Free Archon by Lana Krumwiede Page B

spirit.” He pulled the blanket tight around his shoulders. “Tomorrow everything will be better.”
    But the next morning, they woke up to find two feet of snow covering the mountain.

The blindingly white world was ghastily beautiful. Low-hanging clouds shrouded the mountaintop. The air felt brittle, as if it would shatter with a sharp blow. The whole mountain seemed hushed with a sacred stillness.
    “Skies, I’m freezing,” Amma said through chattering teeth. They already had all their sweaters on, so they pulled their sleeping blankets around their shoulders. Taemon tied his scarf around his chin to cover his nearly frozen ears.
    They were able to build a small fire with some dry sticks and dead branches they’d found under the trees, untouched by snow.
    “How are we going to do this?” Amma said. “You can barely walk, and this snow is going to make it even harder.”
    “I just need a walking stick or a crutch,” Taemon said. “I can get by with that, snow or no snow.”
    “Even if we find a stick for you,” she said, “I don’t know where we’re going. The snow makes everything look different. I’m having a hard time getting my bearings. Aren’t you?”
    Taemon looked up the white mountain slope. Amma was right: even though these were the same views as yesterday, everything looked unfamiliar under two feet of snow.
    “I’m not sure it’s wise to go on,” Amma said.
    “Are you saying we should turn back?”
    “We have no water. No supplies. No food. Now that the snow is here, the green plants will be frozen. The squirrels will begin their hibernation. If that’s not enough, you have a serious injury. We don’t know where we’re going or even if there’s still a way to get there.” She turned and looked him in the eye. “We could die out here, Taemon.”
    “We have to at least try,” Taemon said. “Can we just try?”
    She held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. Nudging the snow with her foot, she took a deep breath and blew it out. “One try. One. If this doesn’t work, we turn back. Deal?”
    Taemon nodded. “If it doesn’t work, you can turn back.”
    Amma shook her head. “That’s not the deal. The deal is if it doesn’t work we
both
turn back. I’m not leaving you out here.”
    “Okay, okay. Deal,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    Amma grabbed his good arm. “Not so fast. Elbow vow.”
    “What?”
    “Come on. Elbow vow. Didn’t you do that as a kid?”
    “Um, no,” Taemon said.
    “Here, bend your arm up like this. Good. Now clap your hand with mine . . .”
    Taemon tried to follow along as Amma chanted. “Elbow, elbow. Hand. Head. I’ll be true until I’m dead.”
    It was an elaborate ritual that ended with Taemon’s palm resting on Amma’s forehead, and hers on his.
    Amma nodded. “Now it’s official.”
    The first task was to find a walking stick for Taemon. After several attempts, they finally found something that worked. In a way. It was hard to hold on to the stick without any feeling in his hand. The cold only made it worse.
    And the snow. The snow made everything colder, slipperier, trickier. Every step meant wading through snow up to their knees. Not only that, but it was also hard to tell what was under the snow. More than once, Taemon stepped on a concealed rock and lost his balance.
    Amma went first and broke a path, but even following in her footsteps was difficult. And the effort of breaking the path was clearly exhausting. They struggled forward for over two hours, sometimes uphill, sometimes descending a bit to find a better path around obstacles. As they came around a group of trees, Amma stopped suddenly. Taemon came up beside her.
    “What is —? Oh.”
    Their campsite. The place where they’d slept under the low branches. The blackened fire circle where they’d stood and made an elbow vow that morning. All that work, and they were back where they started.
    “I tried,” said Amma. “I really did. But everything looks different covered