Karl understood the trouble with discomfort, but he also felt that it was like when there was something about your boot that troubled you. If you didn’t stop to take off your boot and examine and rectify the trouble, then it would cause a blister. If the blister continued to be bothered, it would bleed and become infected. It was best to deal with the problem before a blister occurred in the first place.
Since she hadn’t said anything about the snow, he had to take charge of this. They were in Zermatt, not London. He was the guide and she was the client, so he would do this his way, not hers. “What was the trouble?”
“Trouble with what?” she asked, mildly. There was no tease, no double-entendre. It made him uneasy.
“Trouble that made you whisper with Fräulein Bridewell and Lady Rascomb.” His jaw clenched, flexing against the woolen scarf that he had wound around his chin.
She fiddled with her own scarf, unwinding it from around her neck and then adjusting it to leave enough length to cover her mouth. “It was merely addressing concerns.” She finished her adjustments and with that, her mouth was covered.
His jaw clench even harder. Perhaps it had been better when they walked, rather than talked. “I would like very much to know these concerns. That way I can help with them. That is my job.”
She steadied her chocolate gaze on him. “You cannot help with them. Because I am the problem. Not you.”
He pulled back, viscerally shocked by her comment. How could she be the problem? She was the only one who came on these excursions with him, and therefore the most prepared for what faced them on the Matterhorn in a few short months.
She walked further down the stream, making her way towards the trail that meandered next to it, her back to him. What could possibly be wrong with her?
He caught up to her. “Are you ill?”
“No,” she said, not bothering to explain anymore.
Karl shook his head. If she didn’t want to tell him, then that was her choice, he supposed, and he had tried his best. Fine. He hated that he bristled at her coldness, that it made him feel like he had done something wrong, when he knew very well that he hadn’t. “If you do not wish to be here, then you can return to the inn any time.”
“If I have to stay inside one more minute, I’m going to scream.” Justine turned away from him.
Karl frowned. This was how his older sister had been—never wanting Karl to see her upset. But then, she would turn away and attempt to cry silently, which she was terrible at. Healways knew when she was crying. But it started this way. “Then let me teach you about snow. That was the purpose of today’s walk. To read the snow.”
“Read the snow?” she asked in a mocking tone. But she turned to face him, and that was something. The tip of her nose was red, but that could just as easily be from the cold weather and not tears. “As in, the frozen water that surrounds us.”
“Yes,” Karl said, nodding, hoping he would be able to reel her in with this knowledge. “It is vital for anyone doing big mountain climbing to understand the conditions in which they find themselves. So I want to show you the snow, and how to tell the different kinds.”
“How can there be different kinds of snow? It’s all water, isn’t it?”
“Ja, but how that water freezes changes the way it behaves when a foot is placed upon it. When you live in these conditions, you learn by error. You do not, and we will find snow on the mountain even in July. You must learn.”
Justine’s posture relaxed and she crossed her arms. “Fine. Teach me the snow.”
Karl smiled, not that she could tell under his scarf. “It has to do with the amount of moisture in the air, the temperature, and the wind. This snow?” He brought his heel down hard on the packed, crusty snow. “Old and hardpacked. It is more like rock, and will last late into the thaw.” He pulled off his mitten, bent and scraped what he could from the surface of it. “Look at it closely.” He dropped it in her hand.
She brought the clump of dirty snow up to her face. “Looks like snow to me.”
Fine. She wanted to be a difficult pupil, this was her prerogative. “Keep that in your hand.” He walked over to the stream and broke off the overhanging crust that had formed in the last day or two. The clump was clear, not white, and hadspace between each crystal. He dumped it into her hand next to the other clump. “And this one?”
A line formed between her eyebrows. “They are different.”
“Tell me how,” he said, hoping he sounded patient, like a good teacher.
“The second one looks more like crystals than a solid lump, like the first one.”
“Good, yes, yes.” He nodded, hoping she would continue her thought, but she didn’t. Well, there was no need to go into detail if she wasn’t interested. “Which would you rather walk on?”
“The first one. It looks like a solid rock, not like a piece of jewelry.”
“Good. Lesson one complete.”
“That’s it? Don’t walk on snow that looks like you shouldn’t walk on it?” She dropped the snow on the ground and put her hands on her hips.
“You told me very clearly that snow is just snow. There were no types of snow. Now you’ve seen two different types, and you know which is safe to walk on and which isn’t. That is progress.” Karl turned around to head back to the inn, gambling that she would stop him. He hoped she would stop him and ask more questions. This was important, but he didn’t want to force the knowledge on her.
