The Whiteout Debt

“Don’t touch that!” I told my brother. But when a bag of money is half-buried near a plane crash, listening is the last thing on his mind.

"Don't touch that!" That's the first thing I said. The words came out in a puff of white, a tiny cloud of good sense that my little brother Leon promptly ignored.

He was already on his knees in the snow, his red snowsuit making him a ridiculously bright target against the endless white. His gloved fingers, clumsy as bear paws, were clawing at the corner of a dark green canvas bag sticking out of the drift. It was wedged under the mangled wing of the plane, the one that looked like a giant had tried to fold it in half.

"It could be a trap," I said, my voice tight. My own breath was turning to ice on the fuzzy collar of my jacket. Every part of me was screaming at us to get back on the snowmobile and just *go*, even if we were lost. Especially because we were lost.

"A trap?" Leon grunted, pulling. The bag resisted with a dull scraping sound. "Who sets a trap with a bag? It's probably full of camping gear. Maybe a radio. Or satellite phone!" He looked up at me, his eyes wide and hopeful under the rim of his beanie. Snowflakes clung to his eyelashes. He looked about six, not nine. It was his greatest weapon.

"Or a bomb," I muttered, scanning the trees around us. They stood in silent, snow-draped ranks, a jury of giants judging our stupidity. The silence was the worst part. Our snowmobile had died about a mile back, the engine coughing its last, pathetic gasp before giving up completely. Since then, the only sound had been the squeak-crunch of our boots and the soft, steady *hush* of the falling snow. Finding this… this wreck, it felt wrong. It was a secret we'd stumbled upon, and secrets in a place this empty were never good.

The plane was a little Cessna, or what was left of it. It had come down hard, plowing a deep furrow in the snow before crumpling against a thicket of birch trees. The cockpit glass was shattered, a spiderweb of frozen cracks. There was no one inside. We’d checked. That was the first thing I’d made sure of, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The emptiness was somehow worse than the alternative.

With a final, heroic heave, Leon wrenched the bag free. It was heavier than it looked. He fell backward with an "oof," landing in a soft poof of powder snow. The duffel bag landed on his chest.

"See?" he said, triumphant. "Not a bomb. Just… stuff." He sat up, fumbling with the zipper. The teeth were frozen solid.

"Leon, stop it," I insisted, moving closer. I hated the feeling that was crawling up my spine. It was the same feeling I got when I knew I'd left the gate open and our dog was about to make a break for it. The feeling of something bad being seconds away from happening. "We don't know whose it is. We should leave it. We need to find the trail."

"The trail is gone, Mary-Anne!" he shot back, his voice cracking with frustration. He wasn't wrong. The snow was coming down harder now, thick, fat flakes that erased the world. Our own tracks from ten minutes ago were already softening, losing their edges. "And I'm cold. What if there's a flare gun in here? Or one of those silver blankets?" He pulled a multitool from his pocket—Dad’s Christmas gift—and started picking at the ice in the zipper.

I blew on my hands, rubbing them together. The cold was a physical thing, a heavy weight pressing in. It seeped through my boots, my gloves, the layers of my coat. It was a deep, aching cold that felt like it was getting into my bones. Leon was right. We were in trouble. The kind of trouble where a silver blanket didn't seem like a bad idea. But this bag… it felt like a different kind of trouble altogether.

The zipper finally gave way with a gritty *zzzzzzip*. Leon peered inside, his face a mixture of confusion and then, pure, unadulterated awe.

"Whoa," he breathed.

"What? What is it? Food?" I knelt beside him, my own curiosity finally winning over my fear. I peeked over his shoulder.

It wasn't food. It wasn't camping gear. It was money. So much money. It was packed in tight, rectangular bundles held together with paper bands. Stacks and stacks of it, all hundred-dollar bills. I'd never seen a hundred-dollar bill in real life, not up close. It looked like fake movie money, but the smell that rose from the bag was real. It smelled dusty and old, like the inside of a bank, but sharper. It smelled like trouble.

