Part 4: Chapter 4: Snow Strike

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Chapter 4: Snow Strike

My snow boots sat in the center of the mudroom, still damp - more proof that I hadn’t dreamed my hike last night. I pulled them on. But outside, my feet sank in powdery snow that reached halfway up my calves, and my jeans were wet before I’d gotten ten steps.

Imogen led the way up the mountain, making me struggle to keep up this time. I think her boots had fancy soles that made it easier to walk on the gluey snow. She called something over her shoulder, but the wind took the sounds and swirled them around and past me, along with the shiny flakes.

I was about to ask her to stop so we could talk, when I saw the boy.

He stood on the hillside just past the Biedermeyers’ fence, with his hands in his pockets and his head down, as if he’d frozen there. His jaw was working on gum. He was skinny with red hair; I’d seen him in school a million times but couldn’t remember his name. He was one of the ones who spent most of his time in the Voc Ed shop or hanging out in the back of classes, sniggering whenever a teacher said “hard” or “climax.”

Imogen marched straight up to him. “Aslaug,” she said when I got there, barking to be heard over the wind. “This is Orin Crenshaw. He’s not touched, but he knows what it means. He’s been up in the cave today. He says his friends are up there.”

“Friends?” I scanned Orin’s face, then quickly dropped my eyes. His were amber slits, drawing a bead on me. I had a feeling he was smarter than he looked, but I still couldn’t see him being friends with Stephen, Jeremy, or Kristen.

“Billy Corcoran and all of them,” Imogen yelled.

“Good quarter of the junior class,” said Orin. He spoke low, but somehow his voice penetrated through the storm. “Been up there since about lunchtime today. They’re calling it a strike.”

“A snow strike,” said Imogen.

We began walking again, side by side, heading across what had once been a grassy patch to the crescent of trees. When I glanced back, I saw white layered on seething white where the valley should be. My house had disappeared. “What’s a snow strike?”

“Not sure,” said Orin, “but I think it’s like a snow day. ’Long as it snows, they don’t want to have to do anything they don’t want to do.”

“He came to me in class,” said Imogen, gesturing wildly toward Orin as if she could somehow re-enact the scene for me. “He said they’re saying it’s the end of the world. Because Sam Gann forecasted snow forever.”

It was all coming together now. “Are all of them touched?” I asked.

Imogen shrugged, her dark brows knitting. But Orin said, “Don’t think so. Some of them, they’re just going along with it. It’s wicked cool to cut school and sit in a cave - well, today it is. Also, they got liquor.”

As we approached the trees, Imogen stopped too suddenly, her fingers closing around my arm. “Who’s that?”

Someone was sitting on the big boulder between the first two cedars - a grown man. He wore a heavy green windbreaker and rimless glasses, and he was scrubbing one gloved hand across his pudgy red face as if it were dirty. The other hand held a tarnished silver hip flask.

“That is Sheriff Yeardley,” said Orin.

Sheriff Yeardley raised his head when he heard his name. It was my first time meeting him - he lives in Skorriesville and serves the whole county, so he’s spread thin - but he didn’t look like a sheriff to me. More like a little boy caught in his mom’s liquor cabinet. I dropped my eyes before he could look at me.

“Hey-oh, Sheriff, how’s it going?” said Orin, tapping the sheriff’s knee. He was clearly enjoying this just a touch.

“Seen better,” said the sheriff. He took a swallow from his flask. “What would you kids be doin’ up here in a storm?”

“We heard there’s a party going on in the cave,” said Orin, widening his eyes innocently.

“There’s sure’s hell something going on in there,” said the sheriff.

“You ain’t busted it up yet, have you?”

“Why would I do that?” asked the sheriff. He raised the flask to his lips again. “They offered me some flavored vodka, but I got my own poison, and it don’t taste like candy.”

Orin caught Imogen’s eyes and strode past the sheriff, beckoning us both to follow. “We’ll be on our way, then, sir. See ya on the flipside.”

Imogen paused to ask what I was wondering myself: “Are you OK, Mr. Yeardley? How long have you been out here? Are you cold?”

“Cold?” said the sheriff. “The mercury ain’t dipped below twenty-five today, sweetheart. What kind of punk-ass gets cold?” On the last word, he choked on his drink and began coughing, and the coughing became laughter. “Cold,” he said, sputtering. “Hell, sure I’m cold. To the bone!”

Orin made another, more impatient motion. Imogen touched my arm, and we both followed the skinny boy into the rocks.

