Under the Northern Lights(31)
Chapter Eleven
A few days later, I was standing at the window, astonished by what I was seeing. Winter had hit full force, and the landscape was muted by a white curtain of huge, fluffy snowflakes floating to the ground. On the bright side, that damn nosy bear was most likely sleeping now, but the entire yard was covered with a blanket so thick that I couldn’t make out any of the paths we took for our daily chores. I could barely see the shed holding our precious stores of food. If it kept up like this for too much longer, the snow would cover the window, and I wouldn’t be able to see anything; as it was, the snow line was only a foot or so beneath the glass. I was instantly grateful that Michael had installed heavy-duty storm windows when he’d built this cabin. They did a good job of retaining the heat and keeping out the cold.
“Guess you were right about snow days. We can’t go out in this.” If we tried, we could easily become blinded by the never-ending sheet of white. Then we’d get lost and probably never make it back to the safety of the cabin.
Michael idly looked out the window with me. “Yeah. These storms can get pretty bad, but they usually don’t last very long. Two to three days on average. Five or six at the most.”
Five or six? That sounded like an eternity to me. Especially considering all our food was out there. “What about the meat?” I asked, curious how we would retrieve it.
“I’ve got a system,” he said with a smile. “We can get back and forth to the shed and the outhouse.”
Turning around to face him, I raised an eyebrow. “How?”
Still smiling, he walked over to the door and opened it; the chill smacked me in the face as I stepped beside him. Michael pointed to a couple of metal rings embedded in the thick logs of the cabin, near the front door. I’d never noticed them before, probably because nothing had been attached to them before. But now, one had a bright-yellow cord tightly tied to it, the other had a bright-pink cord. Both were easy to see against the backdrop of white snow, and they hovered above the ground at around shoulder height. The yellow cord stretched off toward the direction of the shed; the pink one led to the outhouse.
Michael kicked a bucket. It was full of carabiners attached together by foot-long ropes. “Snap one end on to you, the other end to the cord. Snap it back on when you’re coming back. It makes it almost impossible to get lost.”
“Clever,” I said, impressed with his ingenuity.
He gave me a soft smile. “Yeah . . . unless the snow or the cold snaps the cord or a creature gnaws it in half or the cords somehow become untied or the metal rings pull free from the walls . . . then you’re pretty much screwed.”
I suddenly felt less impressed as he pointed out every potential flaw in his system. “Good to know.”
Lightly laughing, he shut the front door. “It hasn’t happened yet, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Just don’t feel overly confident and forget to use it. That is the most likely reason that it will fail.”
Nodding, I took that to heart. Even if it was bright and sunny outside, I’d religiously use his safety measure. The last thing I wanted was to get lost and freeze to death. Or create a situation where Michael had to come looking for me, and he got lost and froze to death. I couldn’t handle that happening. Our lives were tied together now, and we each had to be cautious and careful of the other. And that meant not doing anything stupid.
After a full day of doing nothing but watching the snow fall, boredom began to set in. Unfortunately, I’d already decorated the small tree Michael had brought in for me. There wasn’t a lot to adorn it with out in the forest, but I’d gathered a handful of pinecones and tucked them throughout the branches. I’d also collected numerous small twigs and had spent several evenings twisting the sticks into shapes . . . most of them haphazard circles. It wasn’t the most elaborate tree in the world, but I loved it. All the more so because Michael had gone out of his way to get it for me. It was the epitome of everything Christmas stood for.
No longer having the tree as a boredom buster, I turned to Michael, who was sitting on his bed reading a book. “Want to play one of those games you mentioned?”
Closing the book and setting it on his lap, he smiled at me. “Cabin fever set in already?”
A small laugh escaped me as I nodded. “I’m just used to doing something, I guess.” Pursing my lips, I added, “Doing chores didn’t entirely take my mind off things . . . but it helped. Not having anything to do just reminds me of all the things—” Snapping my mouth shut, I stopped talking. If I kept complaining about how much I missed home, he was going to start taking it personally.
He only smiled at me, though, like he completely understood that I wasn’t in my preferred situation and he wasn’t offended by the fact that I’d rather be somewhere else. Although I wasn’t 100 percent sure that was how I felt anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be here . . . with him . . . it was just that I also wanted to be home. There were people in pain right now because of me, and that was a hard fact to live with. If I could somehow let my family know I was okay and would be home when the weather got better, then this little excursion with Michael might not be so bad. Downright pleasant even.
“What do you want to play?” he asked, standing up.
As he headed to the bins under his workbench, I tried to think of something that might stop my mind from spinning. “How about crib? It’s been forever since I’ve played. I’m not even entirely sure I remember the rules.”