White Crystal Butterflies | Wattys 2021 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Three

I haul myself up into the tunnels again to find Liu with the defroster in her hands, giving the cave a contemplative frown. Krüger is slumped back against the wall, eyeing the device. They look like they've been talking.

"New plans?" I say.

"I don't know," says Liu. "I kind of wanted to try something."

"Can we get away from this cave first, before it decides it wants Tobias back?"

They both nod. I haul on my backpack—at least it's lighter now that we're down one set of climbing gear and most of our food—and give Krüger a hand as he tries and fails to get up. I let him and Liu pack up the detritus of her aid deliveries while I climb to find our next anchor point. When the other two join me on safer ground, they bring one small consolation: at least we'll have ice screws to help us on the ascent. With everyone so exhausted, I feel much better anchoring us to proper equipment than just tying our ropes through the ice.

Liu waits for me to give her the go-ahead before starting her new test. The defroster still has a nearly full battery, and was designed with an outer casing that can take a beating if need be. Liu ties a spare length of rope through its handle, then links it to her climbing gear. She then takes up the rear. The defroster trails behind us through the tunnels, bumping over the ice and melting a steady stream of water down towards Mahaha's caves. Bribery. I hope it works.

I stop us when we find the first horizontal shaft that's actually horizontal enough not to turn into a slow-motion slip 'n slide the moment we let down our guard. Liu sits at the entrance of it, watching the vertical tunnel while I break out food.

We've just finished eating when she gasps. "Chief, come look."

I scoot over to her side. She points.

Just downslope of the defroster, a small formation has started to take shape. It's like an ice version of the snow fingers up the side of the Pod. Reaching for water.

"She's responding," says Liu. She glances up the tunnel. "I want to get her to bring down snow."

Snow on these surfaces in just this temperature range will freeze the water-slick ice, roughening it and making it easier to climb on. It will also perpetuate this cycle, melting more easily and giving us an even steadier stream of water to keep bribing Mahaha. If the moon brought snow down to push Krüger out of a tunnel just like this, it can probably get snow down here. I wonder why it doesn't feed itself that way, either.

By the time I turn around again, Krüger's fallen asleep. Poor guy. The most we can rest here is another four hours; now that we're out of food, we're cutting a close trade-off between sleep and calories in our bid to get back to the surface. Especially when Krüger's already been without both for so long.

My wake-up from this field nap isn't my alarm or myself—it's Liu. She's practically bouncing. "Come look!" she whispers.

I follow her to the end of the tunnel. The whole vertical shaft is spattered with snow. I run a hand up it. It's exactly what I'd hoped: roughened ice where the snow met the water on the tunnel walls. This will upgrade our experience instantly from climbing wet glass to climbing slightly shoddy sandpaper.

It also won't last long before it starts melting again, though. And that, I realize, is probably the final piece of the puzzle. Ice from the surface would damage Mahaha's biological network, hurting it if it ever tried to drop itself frozen water. That would be enough to scare it off the whole association until we came along. I wonder if the moon has ever tried bringing down stalactites, too, and suffered a ceiling collapse.

I wonder if we scared it.

Or maybe Liu's slow build-up to the giant icicles was enough to get it to trust us.