Orin navigated the turns crisply and efficiently, as if he’d been here before. In the place where I’d stood eavesdropping last night, he stopped abruptly, so we both practically ran smack into him, and said in that low, intense voice of his, “I was here when the sheriff first came up the mountain, ’bout one. The farmer at the top of the Morgen Road called when he saw all the cars parked in the turn-out. Yeardley came in like a city cop, waving his flashlight and telling folks to freeze. Said he’d take us all in for truancy and underage drinking. His deputy was right behind him.”

“What happened?” whispered Imogen.

Like her, I was starting to hear sounds from inside the cave: muffled, echoing murmurs of many people talking and laughing and breathing. Though we were only a few yards away, the party sounded farther, as if it were happening under a layer of rippling water or several feet of earth.

Orin shrugged. “Kristen came and talked to the sheriff, all sweet and Miss Perfect. I didn’t personally see her touch him, but next thing we knew, he was sitting on the ground and taking out his flask, talking about how we didn’t think to bring any decent liquor. The deputy tried to make him get up. But then some other girl and Jeremy talked to the deputy. He’s still in there, I think.”

“Doing what?” Imogen asked.

But as she spoke, light flashed from the mouth of the cave, and a voice called, “Crenshaw, that you?”

“None other,” Orin drawled.

Leo Mull appeared in the opening, crouched on one knee, blinking like an owl at the daylight. “We told you to bring hot chicks,” he said.

I dropped my eyes, though I wouldn’t have minded burning him right then. Maybe just singeing his eyelashes a little.

“So non-hot chicks aren’t allowed to go on snow strike?” asked Imogen.

Orin drew something from a deep pocket in his coat. “They wanna talk to their friend. The psycho. That’s why they tagged along. Leo, check it out - I got my Gram’s Wild Turkey.”

“Stole booze from your gramma?” said Leo, grinning. “Classic Crenshaw.” He stuck his head back in the cave and called out, “Hey, Kris! Your friend’s loser posse showed up looking for him.”

Orin didn’t wait to be invited. He threw himself on hands and knees, tucking the bottle under his arm, and crawled after Leo, who had disappeared inside. Once in, he slithered back to front and stuck his head and hand out to beckon to us. “Git your asses in here!”

Imogen threw me a look that said, He’s OK, really. Then she followed Orin.

I hit the icy gravel and snow and crept after them, though it seemed like a bad idea. The cave was stuffed with people who didn’t like me, at least some of them were touched, and I had no way of knowing for sure who was and wasn’t. What exactly was I supposed to do in there? What could I say to Stephen I hadn’t already said?

When the frigid air of the cave hit me, I knew.

It was cold in there, several degrees colder than normal, when it should have been warmer with all those extra bodies. The problem was, there were more bodies than anyone knew. And most of them were Jotuns.

The Jotuns were what I saw first. Just like the last time I’d been here, they’d flocked from somewhere below and lined the walls of the cavern like bats, only upright. It was like looking at an army. And when I say they were like bats, I mean you couldn’t possibly count them, because they melted into one another in that misty way they had, and when you looked at them too hard, your sense of space got screwed up, because you could swear they were a crowd stretching into the distance. It was like seeing a three-D movie on what you knew was a flat screen.

But they weren’t just around the edges of the cave this time. They were all through the cave, standing like statues or slowly moving, not bothering to avoid people. Why should they? The people didn’t notice them. The people walked right through them.

I found myself seeing the people the way the Jotuns would. There were a lot of them for such a small space, maybe thirty-five. To the Jotuns this was a cage jam-packed with jittery, scurrying hamsters or mice. It set them on edge, making their eyes go big and round.

From a human point of view, though, my classmates were scarcely moving - not exactly what you’d expect from a party. Most of them sat or lay on the ground in sleeping bags. A few had set up pup tents. A couple of joints and more than a couple bottles were being passed around, along with the usual chips and Cheez Doodles. Someone’s laptop was squeezing jam rock out of tinny battery-powered speakers. Wobbly yellow light came from flashlights and a handful of kerosene camping lanterns, and, because you couldn’t build a real fire in here without immediately suffocating, everyone was wearing hats and coats and puffy vests and tons of underlayers.

“How wasted are they, exactly?” said Imogen. “It looks like an opium den.”

