Winter Study

Unbidden, the movie in her head played past the Hollywood ending. A gap opened behind her. The push of her feet spun the ice. Water the color of ink flicked out a reptilian tongue; the ice plate spun on its axis and reared like a living thing, dropping from under her heels and smashing into the front of her thighs. Gravity and the weight of her pack dragged her back and down. Black water closed over her face. The ice island smashed down, driving her under.

“Bob!” she yelled.

She’d left him on the land behind her and was shouting her feeble pleas to the woods in the opposite direction. Desperate, she turned so her voice would carry. Ice lurched sickeningly under her boots and she screamed.

“Easy, easy, easy,” she murmured to herself and the lake. “No need to prance about. Center. Breathe. Still.” Talking herself back into balance, A

“Bob,” she wailed. As the words flew from her throat, A

The Dickensian image made her laugh. The laugh destabilized her, and the ice slid down an inch or more on the left side. Her soul was sucked back into her body so hard, reality lit up like sixteen million candles, and she was so alive her hair hurt with it. “Whoa!” she breathed, arms out like a child learning to snowboard. Gently she slid her feet wider apart, shifted her weight the slightest bit. The ice did not come back to level. The lip had caught on the edge underneath. Black water pushed out, turning gray as it ate up her world.

Bob had to come, she told herself. He was following her. All she had to do was wait without moving. The ice hadn’t shattered; it had broken in a piece. If Bob stabilized one side, took a wide grip and held it so it couldn’t rock up out of the water, she should be able to move from the center to the opposite edge without getting her feet wet.

Maybe Bob didn’t have to come. The thought floated into her mind as the snowflakes floated onto her eyelashes and shoulders, soft, silently, dead cold.

He’d been stacking excuses like cordwood: knee injury, losing the light, making a report. When he wasn’t armed with telescoping sights, beaters and a high-powered rifle, the sight of an oversized animal track scared him. A

Bob might have decided to quietly follow their trail back to the snug kitchen at Malone Bay.

Or maybe he was watching her from the fringe of boulders, waiting for the ice to swallow her. Cautiously she pivoted her head and peered back the way she’d come.

Fat Christmas card flakes she’d so admired earlier in the day drifted in a veil of lace, blurring the shore. A shape hunkered near the water – not particularly informative, given the finger of earth was littered by boulders of all shapes and sizes.

“Bob!”

A shadow big enough to be Menechi

“Help me!” she hollered, and he moved out onto the lake. Neck aching under the strain, she turned back to stare at the far shore. What was it about Menechi

She risked another look back. Bob was halfway. “Stop there,” she said, relieved not to have to shout, to move too much air between her and another solid object.

He stopped. He didn’t say anything. Snow leached what drab colors there were woven into his scarf and mittens. The lower half of his face was covered and his eyes were shadowed by the fur of his hood.

“I’m on a chunk of ice broken free from the lake,” A

Still, Bob said nothing, not: “How did it happen? Are you okay? Why did you do an idiot thing like that?” Nothing.

A

Wind sang across the parka’s hood over her ears. Beneath her, broken edges of ice grated against one another, the sound of teeth grinding in a nightmare.

“Bob?” She was afraid to try to look over her shoulder. She was afraid he wouldn’t be there.

“Answer me, God dammit!” she snapped.

“You broke through?” he asked. Relief that he responded at all, that he’d not left her, was so great, irritation at his slowness almost vanished.

“Yeah. You need to stabilize the floating ice so I can get off.”

“Why don’t you jump?”

“Jesus!” A

There was no reassuring sound of size-thirteen boots crunching closer.

“I weigh twice as much as you do. If you broke it, I’ll go through,” he said.

“No you won’t. I think it busted along a fault line, or whatever ice gets. It’s not thi

Jumped on it, she reminded herself. Should she die, she wanted to be sure she knew who’d been responsible. “I jumped on it,” she amended, hoping the confession would give him courage. “If you lie down and slither on your belly, your weight will be distributed over a greater surface area. It’ll hold you. You probably don’t even need to do that, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Lay down and…” She was starting to babble, as if by keeping a rope of words spi

“That’s not a good idea,” Bob said. “We’ll both go in if I get any closer. Let me call Ridley.” He sounded mature, reasonable; he sounded as if she should believe him.

“What the fuck is Ridley going to do?” she said, suddenly more angry than afraid. “He’s on the other side of the island in a snowstorm. My legs can’t hold out much longer.”

Till she said it, she’d not allowed herself to think it, to notice that her muscles, tired from two days’ hard walking with a heavy pack on her back, were starting to twitch as she stressed them in her ongoing balancing act. Tiny muscles, seldom used, were being called into play as the infinitesimal weight shifts were executed. They weren’t strong. They wouldn’t last. When a knee buckled or a leg cramped up, she was going to lose her delicate balance.

“I’ll call Robin,” Bob said, and she heard him busying himself with his radio. “Hey, Robin,” he said. Winter Study didn’t bother with radio protocol. With so few people, it wasn’t necessary, and their natural contrariness when it came to NPS regulations demanded they eschew it. “A