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Chapter Text

All eight of his dogs are stretched out in front of him in pairs along the gangline. They claw the ground in frustration as the loudspeaker blares.

"Here's team number twenty eight, our hometown boy, sixteen-year-old… Louis Tomlinson!"

A male voice booms out Louis' racing stats while his lead dog, Blue, whips his crooked tail.

Blue tries to lunge forward, and suddenly catches his eye and screams with a pitch that shoots up Louis’ spinal cord and electrifies his teeth.

"Easy!"

He grips the sled with shaking hands. Louis fucking hates starts.

With over a hundred dogs there, the energy in the air is— to say the least— frantic.

The bawling of the dogs in the team behind him echoes in his ears, while the distinct odor of dog shit smeared under his runners basically assaults his nose.

Louis tries to focus on his dogs and the race chute ahead. Not the burning need to win. Not his mom. Not the fact that there's no one there to cheer for him.

"We gotcha."

Two burly guys kneeling on the start line struggle to hold Louis' bucking sled stanchions.

The race host clears his throat into the microphone.

“We will now begin the race! Racers, get ready!”

The crowd instantly hushes, and the racers frantically finish preparing their dogs.

"On go! One…”

Louis takes a sharp breath and quickly adjusts his scarf that’s keeping his neck and face warm in the negative degree weather.

“Two..!”

His grip tightens on the handlebar. He scans the crowd one last time for anyone that he recognizes.

“Three…”

There’s a pause, followed by whispers in the crowd.

His stomach twists, and he checks all of his dogs one last time.

“…”

“GO!"

“YAW!”

The dogs instantly leap forward and shoot through the parking lot.

The main race sponsor insisted they start at his feed store, even though it's three blocks away from the trailhead. They trucked in snow to get Louis through the streets, but as they skid through the dirty slush, he can tell it is a bad idea.

Mushers need a real snow base for any kind of control.

His frozen eyelashes stick together, and he swipes at them as he peers ahead. They fly to the first corner, his heart pounding.

"Haw!" Louis shouts.

His leaders swerve left, and the dogsled skids sideways.

They're gaining momentum.

With the wind cutting into his face, it feels as if he's being sling-shot out of a jet.

A red Box Chevy is the last in a line of parked vehicles along the other side of the road. Louis crouched lower, sticking his left foot out, and digging the heel of his mukluk in to carve a tighter turn.

The sled continues skidding—closer, closer.

He jumps on the brake, smashing the two metal points into the ground with every ounce of his five-foot-eight (almost nine!) frame.

Still, they skid. And then they careen into the door, Louis' teeth rattling with the impact. A metal screech announces the collision to everyone. He hears a grinding pop.

They clear the car, and Louis looks down to see a little extra weight in the sled bag—a green side mirror.

Glancing around to see if anyone noticed, he grabs it and nonchalantly tosses it away. The cold wind whistles through him as he grins.

He then turns his attention back to his dogs.

Louis has sixteen sled dogs in total, but he only prefers to run with a select few.

The select few include: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolph and, of course, Blue.

Yes, his dogs are named by Santa's reindeer even though they're sled dogs; and yes, Blue is the odd one out.

That's because Louis had gotten blue when he was a little kid, and had grown up with him since he was a newborn puppy.

His mom had named him Blue, for the color of both Blue’s and Louis' eyes.

He always knew that Blue was going to be a racer, and he just happens to be his main leader.

Speaking of, Louis gets snapped out of his thoughts when his runners, Blue and Rudolph, dig for the trailhead with matching strides. Blue's classic husky coat, with his black and white facemask, is even more striking next to Rudolph's rusty-propane-tank shade of fur.

Very reindeer like.

They hurtle down the middle of the street that's been blocked off for the race.

Now that they're running, the dogs are all business, focused ahead with tight tuglines. Louis' heart squeezes with pride.

They don't glance up as they barrel past a crouched photographer with a telephoto lens. They even ignore the smell coming from the hot dog stand next to the coffee shop.

They catapult past a truck with its doors open blasting hideous country music, past the historic log building that is the trading post.

Finally, they're past Main Street, and they slip by the snow fencing that funnels them toward the trail.

Louis feels an instant calm.

The din of the crowd fades behind them, and it's just him and the dogs and the sunbeams breaking through the spruce branches stretching across the trail like cold fingers.

The runners slice over the snow, making their familiar shhh sounds. He breathes in the tang of spruce pitch and the icy air is sharp in his throat.

But the most important thing is the dogs. It's always about the dogs.

He watches the way Dancer paces with her lopsided gait, the way Blue flicks his ears back to check on Louis, and how they all run together as if listening to the same beat of a drum, like a boat team paddling in sync.

Blue and Louis have some kind of soul connection that he just can't explain.

He has a connection with all of his dogs, yes, but Blue just gets him.

Louis likes to imagine they were friends, or family, in another life.

Not that he really believes in that, but there's no other way to describe that day when he was a pup and they looked at each other. Recognition.

It's Blue who Louis greets first in the dog yard every morning, or when he gets home from school.

They have conversations. His best friend Liam Payne calls it crazy. He worries that he's changed too much since the accident.

"It's not healthy to just want to be with your dogs, Lou. Life is about more than racing. You need to try to get back in the game. Remember when we used to have fun?"

Louis shakes his head and lightly touches his good luck mink. It's a narrow pewter charm as long as his hand and hung around the handlebar of his dogsled since his mom gave it to him when he was nine.

He may have secretly named it

Mr Minky.

He pats the base of his nose with a shaky mitt, and calls to the dogs.

"Good dog, Blue, attaboy! Easy, Rudolph. Who's a good boy?"

Their ears swivel back, but they keep trotting ahead. The sled bumps and skips over dips in the hard-packed trail. Louis pedals his foot to help the dogs pull faster.

He wants to win this race for his mom.

He needs to.

He glances quickly at Mr. Minky, and then concentrates on the trail.

As the dogs take a corner, Louis leans out from the handlebar.

They skid, snow spraying out from the runners. Tears squeeze out the corners of his eyes and freeze in lines across his temples. He blinks rapidly to stop his eyelashes from sticking together again.

Some mushers wear ski goggles, but he doesn't like how looking through goggles separates him from the environment.

He likes to see things clearly.

The dogs have good speed coming out of the turn. They're really pulling as if they know they need to win. But they should drop back to their trots—they have a long way to go yet.

"Easy. Easy, dogs."

They run faster, smoking around a poplar stand. When they get to a straight stretch Louis looks ahead.

And then he sees the wolf.

The wolf is a beautiful, burnished brown loner.

Or he seems to be, as Louis can't see any others around.

He's a big one too, about a hundred and fifty pounds. He's trotting right along the trail.

The dogs speed up even more, and Louis can feel the power come up through his feet and into the handlebar. They're running so fast, the wind cuts into his cheeks.

He hunches forward and squints.

They're gaining on the wolf, even though he's loping now, and Louis is torn between excitement and worry.

Alaskan wolves don't normally get along with pets. Sled dogs are probably tougher than the average pet, but since they're about half the weight of a healthy wolf, they'd still be ripped apart.

A few years ago dogs and cats started going missing in town. A bounty was put on the wolves and many of them were shot. Louis didn't like that, but he doesn't want any of his dogs to be snacks, either.

They're less than two team lengths away when the wolf suddenly stops.

Just... Stops dead on the trail.

He then turns around and stares at them.

Blue and Rudolph slam on the brakes and do a move that looks as if they're tucking under the snow while doing a backwards somersault. All the dogs behind them pile up before Louis can even slam his own brake.

Then he throws down the snow hook and stomps on it.

When he looks up at the wolf, their eyes meet and hold. He stands like royalty and stares directly and intently at Louis.

Assessing him.

Louis is enveloped and frozen in the wolf's spell. His piercing green eyes stare daggers into his heart and touch his soul. He's gorgeous.

Wild.

Louis' breath catches like a hiccup in his throat, then he chances a glance at the barking dogs and the moment is gone.

"Hey, wolf. Git!"

He does a false charge toward the wolf.

The wolf spins and trots in a beeline toward the trees. Not in a frightening way, but with dignity. He leaves a path of silence except for the pounding in Louis' ears.

For a few breaths, the dogs are absolutely still. They stand in a tangled mess all sheepish-looking. Then they begin to squirm and mutter to each other.

Blue shoots Louis a look with eyes as big as panic buttons.

"Yeah, that's what you get for chasing a wolf, Blue Brain. What did you think was going to happen?"

Louis grabs the tuglines of the two leaders and walks backwards along the trail to stretch out the team.

Prancer's tugline is wrapped around her back leg, and when she feels it pinch her as it tightens, she growls at Donner.

"Hey! Enough."

Louis sorts out tuglines, necklines, unclips a few dogs, straightens them out, then clips them back in.

His legs still feel shaky.

The dogs start to whine, and Vixen screams and slams on her tug to get running. Dancer leaps on her and they exchange savage growls and shrieks—teeth flashing, whites of their eyes showing. In the next instant, that conversation is over and they go back to barking at the trail ahead.

Louis wishes he could be more like that. Just lay into someone who's bugging him.

Well, he guesses he doesn't have much trouble with that part. But once he's said it, he just likes to let it go.

Cupid succeeds in popping the snow hook, but Louis grabs the sled as it goes by and swings onto the runners.

"All right, Blue boy. Let's go. That a boy!"

Louis' uncle Leonard should be heading to the finish line by now.

Liam wonders how Louis can stand having his uncle around since he looks so much like his mom, but Louis doesn't think he looks that much like her.

Louis looks more like his mom, with his tan complexion and feathery brown hair that swoops down right in the front of his forehead.

His mom had a pixie cut, and she had a habit of running her hands through her fringe when she was deep in thought, so her hair usually stood straight up.

She was a methodical thinker.

Unfortunately, Louis doesn't think that trait rubbed off on him, but he definitely inherited his dog-training talent.

"Mom," Louis whispers.

Blue glances over his shoulder at Louis.

He wipes his nose and straightens his shoulders.

After another hour of running, Louis can tell by the way the dogs' ears perk forward and their increased speed that there's something ahead.

They smell and hear things way before he does. Louis wishes he had senses like that.

But being with them means he does have those senses. Louis reads his dogs constantly to be aware of their moods and what they're telling him.

A tangle of alders shields his view until they skid around a corner and he sees two teams far in front of them.

From the distance, the orange of the mushers' race bibs stands out against the snow fencing as they glide toward the crowds. They cross the finish line to muted cheering.

Since they're in a timed race, Louis won't know till later how well they did, but he's pretty sure they should've passed those two teams to be in the running.

The wolf has cost them time. The dogs' ears twitch back when Louis groans with frustration.

It takes them several more minutes to run the home stretch and trot through.

"Lou! Over here."

His uncle Leonard strides forward on long legs covered with tan Carhartt overalls. The overalls and his lined canvas Carhartt jacket are pretty much the only things Louis ever sees him wear. Even in summer. The rest of the guys he works with all wear the same.

A couple of times Louis has gone by the construction sites and it looked like an episode of Deadliest Catch, minus the rubbers.

"Hey, kiddo, great race! Did you have fun?"

His uncle Leonard grabs his leaders with a bare hand, and steers them toward the dog truck.

"Yeah, but we couldn't catch Crook and that other team. Who's the other one, anyway?"

A bucket full of bloody, chicken-laced water sits on the ground near the back tire and the first four dogs all try to stick their heads in at once.

"I dunno, but that Crook has himself some fast dogs."

"Git! Out of there, wait your turn."

Louis wrestles the dogs over to the drop lines attached to the truck and clips one to Blue's tug to keep the line straight.

If their time puts them in the top ten, they qualify for the

White Wolf Classic.

Imagining his mom's pride if she knew Louis made it to the White Wolf this year fills him with a yearning so thick, he can taste it.

The need to win has been the most important thing in his life this winter.

Louis grabs the bowls off the tailgate and tosses one to each dog down the gangline.

"We're going to make it to White Wolf, right, Uncle Leonard?"

"You bet, kiddo." Uncle Leonard leans toward him, his face all greying whiskers and tanned squint lines.

"I heard some interesting rumors while I was waiting," he says, in a gruff attempt at whispering.

"Seems Crook lost his job at the mill. Maybe getting out of dogs."

He gives Louis a pointed look with his brown eyes peeking out below his fur hat.

Louis glances over at Crook's truck with all his champions bent over drinking.

Out of dogs?

Louis has ran with Crook on their trails at home. He can't believe he'd be getting out of dogs. Crook loves his dogs.

Prancer rakes her front claws down Louis' shin and stares up at him.

"Sorry, girl. I'm getting it."

Louis stirs the bucket with the long-handled scoop. Bits of pulpy chicken gobs float around in the red liquid.

They bait the water in the winter to get the dogs to drink it before it freezes. The only problem is that it spoils them and they get fussy drinking plain water.

Louis starts at the leaders and scoops the raw-smelling water into their bowls, then continues down the line.

Dasher bounces up and down. Vixen dumps her bowl over to eat the chunks off the snow.

"Picky girl."

Louis is pouring more water in the bowl when Comet suddenly scuttles sideways under her partner, Blitzen, as far away as her neckline reaches.

Louis turns to see a man approaching wearing a puffy, light green parka. As he marches closer, he takes off his fancy North Face glove and holds out his hand.

His face is red with a flat nose.

Surrounded by the thick coat, he looks like a stuffed olive.

"Bussell Brice from Endurance Dog Food," he says.

"Um. Louis from Tomlinson Tuglines."

Louis takes his hand, but remembers too late that he still has on dirty fingerless gloves.

"Yes, indeed. Harvey Ticker tells me you're quite the racer. Says your dogs eat Endurance from his store."

"Yeah. My dogs like it."

Louis' voice sounds small and far away as blood charges through his veins.

Why did he come to talk to me?

Is he checking out my team for future reference?

Maybe as a contender for the White Wolf?

Louis wonders, staring intently at the man.

"Your team does quite well in the racing circuit. And you run the tugline yourself, I understand?"

"Yes, I run and train them myself. I think we do well since I'm a lot smaller than most of the mushers here—less weight for my dogs to pull."

There's a short silence that Louis rushes to fill.

"Well, I'm small for my age. I'm almost seventeen. Anyway. My size is good for dogsledding—not so great when I try to find clothes without Dinosaurs or princesses all over them, though."

Louis is horrified to hear some kind of gargled giggle come out of him, and his face heats up.

Bussell scratches his nose and scans the dogs. He looks over at the dog truck and the sled. The pause in their conversation feels thick with significance.

Thankfully, the slurping of the dogs licking their bowls clean covers it.

Prancer and Dasher have a short scrap over whose bowl is whose. While Prancer is busy watching us, her partner leans over and steals her bowl by dragging it with his teeth.

"Well, congratulations on your smart finish. Guess you'll have to wait for a while yet to know your results. But very impressive. I wish you well."

Louis watches him walk over to Crook's team next, and Louis kneels down to bury his face in Comet's neck ruff.

"I wonder what brings the Endurance food rep out to this race," Uncle Leonard says.

"Think he's looking for the next team to sponsor?"

"Yeah. And I didn't say anything except to tell him I shop in the kids' section."

"I think he senses a winning team." Uncle Leonard claps him on the shoulder as he stands.