She was so cynical. I thought everybody looked a little drowsy and happy, as if they really were on strike from the annoying and demanding parts of their lives. Karin Lind was playing cards with Luce Carncross the goth, whom she wouldn’t even have spoken to at school. Billy Corcoran hunched over a battered laptop, telling Ryan Fleet he was wrong about somebody’s batting average, and he would prove it once they had Internet access again. A few people were reading actual books or magazines. Evie Carlsson and Britta Golp were trying to summon someone with a Ouija board, but they kept giggling so hard they almost pitched over.

Right then, as I watched, a Jotun glided through Evie and headed for the cave entrance. While it was in Evie, it looked ghostly, but as soon as it was through her, it went solid again. It was a big woman with a long dress that dragged, made of sleek ice that looked almost blue in the yellow lamplight, and it never lowered its head or glanced to right or left.

I threw Imogen a look, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. So I doubled back to the cave entrance, tripping over sleeping bags as I went, and met the Jotun head on.

Unlike most of the Jotuns I’d seen, this one wasn’t covered in a layer of grit. I could see the creases in her brow, the high bridge of her nose, and the laces in the bodice of her dress, all of her as neat and translucent as an ice sculpture carved for a wedding. It made me wonder why Jotuns took the human forms they did, and where they got them.

Then I looked into the white spheres of her eyes, and she froze in midstep. Flame flared between us.

I reached for my sword or ax, but I had no sword or ax. So I raised my bare fist and struck.

I hit something warm and slippery and so hard it took the breath out of me. As I bounced from the impact, someone grabbed my wrist and said, “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing, Assload?”

I’d punched Leo Mull in the chest, not that hard, my fist skidding on his nylon ski jacket. The Jotun loomed behind him. Leo must have walked straight through her, just as I raised my hand to strike.

“Has she totally lost it?” Leo asked, addressing Imogen now. “Is she off her meds or something?”

“No,” said a deep voice behind me.

Stephen.

“Well, then, what’s her problem?” asked Leo. Turning on his heel to see what his friends thought of the situation, he walked into the Jotun again.

The Jotun was moving now, and this time she raised one huge hand as if to high-five Leo. As he passed through her, the hazy hand sliced him from shoulder to chest. Leo flinched and shivered. I clenched my fist. Was that all it took to touch someone?

“It’s OK,” said Stephen. His own hand closed on my arm. “I wouldn’t worry about him.”

Rigid with the effort of pretending he wasn’t there, I said to Imogen, “I can’t kill them here. There are too many people. It’s dangerous!”

“Kill what?”

Stephen said softly, “She can’t see them.”

He released me then, and I heard him moving away, perhaps because Imogen had noticed him and was trying to corner him now. “Stephen!” she called in that voice-from-the-depths of hers. “We need to talk to you!”

A few people tittered. One boy said, “Catfight!”

“Go get her, Krissy!” said another.

I ignored them. I ignored Imogen, too, when she dashed alongside me and plucked at my coat, saying, “Let me do it.” I even ignored the Jotuns, more or less, though I did swerve at the last second to avoid walking through them.

I followed Stephen’s olive drab jacket and the pale spot of his hair across the cave, stepping over speakers and Rolling Rock bottles and people’s sneakered feet. When I saw him sidestep and disappear into the crack in the wall, the passage to the deeper caves, I didn’t hesitate. I marched to the crack, through the currents of Jotun-cold swirling in the air, knowing this time I would have to step inside.

A small shape in a puffy ice-blue parka stood in my way. “He wants to be left alone,” Kristen Hawke said.

I gazed at the blackish rock over her shoulder. “I need to talk to him.”

“It’s OK,” called Stephen’s voice from somewhere inside, where it echoed a little. “She won’t hurt me.”

“Famous last words,” said Kristen. But she turned and entered the narrow passage. She was so slim she barely needed to wedge herself in.

I wasn’t so lucky; my shoulders stuck, and I had to shimmy and face the wall. The ground rose and fell treacherously, covered with jagged debris, but there wasn’t room for me to look down. When Imogen tried to follow, too, I said, “Stay here a sec. Please.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said? I won’t hurt him. Even he knows it.”

“How are you going to help him, Aslaug?”

I had no idea. “Trust me.”

Before it could become a real argument, Kristen sped around behind me, kicking gravel, and blocked the passage. We were alone in a low-roofed alcove, where the only light bled from the bigger cave and the pearly glow of the Jotuns’ eyes.

Three Jotuns stood just a few feet beyond us, watching. I glared straight at them, and they froze.

We heard the sounds of Imogen squeezing and scrabbling through the passage. “Let me in,” she said, finding Kristen in her way.

