Chapter Thirty-Three #4
“We good, Imani?” Dad asked, checking with her again. He meant, Are you really going to listen to me? Again, Imani nodded. Lies didn’t count as much if they weren’t spoken.
“So… we’ll walk in a formation,” Dad said. “A triangle. I’ll walk in the lead with the rifle. You two walk a couple of paces behind me, but one on each side. We all need to keep our eyes and ears open. Especially where there’s collected snow. Remember: It likes to hide.”
Dad studied them as if he might forget their faces.
His frown lines were so deep that they looked painted on, but he didn’t sway like he was half dead on his feet the way he had when he first found them.
She wondered if his chest still hurt. “We stay close, but slightly spaced out so it can’t get to more than one of us.
If I drop the gun… the closest person picks it up.
It’s ready to fire. Remember to reload. Look where you’re shooting. ”
Imani winced, remembering how she’d squeezed her eyes closed the second time she fired. She wouldn’t make that mistake again, if she had the chance. She burned to carry the rifle, but she knew Dad would never allow it.
“Let’s head out,” he said. “I love you more than my own life, and she loves you more than hers. This is hard on all of us… but let’s do what she asked us to do.”
He didn’t wait for them to agree. Dad turned and began his awkward steps in his snowshoes. How would they keep up with him in deeper snow? No wonder he had wanted to leave them behind in the tree.
“Come on, Imani,” Sharise said, knowing her doubts. “We have to stick close.”
Imani meant to follow her family. She took her first steps—one, two, three—in the ankle-deep snow in boots that definitely were not made for walking, already chafing her.
She tried not to remember Mom’s shrieking, or the worse silence, or her feet would not move.
She craved to feel cold wind in her face from the faster motion on her snowboard, which felt like it weighed thirty pounds instead of only ten now that she was carrying it so unwillingly.
Tears and snot melted across Imani’s face as she looked back at the tree hollow and the escarpment rising beyond it, where Mom almost certainly must be. (Or what’s left of her. That’s what Dad doesn’t want you to see.)
Despite the new snow, Dad’s snowshoe tracks toward the tree were nearly buried, but still a beacon; a sign that she was walking the wrong way.
“A little faster, Imani,” Dad said, glancing back at her. Their triangle was not intact. Imani lagged behind her sister and father.
But the smothering feeling was back in her lungs, hitching her breath. The tree felt like an umbilical cord, and with every step she took away from it, the more she starved for air. Imani’s mouth fell wide-open as she tried to capture more oxygen. Red spots danced before her eyes.
Despite all of this, Imani would have found a way to keep walking if the familiar voice hadn’t lighted in her thoughts again, the smiling voice of her mother: (I’m still alive.)
Was it possible, or just wishful thinking? One step. Another step.
Mom should have died while she was being dragged, Imani realized. She had bled, but only a small amount. Had the Beast protected her somehow while it dragged her?
(I’m still alive.)
And why had it kept her alive in its nest? Why hadn’t it mauled her like the deer?
(I’m still alive.)
If the Beast had delayed killing Mom this long, couldn’t it have delayed longer? Maybe it had a reason for not killing her.
(I’m still alive.)
Imani stopped walking. Hopeful thoughts made it easier to breathe. Dad and Sharise needed to help her look for Mom, and she had the power to make that happen.
Imani dropped her snowboard to the snow with a loud chunk that made Sharise and Dad both turn around. Methodically, she knocked snow free from the soles of her snow boots and began to latch them into place. One click. Two.
“What are you doing?” Sharise asked.
“We all have to go at the same pace, Imani,” Dad told her. His eyes were pained and defeated. Maybe he had always known what she would do.
“Mom needs us,” Imani said. “She’s not dead.”
Imani would never forget the expression on her father’s face, beneath his despairing terror.
He looked like a sad little boy who had already learned there was no Santa Claus, but he knew she must learn the awful secret for herself.
His face almost woke her from her fever of belief.
Almost. But Imani could not walk away without peering at whatever ugly truth lay nestled in the outcropping beyond the hollow tree.
“Imani, don’t—” Sharise began.
Imani launched herself away from Sharise and her father, toward the expanse of snow beyond the tree. She gripped her ski pole tightly because it was the only weapon she had. This tract barely had a downhill grade, but it gave her enough speed to escape their walk of defeat.
Dad took two frantic running steps in his snowshoes to chase her, swinging his arm as if to catch her, but she was already too far. He slowed as he watched the gap between them grow.
“Imani, no!” Dad shouted. His voice boomed against the cliff face like the rifle’s blast in her ear. But he only shouted once, probably worried about attracting the Beast.
Imani wasn’t worried. Dad could shout with all his strength.
Let it come, she thought.