Of Snow

A COLD DARK PLACE

The storm had passed and swept the ice sheet free of clouds. All was quiet now. Winter's night had come, and with it stars as crisp and white as snowflakes frozen in a deep black fall.

Deneige trekked onward through the darkness. She used no flashlight as she wanted to conserve its batteries, but at least the reflection of pale starlight on the snow was bright enough to find her way by. She moved on quickly, kicking through small ridges of the snow drifts called sastrugi.

The snow was relatively firm there, barely yielding; but as she went she jabbed a long pole at the ice beneath its surface, careful every other step to probe it for the hidden chasms that could suddenly cave in under her boots and swallow her.

Despite the pristine look of things it wasn't safe out there. The subtle movements of the ice sheet formed deep cracks known as crevasses, and snowfall blew across the gaps of these and built thin deadly bridges on them, hiding the dark fissures underneath. Traps, thought Deneige. To fall in one was nearly always fatal. You could break your neck or dash your skull against its jagged icy walls, or become wedged between them half a mile deep, stuck forever as their coldness sapped your body heat and life away. The best way to survive them was to smash their snow bridges then find a way around them if you could. Especially in the dark. Especially when travelling alone.

She halted and unzipped one of the pockets of her parka. The light of the transceiver screen had dimmed to a dull green. Deneige realized its batteries were dying, but she'd been in such a flurry to get started that the only other things she'd packed were basics for survival, along with several hundred yards of rope and climbing gear.

She pressed a button for the screen to show coordinates. The numbers said she'd come about three miles from the station, or roughly two thirds of the distance to her mother's rescue beacon. At least the signal was still transmitting, she thought. And yet it hadn't moved at all; its location was still in the same place it had been when she first set out hours earlier. That meant that her mother wasn't moving either.

She's stuck, she thought. Stuck because she's frozen, said her logic. Deneige shook her head as if to clear such unwelcome ideas from it. No, she decided, she would only think the worst after the evidence compelled her to. Solid evidence before conclusions—that was the rule. Indeed, solid as ice. . . .

She huffed and then continued forward. She knew the odds of finding somebody alive after a hurricane-force blizzard out there were not good ones. For now, however, Deneige chose to keep hold of her hope. Why not? After all, her mother was intelligent and understood the continent and all its wild temperaments. She knew about of its dangers and how to protect herself from them. She probably just tripped on some sastrugi and sat bored now with her propane heater and a twisted ankle or something. Or maybe she'd collected too many heavy spare parts from that engine up ahead and needed extra hands to help pull her toboggan. She was fine. She wouldn't dare go off and die and leave Deneige entirely alone in the world. She couldn't.

A few slow miles further and she'd know for sure.

After trudging on a while, Deneige stopped and slid her backpack off. From a large pouch she took out an insulated canteen of hot meltwater. Then she pulled her face mask down, her father's balaclava, uncovering her mouth so she could drink.

Cold air snapped the moisture on her tongue so fast she tasted ice. She sipped from her canteen and screwed the lid back on, and in a flash the wetness of her lips turned into frost.

She put her mask back on took another step.

Suddenly it happened. Her probing pole struck down against a hollow patch of snow, and all at once a mass of it caved in and crumbled on itself, collapsing inward, and opening a black abyss of ice.