Blow strode into the room, and all normal conversation ended.

  Nine

  Avalanche

  “We should finish the top third of the ridge this afternoon. That’s pretty good for a week and a half, don’t you think?” Mindik said over his shoulder to Botan and Pesom as he knocked snow off his boots at the caves entrance.

  His smile disappeared when he walked around the comer of the small tunnel that led into the cave.

  “How do you feel, Curl?” he asked.

  “Better, I think. The pooma helps,” she answered, though she didn’t raise her head from the pillow.

  The morning after they arrived on Rosehip Mountain, Curl had insisted that the explorers go to work in the sections Mindik had assigned to them.

  “No one needs to stay with me. I must have caught the flu at Base Camp. In a week or so, it will pass.”

  The days had drifted by in a feverish haze for the Wassandra girl lying on her blankets. Snow cloths on her forehead had kept her temperature under control most of the time. A judiciously slow sipping of cold water had also helped, and whenever her temperature had lowered enough, she’d made herself eat a few bites of dried food.

  Curl hadn’t remembered her mother’s pooma until the ninth day. That morning her temperature had risen and refused to go back down. The meat she had swallowed for breakfast hadn’t stayed down either.

  “Do you want a piece of apple in your mouth to take away the taste of vomit?” Pesom had asked. “You don’t have to eat it.”

  “I’ll try it,” she’d muttered weakly, but the thick strip of apple had reminded her of pooma, the Wassandra food her mother pounded into similarly thick strips.

  Maybe she could eat pooma.

  Obligingly the group had searched through the supply packs for the small package. Chera was the one who had found it, and he had waved it triumphantly in the air above his head before handing a piece to Curl with a bow.

  “You know, this almost tastes good,” she had said after the first swallow.

  The sick girl hadn’t been so positive in days. She didn’t seem as feverish either. Everyone had smiled at her, the pooma, and each other—in that order.

  Today they planned to celebrate a week and a half of exploration with a hot lunch. Mindik stirred up the fire, while Pesom stopped in the tunnel entrance to take her turn at knocking snow off her boots.

  “What’s in pooma?” she called.

  “All kinds of things that grow on or under Wasso Lake,” Curl explained, swallowing another bite of her lunch stick. “I’ve never made it, but I know Mama puts in leaves and berries, along with water froth mixed with—”

  “Water scum, yuck! Are you sure you should eat that thing?” Chera asked from behind Pesom. He popped directly into the cave without bothering about his boots and tried to grab it from Curl.

  “You leave my pooma alone,” she scolded him with an encouraging display of energy.

  Everyone smiled again. Maybe Curl was finally getting better.

  “Yes, but you have to admit water scum is disgusting,” Chera said undaunted.

  “I didn’t say water scum. I said water froth. Water froth from Wasso Lake is naturally sweet. Our cooks use it to make drinks and desserts. When I was a child, I scooped it down by the handfuls.”

  Chera, who could argue about anything, corrected her, “You mean scooped it up,”

  “I do not,” she disagreed, taking another bite and talking around it. “I wasn’t supposed to go above the surface of Wasso Lake. So I had to reach up and scoop a handful of golden froth down.

  Mindik said approvingly, “Well, if a few strips of pooma help this much, think what a whole package will do.”

  The explorers ate their lunch and left, contentedly chattering about the afternoon’s work. Curl applied snow cloths and sipped water, but her fever went up again in the middle of the afternoon.

  Before the explorers returned for their evening meal, she made herself eat another stick of pooma. Once again, it helped. She felt better as her friends shook the snow off their boots and entered the cave. Even Chera shook his boots this time, though Pesom and Botan had to combine forces to make him do it.

  “How’d the afternoon go?” the Wassandra girl asked.

  Mindik shrugged. “We didn’t find anything, but we finished our sections. There aren’t many caves in the top third of the ridge, so the work went fast.”

  “Or gum,” remarked Chera with a bright smile.

  “What?” Mindik asked, pausing in the act of throwing a lump of coal on the fire.

