Under the Northern Lights(43)
I turned around to get my bearings, but all I saw was white. It was disorienting, and panic began seeping into me as I realized that I had no idea what direction to go. Where was the cabin from here?
Afraid I’d lose him, too, I reached out for Michael’s hand and took a step toward him. “Where?” I asked, above the sound of the wind.
Michael looked lost, too, as he turned his head this way and that. He clenched my hand tight like he thought I might wander off if he released me. “Uh . . .” We both searched the ground, but the snow and wind had already erased our trail. We were lost . . . it had happened so fast, without warning, but I supposed that was how these things usually happened.
As my heart began to surge with anxiety, Michael took off his glove and dug into his pocket. “Shit,” he muttered; then he searched another pocket.
He seemed unsatisfied with every pocket he checked, so I finally asked him, “What are you looking for?”
“My compass,” he answered. “I usually keep one with my pocketknife and my lighter, but . . . I guess I wasn’t as prepared as I thought. I don’t have one on me.” He frowned after he said it like he didn’t know what to do now.
For a moment, I wondered if he hadn’t been prepared because of me. Were we about to die because he’d been so worried about me that it had distracted him from taking the necessary precautions? That seemed like a cruelly ironic fate, and I began to shiver as fear settled into every pore. I didn’t want to freeze to death in a snowstorm.
Exhaling heavily, Michael put his glove back on and looked around the forest again. “Look, Mallory . . . I don’t think we can make it back to the cabin. The storm’s picking up, and if we go the wrong way, we’ll get so lost out here we’ll never get back. Our best bet is to stay here. Once the storm passes, I’ll be able to read the land again—I’ll be able to find the trail home.”
“Stay here? We can’t stay here, Michael. There’s no way to build a fire in this. We don’t have shelter. We’ll freeze. We’ll die.” My voice was coming out shaky, but I couldn’t help the reaction. Once again, I was facing my mortality. I was really tired of doing that.
Michael seemed more okay with facing the end, probably because he was facing it on his terms . . . and not like his wife had, at the end of a barrel being wielded by someone else. He squatted in front of me and clasped both of my forearms. “We’re not going to die. We just need to ride out the storm. We just need shelter.”
I raised my hands to the empty woods around us. “What shelter? There’s nothing here we can use, Michael.”
A small smile cracked his lips; it seemed wholly out of place, given the circumstances. He lifted a finger to the sky. “We’re being provided with more of a shelter every second, Mallory.”
My eyes widened as I grasped what he was saying. “You want us to bury ourselves? Under the snow?”
“It’s actually a great insulator. Igloos hold a surprising amount of warmth,” he stated.
“Except I don’t know how to build one,” I inadvertently snapped. “Especially without any tools. Do you?” Please say yes. Please tell me you took survival training courses before you came out here, and that was part of it.
Michael shook his head, dashing my hopes. “No, I don’t know how to build one . . . but I can build a cave. We just need a deep-enough drift.”
A cave? A snow cave? God, we really would be buried under the snow. But I supposed that was better than becoming human icicles. “Okay . . . what do we do?”
Clasping my hand again, he nodded ahead of us. “We search for something deep enough to hold both of us. Then hope we can dig it out before dark.”
Swallowing the lump of dread in my throat, I let Michael lead me onward, into the blizzard. The snowfall intensified as we walked, so much so that I could barely see Michael’s body as he stretched out in front of me. I clasped his hand like the lifeline it was; if I let go, if we separated, that might be it for me. Staying together was our only chance, and knowing that strengthened my belief that good or bad, right or wrong, humans needed each other. We weren’t designed to spend a lifetime alone. I had to make Michael see that.
Just a few shambling feet from where we’d been, we came across a fallen tree surrounded by a snowdrift. Michael was smiling at me through his frosty beard when I stepped close to his side. “We can use this. We dig a hole until we reach the tree; then we carefully scoop out the inside, making it bigger. We can’t break the ceiling, though—otherwise it won’t work as insulation.”
I nodded like I was in complete agreement with him, but I had no idea how to do everything he’d just said. Closing my eyes, I prayed for strength and luck. I had a feeling we’d need both for this.
Removing our basket backpacks, we lowered to our hands and knees and began digging into the snow. It was icy, easily compacted, and that boosted my spirit. We might be able to scoop out the insides while leaving a sturdy shell that would block us from the elements. Michael wanted to keep the opening as small as possible, so once we had a space big enough to crawl through, he ducked inside to scoop out the rest. Fear and the chill assaulted me the entire time he was half-buried in the bank. I didn’t think it would hurt him if the cave collapsed, but it would mean we’d have to start over, and I didn’t want to scour for another place and try again. I wanted this to work. I wanted us to be safe.