The softness in his eyes looks so familiar, Louis gets an ache in his throat.

"Yeah. Now we really need to up our training. Wouldn't that be something to win the White Wolf?"

Louis takes off the dogs' harnesses as he looks over at Crook's team.

And a new plan starts to form.

Chapter Text

"I'm not taking you to another dog yard." 

Louis' dad thumps his briefcase down on the kitchen counter and grabs his cheese and cucumber sandwich from the fridge. 

"Zendal Crook's dogs aren't any better than the ones you already have. A dog's a dog, Louis. And we've already got too many."

"Well, that shows how much you know about it, since a dog is definitely not a dog." Louis raises his chin and stares at his dad.

Every time they have this fight about the dogs, he braces himself. 

For months now he's been waiting for his dad to say that he wants to move back to Seattle. 

Louis can see it in his eyes when he talks about growing up in the city. 

Whenever Nana calls, Louis knows she's trying to talk Dad into moving closer to her.

He looks at Louis as if he's just proved his point. 

"You have sixteen dogs to choose from. I'm sure your uncle can figure out which ones to run in the dog race."

"The White Wolf. And he doesn't choose, I do. Mom taught me to choose." 

Louis knows it's a dirty card to play, but he does what he has to. 

And if Dad tells him they're moving, he already knows what he's going to say. 

He can move if he wants, but Louis will choose to stay. The dogs and him are staying, end of discussion.

Dad presses his lips into a thin line and a heavy silence descends around them. If he knew dogs, he'd see why Louis needed a couple of Crook's leaders. 

Even just two of his best race leaders may mean all the difference for them. 

He wishes his dad knew dogs. A cold ache spreads through his body and he misses his mom as if the loss were fresh.

"I don't have time for this today." 

His dad breaks the stalemate with a slump of his shoulders. 

"I have to work."

"Of course you do."

"Make sure you do your homework," he says, ignoring Louis' tone. 

"And can you make dinner for us? I should be home around five."

His dad grabs his gear for the open house, sees Louis' sixth-place ribbon from yesterday on the table, and hesitates. 

He turns back to Louis. 

"Oh, Lou. I'm sorry I forgot to ask you how your race went. You did well."

Louis shrugs. 

He looks tired and drawn, his eyes peering out of sunken sockets. Louis suddenly notices how much older he seems, as if he'd aged a lifetime in the past year. 

Well, so has Louis.

Dad opens his mouth as if he's going to say something, then runs a hand through his greying blond hair and turns away. Their conversations have stuttered like this since the coffee shop incident.

The bell hanging from the doorknob tinkles, and Louis is alone.

The dogs outside begin a howl, the song gaining strength as all the dogs join in. He can pick out the individual voices. Blue isn't hard to pick with that awful bawling—his version of a howl. He's got a little too much hound in him. Dancer's voice is gorgeous, full and throaty like a wolf howl.

Listening to them makes him more determined to carry out his plan with or without his dad's support. 

Dad's car crunches over the snow as he backs out of the driveway, leaving the dog truck just sitting there. 

Louis can't talk Crook down in price over the phone; he needs to do it in person. 

And he needs to check out all his dogs. Louis wishes Uncle Leonard wasn't going ice fishing today, but he doesn't need him either. He can get to Crook's himself. 

Really, what does a license matter? It's not as if he doesn't know how to drive. A license is just a piece of paper.

Before he can talk himself out of it, he hurries to the closet to find the topographic maps. He's not exactly sure which roads to take to get to Crook's. 

He mentally kicks himself again for leaving the race yesterday before he spoke to him. 

Crook and Louis' mom were friends, but Louis had never been to his house.

The dogs' song ends abruptly just as he finds the topo map. He lays it out on the kitchen table and bends over, tracing a path with his finger all the way to town—if you could call the tiny place of Rain River a town—then on to the other side.

He grunts a little in annoyance. There's really no way he can drive there without traveling the main roads. Any cop who happens to glance over and see what looks like a 14-year-old peering over the steering wheel will surely pull him over and see him without a license.

He fingers the chicken-pock scar beside his ear. Maybe he doesn't need the truck. If he follows the trail network behind the dog yard until the power line, he could cut through the brush there, hook on to the trappers' trails, and eventually get to Crook's. 

If he drives, the trip is maybe fifty miles, but cross-country it's more like thirty-five. One good thing about living in the Tanana Valley, there's lots of trails to run.

Louis glances out the window at Blue. He's standing on top of his house, watching him. Reading his mind. Their eyes connect and he throws his head back and barks a command to go. 

They really need to get to Crook's today. He has champion dogs. If he waits too long, someone else will get there and he'll lose his chance at the best picks. 

Having a champion team will be a good reason to stay in Alaska. 

Hard for Dad to argue with that. 

How can Louis race dogs in the city?

He imagines crossing the finish line of the White Wolf in first place. 

"Tomlinson Tuglines—that's Johanna Tomlinson's son, isn't it?"

They'd say. 

"She was a real musher; taught him very well."

His dad has never understood.

It will take less than four hours of running if the trails are hard—longer with the cut through the brush. 

They'd keep it easy after the long run yesterday, but they could go and be back before it gets dark. 

He'd tell his dad they were gone for a regular training run. Yeah, one where they found a few extra dogs.

Louis grabs the map and sprints up the stairs to hid room. He has  to push on the door to move aside the books and gear on the floor. His closet doors haven't been able to shut for years due to the gear collection: tent, Therm-a-Rest, insulated pants, sleeping bags, camp stove. 

He glances over the pile assessing what he'll need. Extra woollies, dry socks. Should he bring a sleeping bag? It's not that far.

When he was younger, he went on what was supposed to be a short run with his mom. 

They didn't make it back home until the middle of the night and as he sat shivering but silent in the sled, his mom muttered over and over, 

"Why didn't I bring the sleeping bag?"

Louis takes the bag.

He then throws everything in a duffel and stops in the kitchen just long enough to grab some snacks.

Go hungry—get cold. 

He can almost hear his mom's words over his shoulder.

The bag is heavy as he lugs it to the yard.

When he steps outside, the dogs erupt into a frenzy of high-pitched screams and barks. He feels like a rock star with sixteen adoring fans.

Blue studies Louis while he packs the sled bag. It's a dark blue, thick canvas bag that's fitted to the dimensions of the sled. The plastic sled bottom makes up the floor, and the sides reach up to attach to lines going from the handlebar down to the brush bow. The top flap is sealed shut with Velcro and keeps most of the snow and ice off the gear inside. 

Louis gives Mr. Minky a squeeze hello.

"Hey, Blue, want to go on an adventure?"

He stares at Louis with expressive, ice-blue eyes. His tail wags slowly.

Straddling the dog, Louis slips a harness over his head and he pushes his legs through the openings. His coarse fur quivers in the places it sticks up over his shoulders and ruff. 

They lurch over to the sled and Louis hooks him in lead. He leans into his tugline, holding the gangline tight behind him, and barks down the trail.

He then hooks up Rudolph, Dasher, Comet, Cupid, and Vixen, each dog adding a decibel to the frantic barking.

Hookups are always wild. The dogs are so jazzed to run; their mouths foam, their eyes sparkle, the air vibrates with an intensity that raises the hairs on Louis' neck.

He yanks the snub rope that's tied to the spruce beside him and pulls the snow hook. The sled takes off as if he'd just punched the hyperdrive button. Each dog in the team instantly stops barking and starts pulling, focused on the trail ahead. 

The noise behind him from the dogs he didn't take fades fast as they whip through the trees.

He grips the handlebar as he leans into a turn. 

They skid sideways with a fan of snow. The dogs' feet kick up tufts of ice crystals as they dig, and the cold wind on Louis' face energizes him.

He lets out a whoop, feeling savage. Watching the dogs run gives him such a visceral sense of belonging, he can't imagine being anywhere else. 

Blue swivels his ears back toward him but keeps running straight down the trail.

"It's all right, Blue boy. Keep ahead, that a boy!"

He wishes he could talk Liam into coming along. It would let Louis spend more time with him, and he'd get to show him how amazing the dogs are. 

Why wouldn't everyone in his class want to see this? 

Uncle Leonard says dogsledding is a dying art. That it's too much work for most kids and he'll soon see it isn't the popular kids from school that end up worth anything, but the ones who are brave enough to be different. He has to say that, being his mom's twin brother.

They follow their own trail until they arrive at the fork where it veers into the main snowmobile track. The trail is lined with shrubby willows and spruce. Crystallized snow piled on the branches contrasts with the sea of pale and dark greens.

The Crooks, Mr. Nelson, and Louis all use the trail sometimes to run their teams together so they can practice passing and leading. 

Mr. Nelson is their closest neighbor; he lives a subsistence lifestyle in the bush with his dogs, his garden, and his gun. He doesn't race, but he likes to run with other mushers. Sometimes he used their yurt. Most mushers around use those portable, round tents for base camps. But their yurt has been taken down. 

Louis' hands clench the handlebar when he thinks of his mom selling it to Crook.

"Louis, you can't set up a yurt yourself. And I don't know how to set it up. It may as well be used by someone who needs it."

Louis couldn't argue with that, but it still felt like selling off a piece of Mom.

Running with Crook's dogs is how Louis knows they're stars. He presses his lips together as he thinks of all the years his mom raced, and not once did she come in first. She said she probably never would with trapline dogs. 

Why didn't she get a couple sleek racers then? 

Well, now Louis has that opportunity, so he has to do it for her. The need to do something for her burns behind Louis' eyes.

—

After an hour of solid running, they arrive at another fork.

"Gee! Blue… that's it, Ru! Good boys!" 

They veer right. 

Good command leaders like Blue know their right—gee, from their left—haw. The dogs charge down the trail. They don't usually run that way and they love exploring.

Louis glances up and notices the darkening sky. There's a hazy ring around the sun—a sun dog. If he looks for it, he can see the little prisms of color. 

There's snow on the way and he forgot to check the forecast before he left. Shit.

Hopefully they'll be back home by the time it gets too thick. But first, they should take a break. To slow the team down, he steps on the strip of snowmobile track that's hanging between the runners. It bites into the snow.

"Woah! Woah . . . Good dogs." 

He throws the snow hook down and stomps on it.

Comet dives into the deep snow on the side of the trail and chomps mouthfuls of fluff. 

Louis dabs at the base of his cold nose with the back of his glove. 

After many chapped lips, he's learned to stop licking away the salty runoff. He walks up the line, patting each dog.

Blue rolls on the trail scratching his back, all four feet waving in the air. In the quiet of being far away from anywhere, the only sounds are the grunts and soft snufflings of the dogs. Louis takes a moment to close his eyes and listen to the world around him.

Savor it.

The trees are still with hardly a breeze. They're beside a stand of tamaracks, Louis' favorite trees. Their needles, soft green in summer, burst with vivid yellows in fall, and then drop off leaving them to stand naked in winter. An evergreen that isn't always green. A tree that's different.

A gray jay's sharp trill makes him jump and open his eyes. He pulls out the map from the pocket of his anorak. Their route will take them along that trail several more miles before they cut across to the trapper's trail.

"You up for a little cross-country, Blue?"

He looks up at Louis with round eyes. His eyes are a mixture of frenetic blue and a hint of soft brown. Louis likes to imagine this makes him able to see the world in two ways. Maybe see both sides of an argument. He certainly seems to switch easily from goofy to serious. His wide-mouthed grin is fringed in an icy rime.

"Deep snow will make extra work," he says.

He pokes his nose between Louis' legs and pushes until his head is wedged under his arse. Louis laughs loud and scratches his back. Blue leans into his hands until he nearly topples over.

When Louis heads back to the sled, the dogs stand and watch him behind them. He climbs onto the runners and bends to the hook.

"Ready?" 

His foot presses on the snowmobile track as he hangs the snow hook in front of him. The dogs scream and jump in the air. 

"All right!"

They leap forward in unison and they take off again running flat out down the trail. Then they settle into a ground-eating trot. 

Louis reaches into the sled bag and pulls out the insulated water bottle, takes a sip, and puts it back. It's so easy to get dehydrated out there.

The willow thickets lining the trail along this stretch all look the same. It's hard to tell where they should try to cut across to the other trail. 

So finally, he just calls haw and they veer left and stop at the tree line. 

Louis' stomach flutters a little with the excitement at doing something new. He has to make sure that he doesn't make any mistakes out there.

He pulls out his round bear-paw snowshoes, the kind without tails so it's easier to back up or turn around, and then takes a bearing with his compass.

"Okay, guys, you can follow me now.” 

Chapter Text

The snowshoes punch through deep drifts as Louis heads into the trees.

He glances over his shoulder and sees the dogs jumping behind him like marten through the snow. The lower tree branches droop beneath the weight of their loads. Everywhere he looks is white powdery freshness.

Each movement is deliberate with his large shoes. His feet sink down a little as he steps, and he flicks his ankles to knock the snow from the webbing.

Blue continuously jumps on the backs of them.

"Get back, you little shits."

Louis rubs Blue's head affectionately.

—

After about half an hour Louis stops and peels off his hat to keep from over heating. The sun has disappeared now behind a dull gray and the air is suddenly choked with snow.

He thought he had much more time before it started. A tendril of worry snakes into his gut.

He takes out the map again while the dogs mill around him, and brush off the fat flakes that immediately cover it.

"We should be there by now,"

Louis says, trying not to sound concerned. The last thing a sled dog wants to hear is hesitation from its leader.

While he's studying the map he notices he's holding his breath, and lets it out in a rush.

The frozen cloud hangs in front of his face. He glances up with eyes half closed to shield them from the snow floating down and melting on his face.

Where is the trail?

He checks his compass again and takes a bearing on the tallest spruce ahead.

When he takes another step forward, he pitches into the snow.

"Oi! Rudolph! Get off my snowshoe!"

Blue and Rudolph jump him while he's down and the snowshoes flail in the air as he rolls around pushing at furry dog legs.

He feels as if he's trying to surface in a pool of quicksand as he sinks in the soft, deep snow.

An icy trail of snow trickles down his neck. Blue offers to help by cleaning out his ear.

When Louis finally rolls to his feet, He keeps his voice light for them.

"Let's go find that trail."

—

They plod onward. Finally, he sees a break in the trees ahead.

The trail!

Louis whoops and punches his fist in the air.

Just as they're about to reach it, a lime green object shines in the trees.

What is that?

Creeping closer, he finally recognizes what it is—a snowmobile.

And it's pretty thoroughly wrapped itself around a birch. There's no one around and no footprints in the snow.

Louis stomps onto the trail and takes off his snowshoes. Once he strings the dogs out straight, he sets the snow hook.

Where the fuck did the snowmobile come from? Who drove it here and left it? How did they leave without footprints?

He wanders behind the sled and scans the woods.

"Hello?" He calls. Then louder,

"Anyone here?"

The dogs watch him with intent eyes, heads tilting. The falling snow mutes any sounds and closes in on Louis as if he's in a padded room.

It feels as if it's just him and the dogs in all the world. Except for whoever was on that damn snowmobile.

His traitorous mind suddenly envisions a psycho creeping up behind him in the silence, and he spins around frantically with his heart pounding.

"Stupid! Get a grip."

He shakes his head at himself and scans the ground, but the fat flakes are laying a cover over everything so perhaps the footprints have been hidden.

