The snowstorm yields to clear skies overnight, and the winking stars fade with the dawn to be replaced by endless blue. It’s a beautiful day, and Kala intends to make the best of Azeyma’s favor. She’s been tracking a snow leopard for a sennight, now, her twin brother and their hunting hound in tow.
She should’ve known better.
It happens so fast. One minute, they’re trekking up the mountainside, quiet with the sun on their backs, and the next minute they’re running as the slope starts to crumble. Trygg leads the way, Kala on the heels of the björnätare as they race parallel to the line of sliding snow. She isn’t thinking while she runs. There’s no room for it. If they get buried, then they’re dead, and nobody will find them before they suffocate or freeze. They have to get clear, or at least get closer to the edges of the wave where they’re less likely to be swept downhill.
Snow licks at her legs just as she manages to throw herself at a craggy outcrop, sheltering underneath it with one arm wedged between the rocks and the fingers of her other hand wrapped securely around Trygg’s harness. Snow sprays across her face and fills her mouth, but then the wave is gone and they’ve made it through relatively unscathed. Trygg sneezes, and Kala coughs, letting go as she pulls her goggles up and off her eyes so that she can see.
The words die in her throat, and her stomach sinks to her feet.
“Ahlo?!” she yells, before she can stop herself. He was right behind them, wasn’t he? She should’ve grabbed him, drug him along with her. “Ahlo!”
There’s no answer, just her voice echoing down the slope. She can still see the avalanche crashing down, hundreds of fulms away.
She’s half sliding, half-stumbling down the hill before she can think, and Trygg is right with her as they go. He’s more sure-footed than she is, and she grabs onto his harness again, but this time he’s the one who’s steadying her. Her ice pick is in her other hand.
“Trygg,” she pants, “seek. Seek Ahlo!”
She’s not sure if he understands what she’s saying, but he must understand what he needs to do because he forges ahead with single-minded focus. She can’t see her brother, even after the snow finally settles at the base of the slope. The icy dread Kala feels has nothing to do with the cold. “Ahlo!”
Sisters, please, please let him be okay, please let me find him, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have–
Trygg yanks her, hard. It nearly wrenches her shoulder out of its socket, and she lets out a wordless cry as he starts to dig with paws as large as saucers. She falls to her knees beside him and starts to dig with her gloved hands. “Ahlo!”
She hears a muffled noise over the pounding of her heart, she thinks, and then she finds fabric. An arm.
Trygg scoops up what, for her, would be huge armfuls of snow. They find a shoulder, and follow it to Ahlo’s hat. While the dog works on uncovering as much of the boy’s body as he can, Kala clears Ahlo’s face more carefully.
“Kala,” he wheezes, and she’s not sure if it’s because he was running out of air or because the snow is crushing his lungs. He’s pale and dazed. “Help.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m so sorry, you’re okay, we have you, Trygg found you, it’s going to be okay and I’m so sorry!”
He doesn’t answer, too out of breath, but his chest is clear and some of his other arm and the top halves of his legs. It’s at that point that Trygg shuffles around the edges of the hole they’ve made around Ahlo in their attempts to excavate the boy, bumping Kala out of the way with his broad nose. She yelps with surprise and falls onto her hip, but she understands as the dog ducks down, nudges at the back of Ahlo’s head, and then leans in further to grab onto the back of his coat with his teeth.
Ahlo manages to fumble around enough with one hand to hook his fingers onto Trygg’s harness, and Kala scrambles to grab his other wrist. Together– well, it’s mostly the dog, but she’s trying– they haul Ahlo the rest of the way out of the snow, and after that the teenagers just sit for a while. Kala presses her forehead against Ahlo’s, and he leans on her.
Eventually, he pulls away so that he can instead throw his arms around the giant dog beside them. “Thank you, buddy,” and Trygg almost looks like he’s smiling. Kala sniffles, and reaches out to wrap her arms around one of his big, furry forelegs too. She adds, “Extra treats when we get home.”
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