My heart, which had been hammering, seemed to stop altogether. It just hung there in my chest, a cold, heavy lump.

Leon let out a low whistle. "We're rich," he whispered, reaching a hand in to touch the top of a stack. His fingers left little damp prints on the paper band.

"Don't!" I slapped his hand away. Not gently. "I told you not to touch it!"

"Ow! Why? It's just paper!" He looked at me, his awe curdling into defiance. "Finders keepers! Dad always says so!"

"He says that about seashells at the beach, you moron! Not… this!" I gestured wildly at the bag, then at the crashed plane, then at the suffocating wilderness around us. "People don't just lose this much money, Leon! They crash in a plane and lose it. And then other people come looking for it."

The logic hit him. I saw it in his eyes. The excitement flickered, replaced by a dawning unease. He looked from the bag to the silent, watching trees.

"What people?" he asked, his voice suddenly very small.

That's when I heard it. It was faint, almost lost in the hiss of the snow, but it was there. A sound that didn't belong. A low, angry buzz, like a giant, frozen hornet. It was getting louder.

"Snowmobiles," I whispered, my blood turning to ice water. "More than one."

We both froze, listening. The sound grew, a distinct *brap-brap-brap* that cut through the winter silence. They were moving fast, and they were close. My eyes locked on the furrow the plane had carved in the snow. It was a giant arrow, pointing right at us.

Panic, cold and sharp, stabbed me in the gut. There was no time to think. There was only time to run. I grabbed the front of Leon’s snowsuit and hauled him to his feet.

"Leave the bag!" I hissed.

"No way!" He grabbed the duffel's straps, digging his heels in. "We found it! It's ours!"

"It's going to get us killed!" My voice was a raw shriek.

The engine sounds were closer now. So much closer. I could hear the aggressive whine as they gunned it over drifts. They weren't following the trail. They were coming straight for the crash site.

"There's no time!" I yanked on his arm, but he was surprisingly strong, his body rigid with nine-year-old stubbornness. He had the bag slung over his shoulder. It was almost as big as he was, and the weight of it made him list to one side.

"Then help me!" he grunted, stumbling.

It was a terrible, awful, world-endingly stupid idea. But leaving him was not an option. And he wasn't leaving the bag. With a sob of pure frustration, I grabbed the other strap. The thing weighed a ton. It felt like it was full of bricks. Wet, heavy, hundred-dollar bricks.

"This way!" I screamed, pulling him away from the wreck, away from the direction of the engines, plunging into the thick wall of pine trees on the far side of the clearing. The forest swallowed us whole.

Running in snow is a special kind of nightmare. It's not like running on a track or even a muddy field. Every step is a fight. The powder was up to our knees, and with every stride, my foot would sink, the cold slush shocking my ankles. It was like running through wet cement. My lungs started to burn almost immediately, the frigid air a searing pain with every gasp.

The bag was a monster between us. It swung wildly, bumping against my legs, then Leon's. We half-ran, half-stumbled, a clumsy three-legged creature crashing through the undergrowth. Low-hanging branches, heavy with snow, whipped at our faces. Every few seconds, a load of powder would dump down my collar, a shocking, wet cold that made me gasp.

"I told you!" I panted, the words torn from my throat. "We should have… left it!"

"They would have… found us anyway!" Leon wheezed back, his face pale with effort. "This way… at least we get paid!"

"Paid for what? Getting frozen into popsicles?" The witty comeback felt hollow. The sound of the snowmobiles was a constant, terrifying roar behind us. They had reached the clearing. I didn't have to look back to know. The sound changed, the engines idling down, then revving impatiently. They were there. They had found the plane.