Blue lets out a bark, and with confusion, Louis whips around and finally sees someone

Chapter Text

Crumpled in a heap several yards from the sled, was a tall man lying face down. 

Louis springs into action and stumbles past a black helmet that was smashed into the visor. 

It's not until he kneels beside the man that he sees all the blood.

"Oh no... not good, not good, not good."

Louis shudders, taking a closer look. 

He looks at his face and notices that the stranger was not a grown man, but a teenage boy that looked around Louis’ age. 

He stared at all of the blood starkly red against the snow, and his mind froze for a moment. 

He really wished his mom was there to tell him what to do. Or to give him more wisdom.

But Louis was the only one around.

Blue croons at him long and low. 

Louis' focus snaps toward him, and his head clears, kicking into gear. 

He sets his mouth in a determined line and takes a deep breath.

Blood covers most of the boy’s face, but Louis could still tell that he's never seen him before. 

Louis moves to turn him over, then stops, thinking about first-aid classes and not moving someone with a suspected head injury. 

He bends closer and feels for a pulse along his neck. 

A soft breath warms Louis' cheek, and he lets out his own with relief.

He lurches back to the sled and brushes off the layer of snow that has built up on the bag. Tearing open the Velcro, he dives into the gear, searching for the first-aid kit.

What do I do? Think, think, think.

Snow continues to build in the air and falls in thick sheets, turning his whole world white. In fact, he can now hardly see the snowmobile's tracks. 

Which way did he come? Should I leave him here and go get help?

No, he'll freeze. But he can't move him to put him in the sled bag.

Louis kneels down beside him again and uses a handful of snow to wipe the blood from his face. 

More blood seeps from a gash above his right eyebrow, contrasting with the chalky white of his face. Louis would probably freak out with all the blood if he hadn't helped his mom on his trapline since he could walk.

He wipes the new blood away to inspect the gash. The boy is wearing a ski jacket and blue jeans. 

Jeans? Obviously he doesn't get out much. 

They're thoroughly soaked, and now will only make things worse for him. He's going to freeze for sure.

Louis runs through a mental list as he finds a large gauze pad in the kit. First, he needs to stop the bleeding.

Scooting closer to his head, Louis takes a quick breath and presses the gauze to his gash. The boy moans in pain and rolls his head away. 

His eyes then open and they stare widely at each other.

What really throws Louis off guard though, is the piercing green eyes he's met with so suddenly. 

Louis stares for a moment with confusion as to why this boy looks so familiar, before his stomach lurches with realization.

The boy’s eyes look exactly like the wolf's on the trail. 

A shiver drips down his spine, and he immediately shakes his head at the odd thought. 

"What. . . what happened?" 

The boy’s voice came out surprisingly deep and husky.

Louis was awestruck. 

"I— Uh you crashed your snowmobile into a— tree." 

Louis murmurs, still processing what the hell is going on and how the hell this boy still looks attractive with blood all over his face. 

The boy struggles to a sitting position, and looks around. Louis takes a moment to study the boy’s features and immediately notices his curly chestnut brown hair, along with his somehow very rosy lips and sleek nose. 

The boy raises his hand to his head and pulls it away, widening his eyes again when looking at the blood on his glove.

"Oh yeah, I was just getting to that. You're still bleeding."

"Oh my god I have to get home!" 

The boy tries to stand quickly but his face goes almost whiter than the snow and he crumples back onto the ground.

Louis quickly reaches for him. 

"Take it easy. Hey, slow down." 

Where is his home? Who is he?

"Where did you come from?"

Louis starts, furrowing his eyebrows and watching the boy’s confused facial expressions. 

"Um. . . " 

He jerks his head around, grabs at it as if it made him dizzy, and closes his eyes. 

"That way." 

He points down the trail behind him.

"You came from that direction? Really? You're sure not from over there?" 

Louis points in the opposite direction.

The boy opens his green eyes again and they seem more focused. He looks at Louis' face hard and licks his lips, then shakes his head a little bit. 

"No." 

He fingers his forehead gingerly.

"How far is it to your house?"

"Not far. I think."

Louis rocks back on his heels. 

Should I bring him back on the trail that he came from?

It's pretty far, plus there's the hike through the trees. 

Louis dabs at the base of his nose. He'd have to get out of the sled and walk through the deep snow. What he needs is to get warm and dry in a hurry. But Louis is not sure if they should go the way he says he came from. 

He hasn't been on that trail before. What if they get lost?

He doesn't know what to do.

Through the swirling flakes, Louis peers north at the trail he pointed to. Then looks back the other way. 

They could maybe take the south trail like he'd planned and see if they can make it to Crook's? 

He's guessing it's another ten miles though. And there's this blizzard building. 

Louis lets out a long breath. Sounds as if the strangers place is closer.

"Okay, we better get going before it's dark . . . but your head." Louis holds up the gauze. "We have to stop the bleeding."

The boy takes the gauze and presses it to his head, wincing as he looks at Louis. 

"Feels great," he says with a half-smile.

Louis' shoulders slump forward to see him smile. He must not be hurt as bad as it looks if he's smiling. Head wounds always bleed a lot, he remembers from first-aid class. 

As Louis tapes the gauze into place, the realization kicked in. 

Why was he smiling when he has a head wound? Is he insane? 

Louis narrows his eyes a bit to study him again.  

His face is square and open, he has a defined jaw with stubble and looks like he’s working on a mustache. A dimple in his left cheek deepens with his grin.

"If you live close, how come I've never met you? What's your name?"

"My name?" 

He blinks at Louis with confusion, and he looks so vulnerable that Louis immediately feels bad for asking. 

“Yeah, what’s your name?” 

"It's Harry."

Not as if Louis knew every single person in town. Lots of kids ride the bus for school. Larger centers offer more programs than his tiny rural school, Rain River High. 

Louis shakes his head and resolves to stop watching slasher movies.

He unwraps the scarf from around his neck and ties it around Harry's head to cover the gauze. His curly hair flops over the top across his forehead.

"How do I look?" He asks with a wide grin.

The scarf is red and covered with black dog paw prints. He looks a little like a drunk pirate, but Louis ignores his question. And the butterflies that came after the question. 

He helps him stand and has to crane his head to see Harry towering over him. Louis' head reaches his shoulders.

Harry sways back on his feet, leans onto Louis, and staggers to the sled. 

He then seems to notice the dogs for the first time.

"Uh... Where's your sled?"

Louis raises his eyebrow in confusion. 

"This is my sled." Louis cuts. 

"No, your real sled. Your snowmobile." 

Harry's voice wavered slightly.

"This is way better than a snowmobile," Louis says, offended. "It doesn't wrap itself around trees." 

But then he remembers the time he did break the brush bow on a tree that had jumped in front of them and his mom lectured him for days about being too reckless. He argued right back that the dogs were completely fine, so what was the big deal? 

If Louis could take back every argument he had with his mom, he definitely would.

The dogs bark with excitement when they see Louis and Harry moving toward the sled. 

Harry shrinks back and glances around with cornered eyes.

"Uh—I don't think they like me." 

His gaze darts from Louis to the dogs, then back to Louis. He then seems to start studying Louis, as if recognizing him from somewhere.

"They don't even care about you. They're not barking because they want to attack, they just want to run. Huskies aren't guard dogs." 

Louis' words are harsher than he intended, but he stands tall, ready to defend them. 

Part of him wishes for the easy way that Liam has of talking. Or flirting. 

Maybe Louis needs to start spending more time with other people, like Liam keeps telling him.

Louis shakes his head to clear his thoughts.

"Anyway, just get in. We've got to hurry." 

Louis pushes him down into the sled bag and runs back for the first-aid kit. 

The dogs scream and lunge forward, and Louis jumps on the runners just as the snow hook pops.

The dogs immediately fall silent as they lurch ahead. Louis leans forward to make sure Harry is settled. 

He's perched on top of the gear, sitting upright with his knobby knees bent in and his head and wide shoulders are leaning back against the handlebar. One hand grips the side of the sled bag, and the other awkwardly presses on his bandage. He stares at Louis with wide eyes. 

Louis tries hard not to stare back. 

He gestures with the top flap of the bag to get him to tuck it around himself to keep the snow out.

They head into a narrow, twisty section of trail and Louis has to concentrate. The extra weight in the sled slows them so it's harder to steer around trees. 

Snow falls steadily, so thick that it shrouds Blue and Rudolph from his view. Louis glances behind them and notices their tracks are covered almost as soon as they made them.

The trail is out of his mom's old trapping area. She's never been there, preferring to stick to the trails she knows. 

Louis is relying on Harry to lead. So when they get to a fork and he asks which way, Harry says left and that's what they do. 

At another fork they go right and after nearly an hour of narrow corners and fallen trees, his apprehensions about Harry returns. 

How could he have come through there with his snowmobile? And why?

Chapter Text

Just as Louis notices he's squinting to see through the gloom ahead, they break out of the trees into a marshy area dotted with black spruce. 

Snow fills the air like a swarm of bees stinging exposed skin. Now that they're in the open, he realizes how much the wind has picked up. He hunches his shoulders to cover his bare neck.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?" 

Louis glances down and notices with alarm that Harry's eyes are closed and his face is pasty. 

"Hey! Are you alright?"

"B-b-brilliant." His blue lips quiver as he talks.

What am I doing?  

He's hit his head and he's just going to get worse if Louis doesn't start thinking. 

He needs to lie still, not jerk around in a dogsled. And he has to get warm. Right now. Louis stops the team and sets the hook.

"Good dogs." 

He grabs the picket line from beside Harry in the sled bag. 

"Stay in the bag for a minute. I have to settle the team."

He strings the cable between two spruce trees, and then unhooks the dogs one at a time to transfer them to the drop lines on the cable picket. Each dog scratches and sniffs and circles around in the deep snow as if this is a perfectly fine place to catch a nap. 

Vixen waves her butt in front of Prancer and then snaps at him when he pokes his nose too close. 

Louis' heart swells with what a good job they've done today and how hard they've worked. They're going to need snacks.

Louis turns back to the sled, and bends to help Harry out. 

"We'll stay here a while—maybe it'll stop snowing."

Harry wobbles and leans heavily on Louis. He smells like winter.

When Harry's got his footing, Louis sorts through the gear. 

"I'm going to make a fire . . . there's a sleeping bag in here somewhere . . . you'll be warm then . . . where is it? Ah, you were sitting on it."

Louis pulls out the bag and sends a silent thank you to his mom for reminding him to bring it. 

Once he's grabbed the rest of the gear they need, he closes the sled bag so snow doesn't get in.

"You g-g-got a hot tub in there?" 

Harry stands with his arms wrapped around himself.

Louis knows you start getting confused with the onset of hypothermia. Harry doesn't realize how serious it is.

"Or maybe a cell phone?"

"Cell phones don't work out here." 

Louis hacks spruce boughs off the trees with his hatchet and spreads them out, making a thick pile under the hanging branches of another spruce. 

"Perhaps if you were dressed properly . . . " 

He hears the condescending tone in his voice and tries again. 

"You'll have to take off those stupid jeans, they're wet and are only making you colder." Louis holds up his spare woollies. "I'm not sure these will fit, but they stretch."

"Th-they're pink. Why are they pink?"

"Yeah, present from my mom. Sorry 'bout that, but beggars can't be choosers." 

The sleeping bag crunches in the cold as Louis pulls it out of the stuff sack. 

"Come sit here."

Harry slumps down on the branches and takes the bag with shaking hands. When he tries to climb in, Louis sees how uncoordinated he is. He squats down and helps him into the bag, flipping the hood over his head and zipping it up to his chin.

"We've just met and you're already t-trying to get me in the s-sack."

Louis stares at him. 

He either thinks he's charming, or when he hit his head, he damaged his social skills.

Louis opens his mouth, then thinks better of it and pushes the water bottle at him. 

"I'm going to collect firewood. Stay here. Drink. And take off those jeans."

He burrows into his cocoon and Louis slides the sled beside him as a windbreak. With the trees at his back cutting the south wind, and the sled bag blocking the swirling winds from the west, it should be a warm enough spot once he gets a fire going.

Southwest winds. Louis curses himself for not paying attention to this. They usually bring storms.

As he breaks off dead branches, he remembers winter camping with his mom. 

"That's it, Lou," she said. 

"These spruce needles will be good for insulation under our tent. And the bark off the birch makes a natural fire starter. We have everything we need to survive right here."

One ice-fishing trip they camped just for fun. And stayed for three nights. When they took down the tent, the melted indents in the snow where their bodies had slept proved she was right; the spruce needles underneath had kept them warm. But in the end, all the bush knowledge in the world couldn't help his mom.

Because Louis wasn't there.

He closes his eyes tightly and taps his forehead with the back of his glove, then lights the pile of tinder he'd gathered. 

He hangs over the flame, using his body as a windbreak, and coaxes it to grow by feeding it some bigger sticks. It's amazing how much better everything seems with a fire. It pops and sparks and immediately warms the skin on his neck and face.

Donner lets loose a long, slow howl. 

Seconds later, the other eight point their muzzles in the air—black lips ringing in an O. 

The song undulates and wavers with layers of different voices. As if the conductor had waved his arms in finale, all the dogs stop at the same time. 

Louis always wonders how they do that.

"Whoa." 

Harry is staring at the dogs from his sleeping bag. Louis notices his lips look nicer—less blue. 

"They're hungry after all that work saving you."

"Well tell them I'm not that tasty. Pretty stringy actually. Why is the big ugly one staring at me?"

Ugly? 

"Listen, genius, my dogs are the only things that are important right now. They're going to haul both of us out of here, so they deserve some respect." 

He obviously doesn't know a good dog when he sees one.

"Whoa," he says again, arching his brows. "Sorry, they seem like very nice dogs with big teeth. You haven't even told me your name."

Louis grabs the bag with the fist-size chicken chunks and marches over to the dogs. 

"Louis Tomlinson," he yells over the dogs' demanding screams.

"Lewis?"

"Louis." 

He tosses a chunk to Comet. She snaps it from the air and turns her back on Blue, who's reaching for Louis with front paws outstretched.

"Louis Vuitton?"

Oh god, he's so annoying. 

"You're hilarious." Louis sweeps his arm toward the dogs. "I race sled dogs. I'm one of the top junior mushers." 

He's not exactly sure why he feels the need to tell him this.

"Oh, yeah! I thought I recognized you. I saw you yesterday at the race." 

Harry takes a swig from the water bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his glove. 

"The pink tights fit, but they're a little short. They barely go to the top of my shins."

Louis bites his lip to keep from laughing and turns away. 

"You were at the race?"

Louis throws a chunk to Blue, who has worked himself up to such a frenzy that he has to put the chunk between his feet and pant over it before he can start to gnaw.

"Yeah, Mom and I went to check it out. Some jerk sideswiped us, though. Took the mirror off my mom's Chevy."

Louis blinks. 

"Uh, sideswiped? You see who did it?"

"No, happened when we were parked—"

Harry is interrupted by Dasher, who screams as if someone is ripping off his toenails. Louis tosses him a chunk and he grabs it expertly from the air.

"So . . . " 

Louis changes the subject. 

"Which school do you go to? Rockwell?"

"I'll be starting at Rain River High on Monday. I'm a junior. . . or. . . that was the plan. So I'm guessing I'll have the privilege of your cheery personality greeting me in the halls?"

