahead, Storm looked around. She was frightened. The dense whiteness was so disorientating that she had lost all sense of direction. They were completely adrift in a sea of ice; for all she knew she could be leading them round and round in circles. She wished suddenly that she hadn’t pressed on so speedily. Huddling down, she waited for Aurora to catch her up, peering back through the murk, expecting to see her sister’s anxious face appear any minute.

  ‘Aurora!’ she roared into the wind. ‘Aurora …’ The wind spat Aurora’s name back at her. Storm felt the pipe around her neck glow like a hot ember in a dying fire. Panic rising, she set off to retrace her steps, but she had only taken three or four when she realized with a sick feeling that she could see an end to the rope and that there was no Aurora attached to it. She stared down at the rope in horror and disbelief. Beyond it, the snow had obliterated her tracks completely. There was no telling which way she had come.

  ‘Aurora!’ she screamed, and, quite oblivious to her own safety, broke into a stumbling run. After a few steps she sank to her knees, aghast at her own stupidity. One false step and she would have fallen to her death. She hugged herself and forced back hot tears. Had Aurora already fallen? Was she already dead, deep in the underbelly of the mountains? Or was she still somewhere out on the ice-field, lost and frightened and needing Storm’s help?

  Storm hauled herself to her feet. She felt her way back with her ice axe in the direction from which she thought they had come, all the while muttering to herself, ‘For ever and for always,’ ‘For ever and for always,’ until it became a comforting mantra as she moved trance-like through the blinding snow. Time crumbled away. Storm was soon so exhausted that every step required a supreme effort.‘For ever and for always,’ she muttered to herself. She felt terribly sleepy. Perhaps she would lie down in the snow and have a rest. She shook herself. ‘For ever and … for … always.’ She knew that she mustn’t lie down, that if she slept, then she would never awake again. But she couldn’t help herself. The wind had dropped and she was alone in a silent world of snow. ‘For ever … and … for …’ She would just lie down for a moment and then she would get up again. She prodded the snow in front of her with her ice axe, then she knelt, curling her body up into a little ball. The pipe was burning her skin but she didn’t care. She was far too sleepy. ‘For ever …’

  The snow continued to fall, covering her with a warm, treacherous blanket. After a very short while it began to drift around her body, so that Storm became part of the landscape. A silvergrey hare ran across the snow and huddled its warm body against her cold one.

  ‘Left shelf. Seven plain tea towels. Seven coloured tea towels. Seven hand towels, blue. Seven hand towels, various colours. Right shelf. Six large bath towels, white. Six large swimming towels, multicoloured. Next shelf up. Left-hand side. Eight cream Irish linen double sheets, embroidered with a leaf motif, two darned. Sixteen cream linen lacy pillowcases, embroidered with a leaf motif, one with an iron scorch-mark in top left-hand corner. One patchwork quilt …’

  Storm blinked dozily. She was sure she could hear Aurora’s voice. She smiled sleepily and shut her eyes again, drifting back into warm sleep.

  ‘Right-hand side. Eight single white Irish linen sheets, four of them darned, one very badly in bottom left-hand corner. Sixteen white Irish linen pillowcases …’

  Storm awoke again. She was confused. She seemed to be entombed in warm, wet cotton wool. Foggily, she remembered what had happened. She struggled to sit up, fighting against her aching body, which was screaming for a return to the oblivion of sleep. She pushed her upper body through the layer of snow that encased her. It had stopped snowing. The sun was warm on her face. She cast desperately around for Aurora. The white landscape was utterly empty. She must have been dreaming her sister’s voice. Carefully Storm stood up, every bone protesting and her knees clicking like knitting needles. Somehow she had survived, but she had lost Aurora.

  Storm was beyond tears. Beyond despair. She felt as if she was carved out of stone. She stared at Piper’s Peak. A squall of snow raced across the cruel face of the mountain. Her face set hard, she prodded the snow in front of her and took a step in the direction of the mountain.

  She took several more steps.

