Free Icefields by Thomas Wharton

the chalet grounds. This moraine still has a core of glacial ice that was buried byrock and never melted. I recommend that you find another location for your proposed hot spring pool, otherwise you may find the present site prone to destabilization.
    When Trask heard about the doctor’s recommendation, he was furious.
    â€”It’s one hell of a tall tale, Byrne.
    â€”It’s true.
    Trask leaned over the chalet railing and spat.
    â€”As true as that woman’s stories. Yeah, I heard them too: ’My father was a maharajah and my mother was a snake woman.’ Christ.
    Byrne stared at Trask.
    â€”That’s right, doctor, I’m telling you it was all horse manure. Here’s my version: she was a fatherless brat hanging around the trading post, and some fool made the mistake of teaching her how to read.
Arabian Nights
and
Tales of King Arthur,
that’s where she got her life story.
    The railway company sent out their own geologists, who verified Byrne’s findings. The railroad had to be diverted slightly for several hundred feet, and the hot spring pool was built higher up on the hill behind the chalet. Trask met the doctor in town one day and whispered,
    â€”No more icy surprises, please.
    20
    While they sit together under the spruce tree, the mist rises and dissipates. In the widening sky, wraiths of rain clouds drift. Sunshine lights up the far slopes of the valley. Elspeth and Byrne are still within the cool shadow of the mountain wall.
    â€”One thing you can depend on here, Byrne says, is the changeable weather.
    A raven flaps overhead, croaks once as it climbs into the sky. It weaves slowly from side to side, loops around once as its wings ride the wind currents. Just before the dark shape dwindles in the distance to invisibility, they see it veer to the left, away from the bright, forested side of the valley. The raven comes into sharp black focus against the white gleam of snow, as it glides down into a glacial cirque.
    â€”Why would it choose the dead side? Elspeth
    says.
    â€”It’s a scavenger, Byrne says. An opportunist. Chance meals always show up more clearly in the snow. And more often, too, I would imagine.
    â€”That’s another tidbit I can pass on to the guests.
    â€”It sounds like you get a lot of strange questions.
    â€”Yes, but I don’t mind. I like talking to people. Most people. It’s the ones who won’t deign to say a word to me that make my blood boil.
    She smiles.
    â€”Once or twice I’ve come close to ruining things for myself. There was one old fellow, he put so much effort into being oblivious to my existence. He would tap his saucer with a spoon, and carry on this lofty conversation with his wife while I poured the tea. When I dared ask him a question he’d stare past me and his wife would answer for him. It drove me mad, but after a while I thought it was funny. If I had suddenly dropped to the floor in a dead faint, I’m sure he would’ve stepped right over me without a word and gone on his way. I almost tried it, just to see what he’d do.
    â€”Then I hope for your sake my father doesn’t visit. That sounds something like him, although in his case it’s not deliberate. He’s too busy thinking about his work to notice the rest of the human race. The man is nearly seventy and he’s just started working on another textbook.
The Principles of Obstetrics.
    â€”He’s a doctor, too.
    â€”Yes, although now he mostly lectures and writes. Kate, his wife, told me he ate and slept in his study for two weeks while he was finishing the last book.
    â€”She must be a patient soul.
    â€”She is. With me, too, in those first years. I’m afraid I made things difficult for her then. But she never said a word about it. And now when I write home, she’s the one I write to, if I want a reply. When I write to my father the letters end up in a stack on the floor.
    â€”What do they think of your