He grins and Louis almost smiles at how ridiculous he looks, sitting up with his broad shoulders stuffed into the bag and the red scarf tied lopsided around his head. 

Flickering light from the fire glows on his face. When he turns to Louis, he notices the startling beautiful colors in his deep green eyes yet again.

A gust of wind blows sparks and snow pellets against both of them. 

Harry tilts his head and shuts his eyes. He tucks farther into the bag.

"So, why did you start racing sled dogs? I mean, it's cool, but sort of different."

"I like being different." 

...His voice sounds a little too loud. 

"And it's not that different. Lots of kids my age race."

Louis tries to think of something profound to say about why he runs dogs. About how he'd been around dogs his whole life with his mom, and how he can understand them. How he feels alive when he runs them, how they take him to a magical place that he can get to only behind a team. And how running the dogs makes him feel close to his mom.

"And I like racing." 

Less profound than he wanted. 

"I'm good at it."

He gives up and adds more wood to the fire.

Harry shrugs and huddles closer to the flames. Falling snow swirls around him and Louis suddenly notices how dark it is. And cold.

He gives the rest of the dogs their meal and picks up the hatchet again. 

Judging by the cloaking darkness settling in, he'd say it's around six thirty. 

During the winter months, the only thing he hates is the short days. 

Now that they're into March, the stretching daylight feels like a gift.

With the approaching gloom and the blowing snow, he can hardly see beyond the pale light the fire is giving. The trees around them appear as one black blob. The wind gusts noisily through the branches. 

When he looks up, he sees the tops of the spruce whipping around like angry fists shaking at the sky.

He hacks off more boughs from the closest spruce and carries them over to the dogs, who rest just on the edge of the fire light. 

They jump up when Louis approaches and he lays the boughs in a flat pile next to the dogs, making sure the layers overlap to give them insulation. 

Vixen sticks her tongue up his nose when he bends over her. Blue grabs the branches to arrange his own way, then spins in two circles and flops down on top of them, tail curling over his black snout.

Louis whispers to Blue, 

"We're going to have to stay here."

The tension of this thought travels up Louis' spine and tightens his neck muscles. 

Louis rocks from one foot to the other. He'll have to find enough firewood for the evening and water the dogs somehow. And feed them, too. He stretches his neck from side to side anxiously.

It's okay, he tries to tell himself. 

It's not as if he's never slept out in the woods before. Plus, he's spent enough time alone on the race trail with just his dogs. In fact, that's how he prefers it. His dogs always understand him.

And it's not as if there's a hoard of people lined up to come along.

Uncle Leonard says Louis is a loner because he's an only child. 

Louis would have had brothers and sisters but, as Mom says, Louis came out fighting and something happened when he was born that made her unable to have any more kids.

His dad doesn't have brothers or sisters either and he likes to do weird things by himself, like go to the movies. He's been doing that even more the past year, just leaving by himself. 

Well, he used to ask Louis to come, but after the coffee shop incident, he stopped. Louis closes his eyes and rubs between them, as if he can rub away the memory.

"What do you want, Lou?" He asked.

"I don't care." 

They were sitting in the booth farthest away from the only other people in the shop. Louis was staring at the sign on the wall: COFFEE. DO STUPID STUFF FASTER AND WITH MORE ENERGY.

"Well, you must have an opinion? How about a hot chocolate?" His voice had sounded strained. Brightly fake. 

He leaned across the table and smiled at Louis. A blue vein under his eye twitched.

"Sure."

They didn't say anything else until their orders were ready. They probably should've kept on saying nothing. But they didn't.

"Oh, I can't tell you how much I love this chai tea. Something about the smell of it reminds me of when I used to go out with your Nana and we'd go out and have mother-son time." 

"Huh."

"So. Tell me how school's going."

"Fine."

"How is Mr. Mowat's new baby?"

"Great."

"Liam's dad told me his wife brought her in to the school for a visit."

"I don't know." 

And that's when he did it. 

That's when his dad reached across to take Louis' hand, and he jumped back, knocking his hot chocolate over. 

It was as if the brown liquid pouring out of the cup, running onto the floor was just rushing to escape.

"Look." 

Louis started in what may have been a whisper. He thinks. But it didn't stay as a whisper. 

"I don't know why we're pretending everything is okay. It's not okay and it never will be okay. Ever. So don't act like we're carrying on with our lives. I don't want to sit around pretending to be your buddy! You never understood the dogs. You never understood her!" 

Louis shrieked the last part, but managed to cut himself off from saying what was next. 

"And who's fault is it that she's gone?!" 

But the damage was already done. 

The color drained from his dad's face. His eyes went red, welled up, he looked away.

Louis doesn't think he's really looked at him since.

Louis picked up some branches, but then dropped them again. 

He could use that cup of hot chocolate now, that's for sure. 

And he wouldn't mind having Liam here. To talk to. He's good at talking about things.

Blue sniffs deeply into his branches, then snorts with feeling. 

Louis smiles at his leader. He's even better than Liam—not that Louis would ever tell him that. 

Blue just listens. Makes Louis feel calm. Since the accident, he's happier when he's with the dogs. 

They don't pity or judge.

But usually when he's out on the trail, he doesn't have to worry about having enough food. 

He trudged back to the sled, and then pulled it closer under the spruce. 

Harry glances at him as he sits on the brush bow. The fire spits and embers fly into the air when Louis pokes it with a stick. He lifts his chin. 

The heat coming off the fire helps his mind focus on what he needs to do.

"Here."

Louis offers his sandwich to Harry and his eyes light up. He tears the saran off and takes a huge bite.

"Mmm, so good." 

He practically inhales the rest. 

"That was awesome. Thanks. What else you got?"

"Maybe we can find you some yellow birch twigs to chew," 

Louis says around a mouthful of Fig Newton. "They taste like spearmint. Very healthy."

"We must be close to my place. We can feast when we get there. I can't wait to show you my warm kitchen."

Louis studies him closely. He's still shivering. 

"Well, it won't be tonight." 

Louis drinks from his spare water bottle and watches the dogs curled on their little nests in the snow. Blue has one eye open checking to see what Louis is doing.

"You mean we're going—we're going to stay out here? All night?" 

Harry's voice is edged in panic. 

"In the winter?"

"You say that like you've never spent the night outside before."

"I'm more of an indoor adventure type."

"Uh-huh. Well, it'll be too dangerous to travel in this blizzard. We'll have to stick it out here."

Harry paws at his jacket, peering in the pockets and glancing around. 

"I—uh, I must've left my GPS back on my machine. Where's yours?"

"I just have a compass and topo." 

Louis stands and pulls the map from his pocket. Harry grabs it and leans toward the light of the fire. His brows furrow and his mouth is set in a tight line.

"There's a creek or slough over there," 

Louis says, and points his chin to the open area that is completely obscured with falling and blowing snow. Maybe Harry will tell him they're just around the corner from his house. 

"You look for this slough on the map and I'll go find us some water."

"What's a slough?"

Or maybe not. 

"It's like a branch off a river." 

Why doesn't he know that?

Louis shakes his head and sorts through the back pouch of the sled bag until he finds the rope. 

He ties one end around his wrist and one to the sled. When he picks up the headlamp and slides it over his hat, Louis is reminded of his mom telling him that out there, even a light can't tame the wild.

Sometimes, the wild is sleeping and you get lulled into a trance.

But it doesn't stay sleeping for long in winter. You have to pay attention all the time and be ready for when it wakes up howling. 

When Louis clicks on the light, he's in a whirlpool of snowflakes swirling around his head so fast, it makes him dizzy.

It's howling.

Louis shuts off the light, then turns with both dog dishes in one hand and a long stick in the other, and heads toward where he thinks the water is. 

The blinding snow combined with the solid darkness makes it tough to walk. He staggers on his feet as he pokes the uneven ground.

Fear rushes through him but he tries to ignore it. The irrational phobia he's had of water his whole life definitely gets in the way. 

He takes deep breaths to get his thoughts under control and focuses on feeling the terrain under his mukluks. He seriously can't afford weakness now.

When he hears sloshing under his feet, he stops and dips the dishes into the slushy water. Handy that he doesn't have to chop through ice. That's one of the perks of this area—surrounded by mountains, dotted with frozen black spruce bogs, criss-crossed with rivers and sloughs. There's usually water available.

When he turns, he searches for the glow of the fire. All he sees is a wall of white against the blackness surrounding him. He can't even tell which direction to walk in. His legs shake with the knowledge of their situation.

As he gets closer, following the rope, relief shoots through him when he sees the fire and the silhouettes of the dogs.

Of course they're where he left them. He shakes his head at being such a pansy.

Harry is hunched over the flame. 

When he sees Louis, he shifts his back to him and wiggles slightly. 

Louis' curiosity over what he's doing is interrupted when the end of the sleeping bag is kicked practically into the fire.

He leaps for it. 

"Don't get too close, you'll burn the bag!" 

He snatches the end and inspects it.

"Okay, okay." 

Harry gathers the bag tighter and holds it closed at his neck. 

"Not that I'm ungrateful for the designer pants, or the five-star accommodations"—he glances at the dogs—"or the presence of the man-eaters over there . . . I mean, it's really cool you're, like, this amazing bushman and all, but . . . don't you notice—it's getting rippin' cold out?"

"Since I'm doing all the work, no. I haven't had time to get cold."

He still has the scarf around his head, but his face has color now. 

The strain of worrying about that finally leaves the pit of Louis' stomach. Now all he has to worry about is freezing to death, feeding them, feeding the dogs, and finding their way home. 

Oh, and the heart attack Dad is probably having because he's late.

Chapter Text

Louis sets the metal dishes by the fire and plops a chunk of chicken in one. Harry looks at it in disgust.

"Oh, that's disturbing. I think I'll go with the birch twigs, please."

"Good thing this isn't for you then." Louis makes sure to hide his smile. "I mentioned before, the dogs worked hard for you and they need to be watered."

Louis has never been called an amazing bushman by anyone other than maybe his uncle. Uncle Leonard keeps telling him that he can't do everything. He needs to let people help him. But he is the only one who his dogs can count on now. Uncle Leonard also tells him he should be nicer to his dad.

Louis stabs at the chicken with a stick to try and melt it quicker. 

The fire crackles, filling the silence between him and Harry. He rises to collect more wood while the chicken thaws.

He's avoiding thinking about their nighttime sleeping arrangements. 

When they run races, he sleeps in the sled bag. It makes a great shelter from the snow and wind and is just long and wide enough for him to lie down in. 

But he really can't say "night" to Harry, climb into the sled bag, and then just close it up, leaving him under the tree. 

Not unless he wants to see a curl-sicle frozen solid in the morning.

Once the water is warm, he divides the chicken into six and serves a portion to Blue. He drinks eagerly and licks up the last of the bloody gobs from the side of the dish. Louis takes the empty dish and collects more water.

Between collecting firewood and watering the dogs, he manages to avoid the Harry problem until it's so cold, his nose hairs freeze together if he breathes in too deeply.

Louis visits with each dog once more, petting and whispering in their ears. He puts the dog jackets—fleece liners with windstopper nylon shells—on Rudolph and Blue. 

They don't have the thick natural coats the rest of the dogs do. A dog like Dasher would just eat the jacket anyway if he left her with it overnight.

As soon as he's done, the dogs curl up and look like giant versions of the coconut rum balls his mom used to make at Christmas. They seem content with the firelight catching their eyes and making them shine. 

In truth, he needed them a lot more than they need him. The shame of the thought heats his face.

Harry is leaning toward the fire again and Louis smells the singed bag. 

"It's too cold out here."

Louis sort of admires how Harry's not afraid to show what a complete tadpole he is.

The wind is screaming through the clearing, pelting snow and cold onto him, looking for chinks in his armor. He raises his shoulders to try and protect the heat escaping out of his exposed neck. Black, cold, winter night. Deadly night.

"Shouldn't we build an igloo or something?" 

Harry brushes off the snow that continually coats the sleeping bag.

Once Louis trudges to the sled, he holds Mr. Minky in his left hand, feels its familiar, comforting shape under his gloved fingers, and clears his throat. 

"We're going to hole up in the sled until morning." 

Louis looks at the bag when he speaks, but senses Harry's stare. His fear seems to have vanished suddenly.

"Ah-ha, I knew you were trying—"

Louis clears his throat. 

"We'll be warmer in there out of the snow and wind. It's like a small tent." He opens the sled bag and looks inside. So small. Too small for his liking.

More doubts and unhelpful movie titles, like Swamp Thing, and Sleeping with the Enemy, swarm in his head. 

He notices that he's holding his arms across himself, and drops them, standing up straighter.

He seriously needs to get out more. He swears he'll start going to those lame house parties that Liam keeps insisting he goes to. 

"For your rep," Liam says. 

"You're in danger of becoming one of those crazy, old, gay dog men who never partied when he was young and wrinkle-free, and then lives to regret it for the rest of his life."

Louis loves him like he's a brother, but he swears only Liam could worry about getting wrinkles.

Harry slowly stands, wobbles a little, then leans over the sled to look in. 

He holds the sleeping bag up to his chest as if he's ready to enter a potato-sack race. 

Their eyes meet across the sled bag. 

Harry grins.

"After you," he says.

"We have to lay our outer clothes down on the bottom; they'll dry with our body heat."

Harry opens his mouth to say something, but then just smiles wider.

Louis rolls his eyes and ignores him as he slides the sled onto the spruce boughs. 

His throat catches when he tries to swallow. He takes off his anorak.

"You should, uh, get in first. You're bigger." 

Louis' hands tremble, and he's so glad it's too dark and cold for Harry to notice.

"It's about the size of a coffin in here, isn't it?" 

Harry laughs and climbs in, then lies down with his knees bent awkwardly. 

His shoulders take up the width of the sled.

"Put your jacket under the sleeping bag," 

Louis says loudly over the wind as he shucks off his snow pants. 

His stomach flips.

"Move over." 

Louis tries to sound nonchalant, as if he just does this all the time, sleep in his sled with some damn dude he just met. 

Louis takes off his wool pants, and throws them into the bottom of the sled.

Harry unzips the sleeping bag and holds it open for Louis. 

His teeth flash white in the dark like a Cheshire cat. 

Shivering in his skivvies, Louis climbs in.

"Ow! That's my hip!"

"Well, move your hip."

"Augh, your elbow is digging into my ribs... "

"Don't... Would you stop that... Ouch... Your knee..."

They squirm around until they find that the best place for Louis is under Harry's arm, spooning with his back to him. 

Louis zips the sleeping bag to block out the cold, and reaches up to close the sled bag over them, leaving a breathing hole for the condensation to escape.

The relief from the cold is immediate. 

It feels as if he's lying next to a furnace, with the heat that Harry's body is emitting. 

He doesn't know why Harry was complaining when he's so hot.

He almost lets out a nervous giggle but manages to get a grip in time.

The wind outside seems to howl in frustration, wanting to get in. The canvas bag flaps while the whole sled quivers. 

Louis has always felt as if his sled bag was his secret hideout. Only him in here listening to his dogs sleeping out there. The shape of it, the feel of the rough sides, the smell of wet canvas, it's all comforting and familiar. And now Harry, who he doesn't even know, is sharing this place with him.

