Evolution

Millo and Jahna came to a hole and peered into it. In the chill waters, life teemed. Jahna could not make out the tiny plankton that crowded the waters, but she could see the tiny fish and shrimplike creatures that fed on them. In these cold, dry, windy times, dust eroded from the land was blown far out to sea, depositing iron salts; and the iron, always in short supply in the ocean, made life bloom.

But now Millo grabbed her arm and pointed. A little farther out to sea, close to a larger, slush-capped hole, seals lay on the ice. They were brown slabs of limp flesh, totally relaxed, frost sparkling on their fur. Seals were always attracted to such holes, so they could breathe or come up to bask.

Jahna thrilled at the opportunity here.

With immense care, making as little noise as possible, Jahna and Millo made their way across the ice. If one of the seals raised its head, they froze in place, crouching down against the ice, until the seal had relaxed again. Meanwhile, a moaning wind rose. Jahna welcomed it. She wasn’t interested in the weather right now; she had eyes, ears for nothing but the seals. But the wind helped mask their crackling footsteps.

They were almost there, almost close enough to touch the nearest seals. They raised their harpoons.

Then, without warning, the wind howled like a wounded animal.

The seals woke up, startled. They looked around, honking, and with liquid grace and speed they slid into the water. Millo howled his frustration and hurled his harpoon anyway; it slid uselessly into the water and out of sight.

But Jahna had looked up. A wall of wind-driven snow was descending on them, turning the world white.

Jahna grabbed Millo’s hand and dragged him into the shelter of an obtruding block of ice. They huddled up against the ice, knees tucked against their chests. The wind screamed through hollows and flutings in the ice, too loud for her to hear her own voice, too loud to think.

Then the snow was on them.

She could see nothing but white — no sea, no horizon, no sky. It was as if they had been thrust inside an egg, she thought, a perfect, closed-over egg, sealed off from the world.

Soon the snow was sticking to their furs and piling up against the ice wall. She knew there was a danger that the snow would drift, here in the lee of this boulder, and she tried to clear away the gathering layers of sharp white crystals.

But the storm went on, and on. And with every heartbeat that passed, the chances were that Rood and the others were getting farther and farther away.

Millo’s patience ran out. He pushed her away and stood up, but the swirling wind almost knocked him off his feet. She pulled him back down.

"No!" he screamed through the wind, struggling. "We’ll die if we stay here."

"We’ll die if we leave," she yelled back. "Look at the snow! Listen to the wind! Think — which way is the land?"

He turned vaguely, his small round face battered by the snow.

"We already made a bad mistake," she said. "We didn’t see the storm coming. What does your soul tell you to do? What does Millo, your great-grandfather, tell you?" She could probably have overpowered him, just forced him to stay, but that would have been wrong. She had to convince him to stay put. For if he chose to leave — well, that was his prerogative.

At last he relented. With tears freezing to his cheeks he dropped back to the ice and huddled up against his sister. She held him until the weeping was done.

She kept up her routine of clearing off the loose snow. But as darkness fell — as the bubble of white turned gray, then black, with no letup in the storm — she became increasingly weary, hungry, and thirsty.

At last she couldn’t fight off the sleep any longer. Just for a while, she thought; I will rest just for a while, and wake before the snow gets too thick. She dreamed of rocking, as if she were an infant in her father’s arms.

When she woke she felt the weight of her brother’s head on her lap. The noise of the storm was gone. She was in darkness; but it was warm here, dark, warm, safe. She closed her eyes and settled back. It would surely do no harm to rest a little longer.

But now Millo gasped, as if struggling for air. She remembered his dream, of darkness and immersion and drowning. Maybe she was in the same dream now.

Darkness.

In sudden panic Jahna pushed Millo away. Reaching up, she felt a thick layer of loose snow above her. She forced herself to her feet, pushing her face through the clinging snow.

And found herself in dazzling light. She gasped in the sudden richness of the clean, cold air. The sky was a perfect deep blue dome through which the sun sailed. She gazed around at a landscape of jumbled ice blocks embedded in blue-gray pack ice, scattered with frost and snow drifts, all of it unfamiliar. She was waist-deep in snow. She had been lucky to wake when she did, she knew; the drifting snow had kept her warm, but had nearly suffocated her.