The Glaciermen #22: White (part 2)

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

Welcome back to the Glacier, dear readers!

I’ve got a nice juicy serving of story for you today—piled extra high. It’s on the longer side today; more of a 10-15 minute read than a 5-10 minute read, but if you’re here for reading, then that’s more to enjoy.

Without further ado…

(Here’s the previous segment if you missed it, and the first chapter and index, if you’re new).

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White (part 2)

Recap: Lee has set out across the surface of the glacier as he begins the hunt for a bulltooth to complete the Second Trial, but he has been harangued by an unexpected blizzard, and now has just come across a set of sled tracks in the snow…

Lee kicked at the snow, dashing chunks of it across the tracks in white powder in front of him. The tracks were a perfect match to those of his own sled behind him—because they were his own tracks.

I’ve been walking in freaking circles, Lee realized.

The tracks were already filling in as the snowfall of the blizzard continued to thicken. They mocked him, as if to say ‘Yep, you’re lost, kid.’ 

I’m gonna die out here…

Lee shrugged off the harness and let it fall. He slumped to the ground, the last of his ambition from the morning drained to nothing. He sat cross-legged on the snow-covered ice, arms limp at his sides and head hanging low. He sighed heavily. The wind whipped around him. Flakes of the thickly falling snow began to accumulate on his legs. The cold started to creep into his limbs, despite his thick clothing, and soon enough he was shivering.

What was I thinking? Lee thought, rubbing his arms together across his chest. I was never gonna make it through this. I’m not an eskimo—I’m not even a real ice man yet. And they don’t even like me, except for Aguta and Lusa, though he doesn’t count and she’s not exactly my friend, either.

Lee lifted his head, looking up into the falling snow as the last of the light from the sun faded, leaving him immersed within a thick cloud of murky gray flakes.

‘Be a big boy and try to feel better’.

The words of Lee’s mother bounced around in his mind. He flinched at the memory, mixed emotions making it hard for him to tell how he was supposed to feel. Part of him wanted to be sad. Sad that she was gone, that he was stuck here. That everyone in the chasm seemed to hate him. Part of him felt guilty, too, as if her death was somehow his fault. But part of him didn’t want to feel sad, which itself made him feel even more guilty.

‘Be a big boy’, she would always say. ‘Don’t bother me unless it’s important.’

“Well, Mom,” Lee said out loud, “This one’s important. Wish I could bother you… but nope! Now you’re dead, and it’s just me.”

He laughed, though it was not a pleasant sound.

“It’s always my fault isn’t it! It’s always on me. You never had time for me anyway… mommy needs her rest,” he mocked, arguing with the memory of her in his mind.

“You know what, Mom, fine! I’ll do it on my own. I don’t need you either!” he shouted, tears running from his eyes, “I can make myself feel better without you.”

He balled his hands into fists, trying to gather his focus past the sobs that were fighting to take hold in his chest. He tried to pull a breath in through his nose, but it was blocked by snot from his tears. He pressed a mittened hand against one nostril, then blew hard, sinding some of the mucus flying haphazardly onto the snow, but much of it ended up on his parka and upper lip instead. He growled in frustration, wiping some of it off his face with the back of a mitten and ignoring the rest.

“... make myself feel better,” he grumbled.

Lee took another breath through his nose, and this time it was cleared enough that some air made it through.

Freaking finally, he thought. Okay, Lee, remember your breath. That’s what Aguta said. Remember your breath and make yourself warm... Remember how you did it in the pit. You didn’t need anybody else then, and you don’t need them now.

Lee sniffled, wiping his face again before pulling in another breath, then letting it out slowly through pursed lips. He focused on the breath in his core, then tried to feel around for the tingling sensation that preceded the warmth the last time. There was nothing yet, so he kept breathing, kept focusing. Then, there it was, the faintest hint, the slightest ripple. Warmth.

