HIS BREATH STOPPED AND he was paralyzed by the cold. The skis dropped away slowly into the deep. As the cable fell, limp into the depth, the dogs paddled away in six different directions.

He began to sink.

Sink or swim were the only options he could see open to him. His limbs were stiff and heavy. The cold was sharp and it burned him numb.

Swimming had never been a strength of Joel’s. He gasped, throwing his arms with all the strength he could find. Did the Gabriel know that about him? He wondered.

Wet clothing dragged heavy on his tired arms and legs as he swam for the ice cliff. In the breaths where he could look ahead, he aimed as best he could for the jagged fissure. Sensation faded from his feet. Then from his calves. He was losing feeling in his hands. He turned, stretched and twisted his ankles and shook his knees as much as he could against the weight of the water. And he wriggled all of his fingers and toes.

And he had no sensation to tell him whether his limbs were even moving.

Tactile sense was receding from his wrists. Then his forearms up to the elbows. And his calves. Fighting a sense of panic, he told his arms and legs to move with no way of knowing if they were obeying or not.

When he was able to pull his face up to look ahead, he saw how unbearably far the fissure was. And how desperately slowly he was moving. But he was moving. The numb signals he was sending to his limbs were making him move.

He put more mental effort into motion, and did all he could to calm his mind. And he thought he had a sense of what this exercise might be about. The idea terrified him. Fear spurred him on.

His torso, his shoulders and hips were all that he could feel. Coordination was getting harder. And he was slowing down.

He didn’t think he could finish the swim.

~~

Joel held the few gasps of breaths he could take for as long as he could, shaking in panic for the surface every few strokes. His arms were too tired now. He swam with his hands by his sides and his legs together, propelling himself with his legs and feet. He made each breath last for as long as he could bear. Whenever he had momentum to carry him forward he rested.

Every stroke, every yard he moved forward felt like it would be his last. For all of the last twenty feet, he was sure he couldn’t do it. But he did. After an impossibly long time making flicks with his legs and feet, he floated in the freezing water by the tiny ledge. He stayed in the water, hoping to gain strength to heave himself out.

Eventually he bobbed up to land his elbows on the ledge. It took all the strength he had to writhe and coil himself up. When he did, the ice and snow burned and he couldn’t tell whether the sensation was because the ground was colder than the water, or because it was warmer.

Whatever it was, it was agony, but still he couldn’t get up past his knees and elbows.

That wouldn’t be enough mobility to get himself up to the crack in the ice. A hollow laugh shook him as he realized that the cleft in the cliff could just be an opening to a chasm. The shake in his chest made him cough. The cough racked him and hacked on uncontrollably.

His hacking cough started a small avalanche directly above him. the fissure was going to be blocked. Joel forced himself to his feet. He felt like his feet were gone and he was stood on the stumps of his ankles. Falling through the crack was all he could do.

He toppled forward and tumbled. Putting out his arms, his hands hung limp and useless. He remembered being afraid to shake his wrists, because he thought his hands might fall off. He saw something, a figure as he plunged headlong into the darkness.

Then nothing. And then a blur of color and noise.