Even as a little kid, she'd been exceptionally good at holding her breath. Max hated how she always won, but had never given up trying to beat her. She stared at Zach, held her breath and stared. She had the feeling that winning this time would be no win at all.
'Is there some place for you to hide?' he asked.
'What's wrong?'
'Several cars are headed this way. Two, I think, and one might be a van or off-road vehicle.'
'Can you tell where they are?'
'Close enough. They're moving slowly in the snow, but I'd guess from the muffled sounds that they've already turned off the main road into the lane. You wouldn't happen to have neighbours you haven't told me about?'
'No.'
He shrugged, tried to smile.
'Police?' she whispered.
'Maybe. Probably, unless some trippers are out on a picnic.'
'There's no real place to hide except the wood.'
'Hurry up and get dressed then. Go out the back door and round by the shed, where the tracks will be harder to follow at first.'
'I know the woodland better than they ever could. We'll lose them, tracks or no tracks.'
'You will.'
'You're not suggesting-'
'There's no time to argue.'
Laura crossed her arms in front of her chest. 'Absolutely not.'
Under her steadfast gaze his eyes changed from molten to sea glass, from kiln fire to ash. Their colour had never been more impenetrable. He sighed. 'Look, I'll tell them you didn't come with me, that I stole the key from you or broke in or something.'
'Yeah, as if they'll believe that.'
'I doubt they'll care, so long as they can bring in their trophy.'
'I told you. No.'
'Please, Laura. Don't do this. You're putting Max in danger.'
She stepped close and gathered a fistful of his jersey over where his tattoo must be. A strong trace of woodsmoke clung to his clothes, but she could also smell the unique signature of his skin-sweet like fresh-pressed cider, peaty, intense.
'You can't teach me anything about manipulation, I've imbibed it all with my mother's milk. Max would want me to stay.' She laid her head against his chest to listen to his heartbeat. 'And so do you.'
Chapter 26
With only one husky, it's slow going-visibility poor, the ground jagged and uneven beneath the thick layer of snow, the horizon obliterated. A misstep, and they too could slip off the edge of the world. From time to time they catch a glimpse of the moon, and Lev reckons the storm has moved on. Behind them floats a vapour trail, the ghostly wake of their perspiration and breath. It's worrying, for the wind is too light to disperse it quickly, the flurries too sparse. At least there's no sign of pursuit. Lev is heading eastwards towards the pack ice, hoping to find a way to avoid the long coastal detour. And at one stretch along the shore, weathered granite cliffs promise, at best, a steep haul; Zach has no clue what they'll do about Bella (or the sledge) should they need to climb.
Sweating and grim, they struggle to shift the sledge over a particularly bad patch of rocky outcrop, slick with ice and frozen snow. The runners are badly pitted and need re-icing. In the end they're obliged to offload part of their gear, what's left of it after jettisoning as much as possible to accommodate the loss of the dogs. They half drag, half carry the lightened sledge to a shallow basin harled like plaster, station Bella with their pile of equipment, and backtrack for the remainder. By then they're ready for a break, and Zach would like to pitch the tent and call it a day. His muscles are shaking with cold and exhaustion as he drinks the steaming high-energy quarsh Lev forces on him; he can't bring himself to choke down a nut bar. But Lev is clearly keen to press on, for he allots them barely an hour's rest, then cuts it short when the wind begins to pick up.
'I hope we're not killing ourselves for nothing,' Zach says.
Lev secures the last webbing strap across their supplies box-lighter than aluminium, some kind of alloy. Normally clean shaven, he hasn't bothered in the last few days, and his whiskers have frozen to his face mask. He grimaces as he pulls it free to speak.
'There's no other hunting camp within reach. Bella is doing her best, but going back to base would take us far too long, even if we retrieved the rest of the supplies. In the Arctic, hunger is as much a killer as the cold. Because of the cold.' He casts a look behind him, then gazes out towards the ice with all the appearance of a man with time on his hands.
'Maybe you ought to play a round of Pace,' Zach mutters sullenly under his breath as he bends to attach Bella's harness.
