Free Nightmare Mountain by Peg Kehret Page A

time, she would not awaken from the nightmare.

Eight

    It hit her from behind, first surrounding her ankles and covering her feet, much like an ocean wave when she walked along the beach at home. Then it rose to her knees and, a split second later, struck her with its full force.
    Instead of knocking her to the ground, the snow swept under her, lifting her high into the air. She tumbled over and over, like a loose stocking circling around in a huge clothes dryer.
    Instinctively she put her chin to her chest and clasped her hands on top of her head, trying to protect her face from the flying pieces of ice.
    It lasted only a few seconds. Then, as suddenly as it had hit her and lifted her up, the movement of the snow stopped. Molly was completely buried.
    Because her arms were around her head, there was a pocket of air in front of her face. Everything was dark and still under the snow but she could still breathe.
    She tried to stay calm, knowing she must conserve what little oxygen she had. I’m buried, she thought, but I don’t know how deeply I’m buried. Maybe I’m only a few inches below the surface. Maybe I can dig myself out.
    But which way should she try to dig? She wasn’t sure which direction was up. She had tumbled over and over so many times that she didn’t know whether she’d landed feet up or head up. She didn’t want to start digging in the wrong direction. A wrong guess would be a fatal mistake. She could die, today, buried alive in the snow.
    For an instant, she panicked. Then she clenched her teeth and tried to remember what she knew about the law of gravity. What goes up, must come down. Water always runs down hill.
    Water. That was it. Molly sucked some saliva to the inside of her lips and spit it out. It dribbled down her chin and froze into an icicle.
    If she were trapped upside down, Molly knew the saliva would have run the other direction, toward her nose.
    She needed to dig up, above her head. How far up?
    Cautiously, she straightened her left arm and stuck it over her head. As it pushed through the snow, she lost some of her precious air pocket but when her arm wascompletely straight, she realized she could move her hand, bending her wrist in every direction.
    She knew it wouldn’t move that way in snow. Her hand was sticking up into the air.
    She shoved her other arm upward and rotated both arms as hard and fast as she could. Sharp pains went through her shoulder where the bale of hay had hit her but it didn’t matter; she was working the snow away from her head.
    The hole above her got bigger and bigger until at last Molly’s head was free. She breathed the cold air gratefully and then began rocking back and forth, while she clawed at the snow in front of her.
    “Glendon?” she called. Maybe he hadn’t been buried by the snow. Maybe he was looking for her and would hear her and come to help her.
    He didn’t answer and she was afraid to shout. She didn’t want to start another avalanche. She didn’t know if the man’s gunshot was responsible for this avalanche or if it was just coincidence that the avalanche started when it did, but she wasn’t taking any chances with a loud noise.
    Her hands stung from the cold and she could no longer bend her fingers. She’d give anything, she thought, for a pair of mittens.
    She scooped frantically at the snow with her barehands, using the same kind of motion she used in the swimming pool at home when she practiced her breast-stroke.
    Home. Los Angeles and Mom and her school seemed like parts of another world. She remembered laughing at Mom once when Mom used her electric hair dryer to defrost the refrigerator. Molly wished Mom would appear right now and aim a nice hot hair dryer at Molly’s fingers.
    With a frantic burst of effort, Molly broke free and lay on top of the snow. Blowing on her fingers to warm them, she sat up and looked around. Everything was white. And still. There was no sign of Glendon or of the two young llamas.
    To her right,