  “If the peak is a rosehip or a tooth, then the ridge is either the dead part of a rose or the gum of a tooth,” his younger brother informed them, his smile brightening still further.

  “Ugh!” several of them responded, and Chera laughed brightly.

  “Will we start the middle of the ridge tomorrow?” asked Pesom.

  Without hesitation Mindik replied, “No, we’ll do the peak. I may think the Opal Cavern’s somewhere on the ridge, but I have no real evidence, and we ought to explore the peak now.”

  The group nodded in agreement. No one really looked forward to climbing the dangerous peak, except for Mindik who could look forward to exploring anything, but they definitely wanted to tackle the highest part of the mountain in the summertime.

  “Maybe I can help tomorrow,” offered Curl, trying to smile brightly in imitation of Chera.

  The expedition leader ordered affectionately, “You will go nowhere, young lady, until you’re completely well. I can think of any number of people who would be very angry with me if I put you to work sick.”

  His brother agreed with relish. “Yeah. They might even make you eat water scum.”

  Curl chuckled and the brothers winked at each other. Things were getting better.

  The next morning. Curl woke up so hot that she sipped a whole cupful of cold water, hoping it would cool her off. As the last sip slid down her throat, she vomited.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured and collapsed onto the blankets, her body shaking from the violence of the upheavals.

  “Don’t worry about it,” muttered Chera as he cleaned up the mess.

  Pesom dipped a cloth in the pail of snow Botan kept by Curl’s bed, but before she put it on the sick girl’s forehead, she felt her arms and forehead.

  “Your fever’s high again.”

  “The pooma lowers it, but it always goes back up. I don’t know what to do.” Curl responded weakly.

  She began to cry, and the group was aghast. Curl never cried.

  “She’s had a fever for days. Fever weakens,” Pesom reminded them.

  “If the pooma sticks lower her temperature, she should eat them more often,” suggested Botan gruffly.

  Botan no longer stammered and blushed in Curl’s presence. The short Stalli man had switched to speaking gruffly and replenishing the snow pail in a proprietary manner.

  Mindik agreed with him. “You’re right. Curl, I want you to eat a piece of pooma every hour today.”

  “What if I eat it up and then my fever comes back?” asked the sick girl through her tears.

  He explained, “I’m thinking it might lower your temperature long enough for your body to strengthen. You’re too weak now. Maybe that’s the problem. Eat those pooma sticks, and let them work for you!”

  He sounded upbeat, and she agreed listlessly. When Chera put a piece of pooma into her hand, she began nibbling it, but she closed her eyes while she ate.

  As quietly as he could, Mindik gathered the others on the far side of the cave. “I don’t want to leave her alone today,” he murmured.

  “Do you think we should take her to Base Camp?” asked Pesom.

  “I don’t think she could tolerate traveling this morning. Hopefully, the extra pooma over the course of the day will strengthen her. I’ll divide the hours into shifts, and we’ll take turns staying with her.”

  “No, I want to stay the whole day,” Pesom said firmly.

  The three men looked at her in surprise, and she explained, “Curl might feel better if there’s another woman with her.”

  “Uh, Pesom, how well do you know Curl?” asked Chera, cocking his head to one side.

  Everyone smiled. They knew the Wassandra girl’s preference for men.

  “She’s sick. Things change when you’re sick,” objected Pesom, but she was smiling too.

  “I’ll stay tomorrow or I’ll take her to Base Camp, if that’s what we decide to do,” Chera offered.

  Mindik nodded. “All right. Pesom will stay with Curl today, while the rest of us start on the peak.”

  The men left, and Pesom sat on the floor of the cave while Curl finished her pooma stick. She studied the sick young woman with an inner anxiety that she tried not to show. Then Curl opened her eyes. They were a dull gold with no brown flecks in them.

  “Do you feel better again?” Pesom was able to ask finally.

  Before answering, Curl closed her eyes as if it took too much effort to keep them open. “A little, but I don’t think it will last. I feel strange, as if my life’s draining out of me. I don’t think I can stop it from going.”