Lev too has moments when he needs to prove something. 'Be a good boy scout, and I might just whip you up a cosy iglu and an even cosier supply of seal.'
'Fuck your-'
'Take it easy, lad, your learning curve is flattening by the second.' He goes to the sledge, burrows deep into one of the packs, and returns with the clarinet case. 'But I'm glad you've reminded me of my little toys. Here, it's best you keep this on you, alongside that nifty pocket knife of yours.' He hands Zach the clarinet. 'And though you may not feel inclined to believe me right now, you can trust me. No matter what happens, just remember to keep practising.'
'Yeah, blowing my guts out is a great way to end it all.'
All trace of levity vanishes from Lev's face. 'They call you Corvus. How about trying to live up to it?' He sees that Zach is about to protest. 'No, be quiet and listen to me. I may not get another chance. You should pay attention to your own myths. Like the one in which, at the beginning of time, Raven made the world.'
In exasperation Zach swings round to Bella, who is a much more companionable companion, and who probably would talk much more sense too. As he squats to fondle her head, he can't help thinking of Max. Is he OK? Knowing that you're needed, desperately needed, by someone who has come to feel like your squirrelly kid brother is daunting-humbling-but it's a reason (on good days) to keep breathing, not any of that Corvus crap. Christ, he thought that at least here he'd
The blow knocks him sprawling on top of the dog.
Bella yelps and manages to scramble out from under, but Zach is pinned facedown in the snow by an enormous weight. Then he hears a groan and rough breathing, realises that it's a body lying on top of him. An injured body, by the sound of it.
'Lev?' he tries to say, but his face is mashed into a drift, and his goggles have been pushed askew. He works his face from side to side, small paddling movements, until he's able to suck in some air. 'Lev,' he mumbles frozenly.
The weight on Zach shunts sideways just enough for him to scull his arms beneath him, looking for purchase. He hears Bella's whimper in the background, then a low voice which raises his adrenaline level sharply. Bracing himself on his elbows, he tenses. The smell of urine is strong now, and he wonders what damage he'll do by heaving Lev off him-if it's Lev. But he's not about to wait passively for what's coming.
The choice is taken from him. A grunt, and the body is rolled away. With a movement like a fish flipping on dry land, he's over and ready to spring. For the first time today he's grateful for the gruelling terrain, which has kept them from using their stubby skis.
A figure is leaning over Lev. Zach has only time to make it to his feet before the man straightens and aims an outstretched arm at Lev's head. There's a burst of light. A sound like a balloon bursting. In one rush the air escapes-then nothing left to breathe.
With a howl Bella springs.
'Don't kill her!' Zach hurtles across the intervening distance, raising a fine shrapnel of frozen powder. Her sharp yelp is lost in the carnival roar of mortality. Is that a laugh he hears from the croaker who's done this?
Wildly he spins round. 'Lev-'
Snow, whitewashed clean.
He drops to his knees at her side, pulls off a mitt, feels for a pulse in her throat. She's not breathing. Oh god, she's not breathing. Shakes her, too roughly. 'Breathe, damn you, just breathe!' Dips a finger in the blood seeping from an ear. Puts it to his lips.
'You needn't have swallowed,' he told Laura.
'I wanted to,' she said. 'I wanted you to know how I feel.'
Nothing left to breathe.
The instant before blackness descends, Zach sees other figures like golden specks at the edge of his vision, a shower of chevrons drifting downwards from the sky, parachutes-no, wings-fluttering and folding gracefully behind them.
And in the middle distance, an indigo-tinted shadow, barely perceptible, which quivers like milk set to boil. Seismic stress. Then the image sharpens into a small hummock, canted to the leeward-a hummock that is stealing forward soundlessly with its nose in the snow and its hindquarters slightly elevated.
Chapter 27
His head next to hers at the window, Zach murmured something inconsequential about her hair. He noticed such things-a pair of new earrings, the smell of the lemon juice she'd used as a hair rinse. There were so many questions Laura wanted to ask-needed to ask-but none found its way past the ticking of his heart, the minutes slipping into memory. She couldn't tell if he were afraid, or resigned, or planning some impossible simu stunt; nor did it seem to matter much, though one part of her whispered, do something, you're mad wasting these last moments to escape, or at least draft a convincing story. But the room was so still, his breathing so soothing, so moth-winged that if she were given the chance to choose a single moment of her life to last for all time, she'd be content to stop the clock at this one.
