He didn’t look down, didn’t worry about his own precarious position, but the precious moments he’d taken had been too damn long. As he watched, Angel’s hands slipped, her fingers twisted back. Only millimeters, but more than enough, since a fall would pull this whole thing down.
“Breathe,” he said to himself, though when Angel obeyed, he realized she’d been holding it in, too. And then, because it seemed to help, he spoke again. “Need to cut through the harness. You hold on. Okay? That’s your only job.”
She nodded so slightly he’d never have caught it if they weren’t hovering together in this still, silent limbo between heaven and earth.
He reached into his pocket, removing his pocketknife and struggling to open it with his mouth, then leaned farther forward.
“Just hold on.” He didn’t dare speak above a whisper.
The air around them was as taut as the harness, suffocating and supporting as he grappled with the knife, nearly lost his hold, and seesawed forward before evening his weight out again.
Instead of fighting through a second futile round of fumbling, he ripped his glove off with his teeth, threw it up and over the edge, and went to work bare-handed. The metal was shockingly cold against his fingertips, but at least sensation wouldn’t last once frostbite took over. He had to move fast. Wedging his feet farther into their cracks, he bent and sawed in earnest, staring hard at the strap that anchored her to this place.
“Almost there.”
A few hard swipes and suddenly the nylon slithered from his grasp, a creature sprung from a trap.
Seconds later, the sled smashed into the depths, the sound deafening enough to burst their bubble. He’d just taken in half a lungful of air when the pole came loose.
The next fat millisecond stretched into eternity, and it was still too short. He reached for her hand and missed. His left foot skidded to the side. Angel’s body started its freefall.
Inevitable and terrible, until she slammed against him.
On sheer instinct, he wrapped an arm around her and swung them both to one side, flattened against the ledge.
One second.
Nothing moved.
Another…
Frantic, she yanked her wrist from the ski pole’s strap and chucked it up and over the side.
The ledge shifted.
“Up!” he yelled, though Angel couldn’t move from where he’d crushed her between his body and the wall. Working fast, he pulled himself from the crevasse, not for one second letting himself enjoy the solidity up top, and reached down.
Angel gripped his left hand, glove to glove, flesh to flesh, bone to bone, so tight they’d grind to dust if one of them didn’t let go. She climbed, he heaved, and within seconds, she was up and over, rolling from the edge as it crumbled beneath them. The pieces fell, tinkling like fairy bells, though they should have tolled like a death knell.
“You whole?” he asked quietly into the shocking silence.
Their clenched limbs were links in a steel chain. Titanium, tensile and shatterproof. Impervious to the elements, incomplete without their other half.
Her whispered “yes” ripped something loose deep inside his body.
Chests heaving hard in synchrony, they lay together for a few seconds before he could work up the will to move.
They needed to get away from the edge, though not too far. This whole place could be riddled with crevasses, a honeycomb of cracked ice.
For once, he saw the ice the way most people did—a dangerous, lonely place to die.
Something sounded from below, like the last hungry call of a predator, foiled by their escape. Her sled, shifting with a loud grinding noise before scraping its way down, down, down into the bowels of the ice sheet, the sound too small for such a cataclysmic event, slowly disappearing into nothing.
He glanced at Angel. Both skis and one pole were gone, along with at least half their food, swallowed up by the ice gods in exchange for her life.
For maybe the first time since his maiden trip to this continent, he cared more about what lay over the ice than under it.
The vulnerability of that was terrifying.