A shout cut through the air. It was a man's voice, angry and sharp, but the words were stolen by the wind and the thick curtain of trees. It didn't matter. We knew what it meant. *They're not here. Find them.*

A new wave of terror gave my legs fresh strength. I pulled Leon harder. We couldn't just run in a straight line. They'd see our tracks. I remembered something Dad had told me once when we were hiking, something about how to lose a bear. *Don't give it a straight path. Use the terrain. Make it work harder than you.*

"Over here!" I veered sharply to the right, heading for a rocky outcrop where the snow was thinner. The ground was treacherous, covered in slick, mossy stones hidden under a dusting of white. It was harder going, but our footprints would be less obvious. We scrambled over the rocks, the duffel bag scraping against stone. For a terrifying second, I thought the canvas would rip, spilling our stupid, heavy treasure all over the forest floor.

The engines revved again, this time following our path. They were in the woods. They were hunting us. The sound was deafening, a predator's growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

We slid down the other side of the rocks, landing in another deep drift. Leon went down, disappearing completely for a second before his red hat popped up. He was crying now, silent, terrified tears freezing on his cheeks. He still hadn't let go of the bag.

"I can't," he sobbed, trying to get up. "It's too heavy, Mary-Anne."

My own fear was a physical thing, a sour taste in my mouth. But seeing him like that, so small and scared, flipped a switch in my brain. The panic receded, replaced by a cold, hard anger. Anger at the men on the snowmobiles, anger at Leon for his greed, anger at myself for letting this happen.

"Yes, you can," I said, my voice harder than I intended. I yanked the bag off his shoulder and slung it over my own. The weight was staggering. It pulled me off balance, the strap digging painfully into my shoulder through my thick coat. "Get up. Now. We move now."

He looked at me, his lower lip trembling, but he scrambled to his feet. I grabbed his mittened hand, and we ran. I set a grueling pace, ignoring the fire in my lungs and the screaming protest of my muscles. I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. On pulling Leon along behind me. On the dead, crushing weight of the bag on my back. It felt like I was carrying our own tombstone.

The forest was a blur of white and grey. Every tree looked the same. Every drift was a new obstacle to be conquered. The snow was falling even harder, the world shrinking to a swirling vortex of white around us. It was a blizzard. A real, honest-to-goodness whiteout. In a strange way, it was a blessing. It would hide our tracks. But it would also kill us if we stopped moving. Hypothermia doesn't care if you're rich or poor.

The engine sounds were fading, distorted by the wind and the sheer density of the snowfall. Maybe they’d given up. Maybe the storm was too much for them. A tiny, fragile spark of hope flickered in my chest.

And then I heard it. A single, sharp crack that was not a tree branch breaking.

A gunshot.

It was closer than the engines had been. They were on foot. They were still coming.

The spark of hope died, snuffed out by a fresh wave of ice-cold dread. We ran harder, blindly, with no sense of direction. There was no trail, no sun, no landmarks. Just the oppressive white, the biting wind, and the crushing weight of a fortune I already hated.

We burst through a line of thick firs and suddenly, the ground wasn't there anymore. We were falling, tumbling down a steep, snow-cushioned embankment. I landed with a hard *whump*, the air knocked out of me. The duffel bag, with the force of a bowling ball, landed right on top of me, driving me deeper into the snow. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. I was pinned, my face pressed into the cold, suffocating powder.

Panic surged. I thrashed wildly, managing to squirm out from under the bag's dead weight. I sat up, gasping, my lungs burning as they filled with frigid air. Leon was a few feet away, tangled in a bush, but seemingly unhurt.

"Are you okay?" I coughed, tasting snow and fear.

He nodded, his eyes wide. "I think so." He pointed a shaky finger. "Look."

I followed his gaze. We were at the bottom of a small ravine. And on the other side, nestled in a grove of ancient, towering pines, was a cabin. It wasn't a pretty, ski-chalet kind of cabin. It was small and square and looked like it had been built with an axe and sheer stubbornness. It was made of dark, weathered logs, chinked with pale mud. A thin plume of grey smoke curled from a crooked stone chimney, a fragile ribbon of life in the howling storm. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Hope, stronger this time, surged through me. People. Help. Safety.