'Your skin is singing,' she said.
He said nothing, but his arms tightened around her, pinioning the melody between them.
'How close are they?'
'Not long now.'
She felt a shiver go through him, which always frightened her; it reminded her of that first evening at his flat, and how terribly vulnerable he could be. With a shiver of her own, she glanced behind them, and her pulse jumped. Near the corner bookshelf stood a tall, thin man clothed in light. In another century she might have thought, angel, but there was nothing remotely angelic about his appearance, and his blue eyes gleamed with intelligence, amusement too. A scar like a cubist smile accented the corner of his mouth, and a chunk of something an art collector would covet winked in his hands, splattering miniature rainbows across the walls and floor as he tipped it towards her.
'Zach,' she cried, tugging him round and pointing.
'What?'
Nothing there. The doors were closed, the room sunny, all the shadows accounted for. A few dust motes, not even a cobweb.
'Do you believe in ghosts?' she asked.
Zach's laugh startled even the dust motes.
'I'm serious! I saw someone-OK, maybe something-standing in the corner.'
'Unless you dad's been messing with holography, it must have been your imagination.' His eyes returned to the window, lashes briefly trembling like mothy wings. 'The mind does odd things when you're nervous.'
Now she too could hear the sound of approaching vehicles. 'Zach-'
'Don't worry, it'll be OK. They'll take you home.' He lowered his voice so that Laura found herself straining to hear him, and still she had to repeat his words to herself like a cryptic joke before they made sense. 'And I deserve what's coming.'
* * *
Three policemen; the fat one kept fingering Zach's hair.
Outside, the sun had become an over-friendly tourist whose bright smile and hectic chatter would arouse any immigration officer's suspicion-a smuggler, maybe an asylum seeker, by all means a foreigner who had no bloody right to their corner of the universe.
Three policemen: one fat, one jumpy, one avuncular. The nervy bloke reminded Laura of a hairdresser, and in fact his hair was raked and sheeny, scented too. Without being asked, all three had unzipped their jackets and tossed them onto the sofa. They were armed.
Only three policemen: Laura kept telling herself that this was a good sign, they would have sent a much larger squad if she and Zach were reckoned dangerous. She wanted to slap the fat bloke's sluggy fingers away from Zach, who seemed oblivious of all but the pattern of sun and shadow on the floor, though he answered each question politely. Remotely, as if he'd prepared his answers long since and needed only to reel them off by rote.
'I asked you for the names of your mates,' the fat one said.
'I don't have any mates.'
'Your cell, fuckhead.' He yanked at Zach's hair.
'Take it soft, Gordon,' the eldest man cautioned. He'd stationed himself next to Laura and smelled of fried onions when he opened his mouth. He was the only one with a wedding band, which he liked to slide back and forth over the lower knuckle of his ring finger. After a while Laura noticed a pattern to the movement: it speeded up whenever Gordon spoke.
'Hey, I'm good, Dave.' Gordon leaned forward and whispered something into Zach's ear. Laura was watching Zach closely. How did he manage to stay so calm?
'I think I'd best ring my parents,' Laura said.
'They've already been informed,' Dave said. 'I'll be taking you home as soon as we finish here.' He smiled. 'Early start, long drive. Why don't you make us some coffee? A couple of sandwiches?'
Laura glanced quickly at Zach, but he didn't meet her gaze. It came as no surprise when Dave followed her to the kitchen, but his apology seemed genuine, and he helped to butter bread and lay the tray. 'I've got kids of my own,' he said, 'a bit younger than you, what are you doing with this terr?'
A tight grip on the scoop, she spooned ground coffee into the filter and poured on the boiling water. The brown sludge rose above the brim, cambering in defiance of logic and gravity. She daren't jar it.
'You've got it wrong. He's a decent person.'
