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When the snow squall hit, they had already made a few hundred yards progress, down the trail, in relative safety. There were no more explosions, dancing fires, hugging gusts, wrenching fuselages, or dangerous jumps. Time began to reassert itself, welcome time, Chronos, getting on with it again. All six of them took a moment, without a word, and took a deep breath in that moment. The moment passed, and they smiled. They were survivors.
“I’m hungry,” said Umezawa.
“Oh, come on,” said Jason. “Let’s get some shelter first. We have to get out of this snow or we’ll all die of exposure.”
“Your friend is right,” said Blake, looking around the landscape. “You can die with a full belly, or you can shiver with an empty belly, but remain alive to eat again.”
“It’s not me; it’s the blubber. The blubber only thinks in the moment,” Umezawa said.
Lars looked Umezawa up and down. “You’re not really that fat. Why do you talk about yourself like that?”
“In high school all the girls called me Blubber.”
“Girls are cruel.”
Sano said, “Hm?”
“Present company excluded,” Lars said quickly. “Of course.”
Sausage, sausage, sausage. American sausage, American sausage. WILL YOU SHUT UP!
Blake interjected. “I could honestly use a cup of hot coffee, myself. I think I was halfway through my first cup of the day when we hit that mountain.”
“I could honestly use a turkey dinner, but standing here wishing ain’t gonna bring no turkey and dressing after the blessing,” Lars said. “Let’s get a move on!”
Sano shivered. Jason held her closer.
“Lars is right,” Blake said. “Look for dark shapes in the snow. Outlines. Don’t go running off toward them, though. I’m looking for a big spruce tree. I’ll keep my eyes on the path. Hold on to each other. Call out regularly, like so:
“Leader!”
Lars said, “Leader okay!”
“Okay!” said Umezawa.
“No, Ume, you dum-dum, you’re supposed to say, ‘Lars okay!’” Abe said.
“Listen, fathead, how was I supposed to know that?”
“If you’d get that blubber between your brains to activate, you wouldn’t h---”
“WOULDN’T HAVE WHAT? FAILED JUKU? IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY?”
“No,” said Abe. But yes. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Not now,” Jason said. “Focus. Let’s go.”
“My father was very disappointed, so all I ever wanted to do was drink American Mountain Dew. Does Mountain Dew come from here?”
“No,” said Blake.
“What about your mother?” asked Lars.
“She pretended to love me,” said Umezawa. “But I know she was disappointed, too.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about your mother,” Lars said. “But I suppose I can imagine it.”
“This is like those two transition episodes between arcs two and three in the fourth season of The Morose Alpaca,” Abe said. “Two flashback episodes in which Abigail had a falling out with her mother.”
“Did she do average in senmongakkou?” Umezawa asked.
“I don’t think it had anything to do with senmongakkou, or juku, or high school, or any kind of academics at all.”
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“Then why are you bringing it up?”
Because I like the anime. “Because I thought it was similar,” Abe said. A shape in the snowy air caught his attention. “What’s that?”
“Sound off!” Blake cried out.
“Leader okay!” Lars said. “I think we’re doing this wrong.”
“What?”
“Blake, I think we’re supposed to sound off starting with the rear.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Blake said. He shouted, “Who is in the rear?”
Abe and Umezawa started laughing. “In the rear…”
Lars and Blake shook their heads. “Boys…” Then they laughed.
So much sausage.
“Sano okay!” Jason shouted. “Hm?” said Sano. “Ume okay!” Abe shouted. “Lars okay!” Umezawa shouted. “Leader okay!” Lars shouted.
“I guess Jason is in the rear,” Blake said.
Like the airplane minutes before, Umezawa exploded into laughter. “Ha ha ha ha ha! Jason is in the rear!” Abe most certainly did not laugh. He did not find it funny at all.
Instead, Abe stared at a silhouette of a tree, trying to determine whether it was a mountain peak in the distance, or whether it was shelter near-at-hand. “I think that’s a tree,” he said.
“Yes, you’re right,” Blake said. “Lars, you make your way toward it while I stay with the kids. Think you can manage?”
Mountain snow has the curious property of falling quite softly, like miniature pillows from heaven, but when the wind picks it up, it becomes a crystalline sandblast against any exposed flesh. That’s just what the mountain was doing, while they shivered, looking for a sheltering tree. It let the snow fall, then called for wind, intermittently, to blind them with miniature ice weapons scouring the eyeballs. Thus, the wind forced Lars to shut his eyes while he walked. He had to continually force himself to stop until he could reestablish his bearings by sight, for the wind swirling at his feet made his mind turn in circles. He stopped, turned his entire body to find the party, then turned again to find the silhouette, which was growing larger.
“Are you okay?” Abe shouted.
“Don’t shout or nothing,” Lars retorted. “It echoes in the snow, and I’m having a hard enough time.” With that said, he turned, tripped on a rock placed by the mountain just for that very purpose, to humiliate an experienced outdoorsman in front of urban teens and a fellow outdoorsman, and he fell flat on his face into fluffy snow. His outcry wasn’t even muffled by the snow, and as it echoed, it mingled into a low laughter coming from the mountain. “Oh, come now,” said Lars. “It wasn’t us that hit you with that plane.”
Upon reaching the tree, he turned and found that the snowfall had brought visibility to a limit just beyond his arm’s reach. Looking down, then, he found his own footprint, which was quickly becoming obscured by white. “It’s a spruce tree all right!” he shouted. “Good job, Abe! I’m coming back to you.” His voice echoed, and he realized the way was perilous. “Man, this is not good.”
