“Nettle said she missed you. She asked if you hated her.”
“I hated— When? When did she say that?”
“At night.” Thick waved his hand vaguely. “She said you just went away and never came back at all.”
“But that's because I ate the bad food. And I couldn't reach her.”
“Ya.” Thick dismissed this casually. “I told her you can't talk to her anymore. She was glad to hear it.”
“She was glad?”
“She thought you were dead. Or something. She has a friend now, a new girl. Will we stop and eat soon?”
“Not until tonight. We don't have much food, so we have to be careful. Thick, did she—”
My words were interrupted by a whoop of dismay from the Fool. His sounding post had suddenly plunged deep in the snow. He picked it up, took two steps to the left and shoved it in again. Again it sank deep.
“Sit still,” I told Thick. I took one of the extra poles from the sled and walked forward to stand beside the perplexed Fool. “Soft snow?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “It's as if there's only a crust, and then nothing. If I hadn't held tight to the pole, it would have dropped right through.”
“Let's be very careful.” I took hold of his sleeve. “Thick, stay on the sled!” I reminded him again.
“I'm hungry!”
“The food is in the sack behind you. Sit still and eat something.” It seemed the easiest way to keep him busy. Tugging the Fool to move with me, we took three steps to the right. This time, I plunged in my pole. I felt what he had told me I would. The crust of snow resisted the pole, and then it shot through into nothingness.
“Peottre's stakes go right across it,” the Fool pointed out.
“It wouldn't be that hard to move the stakes,” I pointed out.
“Whoever moved them would have had to walk right across, though.”
“The crust would be more solid at night. I think.” I couldn't decide if we confronted the natural danger of the glacier or if we had followed the line of stakes into a trap. “Let's move back to the sled,” I suggested.
“Seems like a very good idea,” the Fool agreed.
So it was that as I led him back from the hidden chasm, we plunged downward through the crust. We sank, I to my knees, the Fool to his hips, both yelling in terror. Then, as we stuck there, I laughed out loud at our fright. It was no more than a soft spot in the snow. “Give me your hand,” I said as he floundered, trying to get back onto the top of the crust. He took my proffered grasp, and then, as he floundered toward me, we both broke through the second crust below us and went down.
I had a single glimpse of Thick's face contorted in terror. Then his wail of dismay was drowned in the downpour of snow and ice that fell with and after us. I clung to the Fool's hand as I floundered for any sort of solidity anywhere else in the world. There was none. All was white and wet and cold, and we fell in a terrible unending slide of loose snow and ice chunks.
Snow seems a light and fluffy thing when it is falling on a sunlit day. But when it thickens the air to porridge, you cannot breathe it. It flowed inside my clothes like a living thing craving my warmth. It became heavy and relentless. I fought my free hand up to crook my elbow uselessly over my face. We fell still, a slow sliding, and in some part of my mind, I knew that more snow slid down after us. Yet through it all, I held fast to the Fool's hand, and knew that his free hand did not protect his face but clung in a death grip to the shoulder of my coat. There was no free air to breathe.
And then, as if we had passed through the neck of a funnel, we were suddenly falling and sliding more swiftly and freely. I kicked my feet, making vague swimming motions, and felt the Fool likewise struggling alongside me. I felt us sliding to a halt, in cold wet darkness. It terrified me, and I made the final struggle that our bodies demand we make when death clutches us. Then, somehow, against all odds, I was breaking free of the snow. I gasped a breath of almost clear air and floundered toward it, dragging the Fool with me. He came limply and I feared he had already smothered.
All was darkness and cold and cascading snow and ice. I was hip deep, pulling the Fool behind me, and then suddenly the snow let go of me. I waded out of the knee-deep stuff and then blundered clear of it. I heard the Fool take a wheezing gasp of air. I found a breath myself, and then two. Tiny settling crystals of ice still filled the air we breathed, but even so, it seemed such an improvement. We were in darkness.
I shook snow from my hair and dug handfuls of it out of my collar. My hat was gone, and one boot. All was black around us, and the only sounds were the indescribable creaks of settling snow and our own harsh breath. “Where are we?” I gasped, and my little human voice was the muffled squeak of a mouse in a bin full of grain.