  “Now now,” mumbled Pesom vaguely.

  She wanted to say something more reassuring, but nothing came to mind. Curl started breathing deeply as she fell asleep. Pesom closed her eyes then, but she didn’t go to sleep. Great One, help us. Please help us.

  Every hour throughout that morning, Curl ate a pooma stick. Her fever lowered after she’d eaten but rose again afterwards. Each time, it rose sooner than it had before.

  When the explorers gathered for lunch, the Curl’s face had flushed red, but nobody mentioned it. They talked about that morning’s finds, stories about the Opal Cavern—anything but the flushed face and weak body lying on one side of the cave.

  They would distract her now, and the pooma sticks she ate that afternoon would make her better. Everyone counted heavily on the afternoon of regularly spaced pooma sticks.

  The men left after lunch, but they couldn’t concentrate. Mindik suggested quitting earlier than normal. They had scrambled around a ten foot circumference of the peak by then, starting from where the ridge met it, and every cave they had explored so far had been shallow, easy to eliminate. There was one small crevice left and it was in reasonable reach. Doubtlessly it would turn out shallow too.

  Botan volunteered to check it, freeing Chera and Mindik to pack their heavy exploration bags, sling them over their shoulders, and leave.

  “Maybe Curl’s fever has broken,” Chera said hopefully as they jumped down onto the ridge and began walking across it. Mindik nodded but not with a whole lot of confidence.

  “Oh no, NO!” came a sudden scream from behind them, coupled with a giant roaring.

  The brothers whirled around.

  Botan had guessed the ice covering that last crevice was too thick to push inside the cave with his hands; nevertheless, he’d spent a couple of minutes trying. His heavy ice pick had already been packed away and he didn’t want the bother of getting it out again. His friends were off the peak before he gave up and retrieved the pick.

  Carefully he swung. The ice broke away with a sharp crack, but something else broke away at the same time, something higher on the peak and much bigger.

  Mouths falling open, Mindik and Chera watched as a churning mass of green snow hurtled directly down onto their friend, gathering momentum and volume as it came.

  “An avalanche,” gasped Chera.

  Mindik started running back and Chera acted instinctively. Without hesitation he threw himself at his brother and knocked him to the ground.

  The outer edge of the avalanche passed over them, covering them with a harmless foot of snow. Its main body thundered on down the mountainside, coming to a halt only when it crashed against the tree line in a twenty-foot wall.

  Shaking off their snow covering, Mindik and Chera sprang to their feet. The peak now had a fresh blanket of snow, unbroken by any of their paths.

  “Where was he?” asked Chera.

  Mindik knew the mountain by heart. “In a hollow underneath a stump,” he said, peering into the bright green mist left by the avalanche.

  Amazingly they could still see the stump, sticking up out of the snow. Perhaps the natural rise of the mountain had lifted it high enough to divide the flow of snow, as a rock can divide the flow of a flooding river. In any case, the avalanche hadn’t covered the stump, though it had left deep mounds of snow directly beneath it where Botan had stood.

  “Let’s go,” Chera said with urgency.

  The brothers grabbed shovels out of their supply bags and left everything else. They plowed through the snow as quickly as they could, but the new fall was deep in places, and they felt as if they ran forward in slow motion.

  “Here,” Mindik panted out the word when he finally reached the hollow under the stump.

  Chera stopped and bent over double, wheezing. Mindik was able to push his shovel into the deep snow but couldn’t lift it. They needed a few minutes to catch their breath, but what about Botan?

  “Move over,” ordered a panting voice from behind them.

  Pesom and Curl had heard the thunderous noise from inside their cave. Pesom had rushed outside in time to see the heavy mass of snow roaring down the rocky slope to its final crashing end.

  When Mindik and Chera had sprung to their feet and started back up the peak, she had hissed out one word, “Botan,” and then raced to join them, taking advantage of the paths on the ridge not affected by the avalanche. When she reached the peak, it was harder going, but even there, she could follow Mindik and Chera’s new footsteps through the snow.