“No,” said Kristen.

I hung my head and focused my eyes on blackness - anything but the Jotuns. “Kristen, what’s going on? What is this strike thing?”

“It’s going to happen no matter- ” Kristen began.

But Stephen’s voice cut her off. “It’s winter.”

“Winter that doesn’t stop, right?” That was Imogen, still listening. “Winter everywhere?”

“Winter,” said Stephen again.

His voice came from close by. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out a solid mass rising beside the Jotuns, a crag that stuck out into the room and met the ceiling. I came closer and touched the dead stone gingerly, running my hands over it. “You don’t want me to look at you anymore.”

Stephen sighed almost into my ear. My fingers found a fissure in the rock, just wide enough for a glance or a hand, and I knew he was in there. He’d come around the back. “You really don’t, do you?”

“Stay away from him,” said Kristen.

“No worries,” said Stephen. Something white poked from the fissure: his hand. “If it’s meant to happen, it will happen,” he went on. “She’s had two chances, and she’s wussed out both times. That’s why they’re coming from below in droves. They know there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Who’s coming?” asked Imogen.

I knew. The gentle, almost regretful contempt in his voice made my heart race under layers of nylon and wool, and I said, “Who’s being a wuss right now? You’re hiding.”

“Fine,” said Stephen.

His hand slid back into the crevice. I heard scratching and scraping in there, and after a moment Stephen emerged from behind the rock. He leaned against the crag, shaking out one leg as if it were numb.

“Come here,” said Kristen.

From the corner of my eye, I could see her taking Stephen by the arm and touching his face, to make sure he was all right. She said quietly to him, “You told me they were coming because of us. Because we’re here. Not because of her.”

“It’s a combination.” Stephen sounded tired and bored, the way he had when I eavesdropped on them last night. “We still have to invite them into the upper world. To convince them it’s time.”

“Time for what?” boomed Imogen’s voice. I was surprised at how close she was; the darkness was shrinking my world.

“For the Freeze,” said Stephen, as if this should be obvious. “We read about it in your sister’s books - remember? It’s been delayed forever, because Jotuns are slow and they’re lazy, and they don’t like people. They could care less, really. They could spend thousands more years coming up in twos and threes and just freezing a few of us at a time. It’s the same to them. But with enough of us here in the cave, well, it’s like a welcoming party.”

“So the Jotuns come and freeze everything.” I could tell Imogen still didn’t believe him, not really. She’d seen Jotuns, but the rest was a leap of faith she wasn’t ready to take.

Stephen sighed, like Mr. Blanding trying to explain European stock markets. “Once they get going, spreading themselves out in the fresh air, it’s hard to stop them. She was supposed to scare them, keep them down here.” He cocked his head at me. “That plan didn’t work, did it? Poor old Sigurd. And Loki, because he’s a double-crossing cheat, he’s probably snickering into his ale right now.”

“What plan?” I had to stay focused. I couldn’t think about thousands, maybe millions of Jotuns floating through the cave door and off into the chilly air.

“The plan was, you were going to be a blazing sword,” said Stephen. “Forged in fire, dreaded by Jotuns and evildoers everywhere.” He laughed. “I’m not a warrior; I don’t understand this crap.”

“They programmed him with runes, Aslaug,” said Imogen.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. Something awful was coming, more awful than the Jotuns. It was standing beside me just out of reach, like Stephen behind the crag, and when I saw its face nothing would be the same. Yet I had to ask it to come out. “Programmed you to do what?”

The dark shape of Stephen twitched, maybe shrugging. “It was your dad’s idea, Aslaug. I didn’t know it then, but I do now. He thought if he made you kill a friend, you would lose all fear. Become worthy. Strong.”

I pressed both hands to my heart. “They knew you would be touched.”

“More than knew!” cried Imogen. “They made his rune disappear. They wanted you to need to kill him. To burn him.”

“To prove myself.”

“I gave you lots of chances,” said Stephen. “Last night - I practically begged for it.”

“He had to,” Imogen said.

I expected Stephen to object, but he only repeated, “I had to. But it’s too late now. I’m not in their power anymore. Even if you do kill me, it won’t change what’s happening. And your dad’s already turned his back - he’s not patient, Aslaug.”

“I don’t know my dad.” I felt my throat tightening.

“He only understands warriors forged in fire, and you’re not one. You’re too weak.”

While he told me how weak I was, the three Jotuns stared at us both with their goggling egg-white eyes. They stood stiff as statues of dead people on tombs, their hands clasped patiently before or behind their backs, waiting.