"Come on!" I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the cursed bag, and started wading through the deep snow of the ravine floor. It was the hardest part yet. The snow here was loose and deep, and with every step I sank to my thigh. It was like trying to run in quicksand.

We finally reached the other side, clawing our way up the bank. We stumbled towards the cabin, every step a monumental effort. My legs were numb, my shoulder was on fire from the bag's strap, and I could feel the cold starting to win. A deep, dangerous exhaustion was setting in. I just wanted to lie down. To sleep.

The cabin door was thick, heavy wood with a latch made of leather and antler. There were no windows on the front, only a small, grimy pane set high in the wall next to the door. I dropped the bag by my feet and pounded on the wood with my frozen fist. The sound was dull, absorbed by the storm.

"Hello?" I yelled, my voice thin and reedy against the wind's roar. "Please! Help us! We're lost!"

Silence. The smoke still curled from the chimney, but the cabin itself felt as silent and dead as the rest of the forest.

I pounded again, harder this time, using the side of my fist. "Please! My brother and I are lost! Our snowmobile broke down! Please, we need help!"

Leon huddled behind me, shivering. The red of his snowsuit looked faded now, caked with snow.

A scraping sound came from inside. A heavy bar being lifted. The door creaked open, just a crack. An eye peered out. It was a pale, cold blue, set in a face as wrinkled and weathered as a strip of old leather. It was the eye of a very old, very wary man.

"Go away," a voice rasped. It sounded like rocks grinding together.

"Please, sir," I begged, tears I didn't know I had in me freezing on my cheeks. "The storm… we'll die out here. My brother's only nine."

The blue eye flickered down to Leon, who did a very convincing job of looking small and pathetic. Then the eye moved to the green duffel bag sitting in the snow by my boots.

The eye narrowed. The door started to close.

"No, wait!" I said, desperation making me bold. I stuck my boot in the opening. "There are men after us! They were shooting!"

That made him pause. The door stopped moving. The eye studied my face, then Leon's. He was looking for lies. I tried to pour every ounce of truth and terror I felt into my expression.

"They shot at us," I repeated, my voice trembling. "They're hunting us."

The man was silent for a long moment. I could hear the wind shrieking around the corners of the cabin. I could feel the last of my strength draining away. If he closed this door, we were done for.

Finally, with a weary sigh that seemed to come from the depths of the earth, he pulled the door open. "Get in," he growled. "Bring your trouble with you. But you track it on my floor, you're cleaning it up."

We stumbled inside, out of the wind's teeth. The door slammed shut behind us, and the world went blessedly, wonderfully quiet. The cabin was one room, dark and filled with the overwhelming scent of woodsmoke, pine needles, and something else, something musky and wild. Animal pelts—beaver, fox, mink—were stacked in a corner. A small, pot-bellied stove in the center of the room radiated a wave of heat that felt like a physical blow. It was so intense it made my frozen skin ache.

The man who had let us in was tall and stooped, with a wild mane of grey hair and a beard that covered most of his face. He wore flannel and worn denim, and his hands were gnarled and powerful. He gestured towards the stove with a jerk of his chin.

"Get your wet things off. Put 'em by the fire. Don't drip everywhere." His name, we'd learn later, was Ted.

We did as he said, our fingers stiff and clumsy as we worked our frozen zippers and laces. My boots felt like they were welded to my feet. Finally getting them off was both a relief and agony, as pins and needles shot through my thawing toes.

Ted ignored us. He went to the single grimy window and scraped a patch of frost off with his thumbnail, peering out into the swirling white. He stood there for a long time, watching.

"Who are they?" he asked, his back still to us.

"I don't know," I said, my teeth chattering. I hung my coat on a wooden peg next to his own heavy parka, which smelled faintly of snow and gasoline. "They were at the plane crash."

He turned his head slowly, his pale eyes fixing on me. "Plane crash?"

I nodded, huddling closer to the stove with Leon. "A little one. Back in a clearing, maybe two, three miles east of here. We found it when our Ski-Doo died."