  ‘Four brushed-cotton cot sheets, white. Two small goose-feather eiderdowns with blue piping. Four soft white towels. Twenty-two nappies, six badly worn …’

  Storm couldn’t believe her ears. It was Aurora’s voice. She wondered whether she might be hallucinating. She took a tentative step in the direction of the voice and shouted, ‘Aurora! Aurora!’

  ‘Six vests, white—’ The voice broke off.‘Storm? Storm! Is that you?’

  Storm looked around frantically. The voice was coming from somewhere in front and below her. Trying to contain her excitement, she tested the ground and moved forward.

  ‘Storm?’ The voice was coming from under the snow. Kneeling, Storm prodded the ground directly in front of her. It crumbled away to reveal a yawning hole. She peered down. Several metres below on a small ledge she saw Aurora’s ashen face staring back at her. Beyond the ledge loomed a dark blue, apparently bottomless drop. A series of ledges, smaller than the one upon which Aurora was perched, rimmed the crevasse mouth. They would be impossible to climb unaided, but with a rope and some help from her, Storm reckoned that Aurora would be able to scramble back out.

  ‘Hold on, Aurora,’ she called. ‘I’m going to get you out.’ She double-tied the length of severed rope to the spare in her pack and secured one end to her ice axe, which she then jabbed as hard as she could into the snowy ground. Then, casting a loop around her waist, she slowly lowered the rope towards her sister.

  ‘Aurora? Have you still got your ice axe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. You’re going to have to use it to help lever yourself out. I won’t be able to pull you up on my own.’ Storm dug her feet into the ice and braced herself. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aurora in a small voice.

  Storm felt her sister’s weight on the rope. It was like fifty sacks of potatoes. Storm’s forehead beaded with sweat as she tried to stop her feet from slipping. She felt her ice axe move ominously in the ice. Summoning all her energy, she heaved on the rope. Aurora’s head appeared over the top of the hole. The ice axe moved again. Storm pulled with all her strength. Just as Aurora scrambled over the edge, the ice axe flew out of its lodging. The sisters collapsed in a heap on the snow, gasping.

  After a few moments Aurora felt for Storm’s gloved hand and clasped it in her own.

  ‘Tell me,’ Storm said as her breathing returned to normal, ‘exactly why were you itemizing the entire contents of the linen cupboard at Eden End?’

  Aurora blushed. ‘I thought I was going to die. I was trying to take my mind off it by thinking of something nice.’

  ‘Something nice …’ said Storm wonderingly. ‘The linen cupboard? Something nice?’ She broke into gales of laughter. ‘I lov
e you, Aurora Eden. You are so unpredictably predictable.’

  Down a Deep, Dark Hole

  It was noon the next day by the time they reached the base of Piper’s Peak. They had found several silver stars left by Any, so Storm knew that they were back on the right track.

  A gale had kicked up off the ice-field and the girls were sheltering behind a lichen-covered boulder amongst the stones and rubble at the foot of the mountain. Storm was studying the map. Aurora had collapsed on a large flat stone and was nervously eyeing the mountain that rose out of boiling clouds. She resolved that if she survived this terrible adventure she would spend the rest of her life indoors, only venturing outside for weddings, picnics and visits to the dentist. She cocked her head. Somewhere behind the wind she thought she heard the guttural snarl of wolves. She got out her knitting needles: knitting would take her mind off things.

  Storm paced, muttering to herself, taking first forty steps in one direction and then forty steps in another, until she completed three sides of a triangle and came to rest in front of Aurora, still mumbling under her breath and looking around as if she had lost something important.

  ‘Where is it, stupid? Where is it! It must be here somewhere, stupid.’ Storm craned her neck, looking at the flapping map from different angles. Then she counted out the steps again, arriving back at the exact same point in front of Aurora.

  ‘I don’t understand. It must be here,’ she said angrily.

  ‘What must be here?’ asked Aurora pleasantly.

