Mike Mullin - Ashen Winter

“G-g-good idea.”

I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. If Darla fell and hurt herself, it would be a disastrously bad idea. And I’d never been much of a tree climber-I don’t like heights. “Can you do it?”

Darla just nodded, shivering.

I squatted and grabbed Darla by her thighs. Water squished out of her coveralls onto my coat. I lifted her high enough that all she had to do was flop her arms over the branch to hang by her armpits. She kicked out-I had to duck to save my head-and got one leg up over the branch. Then she swung herself up on top of it and started dragging herself toward the trunk, inchworm-style.

I jumped and grabbed the branch in both hands, facing away from Darla. I swung my legs back and forth a few times, working up momentum, and threw them up and around the branch. Then I just had to roll over, pulling myself to the top of the tree limb. Darla was already about halfway to the trunk. I dragged myself along behind her.

“There’s a great view from back here,” I said.

“Q-quit looking!” Darla snapped, but I could hear a hint of a smile in her voice. Maybe my stupid joke had worked. I needed something, anything, to distract from the desperation building in my gut.

Darla stopped at the oak’s huge trunk. “There’s no way to climb around.”

“What about up to that fork in the tree?” I asked.

“Maybe. I might need a boost.”

Darla wasn’t stuttering or shivering as much. I hoped that was a good sign. I let my legs dangle over either side of the icy branch and scooched over to help. She sat up and threw one knee up on the branch and reached to try to get a handhold in the fork of the tree. I held her waist, trying to keep her steady. Darla stood up on the branch so she could reach farther into the fork. “Push me up.”

I put my palms under her butt and shoved. She pulled herself upward until her chest was wedged into the split in the tree. She rested there for a moment and then pulled herself the rest of the way up.

“There’s a branch here that goes the right way,” Darla said. “We can get at least another thirty feet from the path.”

“Okay, good. I’m coming up.” I pulled my knees onto the branch. Standing was tricky. I got one foot flat on the ice-coated branch, but I felt wobbly. I stood, trying to keep the unsteadiness in my knees under control and clinging to the trunk. I wasn’t that far off the ground-maybe ten or twelve feet. There was no real reason to be scared. I focused on the tree trunk and tried to get my breathing under control. In through the nose, out through the mouth-like I’d use for a sparring match in taekwondo.

I reached and got a grip on the fork in the tree. I bent my knees to jump and give myself a head start on pulling myself up, but I slipped-and suddenly I was dangling, my feet clawing futilely at the air.

I kicked out, bashing my toes against the tree trunk. Feet scrabbling against the trunk, I tried to pull myself onto the branch. I didn’t have a solid grip on the fork in the tree; my fingers were slipping on the icy bark. Darla’s hands wrapped around my left wrist and hauled upward. I strained, pulling myself up until my chest was wedged in the fork. Darla was sitting on a slightly higher branch, reaching down to help me.

“Thanks,” I grunted.

Darla turned and started inching away from the trunk on the new branch, saying, “I think this branch will work best.” I scrambled to follow her.

The end of the new branch looked none too safe. It was more than fifteen feet above the ground, and we couldn’t afford to fall and sprain an ankle or worse. But as we inched outward, the branch sagged until it was only ten or twelve feet over the snow.

Darla reached a spot where the branch forked into two smaller limbs that probably wouldn’t support both our weight. She grabbed the branch and swung off it, dangling for a moment. “Hold on tight,” she said. Then she let go, dropping into the snow below.

Before I had a chance to adjust my grip, the branch sprang upward, trying to buck me off. I clung like a squirrel in a thunderstorm. When the motion calmed, I called down to Darla, “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

I inched out to the fork in the limb and slid off, dangling by my hands. I bent my knees a little and let go. When I hit the snow, I let my legs crumple so I wouldn’t jam my ankles or knees. Practicing falls at the dojang, we used to roll or slap the floor to break our momentum, but the snow was so deep there was really no surface to slap. Still, for once I was glad for that deep snow-it cushioned my fall.

Darla grabbed my hand and hauled me to my feet. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I looked around-we were at least sixty feet from the path. I hoped that would be enough of a break in the trail that nobody would notice our new track. With any luck, they’d assume we went into the river with Bikezilla and drowned at the base of the roller dam.

I struck out on a course perpendicular to our old path. Pushing through the deep snow was hard, cold work. Soon both of us were shivering again.

We left the clearing and entered a dense wood. The trees were all dead and leafless, so it didn’t offer much cover. I pushed onward for twenty or thirty minutes, breaking the trail for Darla.

I heard a clicking sound behind me and turned. Darla was shivering violently.

“Crap, I’ve got frozen peas rattling around where my brains should be. We’ve got to get you out of the wind.”

“I’m ’k-k-kay,” Darla said around the rattle of her teeth. Her lips were turning blue, and the legs of her coveralls were crusted in ice and snow. She was definitely not okay. But even if our fire-starting kit hadn’t gone down with Bikezilla, we couldn’t afford a fire now-we were still too close to the barges and the Black Lake guards.

“Crap, crap, crap,” I whispered. First things first-I could take care of the wind and wet clothes-maybe. I looked around for the deepest drift, a spot where a cluster of trees had captured and held the blowing snow. “Come on.” I took Darla’s hand and led her toward the drift, using my body as a plow.

When we got well into the drift, I dug a foxhole, shoveling away the snow with my hands and arms. Darla tried to help, but her arms were shaking so badly she could barely control them. My wet arm in particular was freezing, and I was shivering, but Darla had nearly been dunked. I had to get her dry somehow. Now.

As I finished digging, I hit the ash layer under the snow-a grim reminder of the cause of this abominable winter, of the volcano’s eruption ten months ago. Some of the ash came up with the last few armloads of snow and left dirty gray blotches on the white ramparts of my foxhole.

We squatted in the foxhole for a few minutes. I wrapped my arms around Darla, hugging her from behind and rubbing her arms. The foxhole kept us out of the wind, but it wasn’t warming up Darla-if anything, she was shivering more.

“Stand up,” I said. “Let’s get these wet clothes off.” I unlaced her boots and gave one a tug. It came off with a crackle of breaking ice and squelch of wet sock. When I finished with both boots, I reached up, unzipped her coverall, and started pulling it down off her torso.

“I’m n-n-not really in the mood,” she said.

“Yeah, me either,” I said as I pulled the coverall down over her legs.

“That’s a f-f-first.”

I forced myself to smile. I was terrified she’d freeze to death as I watched, helpless. I started stripping off her jeans. Water had gotten through her coverall at the waist and ankles, so only the knees of her jeans and long johns were dry. When I got her long underwear off, I put my hands on her hips against her pink panties. They were sopping wet with river water.