Louis closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep. Or imagine that he can actually fall asleep while he's in the same sleeping bag pressed up next to a hot guy. 

His breath feels warm on the back of Louis' neck, and he wishes that he couldn't smell him. He then tries to picture what Harry looks like in his pink woollies, and that helps.

"If you're, like, some axe murderer or something, tell me now so I can sleep with my eyes open," 

Harry says in the dark.

Louis' eyes fly open. 

"When we get to school, there will be no one who knows about this."

Harry muffles a laugh. 

"Deal."

And Louis never realized that that he was subconsciously shifting closer and closer to the easily likable stranger as the night went on.

Chapter Text

Louis wakes to spider webs of frost hanging over his face. 

Unlike some mornings, when he's confused for a moment about where he is, he has an exact understanding of his situation. 

He's in a sleeping bag.

With a guy.

A cute guy. 

Louis stretches out a sudden leg cramp and Harry jerks awake beside him.

"Don't bang the sides of the bag," Louis says. "The frost will fall on us."

He carefully reaches up and opens the sled bag, flipping over the flap of canvas coated with frozen condensation. It's heavy with the snow load on top. Cold air rushes in, and he quickly pulls his arm back under the sleeping bag.

He could almost fall back to sleep in the warmth. He lets his mind drift, and enjoys the novelty of the situation.

"Morning, Vuitton." 

Harry straightens his arms out in front of him and yawns loudly. 

"I could sure use some scrambled eggs and bacon."

Louis rolls away from him as much as he can. 

"You could use a shower, too. You smell like a sasquatch." 

That is a big lie.

Louis resigns himself to the freezing air and wriggles out of the bag. 

The side of his body that was pressed to Harry is now cold. 

When he stands on the snow-covered spruce branches, he exhales rapidly and clouds of frozen breath hang in the air. His bare fingers move slowly in the chill as he scrambled to put on his outer clothes. 

He hops around to warm up.

"Little brisk out today," Louis says.

The first thing he checks is the dogs. They're still curled into six snowballs, the branches above them covered in glistening frost.

Then he glances around and blinks.

The landscape looks completely different from last night. Fresh and friendly with glittering beauty. Now that he can see the slough in the daylight, it doesn't seem that far away. And the blackened ring of the long-dead fire has melted a deep pit in the snow. 

New snow sparkles all around them. Blankets of clean white snow heap over alder bushes and dark stumps, softening all the edges. 

He feels as if he's just stepped into a Christmas card. He marvels at how a sunny winter morning always fills him up. Reminds him of his birthday. 

Trees snap and crack in the cold. The wind has died and the hushed winter bush sounds are all around him. He spies the line of snow-covered birches gleaming in the sun and lets out a little breath. 

Every tiny finger of branch has a thick coating of snow that sits like whipped topping.

"Wake me when it's summer," Harry says.

The snow crunches under his feet as Louis moves. He finds a wide tree, checks to make sure that he can't be seen from the sled, and pulls down his pants to pee. 

Crunching snow is good. That means the temperature isn't much colder than zero. If the snow squeaks, they're in bigger trouble. He'd hate to think about their night if it were January instead.

Louis checks the color of the hole he made in the snow and smiles a little in relief. Light yellow means he's been drinking enough. Only once did he see it a dark amber color. That was during the Fur Classic, just after the accident.

The snow feels plenty cold as he rubs a handful into his bare hands to wash. He quickly scrubs his face and then stands, pushing the water off of his freezing cheeks. 

He shakes his hands and tucks them into his armpits. His face tingles and his skin pulls when he smiles.

"Come on, Harry. We should look at your head."

"Everyone keeps telling me I need my head examined."

Louis rummages in the bag that hangs from the back of the handlebar. Where did he leave that first-aid kit? 

"Sounds like you're well enough today to help with the chores. We need another fire to boil water for us and melt some chicken to water the dogs."

"I've got to water a tree first."

Louis tries to remember the last time he saw the kit. 

Oh, yeah, he had it in his anorak pocket with the map—the map!

"And seriously, is there like, room service? I'm so hungry, I could eat a dog."

Louis had completely forgotten about the map last night. Harry was going to show him where he lived. But he never saw it after that. 

Louis felt a bubble of panic.

"Harry, what did you do with the map I gave you?"

"What map?"

"The map. The map I gave you last night, remember?" 

The panic bubble expands.

"Um . . . I don't remember you giving me a map." 

Harry's head pops up from the sled bag and he glances around as if he's looking for it.

"You said we weren't far from your house! You were supposed to find the slough on the map."

"Oh... that map." Harry rubs his face with his hand. "Um, yeah. I forgot to mention... "

"What?" A sneaky dread creeps up Louis' throat.

"It sort of... fell in the fire... "

"What?! Did it burn?"

Harry wrestles with his jacket and reaches into the pocket. He pulls out a limp and blackened piece of useless map. 

"The wind grabbed it."

"AUGH! You idiot!" 

Louis snatches the thing from his hand. Delicate ashes fall like butterflies from the corner and he can't even tell which corner it used to be. He feels dizzy. He tries to take slow deep breaths,  but it doesn't help.

"Do you even know where we are?!" He yells. "Do you recognize this slough?"

"I just moved here from Manchester four days ago. That was the first time I've even been out on my snowmobile."

"Manchester?" 

Of course, he's from England. That explains a lot. 

"Then how could you know where we were going yesterday?"

The anger seethes through Louis' clenched jaw. 

He doesn't even try to keep the panic out of his voice. Why does everything in his life get screwed up? 

The dogs raise their heads and study him.

"Well, I thought I knew... " 

Harry stumbles out of the sled. He stands in his boot liners with a purple goose egg on his forehead, crusted blood across his eyebrow below the bandage, and pink woollies that are four sizes too small.

He scratches his ass.

His forlorn expression tells Louis everything he needs to know. This conversation is pointless and it's up to him and the dogs to get them home.

—

Louis stomps around, preparing for another day, and tries to decide what to do next. 

As he sees it, they have three options. 

They can just stay there and hope that they're found. 

Louis immediately rejects that idea. There's no way he can sit still and wait for someone to help him.

They can go back the way they came. 

Louis thinks of all the new snow covering yesterday's tracks. Trying to follow their path through those ugly trails doesn't hold much appeal. 

But it's the known route—if they can find it, they probably should do that.

Or, they could continue that way. 

Louis stands, watching Whistler lick her paws with slow, methodical attention. 

If he remembers the map right, the main trails are west of them. 

The trail they're on seems to be heading in that direction. 

If they find the main trails, they can follow them, and most likely cross a road. 

He's sure of it. 

Lots of roads around there have dog team crossing traffic signs. And maybe heading west will be even faster than traveling the whole day backwards.

Or, they could all freeze to death as they look for trails that aren't there. 

Louis fingers the scar beside his ear, and feels a moment of regret over yesterday's decision to head north. 

He should have stuck to the trail he knew. Now he's traveling blind out there. 

But he can't look back. 

Always moving forward—his mom's favorite saying.

Blue yodels softly at Louis and snaps him out of his funk. Louis moves closer to him, his butt swaying back and forth with fierce wagging.

"You think that's what we should do?" 

Louis asks, rubbing Blue's cheek. 

"Keep moving forward? You remember Mom saying that, too?"

Louis blows out a slow breath and whispers, 

"I'm not sure what to do, Mom."

Louis swallows hard and remembers his mom's confidence in Blue when he was still a yearling. 

He can almost hear her that day on the trapline.

"See what Blue is doing, Lou? How he's looking ahead past the leaders? You watch. He'll make a good leader someday."

The dogs had been breaking trail and they were plodding next to the sled to help lighten the load. The sled was full of wet beaver from the trapline, and the team worked hard through the deep snow. 

Blue pulled like a dog possessed, and peered ahead as if he wanted to see what was around the next corner.

They'd arrived home late that night, like so many other times, and Louis was exhausted. And cranky. He wasn't much help, but Mom didn't mind. 

They tromped single file through the snow for the third trip unloading the sled, when she reached up and tapped the snow-laden branches hanging above them. Before Louis could catch himself, he walked right under it while the snow came down into his collar.

"Argh, Mom! Stop doing that!"

"Gotta keep you on your toes, Lou—whoa!"

Louis crashed into her knees to knock her over, but she stood rock solid. Always solid.

Louis' chest feels hollow as the memory mows him over. 

He doesn't have time for this. 

He has to get them home.

"Forward it is, Blue. Good idea." 

The cold from the snow he's kneeling in begins to seep through his pants. Rocking back on his heels, he squeezes his eyes shut. 

He doesn't know if it is the right decision, he just knows he has to find their way out soon. 

He thinks of the dog shed in the backyard full of frozen chicken and fat pallets, cooked rice, and vitamin packets. Fuel for working dogs. They can't spend another night out there; they have to get out today.

Once the dogs have been watered with the last of the chicken, they eat a breakfast of smoked sausage and a granola bar—the last of the food. 

It's still morning, but already Louis feels exhausted with worry. He can go hungry, and Harry can certainly starve to death for all he cares, but his dogs cannot.

As they pack the sled, the silence between them could be cut in half with his hatchet. He grabs their two water bottles that he refilled with boiled water from the slough, and stows them in the sled bag.

Harry jogs in place, bringing his knees up high, and then catches Louis staring at him. 

"This is not even cool," he says. "My jeans are so stiff, I can hardly move."

"If you weren't the biggest milquetoast loser I've ever met, I'd feel bad for you."

"Look, I'm sorry about the map, okay?" Harry glares down at him. 

"But who gives a map to someone who's sitting next to a fire? And it was so windy." 

He fingers his forehead, which reminds Louis that he was going to check his gash. He gestures for him to bend closer so he can see it.

"You're supposed to be some sort of wilderness expert," Harry says. 

"Why don't you have a GPS like a normal—ow!" 

He straightens, holding his hand to his eyebrow after Louis ripped off the bandage. 

"Hey!"

"Why do I need a GPS when I can read a map?" 

Louis snaps back, gesturing again for him to bend closer. The lump over his eye is still red, but the dried blood around the gash makes it look worse than it is. 

Louis is pleased the edges are closed. The bleeding seems to have stopped.

"Map reading is a skill anyone who comes out here should know," 

Louis continues. 

"Not like some people who prefer zooming around on some smelly machine thinking a little device will tell them where they are, batting their pretty eyes at whoever comes by." 

Absolutely not what he meant to say. At all.

Harry's mouth opens as if he's about to retort, but then closes. He looks at Louis with surprise. 

"Pretty eyes?"

"Pretty idiotic eyes, yeah."

"Think this will scar?" 

He strikes an exaggerated pose, blinking at Louis. 

He wants to punch him.

"Guys dig scars, right?"

Oh. He likes men too. 

"If you're going for some kind of freakish anime look, you've succeeded." 

Louis shakes his head and grabs the sled to yank it onto the trail. 

"We need to go."

The dogs are pumped. They've been watching his every move and now that he's touched the sled, they leap to their feet. They scratch the ground and yawn with excitement when he looks at them. They never complain. Never hold a grudge. Always trust.

He tosses a harness to Harry. 

"Here, help me get the dogs ready. That's for Vixen, little brown girl on the end."

His amused expression turns to alarm. 

"I . . . I . . . don't know how."

"It's easy—just watch how I do it." 

He straddles Blue and holds up the harness. 

"See how I fold it at the double webbing? Yes, like that."

Louis slips it over Blue's head and the dog does the rest. Harry approaches Vixen as if she's a poisonous tarantula with Ebola virus. It's obvious he's afraid of dogs, but he still tries with the harness. 

He guesses it's not his fault he's incompetent. But Vixen doesn't notice. She wags her tail furiously at his approach and it gives Louis a little warm feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He hooks up Blue with Rudolph in lead. When he turns, he sees Harry sliding toward the sled behind Vixen.

"Pick her front feet off the ground." 

Louis takes her and holds the harness up so she's hopping on her back legs. 

"Shifts the four-wheel-drive down to two. Much easier."

As Harry struggles to harness Dasher, Louis harnesses Prancer and Comet and hooks them into the center of the gangline. 

They're in the team position. 

Vixen and Donner, closest to the sled, are the wheel dogs. They tend to be the strongest dogs, though you wouldn't think it by looking at little Vixen. But if the sled gets stuck, they will both throw themselves into their harnesses and rapidly pop their tuglines until the sled is free. 

Cupid, Louis' crazy little tornado, is already lunging forward as he clips her in.

Frozen hard circles where the dogs had slept create icy dents that look like a plastic egg carton. 

Louis can tell which circle was Blue's; his metabolism cranks out so much energy he'd sink to China if they stayed there long enough. 

Louis worries about his weight, and wishes he had brought extra fat for him.

He winds up the picket line and stores it back in the sled, then steps on the brake and motions for Harry to get in. 

The dogs' frantic screams ignite the air around them. Harry spastically trips and falls into the sled.

"Ready? All right!" 

They charge down the trail for about thirty yards, and then it becomes obvious their travel today will be slow. 

The snow from yesterday's blizzard is so deep, the dogs have to jump like weasels. And the trail is really only a vague indent.  

He should've known this, but he was too busy showing off for Harry to think about it. 

He'll be glad when he drops this guy off at his house.

He stops the team. 

"You're too heavy. Get out of the sled and help me back here."

"I'd rather not." 

Harry grumbles, but climbs out and stands beside Louis. His face is tight and Louis feels a twinge of remorse for snapping at him. 

He seems defenseless, scared.

"What do I do?"

"You stand on that runner. I'll stand on this one. Hold on to the handlebar . . . it's like skiing, but you get to hang on." 

He has to yell above the dogs' frustrated barks. They don't like to stop when they've just started. He pulls the hook again. 

"All right, Blue boy!"

Harry looks frozen with fear, but after a few moments of smooth riding, his easy charm returns and he flashes Louis a wide grin. 

"Hey, this is fun."

"For now. They'll slow down soon and we'll have to pedal with one foot, or run beside the sled."

In fact, for most of the morning, no one is running. 

They plod through the snow, climb over broken and uprooted trees, and jockey the sled around tight corners. 

Louis keeps hoping that around the next corner, the trail will widen out and he'll recognize where they are. 

But around each corner is just more tangled mess, and he curses his luck.

It has to be the thickest brush in Alaska. He sincerely wishes they lived in an area that has cell coverage. 

With that thought, another rushes in.

Dad.

He's got to be freaking with the dogs and him not coming home last night. He'll know Louis is out, but he won't know where.

The more he thinks about it, the more ill he becomes imagining him at home alone. 

His heart aches as he recalls a year ago last January. When they both sat at home—waiting. 

He thinks of his fragile show of cheerfulness, how it could buckle with this added pressure. He probably got home last night tired, expecting dinner. He would have been annoyed at first, then, as it got later, the cold dread would have crept in. 

Louis blinks several times. Even with the anger that has boiled in his gut for over a year, he still doesn't want to see him hurt.

But he would never forgive him.

After his mom died, he heard him talking to his Nana on the phone. 

His dad kept his voice low, but Louis avoided the squeaky spot on the floor and crept close to his dad's room. 

That's how he knows Nana was trying to convince him to move back to Seattle. His dad used to be a city boy before he met his  mom at a course they both took in the city.