Ted's eyes flicked again to the duffel bag, which I'd dragged inside. It sat there on the rough plank floor, looking obscene and out of place. "And what's in the bag? The trouble you mentioned?"

I swallowed. There was no point in lying. This man was our only hope, and he looked like he could smell a lie from a mile away. "Money," I said quietly.

Leon, who had been silent until now, piped up. "Lots of it! We're gonna be millionaires!" He looked proud. I wanted to strangle him.

Ted didn't look impressed. He looked tired. He walked over to the bag and nudged it with the toe of his worn leather boot. "Unzip it."

I hesitated, then knelt and pulled the zipper. The stacks of hundred-dollar bills were exposed to the dim light of the cabin.

Ted stared down at the money for a full minute. He didn't whistle. He didn't gasp. He just looked at it with a kind of profound disappointment, as if he'd found a dead mouse in his flour bin.

"Yup," he finally said, turning away. "That's trouble, all right. The worst kind." He went to a small counter where a tin coffee pot sat on a camp stove. "Drug money, most likely. Or something just as stupid. The kind of thing people don't lose. They only get it taken from them. And the ones who do the taking don't like to leave witnesses."

The words hung in the warm, smoky air. *Don't like to leave witnesses.* Leon's proud smile faltered. He scooted closer to me, his bravado gone.

Ted poured a sludgy-looking liquid from the pot into two tin mugs. He handed them to us. It was coffee, and it was the bitterest, strongest thing I'd ever tasted, but it was hot. The warmth spread from my stomach outwards, chasing away some of the deep, cellular cold.

"So," Ted said, leaning against the counter and sipping from his own mug. "You've led them right to my doorstep. Best hope this storm is as bad as it looks. It might buy us a few hours."

"What are we going to do?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He gave me a long, hard look. "*We* aren't going to do anything. *You* two are going to do exactly what I say, when I say it. You're going to learn a few things, fast. Because when that wind dies down, those men are going to be coming. And this little cabin isn't going to stop them. Understand?"

We both nodded, our heads bobbing like dashboard toys. In the oppressive silence of the cabin, with the blizzard raging outside, the weight of Ted's words settled over us. This wasn't just about being lost anymore. This was about survival.

"Good," Ted grunted. "First lesson: Stop thinking about that bag. It's not a prize. It's an anchor. Right now, it's the heaviest thing in the world, and it's tied around your necks." He looked out the window again. "Now, drink your coffee. Sun's going down. We've got work to do."

The next few hours were a blur of frantic, exhausting work. The blizzard didn't let up; if anything, it got worse. The wind howled like a hungry wolf, and the snow beat against the cabin walls. But Ted seemed to have a plan. Or at least, a series of tasks designed to keep us from panicking.

"Can't stay here," he announced, after a long period of silence spent watching the storm. "They found the plane, they'll find your snowmobile. They'll follow the ravine. They'll find this place by sunup, storm or no storm. A man who wants that much money back has a lot of motivation."

"So we run again?" Leon asked, his voice small.

"Running is for rabbits," Ted scoffed. "Rabbits get eaten. We're going to be foxes. First, we need to mess with their heads." He pulled on his heavy parka and handed us our still-damp coats. "Get your boots on. We're going outside."

"Outside?" I stared at him. "Into that? We'll freeze!"

"You'll freeze faster with a bullet in you," he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Now move. We're burning daylight, what's left of it."

The moment he opened the door, the storm barged in like an unwanted guest. A blast of wind and snow threw us back. The cold was shocking after the warmth of the cabin. Ted pushed out into the maelstrom without hesitation. We followed, because the alternative—staying in the cabin to wait for the men—was unthinkable.

"The tracks!" Ted shouted over the wind. He pointed to the messy trail we had made from the ravine to his door. In the few hours we'd been inside, new snow had already begun to soften their edges, but they were still clearly visible. "This is a welcome mat. Says 'Lost children right this way.' We need to erase it. And then we need to write them a new invitation. One that leads them somewhere else."