Abe stood proud. Sano surely heard this high praise from the American sausage. Now she’ll want me for more than pity. She’ll want me for strength. He smiled. Oh, stoic, stoic, stoic. I am so disappointed in you. Strength? Strength of heart and strength of body are two different things, and which of either do you have?
Blake said, “We should try to meet him.” They sounded off as before, with Jason in the rear, to Umezawa’s increasing delight, and they took careful steps off the natural path onto the snow-covered rocky slope. “We maybe should have followed him instead of waiting on the path. If we had, though, then we might have lost the path. Oh well.”
“Say something, Lars,” Blake said.
“Something, Lars,” Lars said. Blake reached out his hand to see if he could touch Lars, his voice sounded so close. A gust of wind came through, stirring up the snow between the party and Lars’s voice.
They took a few more steps. “Come on, good buddy, over,” Blake said.
“I got ears on,” Lars said.
This time, when Blake reached out, he poked Lars right in the face.
“You got me,” Lars said. “I give up.” He hugged Blake.
“I’ve never been lost on a snow-covered mountain in the Rockies before,” Blake said.
“Well, now’s the time to see if all that survival training was worth the money,” Lars said.
“Where’s the tree?” said Abe.
“Take one step toward me and you should be able to see it.”
A strong gust came forth from the mountain, and, in an act of kindness, blew the snow squall away. The squall satisfied itself hunting for other peaks to envelop while the party saw that the sun was about to set. The sky was otherwise clear, with a few other squalls toying with other peaks in the distance.
“Now I can see it,” Umezawa said.
Abe moved over to the great spruce tree, touched it, and said, “Shelter.” With a start, he jumped back from the tree. It creaked from top to bottom, causing its great boughs to shake and shudder. The bottom-most boughs, particularly the two boughs nearest the party, curled and twisted, their fronds wiggling, as though beckoning.
“That’s some weird wind,” said Jason. “Some sort of thermal updraft, I should think.”
“That ain’t no thermal updraft,” Lars said. “Did you feel any wind, Abe?”
“Nope.”
“Lars is right,” Blake said. “That was no wind. The tree did that on its own. Odd timing that it would do it just as Abe touched it and said the word ‘shelter.’”
“I reckon it made a shelter for us,” Lars said. “Which means I must be on the airplane, asleep and dreaming, circling the Seattle airport.”
The fronds continued to wiggle. Abe was first to accept the invitation. When he entered what he thought might be a doorway into the spruce boughs, he saw a cavern, of sorts, a cavern of limbs and boughs twisted and arched creating a space just large enough for six people to lie in close proximity to each other. “It’s perfect!” he said, as they crowded in.
Sano entered next, taking Jason’s arm from around her shoulders. Jason followed, then the rest of them. They stood, looking with wonder. No one spoke, but a sense of relief flooded over them. The wind blew outside, but its effects could not reach them.
Abe saw that the limbs and boughs hung as though they were under great strain and tension. He broke the silence, deciding to speak to the tree. “Tree,” he said. “Are you sure you can hold this shelter in place for us all night?”
A sigh came through the boughs of the spruce tree, and a clunking, thunking, thump came to the ground in the dim light before them. It was a sizeable branch, dead wood, dry as a bone.
“Firewood!” Lars exclaimed. Another sigh came through.
“Thank you,” said Abe.
“I shall call you Mustard Seed,” Sano said, touching the trunk of the spruce. “Thank you, Mustard Seed.”
Everyone stared at her.
“I have my reasons,” she said. And she giggled very prettily.
While Abe continued to stare at Sano, marveling at her thin, pointed nose, Blake and Lars set about starting a fire.
“So hungry,” Umezawa moaned.
“How hungry can you be, Ume?” Abe demanded. “We ate a full meal not two hours ago.”
“Seems like an eternity,” Umezawa said. “And it was airline food!”
“You do have me there,” Lars said, laughing.
A few sticks and twigs, along with some dried grass and a judicious snip of a charred coat Lars was using as a scarf, formed tinder and kindling. The spruce tree dropped a few choice bits of sap-filled fatwood and the remains of a bird’s nest to supplement the necessities for fire-starting.
“The federal government tried to steal my ferro rod at airport security,” Lars said. “But I buffaloed the agent and she let me keep it.”
“Do the honors, then,” Blake said.
“See, kids,” Lars said. “If you spend the time and effort prepping the fireplace, you’ll never have to worry about getting a fire to go, and, more important, to keep it going.” He looked at the tree. “Especially with some coniferous help and aid.” He snapped the scraper against his ferro rod, sparks flew, and presently, the tinder blazed.
Blake piled fatwood on the tinder, and Lars took the moment to put his ferro rod on his person again, safely stowed. “Always keep your fire starter where you know you’ll find it, preferably hanging around your neck. The fire starter is more important than the fire itself, I’ll warrant.”
Jason drew near the fire and took over feeding it kindling. In as few seconds as they could have counted on two hands, warmth, the first warmth they’d felt since the dancing fires on the wreckage—warmth came to them, and they all felt safe. Blake started to cry.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” He sat with his back against the trunk of the spruce tree and blubbered, which brought the entire party to tears. “Did you see all those dead people? They were alive one second, we fell asleep, and we woke up to them all being dead!” He continued to cry, but not so uncontrolled as before. “Whew!” he said, finally.
“Wow,” said Umezawa. “I thought I was blubbery.”
Lars wiped his own eyes and laughed. “You know, Ume, I like you.”
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