Mom liked to improve her mind, always reading books and taking classes. She was probably the smartest fishing guide in Alaska. 

Louis convinced his dad he could work as a real estate agent in Rain River, since Louis obviously couldn't trap or guide in the city. 

Louis doesn't think Nana ever let go of her grudge over that. 

His grandpa died years ago, and she's alone down there.

Dad hasn't really loved Alaska. 

Not like his mom and him do. 

She's been to the city to visit, so he can tell it's not the place for her.

Too many people, too much noise, too many cars on the roads. Not enough dog trails.

"You think we're close?" 

Harry asks, breaking Louis out of his thoughts.

"Yeah, we've got to cross a road eventually. Unless we get to your place first. Let me know if you see anything familiar."

They're on a slight downhill and the dogs pick up a little speed. 

Harry and him can both hop on the runners and ride. 

Louis makes a show of digging in on one side of his runner and pulls the handlebar to steer the sled over to one side of the trail. 

He can't help but steal a glance to see if Harry is watching, but he's busy gawking at the trees.

"Everything looks the same to me here. I used to live downtown on Bloor Street, surrounded by sidewalks and buildings. I've never seen this much snow in my life."

"You lived in England and you're not used to a little snow? Oi, what kind of Brit are you?"

"He jokes!" 

Harry slaps his thigh with mock laughter. 

"Why do all Americans think we say 'oi' all the time? That's so lame. And I'm from Manchester. We don't get much snow. Our winters are just cold."

"I'm an Alaskan—so don't clump me with 'all Americans' or confuse me with some New Yorker you might know."

"Well, at least where I'm from you could tell by the corner stores where you were. Or just look at the street signs. Or hop on a tram. I'd give anything right now for a tram."

"I've never been on a tram."

The dogs are running faster, but Louis hardly takes notice.

"You've never . . . Wow. Okay, they run on rails cut into the pavement and travel at about this speed. You usually have to stand and get bounced around kinda like this, too. But they're warmer. Oh, the warmth. Then we could hop off and hit a biscuit or doughnut shop. I'd kill for a Timmy's. And a cruller."

"A what? You mean crul-ler. It's pronounced with a short u."

Harry glances at Louis. 

"You don't have many friends, do you?"

He represses the urge to kick him. 

"Why did you . . . " 

Louis begins, but before he can react, the dogs completely disappear over a ridge.

He snaps immediately to attention, but too late to do anything but brace himself.

The sled launches over a dropoff that's at least as tall as he is. 

The dogs run low to the ground in a full sprint. 

The bottom falls out of his guts as they go airborne. 

He grips the handlebar even tighter when the sled tips sideways.

Harry screams as he flies off.

All Louis can do is hang on until the sled hits the ground. 

And when they hit, it knocks the wind out of his lungs. 

He hears an awful crunch. 

They continue plowing down the trail. 

The dogs drag the tipped-over sled with Louis still clinging to it, gasping for air. 

He's sliding over the trail on his stomach. 

With one hand he reaches for the brake while he clamps down on the stanchion with his other. 

Louis forces the brake down, straining his arm with the effort. It takes a few moments for the dogs to slow down, but the sled finally stops.

Chapter Text

"Woah! WOAH!, Blue, woah." 

Louis is afraid to stand. 

If he's broken something, he doesn't want to know. 

He gingerly pushes up from the ground to test his legs. 

Everything seems to be working. 

Harry frantically runs up behind him.

"Are the dogs okay?!"

Oh, now he's worried about the dogs. 

"Yeah, they stayed on the ground. That was fun for them. I'm good, too, thanks for asking."

He rolls his eyes and bends to pull the sled upright, he notices Mr. Minky is dangling at an awkward angle like a loose tooth. 

The solid ash handlebar between the upright stanchions has split in two.

"Oh, no... No!" 

That one was his mom's favorite of all the sleds she had made. 

Louis watched her build it. She shaped the runners and brush bow with steam and then pounded them into the molds. He'd sat cross-legged on her workbench and handed her tools. 

His mom had explained every single stage to him, as if he was another adult musher learning to build his own sled. 

Louis' throat tightens.

Stupid, stupid. He should've paid more attention.

Harry inspects the two ends and pushes them together as if they'll magically meld. 

"Can you fix this?"

Pull it together, Louis. You can fix this. 

"Of course."

He glances around at the saplings near the trail.

"What is this thing?" 

Harry pulls at Mr. Minky and Louis hastily slaps his hand away.

"None of your damn business."

Harry's eyebrows shot up. 

The dogs roll in the snow as Louis kicks the snow hook in, then pulls out his hatchet.

Louis changes the subject.

"We'll splint it together with a couple of alders," he says. "I've got some duct tape in the sled bag. Can you find it?"

Louis spies two perfect saplings. 

After he cuts them to length, he takes off his mitts and uses his fingers to hold the wood in place. 

The cold immediately attacks his exposed skin at the ends of his fingerless gloves. 

Harry finally finds the tape and stands next to Louis. 

Louis places the two pieces on either side of the broken handlebar.

"Tape it here," 

He says, and point with his chin.

"Say 'please.'"

"What?"

"I'll do it if you remember your manners. You have to say 'please.'"

"Harry, I swear to—"

"Okay, okay. Bossy!" 

He whistles loudly as he winds the tape around.

"Tape it all the way across so it's sturdy."

Harry's bent head is so close to Louis', their frozen breath mingles and rises up as one cloud.

"This tape is strong. Like you could tie up a person with this stuff."

Louis' blood freezes. 

"...What?"

"I'm just saying . . . this is what they use in movies. It might work on the sled. Think it will hold?"

"I know it will."  

Louis tries hard to ignore the unease of what Harry just said. 

Why would he be thinking of tying someone up?

"I've done this before when my mom broke her old sled. Well, I watched her do it. This will hold until we get back." 

Louis pulls on his mitts uneasily and stows the hatchet deep in the sled bag. 

He glances at Harry.

Harry, unknowing of Louis' thoughts, indicates behind them. 

"It's like someone came along with a backhoe here and dug out a rippin' hole in the trail."

"Yeah, it must've been a mudslide," Louis says. "Anyway, you have to stay on the sled. If you fall off again, I'm not coming back for you."

Louis enjoys the image in his mind of waving goodbye to him as he lies on the trail.

"Did you see my lift-off?" 

Harry sweeps his hand in an arc. 

"Crazy. I got serious air."

Louis muffles a snicker then refocus on the sled. It's about time to start using his head. He pulls out his snowshoes from the bag.

"We should all take turns breaking trail." 

Louis slips his mukluks into the bindings and then shuffles toward the leaders. 

Blue groans as Louis rubs his ears. 

"Good boy."

Blue grins at Louis with his tongue hanging as if he's having the time of his life.

Sometimes Louis wishes he could trade places with the dogs. They only have to worry about running and eating. They love fiercely and don't worry about things they can't control. 

And when someone dies, they can sit on top of their house, throw their head back, and howl. Then they can begin a new day.

Louis stomps into the fresh snow in front of the lead dogs and they both step on his shoes.

"You have to ride the brake!" 

Louis turns to see Harry clutching the handlebar with a steel grip. His round eyes are studying the wheel dogs.

"Well, I don't know how to do this," he yells shakily.

"I'm not going as fast as they are. Just don't let the leaders run me over." 

How did he let myself get into this situation? Alone out here with a guy he doesn't even know anything about. And one who obviously doesn't know anything about the outdoors.

Louis thinks randomly of last night, and how Harry's body had been wrapped around him comfortingly; and the pit of his belly feels warm. 

Liam would totally flip if he knew. 

He's very into dating, and a lot, too. 

But Liam's interests are more southern. As soon as they graduate, he's gone to California. His dream. 

He dresses as if he lives there already, which is another reason guys like him. 

He's is a fun, loud, and wild center of attention, and hard to resist.

It's not as if Louis has never gone out with anyone. 

He grimaces thinking of his short and tragic past with Nick Grimshaw. 

Maybe Louis felt sorry for him. Maybe he wore Bart Simpson T-shirts every day because his development was stunted. 

Back in grade school, Nick fell asleep at Ben Winston's birthday party, and they super-glued his finger to the inside of his nostril. 

That kind of humiliation is hard to get past in a small town. So in eighth grade, Louis reluctantly called himself his boyfriend. 

He even let him hold his hand in the school hall. People aren't necessarily supportive of same sex relationships where they live, so it was a big step for Louis. 

He shakes his head at the memory. 

They're moving through a stunted black spruce stand. It crowds in thicker and thicker, which tells him it hasn't been maintained in a long time. 

Which means they've gone seriously wrong with choosing to go that way. 

No self-respecting trapper would use this trail, so it's highly unlikely they'll run into anyone messing around in there.

Soon, Louis hardly sees a path through the coarse branches. 

They twist and grab at them as they go by. His hair snags on a branch. Sharp needles rake his cheek. 

Louis takes another step and his hat gets knocked off.

He's bent over to grab his hat and hold up a long branch for the dogs to come through, when he hears a droning noise.

"A helicopter!" 

Louis screams to Harry.

He looks up. 

Black spruce branches tangle together above their heads with a few little windows of overcast sky between them. 

The chopper blades beat the cold air with a staccato that echoes in his ears. 

But when he glimpses at it, it is farther away than it sounds. 

They both jump up and down flailing their arms as much as they can within the scrubby bush.

"HERE!" 

Louis desperately screams.

"HEY!" 

Harry yells. 

"We're right here!"

Look down, look down, look down, look down. Are they seeing us? 

Louis' pulse races.

Please, see us. We could be home.

With food.

Safe.

The dogs safe. Louis could stop being responsible for everyone.

His heart pounds, then deflates drastically when the helicopter continues on its way.

Chapter Text

"If we can't see them, they can't see us." 

The disappointment is so bitter, Louis almost chokes trying to swallow the lump.

"NO! No, no, no, no..." 

Harry covers his head with his arms, then savagely kicks at the snow and falls to his knees.

"They were so close," he rages. 

He pounds his fists into the snow. 

"Why didn't we just stay in the open field? They would've seen us then!"

Louis feels a sharp pain as if he'd just been jabbed in the stomach. 

He's probably right.

Since they left the swamp, they've followed the narrow trappers' trails that are overgrown and hidden. 

No one will see their tracks from the air. 

Even their tracks from the morning probably just look like a pack of wolves had been there.

They've gone so far, though, they can't turn back even if they  wanted to. 

Louis highly doubts he'd be able to find the trail. 

They can only keep going;

but how far? 

They could be out there for days before they cross a road. Louis imagines all the wide green space on the topo map. 

What if they were going the wrong way?

An icy dread runs through him. They could all die out there running straight through to nowhere. 

If he could just study the map 

one more time.

"If we had a map, then we wouldn't be here, would we?"

"If we had a GPS, then we'd be home eating cheeseburgers," 

Harry barks back. Louis can see the fire in his eyes from there. 

"Or if we had snowmobiles, instead of these stupid fucking dogs!"

Louis sucks in his breath as if he'd just been slapped. 

He's about to scream back, but then Harry's expression reveals the fear he'd been hiding the whole time.

A tear runs down Harry's cheek and he quickly rubs his face with both hands. 

A silent moment stretches between them. 

The only sounds are the constant wind moaning through the tree branches and the dogs grunting with contentment as they scratch their backs in the snow.

Harry clasps his hands behind his neck. 

"Forget it," he says with a much softer voice. 

He hauls himself to his feet, brushing the snow off his jeans.

"I'm just mad."

Louis is mad, too. 

At himself, at Harry, at their whole situation. 

But he can't help himself as he points to Harry's jeans. 

"Try not to roll around in the snow with those. The woollies underneath will only do so much to keep you warm."

He gapes at Louis, then snorts, adjusting his scarf and shaking his head with a bemused expression.

Louis smiles and bends to hug Blue. His hot tongue brings him back to center, and after a moment he feels ready to stand.

"Okay. Anyway. Let's keep going out of this nasty spot at least. We'll find the main trails soon. No point sitting here crying."

"Hope we find a biscuit shop soon, too," Harry says with a smirk.

Chapter Text

The cold dark of the evening had arrived suddenly. 

Like entering a haunted house the town sets up at Halloween. 

Your eyes struggle to adjust from the daylight to the oppressive darkness of the interior, strain to see the scary things before they jump out at you.

But Louis didn't have to see the scary things to know they were there. 

Scary things like dehydration. 

Starvation. 

Hypothermia. 

Scary like the skin on Blue's shoulders sticking up for a second when Louis pinches it—the first sign of dehydration. 

Scary like sleeping another night in the sled bag with Harry.

Oh, Harry. 

"Whoa," 

Harry says in Louis' ear. 

His arms are around Louis in the nest of the bag and they both hear the loud complaining of his stomach. 

Louis actually feels it on his back. 

"It's rebelling after that tea."

Without food, their bodies are having a harder time staying warm. 

And tonight is much colder than last night. It's hard to guess how cold because he hasn't eaten so he's feeling it more than usual. 

Even the furnace that is Harry's body is barely radiating the BTUs it did last night.

Go hungry—get cold.

Louis thought about making a proper lean-to shelter to reflect back the heat of the fire, but that seemed like so much work. 

All of their energy should be used to move forward and get themselves out to a road. 

They couldn't afford to waste any time or effort making a shelter when they already had one. 

Louis shivers again and he feels Harry's arms tighten around him.

They've set camp near another slough. Plenty of water, but the dogs didn't drink enough for the energy they are putting out. And they're used to baited water. 

Louis still doesn't recognize the land or the slough but he's guessing, since they haven't come to a road or main trail, that they've somehow gotten turned around far north of where he wanted to be. 

Without a map, his compass doesn't tell them much. Louis doesn't need a compass to show where west is when he has the sun.

Calculations buzz in his head. 

If they've been out there two days, possibly traveling twenty miles a day with the deep snow and slow speed, they definitely should have crossed Crook's road by now. 

Maybe they're running parallel to it.

Louis scraped the inner bark from a bird and tried eating it. 

Mom told him once that it could be used as emergency food because it's starchy. But Louis guesses he was thinking of potatoes when he heard starch. 

It was nothing like potatoes. 

Sort of like eating sawdust, and it was so bitter, it made his eyes water.

But he boiled some white birch twigs in a dog dish for him and Harry, and that had been okay. 

Slightly sweet. And nice to have something warm inside his stomach. 

The fact that he had just been joking the night before about eating yellow birch twigs hadn't escaped him. He truly never thought they'd be out there so long.

He had eyed the beaver house on the bend in the slough and sorely wished that he'd brought snares. 

With snares, they could trap beaver. Or rabbits—though the meat wouldn't be as rich. He could have set the snares overnight, and perhaps gone to sleep with the knowledge that they'd be fed in the morning. 

That the dogs would be fed.

He did not bring snares, however. 

And he's certain the gnawing guilt and worry is going to keep him awake most of the night. 

He tries to imagine what his mom would do, but that makes him feel worse because he knows his mom would have brought snares. 

Besides the tea, what else can they eat out there? And they must eat. 

No fuel in the furnace, no life.

"Every time I close my eyes I see a stuffed crust pizza with ham and pineapple." 

Harry's voice breaks through the dark.

"Pineapple on pizza? That's not right."

Harry chuckles. 

"What's the first thing you're gonna eat, Vuitton? When we get back."