He grabbed a long, thick pine bough from a woodpile near the cabin. "Watch." He began sweeping the snow with the bough, walking backward away from the cabin. With broad, powerful strokes, he brushed away our footprints, smoothing the snow until it looked like an untouched drift. It was slow, meticulous work.

"Your turn," he grunted, handing me the branch. It was heavier than it looked. My arms, already aching from carrying the duffel bag, protested. But I did it. I swept, moving backward, my eyes watering from the wind, the pine needles scratching my face. Leon took a turn, his smaller frame struggling with the bough's weight. Together, we slowly, painstakingly erased our desperate path to Ted's door.

When we were done, the area in front of the cabin was a smooth, windswept canvas of white. It was as if we had never been there.

"Good," Ted nodded, taking the branch back. "Part one is done. Now for part two. The lie." He started walking, not back toward the cabin, but north, along the edge of the ravine. He walked with a strange, deliberate gait, dragging one foot slightly. And he used the tip of the pine bough to press a series of deep, round holes in the snow next to his footprints.

"What are you doing?" I yelled, trudging after him.

"Making a story!" he shouted back. "This story says two people came through here. One of them is heavy, limping. The other is using a walking stick, or maybe a rifle, to keep their balance. They're heading north, up the ravine. They're tired, and they're in a hurry."

He was creating a completely false trail. He had us walk over it a few times, one behind the other, stepping exactly in the prints he'd made. Then he'd use the bough to brush snow over them, not enough to hide them, but just enough to make them look like they'd been made a few hours ago, before the storm really kicked in.

"A hunter reads the ground like a book," he explained, his voice loud against the wind. "Every track tells them something. How many people, how fast they're moving, how tired they are. We're giving them a good story to read. One that will keep them busy for a while." He pointed the bough north, into the teeth of the blizzard. "They'll follow this for a mile, maybe more, before they realize it's a ghost trail that goes nowhere. That buys us time."

My hands were numb, my face felt like a block of ice, but a flicker of something new was kindling inside me. It wasn't hope, not exactly. It was a grudging respect. Ted wasn't just an old man in a cabin. He knew this place. He understood the snow, the wind, the mindset of the men who were hunting us. He was teaching us a new language, the language of survival, written in footprints and lies.

We worked for what felt like an eternity, laying the false trail, before Ted was satisfied. He led us back to the cabin using a different route, walking on a rocky spine of ground where the wind had scoured the snow away, leaving no prints at all. Back inside, the warmth was a painful shock. I could barely feel my fingers as I fumbled with my coat.

"Next lesson," Ted said, wasting no time. He pointed to a small pile of gear in the corner. Two pairs of old-fashioned snowshoes made of wood and rawhide, a canvas tarp, and a small hand axe. "We leave in an hour. When the storm is at its worst. That's our best cover. But if we get separated, or if I go down, you need to be able to survive the night. We're going to build a shelter."

"Another one?" Leon whined. "Out there?"

"Practice," Ted said sternly. "You don't want your first time doing something to be when your life depends on it. We'll build it in the lee of the cabin, out of the worst of the wind." He grabbed the tarp and the axe. "Let's go. Time's wasting."

He led us to the back of the cabin, where a huge drift had formed against the wall. The wind was slightly less brutal here. "Quinzhee's too slow," he said. "We'll do a trench." He used the axe to chop into the hard-packed snow of the drift, cutting out large blocks. He showed us how to stack them, creating a low wall. Then we had to dig. We used our hands, a small tin plate from the cabin, anything we could find to scoop out a narrow trench behind the wall, just long enough for two small people to lie down in.

The work was brutal. The snow was heavy and wet. My gloves were soaked through in minutes, and my fingers burned with a cold that was almost hot. Leon, to his credit, didn't complain. He dug with a fierce determination, the fear in his eyes focused into a single point of survival. We were a team now, a dirty, frozen, terrified team.