Waiting for us to finish talking. Waiting for the cave to fill with people. Waiting for the snow to cover the rooftops in the valley. They could wait for days, weeks, or years; they weren’t impatient. What would happen would happen, no matter how long it took.

I stared straight past Stephen; I stared back at the Jotuns. Light flared on the walls, and they froze a second time. Stephen chuckled in his throat.

But I caught him off guard when I shoved him to one side with my shoulder. The first Jotun hulked in my way, like a snowman rolled by giant children. I stuck out my fist and put it through the middle of the Jotun.

It was harder than using an ax or a sword. It felt like plunging your bare fist into a snowbank that has melted and refrozen and gone gritty over the course of a winter. My hand came out red and smarting, but the Jotun fared worse. He melted.

So did the next one. And the one after that.

Wind roared around me, echoing somewhere far above. My shoulders still ached from squeezing through the passage in the rocks. Yellow light from the outer cavern gave me crazy, confused glimpses of pitted black rock and dark-bundled bats and stone icicles hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t want to see any of that. I focused on the white globes of the Jotuns’ eyes.

The deeper you went, the more Jotuns you found, of course. More and more. From the slow, floaty way they moved, I got the feeling they were just waking from a long sleep, the way I had this afternoon. From their usual home, far below, they had heard a call or a summons; they had felt an itch in their bones and set out. But they were too tired to care much, like kids whose mom calls them for a treat well after midnight. They knew what would happen. They had always known. They were over it.

The passage slanted sharply down, but the floor was dirt now, clear of fallen rocks. As I forced my way deeper - pinning the Jotuns with my eyes, skewering them with my fists - I watched their own eyes contract from bewildered white balls to sullen yellow slits. Down here, farther from the light and music and laughter, they were more themselves. Their golden eyes had expression; I could see them zeroing in on me and narrowing, as in anger or disgust. They reminded me of bobcats, just human enough to let you see they weren’t. But my eyes still stopped them. My eyes still stopped them dead.

My knuckles were numb from sucker-punching snowmen, and I had to use my left hand. My feet splashed through puddles and slipped on gravel and sudden slopes and mud. There was no light anymore but the Jotuns’ eyes.

And I saw fewer of them here, as if they’d found room to spread out. Sometimes all the light vanished, and I turned around and around for terrible seconds before I spotted a pair of yellow eyes several yards down the passage. (Passage? Tunnel? Room?) When I’d killed that Jotun, I looked for the next.

The ground leveled. The ceiling dived to meet my forehead, and I had to crawl on hands and knees till the space widened again. But it was all right, because I could see three Jotuns up there. Two stood with their backs to me, as if having a conversation, while the third watched me like a hungry owl.

I glared at her while I tottered back upright. She stood stock still, disdain and famine still angling her sulfur eyes. I thrust my hand through her, and grains of ice spattered my face.

Now it was dark, darker than the darkest night above ground. I drew my aching hand to my chest and headed for the place where I had seen the other two Jotuns. My shoulder hit stone. I groped the wall, looking for an opening, and felt something soft and damp that came away under my nails. Dirt? Fungus? Blood?

That made no sense. I jerked my head up and turned. But the darkness had me off kilter. The floor under my feet was a mess of rocks, some the size of paperweights and some like toasters, that made me stumble and stub my toes as I crossed the chamber, looking for the crawlspace again.

My hands palmed the rock. Solid. I sank to my knees and stretched out my arms, first to the left, then to the right, feeling my way along the wall. I found spongy places and hollow places and ledges as sharp-edged as knives, but no openings.

Be systematic, you wuss. Weakling. With my weight on my throbbing ankles, I crept counterclockwise and probed again. Nothing.

I rose, and this time my hands didn’t just search the rock. They pounded it. While my brain said, Stop, my palms smacked the hard surface again and again. Strange sounds came from my throat. My brain said, This isn’t helping. Then it said, They’ve trapped you here.

I stopped slapping the wall. I collapsed and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, rocking and taking deep breaths. Sobs fought their way up through my throat, but I made myself exhale evenly, then inhale.

Wuss. Weakling. That was what my father thought. He had given up on me. I hadn’t given up, but I might as well. What did it matter? I asked myself. My friend was as good as dead. If I came back alive, I would have to kill him eventually.

Strangely enough, this calmed me. Not much. But enough so that I raised my head and noticed, far away in the depthless darkness, a pinprick of light.