Louis doesn't want to say his first thought out loud—

that they might not get back at all. 

So he plays along. 

"Um. Maybe fettuccine alfredo with thick shredded parmesan alfredo sauce and broccoli."

"Oh, that's boring."

"Well, how about some of those Christmas oranges? Juicy and sweet, with no pits. And the pajamas peeled off them."

"Pajamas?"

"You know, the white stuff under the skin. That's got to go."

"Too healthy. I'm going to eat a couple of Big Macs, then a chocolate shake. Then a whole pan of brownies . . . maybe topped with some raw cookie dough. Oh, and blueberry pancakes! I make those a lot at home. With gobs of syrup and strawberry sauce. And bacon, fried crispy. Also sausage links, cause man do I love me some sausage. Some scrambled eggs and cheese too—cooked so they're not runny. I can't stand runny eggs." 

Harry's voice strains at the edge of a whisper in his excitement about food. 

What is it about the dark that makes people whisper?

"Actually," Harry says, 

"I wouldn't even mind if they were runny."

And Harry's appetite is not satisfied until he's described every meal he's ever cooked, eaten, or thought about eating.

"You know, you're going to be disappointed in Rain River. The only place to eat is the coffee shop and I wouldn't recommend it. You have to drive over an hour to get to McDonald's, even."

"Well, I guess I'll just cook more. I like to cook."

"Why did you guys move anyway? What does your dad do?"

Harry pauses for a moment and they lie still, the silence hanging between them in the darkness. 

"He... didn't come with us. They split a few years ago."

"Oh... I'm sorry."

"That's okay. Mom got transferred at her insurance firm. She must've really screwed up at work."

"How can your mom work here? Wouldn't she need like a green card or something?"

"She's originally from Boston, but moved to England before I was born. She met my dad in Manchester."

"Is he still in Manchester then?"

"Yeah, I'll be going back to visit."

"When do you—" 

An eerie howl interrupts him. 

It bursts out from the north, behind where the dogs are staked out. And it sounds close.

"What—?" 

Harry gasps in Louis' ear. 

It sends a shiver down his spine. 

An answering howl rises up again. With many voices.

"Wolves," Louis tells him.

"I know it's wolves," Harry hisses. 

"I've heard them on TV. But it's so different when they're live. Actually right there in the dark."

Harry shuffles closer and his knee jabs Louis in the ribs. 

"Whoa, my arm hairs are standing up! Man that's spooky. They sound like they're right in camp."

The dogs rustle nervously outside so Louis pushes aside the flap on the sled bag and sits up. 

Freezing air attacks him. 

Once he's out of the dimness of the canvas bag, he sees the cloudless night sky lighting their campsite with the glow from the stars and half a moon. The hairs in his nostrils stiffen as he inhales.

He sees the outlines of all six dogs nestled in a row beside them, but he shines his headlight at them to make sure they're okay. 

Their eyes glow back at him. He points the light into the gloom around, half expecting to see many more shining eyes, but there was nothing. The howling ends abruptly and once again it's dead quiet except for the cracking trees.

The embers from the fire are comforting. He wishes he could toss more wood on from there, but he's already shivering again. 

He scoots back into the bag, shutting off the light, and closes the top flap.

"That's the wild letting us know it isn't sleeping."

"Huh?"

"We have to be aware of things all the time. Respect it. Maybe the wolves are just passing through," 

Louis says loudly. 

"We should make noise to let them know we're here."

Harry bursts into singing at the top of his voice. 

"There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don't know why, she swallowed the fly..."

And so Louis endures another few minutes of Harry's campfire songs before he winds down, and the dogs are settled, too. 

As if the singing comforted them. 

The thought warms his insides.

"I used to sing all the time when I was younger," 

Harry says. 

"My buddy Zayn and I even talked about starting a band. I play guitar and sing, he plays drums. I used to go to his apartment sometimes on the weekends and we'd play video games and practice for our future stardom as musicians."

Harry shifts slightly to his right, which means Louis has to shift too, and they both uncurl, then curl like two dragonflies in a hard wind.

"He had the tallest bunk beds I've ever slept in. The top bunk was his older brother's, but he moved out. So when I stayed over, that's where I slept. I'm not cool with heights, but I never told him that. Just climbed up to the top of those beds.

"Then one night I woke from a bad dream. I jumped up and the ceiling fan got me in the head. I still have the scar."

Harry grabs Louis' hand in the dark and guides it to his forehead. 

Louis touches a small, thin bump along his hairline that he hadn't noticed before. He feels along the ridges for a moment longer than he needed to, and suddenly drop his hand.

"Yeah, nice scar."

He briefly thinks of telling Harry about the time he took three dogs with his bike. 

He wanted to try Blue in lead. 

But for some crazy reason, he decided it'd be even more fun with Vixen and Prancer. 

Maybe he should tell him. 

"This one time, I decided to take some dogs with me, attached to my bike..." 

Louis starts, giggling softly at the memories. 

"The first three minutes were the wildest of my life. They tore out of the yard while I was perched on the bike with a death grip and probably the most hideous face someone could ever make." 

Louis laughed out, Harry chuckling behind him. 

"And as you can guess, the rest of the time I spent on my face dragging along the dirt road. By the time I got us back to the house my coveralls were ripped to shreds, and I was covered in a lot of mud and blood." 

"I know it sounds bad, and it was in the moment, but it's funny to think about it now. How naïve I was." 

Louis actually still has the scars running down the left side of his belly. 

Heat creeps up his neck thinking about showing it to Harry.

"I got a big scar from that. But I also have one here." 

Louis surprises himself by softly placing his hand in Harry's to show him his index finger. 

His warm fingers run over Louis' as he searches for his scar.

"When I was young, I was feeding peanuts to a squirrel in our backyard. I guess he thought my finger was a peanut because he grabbed it, then his mouth got stuck or something 'cause he just hung on while I flung my hand around."

Louis surprises himself yet again, by how much he's talking about himself. 

"Aaaaannddd... that's why I prefer the indoors." 

Harry touches the jagged bump beside Louis' nail.

"I was screaming and crying and the thing finally flew off. He was probably mentally scarred for life."

"You're worried about the squirrel? That's rich. He probably gave you rabies or something. Did you get checked?"

"No, no. I don't have rabies, I'm just a carrier. Whatever you do, don't touch me or you'll get it."

The hunger and stress must be taking a toll on Louis' good judgment for him to enjoy bantering with Harry in the dark. 

Actually, it's because it's dark that He's doing it. In the morning, He'll probably feel embarrassed to look at him. 

Louis flips back and forth, berating himself and secretly grinning until restless sleep finally claims him.

—

Louis' eyes open again before daylight, not knowing what woke him. 

He listens intently, but doesn't hear any more wolves. 

Then Harry murmurs in his sleep.

"Hide . . . come on . . . the wolf . . . run!"

Louis lies still, trying to ignore the cramps in his belly. 

After a few seconds of silence, he lets out a breath. 

Harry is quiet again, breathing slow and heavy. 

Louis listens to the rhythm of it, pondering the mystery of him. Of how he behaves when he's with him.

He has a bad taste in his mouth from not brushing for two days. 

He puts his hand in front of his face and breathes into it to check his breath. 

He's definitely chewing the end of a slender green sapling when they get up, and brush the scum from his teeth. 

And maybe wash with warm water. 

It will help him feel better. 

Yes. 

Today, they're going to find a road.

Another thing his mom taught him. Just because they're outside doesn't mean they get to be dirty and unkempt. They'd wash up right from the river, or heat the water and he'd hold the compass mirror up so his mom could brush her hair. If there wasn't any water, they'd use snow. 

Louis loves the way his skin feels after a fresh snow bath. He grins imagining it, but then the familiar ache rushes through him so fast, he gasps and chokes on a sudden sob. 

How could he had known that soon, his mom would be gone, and all that grace would disappear from the earth?

He's interrupted from his heavy breathing by Harry talking again. 

"Louis! Come on, come on, come on..." 

He squirms, and Louis can't stand to see him suffer any longer. 

"Hey, Harry. Hey! Wake up. You're fine. We're fine." 

His eyes snap open and he tries to sit up, but ends up bumping into the sled flap and falling back down beside Louis and going back asleep. 

"Mom," Louis chokes. 

"...Could use a little help."

Chapter Text

After a breakfast of more birch twig tea that only makes him hungrier, Louis fills their water bottles with the rest of the tea for later.

The dogs look at him expectantly. 

They grab his heart and squeeze. His eyes burn from the shame of getting them into this situation.

"I'm sorry, girl," Louis says softly to Vixen. 

"I don't have anything for you this morning."

Her foxlike face is tipped in frost, and she hasn't even uncurled from her bed. She's trying to conserve her heat. The jacket isn't enough if she's not eating. How much longer could they hold on?

When they head down the trail again, Harry and Louis each ride on a runner. 

Louis feels sluggish. 

Normally his stance is secure and solid on the back of the sled, whether he's riding one runner or two. Now he feels unbalanced on weak legs. He spent too long jogging in place trying to warm up, and he's light-headed. 

His insides are hollow. 

A shiver of fear mixes with his shaking from the cold.

He thinks back to when he decided to go on the trip. 

It seems like weeks ago. 

Stupid, stupid. 

Louis glowers at Harry out of the corner of his eye. 

It occurs to him that if he'd crossed to the trail at a different spot, he may have missed him altogether. 

The anger helps cover the guilt, so he follows that thought.

Idiot guys from Manchester think they can ride a snowmobile along a trail and not know where they're going or what they should wear so they don't get hypothermia and put someone else's life in danger, then pretend they actually know where they are and act all smug—

Louis catches a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and looks up. 

Several ravens are circling low over a stand of white spruce ahead and his breath catches. 

Their glossy black feathers shine in the sun, making them radiant in flight.

"Look!" Louis raises a hand, shielding his eyes. "Ravens!" 

Hope flutters in his belly.

"Yeah. So?"

Now he hears their cackling calls. Just past that granite outcrop. The trail runs along the side of the rock. Louis stops the team and a raven sitting in the lower spruce branches takes off, cawing loudly.

"So just stay here with the dogs." 

Louis grabs the snowshoes and jumps off the trail. 

He scrambles and claws his way up the hill, not even caring if he gets sweaty or his clothes get damp or he gets embarrassed by Harry watching him. 

His heart pounds. 

The loose snow pills on the surface behind him. It rolls and skitters down the top crust. 

When he crests the ridge, he looks down into a clearing and lets out a huge breath.

The clearing looks like a war was waged there. Trampled snow stretches from the rock to the tree line, as if the site had been cleared for a party. 

Scrubby willows are bent down, young poplar snapped off. Blood and hair litter the scene.

But the best thing about it is the moose.

A freshly killed moose, mostly eaten, lies on its side in the snow. 

Even from here he can tell that the front shoulder is almost untouched beneath it, and the head is still intact.

Louis shoots his arms into the air and whoops. 

Thank you, Mom! 

Thank you, wolves.

"What? What do you see? Is it a road?"

Louis turns and smiles down at Harry. 

"How do you feel about some McMoose for breakfast?"

Dawning comprehension flashes across his face and he grins back, giving Louis two thumbs-up.

—

For the next few hours, they work together. Harry is learning how to start a fire and stake out the dogs. 

Louis uses his hatchet to hack, shave, and saw off pieces of meat from the shoulder and the neck. 

He picks away at the carcass just like one of those ravens, or a turkey vulture. 

Little nips, pulls, tears.

The dogs get most of it, chunks of about two pounds each. 

When Louis gives it to them, he cannot describe the joy it brings to him. 

His whole body vibrates with emotion. 

He fights back tears once again.

The dogs gnaw rib bones that he's managed to crack off while he waits for the meat scraps and bone chips to boil. 

That will give them some nice meaty broth to drink.

"It's really too bad I can't get at the nutrition inside the skull," 

Louis says to Harry as he slices. 

"It's way too big to try to boil in a dish. And to sever it, I would need something better than my hatchet."

"Mmm. Brraaiins." 

Harry pats his stomach. He breaks a dead spruce branch and places it on the fire. It flares up.

Louis cubes the rest of the meat for them and throws the pieces into the other dog dish with boiling water. 

Harry stares at it with eyes so full of yearning, Louis forgives him for his earlier comments on his "cruel" lifestyle of eating animals that they've hunted. 

Just where did he think the meat came from all wrapped up in the grocery stores? 

Maybe he'll understand once he's lived there a little longer.

The moose had been a bull, an old bull by the looks of his worn teeth. The boiled meat is rubbery and tough to chew.

And he's never tasted anything so delicious.

Louis then scalds his lips on the broth in his eagerness. 

When the food goes down, he can almost feel the warmth and energy seeping into his arms and legs.

"Mmm, oh, nomph, this is so good!" 

Harry closes his eyes and moans. 

Louis' stomach might have flipped at the sound. 

While Harry takes a turn at slurping from the bowl, he fishes out another chunk and chews. 

When Louis takes the bowl back,  they look at each other over the shared victory and grin with shiny lips.

—

They eat all that they can salvage. 

Louis can't break off any more of the larger bones to bring with them, and all the edible parts are gone. 

It's not enough, but a definite improvement from before. He decides to let the dogs rest a little.

"If you like moose meat, you'll love the feasts at the community center. Especially the Christmas one." 

Louis sits back on top of the sun-warmed sled bag and lets out a big sigh. 

Harry drapes his tall body against a rock and nods.

"Hard to imagine eating with a whole community. But sounds cool." 

He tilts his face toward the sun.

"We have feasts all the time, but the Christmas one is always special. When I was little, my parents would wrap me up in the dogsled and we'd all go. I was in charge of holding Dad's guitar. I remember coming 'round the last corner on the trail and seeing all the red and green lights they put on the tree in front of the hall. We'd stake the team outside and then walk through the front doors into a wall of heat and baking smells. Mrs. Chivy's moose-meat pie, Mr. Bicker's moose-ball stew, roast moose, sweet and sour moose, and for dessert there'd be chocolate mousse. That's where I first tasted jungle berry juice. I thought it was the best thing ever. I pleaded with my mom to put it in my lunch, but she didn't know what I was talking about.

" 'I can't find jungle berry juice anywhere. I don't know what it is,' she had said. So I had to do my own investigating. Turns out, it was just milk with strawberry syrup. But I still like it."

"Hey, I've had that! It's good!"

"I know, right? Anyway, there was another tree decorated with lights inside, too. All the kids would get gifts from Santa and we'd play games. Then Dad would unwrap his guitar and play songs that everyone could sing along with. My favorite was 'Cat Came Back.' I'd sing the chorus the loudest. But, now that I think about it, that song is sort of evil with what the poor cat goes through. I just liked it 'cause I was cheering for him.

"Then, at the end of the party, we'd go back outside to the team and it was always freezing cold compared to the heat of the hall. When the dogs took us down the trail, and we'd go past the reach of the lights, it was like traveling into another world. So quiet and dark and adventurous. But I could never stay awake for the ride home. I always woke up the next day in my bed."

He's truly astonished at himself for talking so much. 

Harry watches him with a thoughtful expression. 

His eyes, squinting against the sun, seem lit up. 

The ends of his brown hair dance in the breeze, the curls sticking out from the bottom of the scarf he now regularly wears as a hat.

Louis clears his throat, a little embarrassed. 

