A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (7 page)

"Hey!" Sakura shouted
from up ahead on the path. "Come look at this!"

Kara took Hachiro's hand again
and they raced after their friends, who had become gray silhouettes in the
snow. They had reached an opening in the trees and now Kara and Hachiro emerged
behind them and joined them all on a rocky outcropping that fell away just
ahead into a steep slope down to the city below. They could see only a
white-veiled hint of lights far, far beneath them.

"Wow," Hachiro said,
grinning at Kara to let her know he was imitating her.

She didn't mind. Anyone who didn't
say 'wow' at such a view in the midst of a snowstorm had to have something
wrong with them, as far as she was concerned. Now, though, she had other things
on her mind.

"It's getting really bad,"
she said.

Glancing around, she saw in her
friends' eyes that they felt the same. What had seemed like an adventure ten
minutes ago now seemed like a terrible idea. But they could never have
predicted the storm would grow so much worse so quickly. To Kara it seemed
almost unreal that a gentle snowfall could turn into a blizzard in such a short
time, but the weather had turned on them.

"We've seen it. Let's go
back," Ren said. Despite how much he had liked the idea before, he now
seemed as anxious as any of them.

In unspoken agreement, they all
started back toward the trees, which had become little more than strange
apparitions in the storm. Long, bare branches reached skeletal fingers into the
white sky, and black pines were blanketed in snow.

"Wait," Sakura said.
"Which one?"

"Which what?" Miho
asked.

But Kara saw immediately what
Sakura meant. This overlook must have been very popular, because as they
approached the trees she could see the narrow openings of at least four
different paths — no, five — without any way to tell which one had
brought them here.

"I think it's the middle
one," Hachiro said.

"It's not either of the two
on the right," Sora added quickly.

"No. It's that one,"
Sakura said, pointing to the second from the left.

A ripple of fear went through
Kara. With all of the other things she had reason to be afraid of, it had never
occurred to her that she would encounter such fear in such an ordinary way. But
as they looked around at the various paths and the wind gusted harder and the
snow accumulated almost impossibly fast at their feet, piling up on top of
their jackets and hats and hoods, she felt real terror growing inside of her.

"We have to get back,"
she said.

Hachiro grabbed her hand. Through
her glove, she felt him squeeze tightly. "We'll be okay. I promise."

Kara pulled the collar of her
shirt up over her mouth and nose, hoping to block the wind. The temperature had
plummeted in minutes. Even with gloves on her fingers hurt, and the hood on her
new jacket kept blowing back, forcing her to hold it closed with one hand.

"Which is it?" she
said, voice muffled. "Let's just pick one. At least the trees will keep
some of the wind off of us."

They all studied the entrances
to the paths. Sora shook his head, throwing up his hands, and his eyes were
full of dread and panic.

"This one," Miho said.
"I agree with Hachiro. The middle."

She didn't sound entirely sure,
and Sakura hesitated. But when the others all forged ahead onto the path,
grateful for the shelter, Sakura followed. Kara linked arms with her, both of
them hiding in the windbreak that Hachiro's size provided. They hurried along
the path, ducking low branches and following a slight curve that Kara did not
remember — though she hadn't been paying very much attention. With the
snow whipping around the woods became a blur of dark lines in the white static
of the storm. Snow stung her eyes and, driven by the wind, it managed to sneak
inside her hood and down her neck.

Sakura said something that Kara
could barely hear through her hood and the howl of the wind.

"What?" she called.

"Where's that branch?"
Sakura repeated. Her cheeks were red and blotchy from the cold. Snow had built
up on her hat and clung to her eyelashes. "The one that broke off when we
were coming through here?"

Kara scanned the path ahead,
searching. Somehow they had taken the lead, with Hachiro just behind them and
the others bringing up the rear. Panic seethed inside of her. How could the
storm have turned into a blizzard so quickly? Could it subside just as fast? Maybe
so, but she knew that they could not risk waiting to let it pass. If not for
her father, she would have feared that in the storm, the teachers might not
have realized they had wandered off and might have headed back for the
observatory without them. But her father was with them. No way would he leave
without making sure that Kara was accounted for.

