“Tobacco?” Max was shocked. “I haven’t seen tobacco since Milan.”
“Nicotine can save your life,” Snow Goose said piously. She lit it, inhaled deeply, and then exhaled in a thin stream that was so white it seemed to glow. “To my brothers in the north,” she said. “Brothers of the mind, children of the wind. Guide us, help us. Help us find the doorway to the nether kingdom, to the land of the dead, to the realm of the All-Mother.”
She blew a second puff directly into the whistling wind. The smoke should have vanished instantly, but it didn’t. It merely drifted, as if on the faintest of breezes. “The south. Brothers of the heart. Help me feel my way. Let your water nurture us, and help us in our quest!” Another breath. “Brothers of the east, you who are of spirit, beings of fire and light. Open the path. Show us the way!”
With a final puff, she saluted the West. “Brothers of the west! Children of the Earth! Holders of physical form, guardians of the body, protect us in our quest.”
The smoke: it had not dissipated into the wind, although the wind continued to build. Four tendrils of smoke were drifting haphazardly, ignoring the wind.
Snow Goose was sliding into a trance. “Ohhh… they are near. The dead, the endless legions of dead, are near. Show us! Great… great evil! There is great evil…
Four tendrils of smoke turned and twisted in the wind, but would not go where the wind went. Instead they were beginning to move all in the same direction, turning like four blind snakes who have caught a scent. They drifted toward the mountain wall. One by one they brushed against the gray rock, and again, and, gradually, were gone, scattered by the wind or absorbed by the rock.
The mountain began to shudder.
“Jesus! What’s going on?” Orson yelled.
The snow above them began to tremble. Snow Goose, stirring from her trance, suddenly screamed, “Up against the wall!”
Kevin muttered, “-motherfuckers!” But he was moving, rolling, like the other Gamers.
Snow Goose’s warning barely came in time. The slight rumbling that had alarmed Orson abruptly became a thunderous, malevolent roar, and their entire world turned white as countless tons of snow and displaced rock crashed past them.
They huddled together, tight against the wall. Somebody down at the other end screamed, and Max didn’t blame him a bit. He felt sick to his stomach, genuine gut-fear hammering at his desperate attempt to remember that it was only a Game. He closed his eyes tightly, and waited.
After an endless time the ground stopped shaking, and Max opened his eyes again.
And could see nothing. His reaching hand met a solid layer of snow.
Francis Hebert triggered a flashlight. The luminescence lit them an eerie yellow in their tomb of ice. The overhang was all that had saved them.
For a long time, no one spoke. There was the sound of their constricted breathing, and the low, bass rumble of a distant tremor. Then even that died away.
Snow Goose broke the silence. “I guess the Gods were listening,” she said calmly, and lit another cigarette.
She exhaled in a long, long stream… in fact, she didn’t stop exhaling, even after a solid thirty seconds of feathery breath. The smoke formed a glowing cocoon around her. It lit the interior of their makeshift snow cave so brightly that Hebert switched off his flashlight.
Without another word she turned, and walked directly at the wall of snow. It melted before her, the water flowing and fusing into the crystal ice walls of a snow tunnel.
She almost floated as she walked, yesterday’s college-girl persona completely submerged. She seemed to be a different person entirely, one not wholly of this world. All they could do was follow her. Max looked to Orson for advice or comment, and Orson shook his head.
The snow tunnel twisted and wound, angling steeply into the very heart of the mountain. Max stretched out a hand to touch the walls. They were hard and cold, although the air in the tunnel was pleasant.
Ahead of them walked the glowing Snow Goose, carrying herself as might a great lady, a princess, the mistress of all dark secrets. She had stopped puffing on the cigarette, but a steady stream of vapor poured from her mouth, her nose-Jesus! Her eyes and ears, continually re-forming that glowing cocoon that melted snow and rock ahead of her, building a way for the rest of them.
She stopped, canting her head as if to hear phantom music. Snow Goose shuffled a few more steps, then halted again.
At the low end of the audible, Max heard the rumble, and felt it in his bones. Sudden claustrophobia raged at him. Were they going to be trapped underground? Were they…?
No. The screaming had a personality. It was the roar of something alive, something huge.
They were approaching the gates of Hell. Didn’t he expect the Inuit equivalent of Cerberus?
Orson gripped his spear. “Snow Goose. Can I have one of those cigarettes?”
She nodded, and a twitch at the corners of her lips told Max that his brother, as usual, had been dead on the money. There was a swift babble of requests as the rest of them followed suit, and then swift multiple fires as the sacred cylinders were lit all around.
Max braced himself for the worst, and sucked smoke. He was surprised. For unfiltered, hand-rolled cigarettes, these were, mild, almost like smoking air. But luminous smoke poured from his mouth and nose as he exhaled, and his harpoon began to glow.
Ahead of him, Snow Goose stopped, exhaling smoke against an unyielding wall.
Hebert joined her, blew hard against it, then slapped at it with the pink palm of his hand. “What’s the matter?”
“The ice’s been protected against magic.” She said it in one of those matter-of-fact voices that made you ashamed to have asked such a stupid question.
“How do we get through it?”
“We can’t stop here. The way to Sedna lies beyond the underworld.” Snow Goose frowned. “Where magic fails, perhaps muscle…”
The face of the ice sheet measured eight feet across. Behind it, something flickered dimly, a vague, sluggish movement. Max had the impression of something monstrously tall that moved with unnatural vitality. It seemed to be balancing on one leg.
Then the shadow was gone, and the skin on the back of his neck ceased to creep.
“ Karate Kid,” Kevin said. “Part Seventeen.”
Exactly,” Snow Goose said softly. “Let’s put our backs to it.”
Max set his cheek against the ice. Orson and Trianna joined him; both flinched from the cold. “Go,” said Orson, and they heaved. The ice might have moved a tenth of an inch.
Charlene moved between Orson and Max. Heave. Nothing.
She and Orson shared a ragged smile. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?” she gasped.
“My brother said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.”
“Heave,” Max said, and they heaved. The ice wall might have shifted, or not. “Rest. Let it settle. Heave!”
Kevin consulted his pocket computer, then politely moved Charlene and Orson aside. “I’ve got soot!” he chirped. “And Max has an owl claw. That makes us the strongest ones here!” He leaned against the ice and strained mightily.
There was no more conversation, just the sound of fevered breathing in a confined space, as the largest and smallest of the Gamers bent their backs against eight feet of ice.
With a long brittle note, the first fissure appeared in the wall. As it deepened, a vast network of tiny cracks turned the entire sheet milky.
Max stepped back. He heaved for breath and said, “Hulk smash!” and ran at the wall.
The thud must have been audible in Gaming A. There was a moment in which nothing happened, and then the entire barrier shattered, almost in slow motion. Max lurched through a couple of steps, skidding on shards, before he could stop.
Kevin flexed his arm and made a tiny biceps, face positively luminous.