"The dogs have rested. We should get moving."

A slow grin spreads across Harry's face as he continues to watch Louis with that peculiar look. 

Then he pushes off from his rock and adjusts his scarf. 

"I was just getting comfortable here."

Louis ignores him and starts breaking trail with snowshoes even though the trail is already broken with all the animal tracks running along it.

"What are all these tracks from?" 

Harry asks.

"The trail system makes handy routes for wildlife out here. The trails get animals out of the deep snow and thick brush. So they also make good hunting corridors."

Louis notices the tall spruce lining this section of trail and wonder if they'll see any marten, with their cute little round ears and sweet 

faces. 

He'd like to show Harry a marten just to see the look on his face.

Their travel is painfully slow. 

At this rate, from all the time spent making fires, boiling water, cleaning moose, not to mention moving through deep snow, they should make it out by spring.

Chapter Text

The dogs seem happier.

Louis feels their enthusiasm behind him as he plods along.

He's very careful not to work up a sweat and get damp, so he stops often.

There has been little wind since the storm. The trees are still. It's so peaceful out there when it's quiet.

He could almost forget that they were lost and starving.

With the sun out, he imagines how wonderful it'll be in a few weeks.

His mom always played a game every year waiting for spring.

"You can hear it breaking the back of winter," she'd say.

When Louis was young, he took that literally, and tried listening for some kind of spine-snapping noises.

Once, we heard the creek ice let go with a loud crack that echoed across the valley, and Louis was convinced that it was winter's back.

The dogs pant behind him, and the snow makes little shushes as he shuffles in his snowshoes.

Around them, the arched limbs of alder and birch take turns losing their snow loads with a soft whoomp. They spring upward, free of their burdens.

"So do all mushers run ten dogs in a team?"

Harry asks from behind Louis.

"No, no. That's just how many I brought along for this trip. I have sixteen. It all depends on what you're doing, how much weight you have in the sled, how far you're going, what the trail conditions are like."

Louis keeps moving in front of the team, but turns his head so Harry can hear him.

"The main thing is not to have too many and be overpowered. That's dangerous for everyone."

"Huh. I guess you don't need many dogs to pull you."

Louis glances back with a mock offended expression.

Harry doesn't know just how true his words really are, though.

Two years ago, he had too many dogs on a run.

Of course, he had waited till his mom wasn't around, then hooked up an all sixteen-dog team.

That was a wild ride.

—Well, another one.

He thought he was so cool running that long string of dogs all by himself.

Fun—until they got to the road where he couldn't sink the snow hook.

Instead of going straight across the road and onto the trail, Blitzen, the little tramp, had veered into a ditch to get to the village dog that was walking loose near the trees.

They crashed, or, more to the point, Louis crashed, and watched his whole team take off down the road without him, dragging the broken sled.

He had limped up the driveway of the nearest house, which turned out to be Nova Chamberlain's place, and she proceeded to tell the whole school what a complete noob Louis was, and worse, that he was a bad musher.

And her dad had to take Louis on his snowmobile about a mile to the next homestead just in time to watch Blitzen tie with the male dog and a fight erupt in the team.

Mr. Chamberlain helped Louis break up the fight while he pretended not to notice the two dogs caught in a canine version of wanton lust, which was pretty hard since Blitzen was squealing like a vixen, (literally).

Louis usually runs smaller teams now since he really doesn't need to repeat that kind of drama.

Honestly, ten dogs is probably too much to take with him, but he races with them all the time and couldn't bare to let them stay at home.

"The dogs are always looking at you, you know?"

Harry says.

"Like they're connected to you... It's really cool."

Louis' face flushes immediately and he bites back a big grin.

It surprises him that Harry would notice something like that.

"The dogs are reading me for how they're supposed to react to something. It's important to stay calm so they don't freak out. They look at my face, but also my posture, how I'm holding myself, the tone of my voice—all of it."

As he explains, he straightens his shoulders back a bit more and dart a glance to Harry.

For the first time, Louis wonders if Harry's trying to read him, as well.

"You think they're looking at me, too?"

"Yes, that's how they communicate."

"Must make you tired," Harry says,

"trying to stay calm for the dogs all the time."

The two don't speak for a few paces as Louis keeps the rhythm of his steps in the snow.

Harry breaks the silence.

"I just realized; did you really name your dogs after the deer in the Rudolph movie?"

Louis laughs.

"Yes, yes I did."

"That's so cool, do you want me to take a turn up front?"

Louis glances around, surprised to realize he's been trudging along for quite a distance.

They won't make that kind of time with Harry in lead, he bets.

"Have you ever been on snowsh—"

The dogs' screams interrupt him.

"Yes, Blue, we're going."

Louis turns to start moving again just as he hears a different kind of scream—high-pitched and distinctly girly.

It's Harry.

"Look out!"

Then he sees it.

A huge cow moose is coming around the corner of the trail directly at them.

She stops at the noise of the dogs, swivels her ears, blows snot out her nose, and stares at them.

She's standing in the middle of the trail about three team-lengths away.

Fifteen hundred pounds of unpredictable animal with razor-sharp hooves.

Blood hammers down Louis' arms leaving his elbows feeling as if they aren't part of his body.

All moisture leaves his mouth.

His legs feel rooted to the trail and for an awful second, all he sees is black.

She won't give up the trail. With her long, narrow legs, she'll sink in the new snow.

Behind him, Harry shouts.

"Louis! Come on!"

The dogs shove into Louis' legs and he snaps out of his panic.

"Git!"

Louis screams.

He waves his hands above his head to look bigger.

"Go on! GET OFF THE TRAIL!"

His heart pounds.

This can't be happening...

Chapter Text

The moose sways a little on the trail, as if indecisive. 

Louis shrieks louder and stomps his feet. 

She looks behind her. 

Seems to think about it. 

Then she puts her head down and fucking charges toward them.

Louis lets out a horrified scream, but she keeps steaming toward them like a train on a track. 

She's charging at a gallop, and it's as if he's watching her in slow motion. 

Time has slowed down to a crawl. 

Louis sees frost blowing from her nose like a steam engine. The trail shakes from her thundering hooves. She's so big. He can even smell her. Pungent. Horsey.

"Look OUT! LOUIS?!" 

Louis hears Harry scream behind him.

And of course he doesn't think—just bends down and swiftly yanks off a snowshoe. 

When he stands, she is less than ten paces from them. Bearing down. 

The dogs have gone quiet. 

His pulse roars in his ears. 

And he whips the snowshoe as hard as he can. 

It flies through the air like a Frisbee, and hits her square in the face. The thwack sound is surprisingly loud in the cold air. 

She stops short. Her large brown eyes study us.

"AUGH?! GO! AWAY!" 

Louis screams in frustration, waving his arms frantically and clapping his hands together.

And then, she finally wheels around and charges back down the trail.

Louis' knees buckle and he falls in the snow. 

The dogs break into a frenzy of barking in their desire to chase. 

Rudolph leaps over Louis with eagerness. 

He reaches up from where he's sitting and grabs the gangline, digging his feet into the trail. 

He notices he's been holding his breath and let's it out in a whoosh. 

His heart hammers in his throat. 

He takes off his other snowshoe with a shaking hand.

"Holy shit, holy shit holy shit." 

Harry is absolutely losing it behind the sled. 

He hastily runs toward Louis, leaving the sled unattended.

As soon as he's off dogs explode forward, with Louis hanging onto the gang-line. 

Suddenly, Louis is yanked between the dogs, his arms stretched above his head, with his hip dragging on the trail.

Louis cries out in pain and tries to lift his head. 

"Set the hook! The snow hook! HARRY!" 

Louis grips the gangline with damp gloves, digs into the snow with his knees to try and slow them, and feels Donner's feet trample Louis as he runs. 

The dogs are powerhouses when they want to be. 

The strength of a dog team can pull cars out of ditches. They can haul loads of firewood or pelts down narrow, twisting trails. A dog team on a mission can be like a runaway plow truck.

Louis catches a glimpse at Harry as he grabs for the sled.

And misses.

"Fuck! Run!" 

Louis yells as snow fills his mouth. 

He rolls on the trail feeling as if he's speeding along in a dune buggy—only... without the buggy. 

His internal organs are being rearranged by the pounding.

And not the good kind of pounding. 

His hands slide down the gangline. 

He's losing his grip. Fuck. 

He frantically tries to pull himself up. With his outstretched arms covering his ears, the sound of his own rapid breathing is all he can hear. 

When he lifts his head to see where they're going, he just gets a face full of snow and his grip slips farther. 

If he loses the team they'll keep running right toward that moose. 

They will not come back for them, won't stop because he's fallen off. 

They're trained to run straight down a trail. he absolutely can not let go.

The team pounds down the trail. Louis can hardly breathe with the snow clogging his nose, filling his mouth. 

His hands slip further.

Don't. Let. Go.

He's dragging between endless legs, feet clawing up the trail, digging into his body. his fingers are frozen into hooks. 

He can't grab. 

Can't see. 

How far have they come? 

Where is the moose? 

They must be almost on her by now.

Don't fucking let go.

He digs his knees in to desperately try to slow them, but it just makes his grip slip another few inches. 

The sled bounces behind him. His feet kick it.

Don't let go!

He has to do something. 

Panic floods to the surface as if he's drowning in it. 

Drowning in white, frozen desperation. 

He can't hold on much longer. 

His guts must be spread out behind them. He can't feel anything below his neck.

Slips. 

Bounces.

Claws frantically.

Faster than a gasp, the sled runs Louis over, and he's face down alone on the trail.

Louis looks up just in time to see the sled disappear around the next bend. 

Shakily, he sits up. 

He lets out a painful groan and chokes back tears. 

He's lost his hat and snow is packed solidly up his sleeves, down his neck, up his nose. 

He's starving. 

His body aches. 

Alone in the winter bush. 

Wet.

And he's just lost his dog team.

Chapter Text

"Fucking idiot !" 

Louis' throat threatens to close again, and he realizes with horror that he's about to cry. 

Get a damn grip. 

He tries to take deep breaths and think.

Must get the team. 

He lurches to his feet and takes stock of all his limbs. 

Everything is still there. 

Melting snow drips down his back. 

His sleeves have jammed up to his elbows and his arms are red with freezer burn. 

His whole body feels as if he's gone through the rinse cycle. 

He's probably black and blue underneath. 

But right now, he has to get his dogs.

He begins to jog with jerky steps, following the tracks the dogs have made.

The last time he lost the team, after their headlong charge through the ditch, the snow hook had knocked loose with the bouncing. 

It had embedded itself in the trail finally, too late to prevent Blitzen from getting knocked up, but it had at least stopped the team. 

Louis can only hope that happens again. 

He thinks of the upright sled, sliding happily along. 

If only the sled fell over, it could slow the dogs down.

His heart races at the thought of the dogs facing that moose. 

Have they caught her? 

Please, don't let them be trampled.

Louis runs, pumping his legs as fast as he can manage. 

He doesn't care how much he sweats, He's dead anyway if he doesn't find the team. 

The soft trail slows each of his footsteps, like running in a nightmare when you can't get anywhere. 

He finally makes it around the corner, but the tracks keep going over the next ridge. 

Don't think. Just run. 

One foot, then the other. Keep moving.

Must get dogs. Must get dogs. 

Louis chants this as he runs and it becomes the only thing he cares about. 

Keep moving. Get the team.

He crests the ridge and still no sign. 

He stops to suck in wheezy breaths. The adrenaline is keeping him moving, but his energy tank is almost at zero.

Then he hears it. 

He holds his breath to listen, and his stomach feels as if he's just swallowed lead.

Faint, horrific screaming.

Louis bolts ahead and skirts around a white birch stand. 

Finally he sees them.

The dogs are in a ball with Blue tangled in the middle. 

The gangline is wrapped around his front leg. Dasher and Donner are locked in battle—pulling the gangline tightly, pinching Blue. 

The other dogs have jumped him, egged on by his screams of pain. It's all so horrible that Louis can barely look.

"STOP!" 

Louis squeals as he reaches them. 

"DASHER! ENOUGH!" 

Louis brings his face down right beside the flashing teeth and screams into their faces. 

It makes them pause long enough for him to break them apart and start untangling.

The rest of the dogs seem to be coming out of a hypnotic trance. 

They blink at Louis and shoot dirty glances at each other. 

Dog fights always trigger their primal instincts. They take on a pack mentality and pick on whoever is losing. 

Thank goodness they hardly ever fight. 

They argue all the time, but what looks extreme to anyone who doesn't know them is just them sorting things out. They need to do that to avoid any serious fighting.

Louis has no idea what happened. 

Did Blue try to turn around to find him? 

Did they catch up with the moose and then the fight started? 

Louis can't tell from the chaos of tracks.

"Blue, are you okay?" 

He sways on three legs, his left front leg held off the ground. His head hangs down.

Louis' stomach squeezes as if it's been stabbed with an ice pick. 

He whips off his gloves and gingerly feels Blue's leg. 

His hands tremble. 

He quickly finds a nasty puncture wound on the top of his leg next to his elbow. This kind of injury is common in a dog fight. 

He cleans it with snow, and spreads his fur to get a better look. 

That's when he finds the gash deep in his shoulder, which is far more ominous. 

Slowly, Louis extends Blue's leg forward to check his range of motion, watching his reaction. 

Blue pulls away. 

Louis' mouth goes dry. 

Did the moose kick him? 

If he has internal damage to his ligaments, there isn't much Louis can do. 

He follows the muscle from his elbow to the shoulder, and feels a tendon tremble against his finger. 

He needs a shoulder pack, which Louis does not have.

Blitzen has recovered from the fight and pops his tug to get going again.

"Shhh, it's okay, Blitzen. Settle down." 

If Louis keeps his tone low, it calms the dogs.

Uncle Leonard tells him the more you pretend at being something, the closer you are to making it real. 

Fake it till you make it. 

So just make sure you're pretending the right things. 

Because it becomes a habit. 

Considering how often Louis acts like he's in control of everything in front of the dogs, he should be pretty close to it by now.

When he unhooks Blue and gathers him in his arms, he doesn't struggle or whimper. 

His bravery makes Louis want to be a better musher. 

One that doesn't put his dogs in danger, and has enough food to feed them.

Adrenaline must still be coursing through him because he picks up the fifty-pound dog even though he feels about as strong as a wet noodle. 

And manages to carry him back to the sled. His legs wobble as he set Blue inside the sled bag. 

Louis is panting as he arranges the gear to make him comfortable. 

Once he's clipped his neckline to the handlebar, he pulls out the first-aid kit.

There's a small roll of gauze left, and he grabs that with the scissors. He quickly snips away the fur around the wounds, to see better and keep out contaminants. 

Blue watches but lies still until Louis probes his shoulder.

"Almost done, Blue boy."

Using snow to wash the blood, he wishes he had a larger kit with Betadine. 

Gathering a handful of clean snow, Louis packs it over the front point of Blue's shoulder joint, then wraps the roll of gauze around to hold the makeshift ice pack in place. It's the last of the gauze, and it's just enough. 

He tapes the end, then smooths the fur on Blue's muzzle.

When Louis straightens, he wipes his burning hot face with the back of his mitt, and takes a deep breath before he looks behind. 

The trail is empty.

Oh, fuck... 

Harry.