"Kara?" Sakura called.
"Where is it?"

The girl's voice sounded
frantic, now. Any traces of her rebellious nature had been obliterated by fear.

Kara had continued to watch the
path but found no sign of the fallen limb, and she knew that if they had come
across it before she would have noticed. They would have had to step over or
around it. Still, she kept on walking, telling herself that they simply had not
backtracked far enough yet, that the storm made it seem that they had traveled
further than they actually had.

When they reached a fork in the
trail, with one path veering sharply to the left and the other continuing a
long, gentle curve to the right, she knew for sure.

"This is wrong!" she
said, turning to Sakura, heart hammering in her chest. She saw in her eyes that
Sakura had realized the truth as well.

"What do we do? Go back?"
Sakura asked, glancing around wide-eyed as the others gathered around them.

Hachiro stood close to Kara,
still trying to shield her from the storm. She just wanted to be back at home,
inside and warm, with her arms around him.

"We don't have time!"
Hachiro called over the wind. He pointed to the sharp left-hand fork. "Let's
just go that way. We picked the wrong trail, but we know the clearing is in
that direction. This path must meet up with the one we took originally, or
maybe it leads straight to the clearing."

"You don't know that,
Hachiro!" Ren said, his words almost lost in a gust of snow.

"We can't go back,"
Miho said. "I can't even feel my feet
now
!"

Kara looked at Sakura, searching
her eyes. Sakura had been right about which path they should have taken, or so
they all now believed. If she said to go back, then Kara would go back. She
knew they all would.

"She's right," Sakura
said. "We can't spend any more time up here than we have to."

The wind stole some of her
words, but Kara understood. She nodded. "All right, we go —"

"Hachiro!" Ren
shouted.

They all turned to see that he
had backtracked several paces. In the gray-white tunnel formed by the trees on
either side and the blotted out sky, he looked like little more than a shadow,
though he stood only ten feet away.

"What's wrong?"
Hachiro called to him.

Ren threw his arms wide. "Where's
Sora?"

Kara's heart went as cold as the
rest of her. She stopped breathing a moment. They all turned round in circles,
looking into the trees and both ways up the trail.

"Oh, my God," Kara
said.

"He must've turned back!"
Hachiro said.

"Or wandered off the trail!"
Kara called, half-turning her face from the wind.

Miho had covered her face with
her hands, but now she lowered them, revealing the desperation in her eyes.
"We've got to go back for him!"

Kara glanced at the trail they'd
been about to take, the one she thought would lead them back to the rest of
their group, but then she pulled her gaze away. She nodded and started past
Hachiro.

"No!" he said.

Kara stared at him. "We can't
just leave Sora out here alone!"

Hachiro pointed to the trail.
"You and the girls go. Ren and I will get Sora and catch up."

Ren took a couple of steps back
toward them. "We will?"

Kara grabbed Hachiro's arm. Somewhere
in her brain she knew the Japanese word for 'sexist,' but was too cold to think
of it.

"You're not sending us
ahead just because we're girls!" she shouted into the wind, blinking away
snowflakes.

Hachiro shook his head
vigorously. "No! Yes, I want you safe, but someone needs to get back to
the group and tell Mr. Yamato we're still out here."

Kara hated parting from him, but
Hachiro was right. Someone had to go back. As much as she would have liked to
stay with him, she worried about Sakura and Miho as well and wanted to make
sure they reached the group safely.

"If you get back to the
rocks and you haven't found him, don't search. Not in this. I'm going to be
waiting for you," she said.

Hachiro gave her a quick kiss
and then he turned and started back down the path, shouting for Sora. Ren
joined in the shouting and the two of them picked up their pace, jogging into
the whiteness until it swallowed them completely.

"Kara, come on!"
Sakura said.