Then a heavy gust of wind blew past, sending stinging flakes into Lee’s face, breaking his concentration. The tingle of warmth slipped away, and Lee felt the cold creeping in again. He reset himself, bringing his focus back to his breath and his core. 

He remembered Aguta’s words: ‘It will not come merely if you wish it. You must will it, and feed it with breath.’

Will it, Lee thought, taking another breath, Feed it… breath in… breath out…

Again, there was nothing at first, and the wind made it difficult to focus, but eventually there was the tingle, the hint of warmth. But as soon as he found it, another strong gust roared past, ripping the warmth away with it. 

Lee tried again. This time, before he could even find the tingle, another gust blew him back to square one. His frustration grew. He clenched his jaw and tried again. Then again, and again, but each time the wind came anew, stealing the hope of warmth with it. 

Lee finally gave up… he had failed. 

He couldn’t find the warmth, and worse, he had wasted time trying. Night had come, the snow was still falling thickly, and the wind was as bad as ever. The only light now came from the diffused glow of the moon dimly illuminating the snowy sky. But worse than the poor light was the cold. The sun had kept it away during the day, but now it clawed at Lee with icy fingers as each new gust of wind stabbed its way past his parka to steal another piece of his dwindling body heat.

What was I thinking? Lee thought. Aguta’s wrong about me. I’m not special. I’m just some kid from Chicago, not an eskimo or an iceman or anything. I just got lucky, and now my luck has run out…

Lee felt the tears wanting to come back. What was he supposed to do now? He had failed to access his supposed special power, and now he was stuck in the very situation he had been told to avoid at all costs: a blizzard, at night, completely alone with no shelter and no company except for a stupid, useless sled he had dragged along all day for nothing.

The sled!

Lee's head shot up, his sadness forgotten in an instant. In the next moment he was brushing the accumulated snow off the pile of supplies on the sled, rummaging through the packs until he found what he was looking for: a small wooden canister. He opened the lid, meaning to scoop out a fat glob of the gel within, but he hesitated. Aguta had called the power of the godseye a curse.

‘Do not use this except to avoid certain death,’ he had said.

Lee pondered for a moment, then used his teeth to pull the mitten off his free hand, letting it drop to the ground. He dipped the tip of his little finger into the faintly glowing gel, then held it in front of his face. Aguta said it worked by rubbing it all over your skin, but Lee also remembered that Aguta had put a pinch of the raw mycelium directly into his lip—and the effect had been pretty darn strong. No doubt the concentrated gel would probably work the same way.

“Well, here goes nothing,” he said, then plunged the finger into his lower lip and rubbed the gel around on his gums.

It was slimy and the taste was bitter, but Lee definitely felt a familiar jolt of mental clarity, though there was a different twinge to it that he couldn’t put his finger on. He didn’t feel any warmth right away, but he figured that it would probably take a little bit of time to kick in since he hadn’t put the gel directly on his skin. 

With the extra mental sharpness, it was instantly obvious to Lee that sitting out in the open meant certain death—so shelter was item number one on the menu. There was a mat and blanket among the things on the sled, but that would not be enough for him to survive the blizzard. Lee stood for a moment, allowing himself to think. The perfect solution came to him almost immediately.

This godseye stuff is pretty good, he thought.

He retrieved an ice pick from the supplies and began to dig into the loose snow and ice on the surface of the glacier. Within a few minutes, he had already carved out a decent sized divot. This wouldn’t take long at all.

In short order, Lee was crouching next to the fruit of his labor: a body-sized depression in the ice deep enough for him to fit into completely. In fact, it even had some room to spare. Satisfied, he got up and moved the sled until it was lined up at the top of the hole, parallel to it lengthwise. He retrieved the sleeping mat from the sled and put it down on the bottom of the hole to insulate against the ice, and then found the blanket and draped it over the top of the sled.