  ‘The entrance to the abandoned mineshaft,’ Storm replied impatiently. ‘Look, it says here on the map: X marks the spot.’

  ‘Are you reading the map upside down?’ ventured Aurora.

  ‘What do you think I am? Stupid?’

  ‘Of course not, sweetie,’ said Aurora soothingly. ‘But it’s not here, is it? If it was we would be able to see it.’

  ‘Well, if you’re so good at reading maps, you find it,’ said Storm huffily.

  Aurora looked at the map. The boulder with its distinctive lichen markings was clearly shown. She took the forty steps in one direction. Then the forty in another. Finally, with Storm close behind her, she paced forty more and came to a rest in front of the wide flat stone where she had been sitting. Engraved where she had been perched was a faint but distinct X.

  There was a tiny bubble of silence. Aurora expected Storm to explode, but her sister merely took the map and said in a tight arctic voice, ‘Ah, so Aurora marked the spot.’ Then she sighed.‘Come on, Aurora, give us a hand.’

  It took several minutes of backbreaking exertion before the girls succeeded in moving the heavy stone to reveal a round wooden lid with a rusty handle. Storm lifted the lid and the girls stared into a vertical tunnel of darkness. Storm threw a pebble down the hole and counted. She had reached nineteen and a quarter before they heard a distant splash.

  ‘Well,’ said Aurora with a nervous little laugh, ‘either this mineshaft is very deep or that stone fell very slowly.’

  Storm grinned. She felt into the shaft and located a rickety, rusty metal ladder fixed to the side. Then she busied herself with the rope.

  ‘You stay here and hold the rope,’ she decided. ‘I want to check the ladder. It doesn’t look very safe but I think it’s the only route to the tunnel that leads into Piper’s Peak. I just hope it’s above the waterline and hasn’t been flooded.’ She tied one end of the long coil around her waist and the other around Aurora’s.

  Aurora was only half-listening. She had been peering fearfully around into the gathering gloom. She had the uneasy feeling that they were being watched.‘You’re going to leave me all on my own?’ she gulped.

  ‘Only for a few minutes,’ replied Storm impatiently. ‘Please try to pull yourself together, Aurora. Nothing is going to happen to you. I’m doing the dangerous bit. All you’ve got to do is hold on to the rope and brace yourself in case I slip.’

  ‘But what if the rope snaps again?’ Aurora protested.

  Her sister looked momentarily contrite. ‘It won’t. Look – there are no rough edges for it to snag on here. And besides’ – she tried a smile – ‘we’ve had more than our share of bad luck already, don’t you think?’

  Her sister didn’t look convinced. She peered around again, still unable to shake the sensation of being watched, but there was no sign of movement amongst the rocks or out on the ice-field. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. Storm ignored her and began to descend into the shaft.

  Aurora gave a shriek so shrill it nearly made Storm lose her footing.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ she asked, pulling herself frantically from the hole.

  ‘I thought I saw something,’ said Aurora tearfully.

  Storm stared around. ‘I can’t see anything, can you?’ she enquired with a nasty little sarcastic edge to her voice. Aurora shook her head miserably.

  ‘Well then … If you’re quite sure, I’ll try again,’ said Storm, descending into the dark. She got a few rungs down when Aurora gave another piercing cry. Storm scrambled breathlessly back.

  ‘What is it?’ she hissed irritably.

  ‘There’s something there,’ sobbed Aurora, pointing up into the gloom of the mountainside. Storm sighed. She was getting really fed up with Aurora’s never-ending anxiety.

  ‘There’s nothing there, it’s your imagination playing tricks. You’re such a baby, Aurora. Now, I’m going down again; all you have to do is hold the rope. Can you do that?’ she asked, adding nastily, ‘Or will the scaredy little baby run away?’

  ‘But I did see something,’ said Aurora in a tiny voice. ‘Please don’t leave me here alone. I’ll come with you. I don’t want to be left on my own.’

