AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This notion of finding something within nothing, of uncovering the hidden within the great wide-open, was what the others—at least Danny, and certainly Jessica—didn’t seem to get when it came to finding the Long Lake mine, for instance. If Silas could, he would follow every trail marked on the maps in his room to its final destination, no stone left unturned.
Only Meg usually seemed to understand this about him. “Silas the Conqueror,” she intoned dryly now, chucking a heavy chunk of snow in his direction as she and Jessica caught up. She stripped a layer, tying her jacket around her waist. “Lead on.”
After nearly two hours of effort that should have been closer to one, they reached Willow Lake. It disappointed, as Danny had warned it might, sitting shallow and flat in a low bowl between the mountains. But Willow Creek gurgled under a layer of snow, and the center of the lake shone blue under the reflection of the frosted trees, and the peaks rose up on every side of its banks in a dramatic sweep of gray and white. It all left Silas slightly dizzy as he scanned the scene before him, and he smiled. He took a deep breath and flopped down on a rock by the reeds, his snow pants sliding on the wet surface.
“A few more weeks of this cold, and we could come back with skates,” Danny noted, coming up behind him, and he was right. On this end of the lake, where the water was shallowest and the shadow of the nearest peak cast a low gloom, the lake had frozen over.
Silas immediately hopped back up, ignoring the sharp pull of protest from his quad muscles. “If you need skates, you can sit on the side and watch, Cairns.”
He stooped to unclasp his snowshoes in less time than it took to finish his sentence, then pushed through the powder to the edge of the lake. Stepping out gingerly, he tested the surface with a hard rap of his heel.
“Oh,thatlooks scientific,” Danny laughed, while Jessica shouted, “Be careful!”
Meg just watched, sitting on a stump, legs outstretched. The aluminum ends of her snowshoes stuck into the snow, the tips pointing up at the sky.
“Come out here,” Silas called. “The water’s fine!”
Danny gestured down his long torso. “I weigh more than you,” he answered. “Besides, the ice is too thin this early in the season.”
Silas just scoffed and then slid farther out onto the pond. “Seems okay to me!” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Danny bend to release his own boots from his buckles. But then Meg was at his side, saying something Silas couldn’t hear, and Danny’s hand fell away from the clasp.
“Oh,hellno,” Silas called as he spun away on the ice. “You are not that whipped, Cairns.”
“Shut up,” Danny returned, though good-naturedly enough. Silas turned to glide toward them again only to skid gracelessly to a halt as the reason for Danny’s improved mood stared him right in the face. Meg sat on Danny’s lap, hands snaked under his coat as he kissed her neck. She whispered something in his ear, and Danny laughed, the sound crescendoing across the lake.
And just like that, Silas felt like the third wheel again, just like old times.
Which was dumb, because Jessica was right there, standing on the lakeshore, waving to him anxiously.
Maybe it was just because Meg and Danny weren’t the cutesy type, so sometimes Silas could almost forget they were a couple. That they weren’t all just best buds, hanging out at the lake. He remembered the way he’d felt when Danny had used the word “boyfriend” in the same sentence as “Silas’s” and “Jessica” and suddenly felt claustrophobic, even out here under this wide sky. He spun away from all three of them, keeping close to the edge of the pond, sliding and coasting through the reeds sticking up through the ice. Even by the time Danny, Meg, and Jessica were just dark blobs at the far end, he hadn’t gained enough space. Didn’t he want himself and Jessica to have what Meg and Danny had? Jessica was kind and smart and at least mostly keeping up.
By the time he’d turned back, the shadows had increased and the ice no longer sparkled with the light of the sun. A low bank of clouds descended rapidly, darkening the lake surface, and Silas felt suddenly melancholy.
What he needed was a diversion, something to cheer him up. With Meg and Danny still thoroughly wrapped up in one another, Jessica now walking the lakeshore solo, he left the ice and scrambled up the incline by the bank about fifteen feet, all he could manage without snowshoes. Locating the largest snow-topped hunk of granite he had any chance of dislodging on his own, he pressed his weight against it, shoulder to thigh. What would Danny do if he thought he’d been proven right about the ice? Go into full Boy Scout mode? Cry for help? The possibilities cheered Silas immensely. It took a few minutes, but pretty soon he had the large stone rocking. With one final shove it began to roll, tumbling down the slope faster and faster until finally—and so satisfactorily—it crashed through the thin ice with a splintering sound that echoed off the granite ridges.
He froze in place on the slope but didn’t have to wait long. They definitely heard it. All of them. Only twenty, maybe thirty, yards away, Danny and Meg came running, navigating the debris of rocks and roots concealed under the snow along the bank of the lake. Jessica came from the opposite direction, picking her way along the shore with clumsy haste.
“Hey!” Danny yelled. “Silas?”
At first, the sight of them all scrambling toward the source of the sound, limbs flailing, felt almost as satisfying to Silas as watching the rock tumble downward in its crush of snow and exposed brush. But then they got closer. Close enough for him to register the looks on their faces the moment they saw the jagged break in the ice.
“Silas!”Meg screamed.“Oh my God!”
And just like that, the joke soured.
She continued to yell as she ran, tripping and gasping, and, hardly for the first time, Silas wondered what the hell he had been thinking. His pride held him in place for only a few seconds before he launched himself down the slope to cut them off, calling back to them. They weren’t listening, so he channeled his energy into keeping on his feet instead, barreling down the hill as his legs worked triple time through the thick snow. He was ten feet upslope from them, and then five, and then the momentum proved too much and he flailed out of control, running headlong into Meg, sending them both crashing to the ground. Silas curled one arm around her stomach, drawing her flush against him as they tumbled, and when they hit the rocky debris of the pond bank with a heavy crunch, he was on the bottom, breaking her fall.
“Son of abitch!” Meg shouted, and even though Silas was wet and scraped and he hurt like hell, his first reaction was relief. If she could cuss him out, she was okay.
His second reaction was to curse a bit more colorfully; a jagged rock had cut clear through his jacket to the small of his back, and the pain seared through him in steady, high-crested waves.
Meg rolled off of him.
“Are you all right?” he gasped.
“I’m okay,” she answered slowly, just as Jessica caught up, panting for breath, looking between Silas and Meg and the cracked ice in utter confusion. Meg followed her gaze to the ice, and her eyes narrowed at Silas. “Youappear to be just fine as well, not to mention perfectlydry—”He braced himself for more—he deserved it—but she had bent back down over him. “You’re bleeding. Let me see.”
She helped him to sit as Jessica pushed in close, giving a little whimper at the sight of blood. Danny just delivered a hard shove to Silas’s shoulder. “What thehell, man?”