Then he lowered himself into the hole, shifting around to get comfortable on the mat. It was a bit stiff, but not too cold. It would do. Then, lying down flat, he reached above his head and pulled the sled over himself and the hole. Where the blanket on top draped down over the sides of the sled, Lee tucked it under the sled’s runners to make a half-decent seal between his little space and the outside air. With the sled squarely covering the hole and insulated with the pile of supplies and a blanket to keep the wind away, his shelter was complete.

What had he even been worried about a half hour ago? It had been so obvious what to do once he had taken the godseye, and now he had a nice place out of the wind and the snow, and it was almost comfortable, if a bit dark. It was like the Taj Mahal of the ice world, and Lee was the emperor.

The boy rested his hands behind his head, crossed one leg over the other, and, satisfied with his cleverness and feeling quite deserving of a nice snack, reached up through the slats on the bottom of the sled and fumbled around until he found the food pack. As he munched on dried strips of meat, he began to feel a tingle in his stomach as the first bit of heat began to bloom within his abdomen. Soon, his eyelids began to get heavy, so he let them droop down as the warmth spread. Everything was going to work out just fine…

Lee awoke in pitch darkness to a twisting pain in his stomach and a pounding headache. He was drenched in sweat, and his tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth. A powerful thirst clawed at his throat.

I need water, he thought.

He sat up hard only to immediately bang his head against the bottom of the sled. 

“Freaking… son of a… agh!” he growled as his skull throbbed in the cramped darkness.

His whole body ached, and somehow the hole felt like it had shrunk—he couldn’t stretch out even a little bit. In fact, he was curled up nearly into a ball and yet he barely fit into the hole at all. Confusion added to the nauseating pain in his stomach. The space had seemed massive just a little bit ago while he was drifting off to sleep.

Lee reached up to push the sled away from the hole, but it didn’t budge. He pushed harder and the sled shifted an inch, but then stopped with the squeaking sound of compacting snow. He pushed for a third time, but instead of trying to slide the sled away, his aim was to tip it sideways off the hole. His muscles strained, but the sled felt like it weighed a ton. It wasn’t going anywhere.

It must have gotten weighed down by the falling snow, he thought.

Lee could barely move in the cramped hole, and he felt the fingers of claustrophobia tighten around his already churning stomach. His breaths quickened as a pang of panic joined the fray. He fumbled around in the darkness until one of his hands found the edge of the hole where the blanket was tucked under one of the runners of the sled. He jerked until it came loose from the runner, then began frantically digging into the snow, pushing the detritus toward his feet.

Nothing to be worried about, Lee told himself, just a few inches of snowfall in the night.

But soon he had cleared away more than a few inches, and where there should have been open air, there was just more snow, and it was still pitch dark.

I got buried in the blizzard, he realized.

The claustrophobia got instantly worse. His headache pulsed. The air became thick. A new wave of sweat poured from his skin and the nausea flared. It was like a vice clamping down on his stomach, twisting forcefully this way and that. Then his entire torso tightened briefly, and an involuntary burp escaped from his lips.

“Uh oh.”

He had just enough time to turn sideways before emptying his stomach into the loose snow from his digging. He heaved several more times. Everything came up—more than made sense, as if he were emptying his stomach again and again until there was nothing left at all. Then it was over.

Lee wiped a layer of sweat from his forehead, letting out a deep breath. That had not been fun. The smell was terrible in the dark, confined space, but luckily, it seemed like much of the vomit had been absorbed by the loose snow strewn about from his hectic digging, though there was definitely something wet soaking into his parka at his side. It was hard to tell in the darkness.

He did feel a little better, though. The pain in stomach had gone away at least, and after a minute of blinding smelling several random handfuls, he even managed to find some untainted snow to clean out his mouth. The cool snow was a relief to his parched pallet, and that’s when Lee realized he couldn't remember drinking any water since gumming the godseye gel. In fact, he had a hard time reconciling his memories of the night before with his current predicament.

