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The door of the plane pops open as Raph approaches. The wind carries Raph’s voice to me over the ice. The words are muffled, but I piece them together. “—else dug up the hole,” he says, and my skin prickles. I made the hole bigger when I dug it up. Raph must suspect someone’s been messing with it. “Can’t be sure... got the heater... while longer...” I can’t hear the rest, but it sounds like they haven’t gotten through the soil yet. That’s good. That gives me more time.
“—waited for spring,” the pilot replies, the beginning of his sentence too muffled to hear. Raph snaps something back, and the pilot laughs.
I grip the rifle tight. At this range I couldn’t hit a mammoth, much less a strip of jerky like Raph, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing I could pull the trigger and end him. The me I used to be might flinch at killing someone, but the me I am now thinks, It’s just Raph, the way I used to think, It’s just a fish.
The conversation ends in a few more angry, indistinct words, and then Raph stalks back into the woods. My breath leaves me in a rush of steam.
Raph vanishes into the trees. I lower the rifle for a moment, hands suddenly shaking. It would have been a mistake to shoot him, I tell myself. The pilot would come after me. I need to get them isolated. Away from one another.
The pilot doesn’t move. Good, I think. Split up. The plane door closes.
I’m shaking as I rise from my hiding spot. The plane’s rear is to me. I snap for Bo to follow and scurry across the ice, staying low, staying out of sight, hoping the pilot doesn’t glance toward me.
The ice creaks under my feet. It makes only thin, pale sounds, but I hear them, and I’m sure he does, too. I’m sure he’ll look, and he’ll get his gun.
But the stretch of ice between us shrinks and shrinks again, and then I’m close enough to reach out a hand and touch the plane, to slide forward on the ice toward the door.
And then I’m by the door and the rifle is in my hands and I reach up toward the cold metal skin of the plane and knock three times. It’s a tinny, sharp sound with a hollow space behind it.
There’s a pause. Then the door opens, the pilot leans out, and I aim the rifle at his face.
Time goes slack for a moment as we take each other in. He’s a big man, with muscles turned soft and a gut poking out in front. He wears a brown coat with a patch on one sleeve. He looks friendly. Like the kind of guy who could get work as a mall Santa this time of year.
Or is it too late for that? I haven’t thought about Christmas all winter, but suddenly seeing him I’m punched right back into the flow of time without any sense of where I am in it, like stepping out of an airport into an unfamiliar city when you’ve gotten used to empty sky.
“Hello,” he says. His weight shifts. I can tell he’s reaching for something. His gun.
Shoot him, I think. I swallow. “Stop,” I say, and Bo’s growl echoes my rough voice. “Get out.” My voice is rough as tree bark after weeks of disuse.
“Hold on there,” he says, lifting his palms. “I don’t mean you any harm, sweetheart. You all alone out here?”
Shoot him.
“Out,” I say. In a movie I’d cock it dramatically, but of course I’ve already made sure there’s a round ready to fire, because I’m not an idiot. At least not about that.
“You wouldn’t shoot me, would you?” he says with a halfway grin.
I bare my teeth at him. “Wanna bet?”
He doesn’t. He slides himself off the seat and down onto the ice, keeping his hands nice and peaceful at his sides. His gun is in a holster under his armpit. I can see it when he raises his hands, his jacket pulling out to the sides.
Shoot him.
But I don’t have to. I can take the plane. I can leave; leave Raph, leave Daniel, leave the woods. I can fly and get help. Let the forest kill Raph, or let the police find him.
I can’t. I can’t let Raph go.
But to kill Raph, I have to shoot this man, standing here with his hands up.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t even there when my father died. Couldn’t have said a word to stop it. He’d just sat in the plane, that was all.
“Take that out,” I tell him, nodding my chin toward his gun. “Throw it away.”
He obeys slowly and carefully, pinching the gun between his thumb and index finger so it won’t look like he’s grabbing it. I have my finger so snug against the trigger that if I twitch, I’ll shoot. I ease it off a little. If I’m going to kill him, I should do it intentionally.
Am I going to kill him?
“Key,” I say, tilting my head toward the plane to make it clear what I know. He flicks a keychain to me, two keys on it. Door and engine. “Walk to shore,” I say. My voice shakes.
