Free Frozen Stiff by Sherry Shahan

asked.
    Derek shrugged.
    She shivered, knowing he could be lurking outside the tent at this very moment. “What did he look like?”
    Derek hesitated, then described him. The stranger was too much like a character in a late-night movie.The kind where a scientist travels back in time and discovers a lost civilization. Crude deerskin pants and a poncho-type shirt, homemade boots, scruffy fur cap and gloves.
    “It doesn’t matter what he looks like.” Derek finished, and glanced toward the cabin. “He’s trying to help us.”
    “Said the spider to the fly,” Cody said.
    “You’re just paranoid,” he said. “Because of that kidnapping.”
    Cody sighed, remembering Ginny Martin, the curly-haired little girl who had been snatched from her bed in the middle of the night. The Martins lived only a few miles from Cody’s house. Even after a year, the family didn’t know what had happened to her. “And you’re too trusting of strangers.”
    Derek quit trying to convince her that the man wasn’t a threat. He changed the subject by shining his flashlight on his new project. Part of a torn T-shirt was stretched tightly over a board and secured with old nails. He’d used charred firewood to sketch in the fjord, from Yakutat to Hubbard Glacier at Disenchantment Bay. “I made this map while you were sick.”
    She saw an X at their first camp. “You were reciting what’s happened to us out here.”
    “Yeah, the map goes with my story.”
    “I bet one of the papers in Alaska would publish it.”
    “You really think so?”
    “Maybe even the
Californian
.” That was the big paper in Bakersfield.
    Cody knotted her hair into a fist, which fell lopsided over one ear. Dried salt water mixed with sweat and dirt had made her hair coarse and stiff.
    Outside, the sky had started to lighten up.
At least the storm’s over
, she told herself.
Mom’s found the note by now and a rescue party will be on its way at first light. All we have to do is build a fire and stay put until a pilot spots the smoke
.
    Cody fell into the warm folds of her sleeping bag. “You still haven’t told me what the poacher said.”
    “He didn’t talk. I did. I thanked him for the food.”
    “Are you nuts?” She couldn’t believe Derek wasn’t more suspicious of a stranger in the wilderness. Especially someone dressed in skins. “No wonder your mom worries so much about you.”
    “Maybe if you talked to him you wouldn’t be so scared.”
    “I’m not scared,” she said quickly. “I’ll start socializing with poachers when the fjord freezes over.”
    Derek sighed, settling deeper into his bag.
    Cody wouldn’t talk about it anymore. In a little while they’d build a roaring fire. Under a clear sky, smoke would be visible for miles. “Yakutat.” She rolled it around on her tongue. Hot shower, hot meal. She’d sell her soul for the shower alone. No, a toothbrush. Brushing her teeth would even beat a shower.
    “Let’s not wait on the fire,” she said. “Let’s get it going now.”
    • • •
    Cody huddled with her back to the fire pit, shielding her eyes from the heat and light. She’d pulled her knotted hair through the back of No Fear; the brim shaded her eyes. Maybe she’d rub mud high on her cheekbones. That was what Patterson did when he played football to absorb the beams off stadium lights.
    She wished she had lotion to rub on her face. It was so hard and dry it felt ready to crack. She considered searching for edible roots, something that wasn’t toxic. She could boil and mash them, then spread them on her face. But by the time she went to all that trouble the rescuers would be there.
    Now that the skies over Yakutat were rid of thunderstorms, their rescue was inevitable, probably within an hour, certainly before lunchtime, a thought that took the edge off images of a poacher dressed in dead animals.
    At sunrise the sky spread soft-colored pastels; then a heavy gray mist muddied the palette. Even in a fire pit clogged with