  ‘Oh grow up, Aurora. Do you really want to climb down this dark, wet hole if it leads to a dead end? And besides, it’ll be quicker if I go alone. You’re always so slow.’ And with that, Storm’s head disappeared into the darkness.

  The coil of rope slowly unwound. Aurora shivered. She peered into the gloom and her heart skipped a beat. Staring back at her was a pair of eyes like tiny dirty headlamps. She closed her own momentarily and rubbed them. When she opened them, the single pair of eyes had been joined by several more. She screamed a scream that was like a thousand shivers. The eyes moved closer.

  Down in the mineshaft, Storm thought she heard a distant cry. She listened hard. Nothing. It must have been the wind. She continued towards the bottom, testing each rung of the ladder before putting her full weight on it. After more than a hundred metres she thought she could see water, dark and deceitful, waiting to swallow her up if she slipped. She sighed – it was just as she’d suspected. The entrance to the tunnel was below the water level. They would have to climb Piper’s Peak and find another way in.

  She began to climb back up, her exhausted legs protesting. Halfway to the surface she made a stupid error. She stepped onto a rusty rung and grabbed another a few metres above without testing it first. As she put her other hand on the rung to haul herself upwards it broke away. Storm fell. She grabbed at the ladder desperately and an entire section ripped away from the wall and dropped into the water below. Storm lurched sickeningly through thin air on the rope, then stopped with a jerk. Silently she blessed Aurora for absorbing the impact of her full weight on the rope.

  When her stomach returned to its proper place, Storm tried to claw her way through air to the wall. But although her fingers grazed the shaft’s sides, there was nothing to get a grip on. Only bare wall stood where the ladder had once been. She stretched upwards as far as she could. The section of ladder above the piece that had broken off was tantalizingly close – no more than a couple of metres above her. But however hard she tried to reach it, it remained beyond her grasp.

  Her situation was desperate, but not hopeless. Aurora had broken her fall and before long she would surely realize that for some reason Storm was unable to take her weight off the rope. Then her sister would haul her upwards. If Aurora could just manage to lift her a couple of metres
higher, she could reach the ladder. She called up, ‘Aurora. Aurora.’

  There was silence. A terrible thought crossed Storm’s mind. Perhaps somehow, in breaking her fall, Aurora had knocked herself unconscious, maybe with the rope caught beneath her. Maybe Aurora was even dead. Then Storm would be suspended for eternity in mid-air until she herself died or, even more chillingly, until her weight dragged Aurora’s body over the edge of the shaft and sent it tumbling down on top of her.

  Storm tried again to reach the next rung of the ladder before tumbling back exhausted. Tears of frustration began to course down her cheeks.

  Up at ground level Aurora stood frozen with shock and effort. She had felt the jerk of the rope as Storm fell and had held on for dear life, the rope biting viciously into hands. Her arms were shaking uncontrollably with the effort.

  She couldn’t understand it. Storm couldn’t have fallen very far – there had only been a metre or so left of the rope to uncoil. She couldn’t be seriously hurt. So why hadn’t she moved her weight back onto the ladder?

  Aurora shut her eyes briefly to black out the pain in her arms and the terrifying circle of yellow eyes that now surrounded her. She heaved on the rope, but Storm’s body was heavy and her own arms too numb. There was a small stunted bush nearby. She wondered if she might be able to reach it and secure the rope around it. She took a tiny shuffle towards the bush. As she did so the yellow eyes morphed into grey bodies and saliva-flecked jaws, stretched with twisted smiles.

  Trembling,Aurora took another minuscule step towards the bush. The wolves moved closer. Then they threw back their heads and bayed.

  From out of the darkness stepped Dr DeWilde, followed by Kit, the beautiful odd-eyed boy. The boy’s shoulders were slumped and there were violet circles under his curious mismatched eyes. He would not, or could not, meet Aurora’s pleading gaze.

  Dr DeWilde’s cruel eyes surveyed Aurora’s sweaty forehead, her shaking arms and the rope wrapped around her clenched fingers.