  The young Stalli woman was panting, but she hadn’t worked that day, nor had she just forced a new path through snow. She had breath enough to dig. Without a word Mindik released the handle of his shovel and stepped out of the way. Pesom swung the load of snow up and away. Then she dug out another one.

  By the time she’d made a three-foot hole, Chera and Mindik had recovered enough to help. The avalanche had filled the hollow nine feet deep, but the snow was soft. It didn’t take long before they had dug down to the crevice.

  The ice over the small opening had vanished, but so had Botan. The explorers paled. How far had the current of snow carried their friend’s body?

  “This is NOT the Opal Cavern!”

  Spinning around, they saw a face neatly framed by the crevice in front of them. The face grinned.

  “It makes a pretty good avalanche shelter though,” Botan announced.

  Five minutes later a boisterous, backslapping crew walked across the ridge to their base camp. A tragedy could have occurred—but it hadn’t. Mindik started a song of praise to Keshua, and the others joined in gustily. They didn’t sing on key. Botan was warbling some other tune altogether, but nobody cared.

  Curl heard them coming.

  She had pushed herself up when the sound of something huge had penetrated the cave walls. An avalanche! The Wassandra girl had never heard the roar of an avalanche, but people had told her about them. The giant noise couldn’t have been anything else.

  After Pesom ran out of the cave. Curl managed to sit up for a few more minutes. When her energy gave out, she collapsed again, but her body stayed tense until she heard the singing. Then the tension drained away and weakness took its place. She lay motionless, barely having the energy to breathe. The ends of her lips quivered slightly, as if wanting to smile at the singing, which was terribly beneath Wassandra standards. Probably it was beneath anyone’s standards, but the explorers wouldn’t be singing if anyone had been hurt, so it was a welcome sound.

  Her stomach convulsed as the singing got louder, but Curl determinedly swallowed what had risen into her throat. She refused to throw up right now. The others deserved a time of uninterrupted happiness.

  When they burst into the cave, the usually quiet Botan started talking hard and fast.

  “I dove through the crevice when I saw the monster coming. That’s what it was like, you know—a monster out to get me. The crevice was right there and I dove in without thinking, which was a good thing because that avalanche traveled fast. Snow weighted down half of my legs, but I kicked and squirmed until I got them free.

  “It was quiet after that, dark and quiet. There wasn’t enough air. Then I heard a noise and saw daylight. I couldn’t say anything right away. You don’t know what it’s like to come that close to death. As soon as I could, I crawled to the entrance and said the first thing I could think of— that this cave wasn’t the Opal Cavern. I wish it had been. Wouldn’t that have been a great way to find it?”

  Botan stopped abruptly and blushed but nobody, not even Chera, made fun of him for talking so much.

  “Forget the Opal Cavern,” Mindik ordered evenly.

  Everyone in the excited group had started talking at the same time Mindik spoke, but conversation froze with his words. Pesom, who was lifting a hand to make a point, checked the movement midair.

  Had Mindik really said that?

  “We’ll have to explore more carefully,” Chera began, eyeing his older brother as if he thought his mind might have given way under the stress of the last several minutes.

  “I said forget the Opal Cavern and I meant it,” Mindik repeated.

  “We knew the peak would present difficulties and we knew about the possibility of avalanches,” protested Pesom.

  Mindik growled, “Yes, we knew but we didn’t believe it would happen, not to us. Botan could have died today. Keshua saved him with that crevice, but how many other risks do you want to take? The Opal Cavern isn’t important enough to lose any of you.”

  The silence dragged on. Nobody knew what to say. Finally a weak voice piped up. “Mindik’s right.”

  They had momentarily forgotten about Curl. Foreheads creased with fresh worry lines as they noticed the intensity of her flush. The excitement had not been good for Curl.

  “Have you had your pooma stick?” asked Botan gruffly.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember,” she whispered.

  Pesom knelt by her side and reached in the bag. “Here you go. This will make you feel better,” she said gently.