The hole he dug the night before was huge in his memory—he had room to stretch out and relax—but now it was barely capable of fitting his child-sized frame while crunched as small as possible.

Seeing things that are not there, Lee thought, remembering Aguta’s description of the godseye’s effect. I guess that includes seeing things as bigger than they are…

Lee smacked his lips, remembering his thirst, then he also remembered that he had been wise enough to follow the advice to keep his waterskin inside his parka to prevent it from freezing.

Forgot that was there too, he thought, though that’s probably a good thing considering it would have just come back up anyway.

With his thirst slaked, and having no better plan, Lee continued to dig sideways out from under the sled. After digging a small channel as far as his arm could reach into the snow, he could see the faintest glow of dim gray light beginning to diffuse through the snow at the end.

It’s just a foot or two, he thought with relief.

It took him another hour to dig out to the surface. There was not much space to work, which meant he had to pause every several handfuls to awkwardly squirm past the snow he had dug to get it behind his body and free more space for digging. When he finally crawled free, he yelled triumphantly into the sky, pumping his fists in the air and taking in big gulps of the fresh air.

After his celebration was over, he turned to survey his situation. While the sled had worked to block the wind from freezing Lee to death, it had also served to catch the blowing snowfall, and was now buried under a drift of snow that came as high as Lee’s chest in some places. He groaned. It would take another couple hours at least to dig it out, and the sun was already high enough in the sky to signal late morning. There was no choice in the matter, though. The sled was loaded with supplies that Lee could not afford to abandon.

Two hours later, Lee dragged his arm across the top of the packs on the sled, brushing aside an armful of the compacted snow. The sled was still half buried, but he was getting tired of digging. He retrieved the harness, settled himself a few paces away until the lines went taught, then heaved hard. The sled budged an inch. He heaved again, straining against the harness, which dug painfully into his tender scars. The sled inched again, then came loose with a jerk. Lee sprawled forward onto the snow, then rolled over onto his back to let out an exhausted sigh of satisfaction.

His stomach gurgled, and he realized he had forgotten to eat during his efforts to free himself and the sled. He searched around on the sled, and not finding the pack of dried meat, remembered his snacking from the night before. He then searched through the snow in the collapsed hole the sled had left in the middle of the snow drift. The sleeping mat was easy enough to find, but Lee’s efforts to uncover the sled had buried most of his original hole, and the pack of dried meat did not materialize even after several minutes of pawing through the loose snow at the top.

Lee looked up at the sun, then back down at the partially re-dug hole. It was already almost midday, and he was still at least an hour from the mountains—almost a full day behind schedule. That pack of meat was the only food he had been given, and it was supposed to last until he reached the inlet where the bulltooth beached themselves. 

Lee’s stomach growled again—the decision was made. He retrieved his ice pick and began digging into the hole. Soon enough, the snow shifted from pristine white to a grisly brown-orange, and an acidic stench filled the air. The vomit soaked snow meant he was close. Shortly, he uncovered a corner of leather, then he eagerly yanked it from the snow, shoving his hand in right away to find a morsel and curb his hunger.

The bag was empty. How could that be possible? It was supposed to last for two entire days. There was no way he could have eaten the entire bag in one sitting, unless… Lee remembered how it felt like he had thrown up an inordinate amount of material. He looked closer at the stained snow. Everywhere throughout, bits of chewed-up, half-digested jerky were visible among the unpleasant mixture. Lots of bits.

The munchies… Lee thought as a long-forgotten memory came to mind of the rumors older kids at school used to spread about what happened when they ate weed gummies. Aguta didn’t mention godseye causes the freaking munchies!

He kicked at the snow in frustration, sending ugly chunks of stinking detritus across the spotless white of the glacier. After a minute or so of incoherent grumblings and kickings, Lee calmed down enough to think. He would need food soon—and there was only one way to get it.

He shouldered the straps of the harness, grimaced at the late location of the sun in the sky, and set off toward the mountains.

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And that’s it for now folks

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