With one final glance — the
snow already filling in the prints Hachiro and Ren had just made — she
turned and started up the left-hand trail. Miho and Sakura linked arms with her
on either side and the girls raced along this new path, branches drooping
overhead, the storm buffeting them.

They rushed along, huddled
together, but had gone no more than a hundred yards before their path joined
another. Kara thought it might be the one they had originally taken to get out
to that stony bluff overlooking the city, but she dared not express her hope
aloud. They kept on, trudging through the deepening snow. Her fingers and toes
and face were numb, her legs like blocks of ice, and she knew that her friends
must feel the same, though they traveled in silence.

One moment the trees were
sagging and swaying in the storm all around them, and then they were surrounded
by nothing but white. They had arrived in the clearing without even realizing
it. Through the storm she could see vague figures all around them.

"Dad! Mr. Yamato! Someone
help!" she called.

Shouts came in reply and the
figures rushed through the blizzard to reach them. She heard her father's voice
calling her name, and then he appeared out of the storm and took her in his
arms, asking if she was all right, tearing off his gloves and using his hands
to rub her cheeks and warm her face.

"I'm okay," she said,
barely aware that she had reverted to English. "We'll be okay. But the
boys are still out there. We lost Sora somehow, and Hachiro and Ren doubled
back for him."

She quickly described the paths
they had taken, the rocky overlook they had found, and where she thought the
boys would be. By that time Mr. Yamato, Miss Aritomo, and Mr. Sato had joined
them and listened carefully. With their hats and jackets coated in snow they
looked like they were being slowly whited out, erased from the world.

"Where is everyone else?"
Sakura asked, for the clearing was nearly empty.

"I sent the rest of the
group on their way to get the students off the mountain," Mr. Yamato said.
He looked scared and confused. "I don't know how the weather turned so
quickly. There was nothing in the forecast about a blizzard like this. Just
light snow, and even that wasn't supposed to come until tonight."

Her father cupped her cheek in
his hands. "Keep moving, Kara. Go down with Mr. Sato and Miss Aritomo. The
rest of us will find the boys and follow."

"No!" Kara said.
"Dad, please. Come down with us."

Hachiro was already out there in
the blizzard. Now that she had her father back, the idea of leaving him behind
up there on the mountain made her frantic. She didn't even want to go back down
without Hachiro, but she knew that they all risked frostbite if they stayed up
here much longer.

"Kara, Mr. Yamato and I are
going to —"

"Harper-san," Mr. Sato
said, his big glasses spider-webbed with ice, "please go with Kara. I will
search with Mr. Yamato.

Kara's father hesitated and she
grabbed his hand, silently pleading with him. Then he nodded.

"All right," he said,
looking up at Miss Aritomo. "Let's get these girls off the mountain."

Hachiro's throat was raw from
shouting. His head pounded, the cold like a vise on his skull. His gloved hands
were stuffed into his pockets and he could no longer feel much at all in his
feet. He thought he might have to stop and take his boots off, use his hands to
rub some life back into his feet, but didn't know if that would help or if the
exposure would only make it worse.

"Sora!" Ren shouted at
his side. "Where are you? Can you hear us? Sora!"

They struggled along together
side by side, Ren peering into the trees to the right of the path and Hachiro
scanning the woods to the left. Another thirty yards and they would be out of
the woods and back at the rocky overlook whose allure had gotten them all into
such trouble in the first place.

"Sora!" Hachiro
screamed into the storm.

He opened his mouth to yell
again, but paused, thinking he'd heard some kind of reply from the thickness of
the snow-covered woods. It might have been the wind, or the creak of a tree
felled by the blizzard, but he did not think it had been either.

"So —" Ren
began.

Hachiro clamped a hand on his
shoulder, shushing him. "Quiet. Listen."

They stood still and silent for
the count of ten, but heard nothing but the cry of the wind. Hachiro glanced at
Ren and nodded and the two of them shouted again, this time in one voice,
calling Sora's name into the storm, into the woods.

A voice cried out in reply.

"Tell me you heard that!"
Hachiro said, turning to Ren.