Finally, we had a trench about three feet deep. Ted showed us how to lay pine boughs on the bottom for insulation, and how to stretch the canvas tarp over the top, weighing it down with snow blocks. He made us crawl inside.

It was cramped and smelled of damp canvas and pine. But it was out of the wind. The howling immediately softened to a muffled roar. It was still freezing, but it was a survivable kind of cold.

"It's not a palace," Ted's voice came from outside the tarp. "But the snow insulates you. Your body heat will warm up the space. It'll keep you alive till morning. Remember this. Your best friend out here isn't a fire. It's the snow itself. It can kill you, or it can save you."

Crawling back out into the full force of the blizzard was like stepping into another world. The brief respite in the shelter had made the cold seem even more vicious. We hurried back inside the cabin, shaking with cold and exhaustion.

Ted was already packing a small, worn rucksack. A thermos, a block of cheese, a knife, a compass. And the duffel bag full of money. He hefted it, his mouth a grim line in his beard.

"We have to take it with us?" I asked, my heart sinking at the thought of carrying that weight again.

"We do," he said. "If we leave it, and they find it, they might just leave. But they might not. They might decide to tidy up any loose ends. Like the two kids who found it. And the old man who helped them. No. The money stays with us. It's our bait, and it's our burden." He looked at me, his pale eyes seeming to see right through me. "You and your brother brought this trouble here. You're going to help carry it out."

He handed Leon a small coil of rope and me the heavy hand axe, which he'd tucked into a leather loop. "You're not helpless anymore. You know how to make a shelter. You know how to hide your tracks. Now you're going to learn how to walk through a storm without dying." He strapped the snowshoes to our boots, showing us how to tighten the leather bindings until they were snug.

"Ready?" he asked.

I looked at Leon. His face was smudged with dirt and streaked with frozen tears, but his chin was set. He nodded.

I took a deep breath. I wasn't ready. I wanted to be home, in my warm bed, worrying about homework. But that life was a million miles away. I nodded too.

"Let's go," I said.

Ted gave a single, sharp nod. He slung the rucksack over one shoulder and the duffel bag of money over the other. Then he opened the door, and for the last time, we stepped out into the screaming white chaos of the blizzard.

The world outside the cabin was gone. There were no trees, no ravine, no sky. There was only the color white, and the sound of the wind, a physical force that tore at our clothes and tried to rip the air from our lungs. Visibility was maybe five feet. It was like being on the inside of a giant, angry snowball.

Ted tied the rope around his waist, then Leon's, then mine. We were tethered together, a tiny, fragile island of humanity in the vast, roaring ocean of the storm.

"Stay close!" he bellowed, his voice almost completely swallowed by the wind. "Watch my feet! Step where I step! Don't look up, don't look around! Just watch my feet!"

And then he started walking, plunging into the whiteout. I did as he said. I lowered my head, pulled my hat down, and focused on the dark shape of his boots in front of me. Left. Right. Left. Right. The snowshoes felt awkward, like I had wooden planks tied to my feet, but they kept me on top of the deep snow instead of sinking into it. The world shrank to that small circle of trampled snow in front of me.

It was a brutal, mindless journey. Time ceased to have meaning. There was only the next step, and the one after that. The wind was a constant, physical assault, pushing and pulling, trying to knock us off our feet. Ice crystals, driven like tiny needles, stung any exposed patch of skin. My goggles were useless, completely frosted over in seconds. I navigated by the faint tug of the rope around my waist and the shadow of Ted's legs in the swirling chaos.

Leon stumbled and fell. The rope went taut, and I was pulled up short. I turned to help him, but Ted was already there. He didn't say a word. He just hauled Leon to his feet, brushed the snow off him, and pushed him forward. There was no time for comfort or coddling. To stop was to die.

We kept going. I lost all sense of direction. I had no idea if we were going north, south, up, or down. I was putting my entire faith in the grizzled old man leading us through the apocalypse. My mind went blessedly blank. The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was buried under a thick blanket of pure, physical exhaustion. My body was a machine. Lift foot, place foot. Lift foot, place foot.

Sometime later—it could have been an hour, it could have been a day—Ted stopped. He held up a hand. I bumped into him, my mind slow to register the halt. He pointed. I peered through the swirling snow. A light. A faint, yellow, rectangular glow, no bigger than my thumbnail. It was a window.

"Ranger station," Ted yelled, his voice raw. "Half a mile more. Stay with me!"

The sight of that light was like a jolt of electricity. It was safety. It was warmth. It was the end of this nightmare. It gave me a new burst of energy. We pushed on, our steps a little faster, a little less shambling. The light grew, slowly, painfully, until we could make out the dark, solid shape of a building behind it.

We finally stumbled into a small clearing. A log building, much larger than Ted's cabin, stood before us. A sign, swinging wildly in the wind, read: 'Saganaga Ranger District - Superior National Forest'. There was a Jeep parked near the front porch, almost completely buried in a drift.

We were there. We had made it.

We stood at the edge of the trees, maybe a hundred feet from the porch light. Ted untied the rope from around his waist. His face, in the faint glow from the station, was a mask of snow and ice.

He shrugged the duffel bag off his shoulder and handed it to me. The weight was familiar now, a monstrous, evil thing.

"Go," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "Knock on the door. Tell them you got lost on your snowmobile. Tell them the storm came up on you. Stick to the truth as much as you can. It's easier to remember."

"What about you?" I asked, my voice cracking. "You're coming with us, right?"

He shook his head. He looked back the way we had come, into the roaring darkness. "I don't do well with uniforms. Or questions." He looked back at me, his pale eyes serious. "And I don't feature in your story. You never met me. You found your own way here. You understand?"

"But…" I started, not wanting him to go. He was our protector, our guide. What would we do without him?

"No buts," he said. He reached out and put a rough, calloused hand on my shoulder. It was surprisingly gentle. "You're tougher than you think, girl. Both of you are. You'll be fine." Then he looked at the bag in my hands. "Get rid of that. Soon. Don't let it poison you. Leave it somewhere they'll find it, but not on you. Tell them it was from the plane. Let them handle the trouble."

He turned to Leon and ruffled his snow-caked hat. "Stay out of trouble, kid."

And then, he was gone. He didn't walk away. He just seemed to dissolve into the storm, a grey shape that was there one second and gone the next. Swallowed by the white.

"Ted!" I yelled, my voice snatched away by the wind. "Wait!"

There was no answer. Only the howl of the blizzard.

Leon and I stood there for a moment, suddenly, terribly alone. The warmth and light of the ranger station seemed a world away. I looked down at the bag in my hands. It was our problem now. His last lesson.

I grabbed Leon's hand and pulled him toward the light. We stumbled up the wooden steps, my legs shaking so badly I almost fell. I raised my fist to knock on the heavy door, but hesitated. I could feel the weight of Ted's absence, of the men who were still out there somewhere in the storm, of the bag full of cursed money in my hand.

The door opened before I could knock. A woman in a green ranger uniform stood there, her face a mixture of shock and concern. "My God! Kids! Get in here! What on earth happened to you?"

We stumbled inside, into the blinding light and suffocating warmth. Another ranger, a man with a kind face, rushed forward with blankets. They sat us down in chairs, asking a flood of questions that all blurred together. Are you hurt? Where are your parents? How did you get here?

I just shook my head, my teeth chattering too hard to speak. I had shoved the duffel bag under the bench I was sitting on, out of sight. My eyes went to the window. It was completely whited out, a swirling, impenetrable curtain of snow. Ted was out there. The men were out there. The danger wasn't over. It had just followed us inside.

The woman knelt in front of me, her voice soft. "It's okay, you're safe now. Can you tell me your name? Can you tell me what happened?"

I looked at her kind, concerned face, then back at the terrifying, empty white of the window. The ranger asked what happened, and for the first time all day, I didn't have an answer.