“Woohooo!” we cry, giddy as schoolboys.
The cold wind whips against my face, bright and fresh and alive, and I’m glad I didn’t wear a slider’s mask. A small patch of pines runs toward us, like they’ve got feet and they’re the ones moving, not us. I cut hard to the right, carving a curving line in the snow, while Buff goes left.
We whip around the trees and then come together on the other side. I lean forward to gain speed, edging in front of Buff, and then angle across his path, switching sides. The game is on, cat and mouse we used to call it, and Buff passes me, swapping sides. Again and again we trade places, ripping a continuous zigzag down the slope.
The hill begins to flatten out, to a perfect landing area for this particular run, but I’m not ready to stop, not ready for the distraction from real life to end, so I lead Buff across a swatch of ice that gives us enough momentum to get to another slope, one that slices through the forest. It’s not intended for sliding, but I feel invincible, like I could slide right through a tree or boulder or anything else that tries to get in my way.
With a whoop, I lift the tip of my slide up and over the edge of the next hill. I’m forced to half-skid/half-turn hard to the right when a sharp gray boulder rises up directly in our path. Powdery snow sprays all around me as I hit a soft patch, cutting back to the left to avoid the edge of the trees on the right hand side.
The challenging natural course doesn’t get any easier from there. A couple of times I think I’m freezed when the slope narrows and trees and rocks close in on all sides and sometimes right in front of me, but I always barely manage to squeeze through even the tiniest gaps. I can still hear the scrape and whoomp of Buff’s slider behind me, so I know he’s managed to follow in my wake so far.
Invincible. That’s what we are. Indestructible.
Such are my thoughts as I cross a trail that leads away to the east, back toward the village. That’s when something grabs me from beneath the snow.
~~~
One second I’m invincible, a slider warrior, and the next I’m airborne, like some icin’ snowbird, except with a broken wing, unable to fly, flipping and spinning and going so fast that there’s only one thing to do.
Crash!
My right shoulder hits first and it feels like I’ve landed on sheer stone, except for the fact that it’s white and my bones crunch through it—and I know for a fact that my shoulder isn’t hard enough to break through rock. So it must be snow. Well, more like a mixture of snow and ice, hard packed and without much give to it.
Then I tumble end over end, arse over heels, shoulders to tailbone to knees to bones and parts I don’t even know the names of. It hurts like I’m getting a beat down from Abe all over again.
Eventually though, the friction of my coat and slider against the snow pinches in enough to bring me to a stop, leaving my head spinning and my heart pounding. I stare at the gray-covered sky, which seems to be moving a chilluva lot more than usual. Or maybe it’s me that’s moving. Or something else entirely.
Buff skids to a graceful stop beside me. “Whoa, man, you all right?” he says.
I go to nod, but my neck feels stiffer than a wood plank. “Urrr,” I say, which obviously means yah.
“What happened?” he asks
Even if I knew, I wouldn’t be able to tell him. “Hurts,” I manage. And then, “Urrr.”
“Anything broken?”
More like everything broken. But I’m just being a baby. The wind’s knocked outta me and I got a few bruises—nothing major. I’ve had worse. “Need…a second,” I say, whistling in breaths between puckered lips.
“What the chill?” Buff says, but this time he’s not speaking to me. He’s looking back up the hill, back toward where I fell, where something—I swear to the Mountain Heart I’m not making this up—grabbed me. It was like it reached up from beneath the snow and clamped down on the front of my slider.
“Urrr, what?” I say, trying to twist my sore neck to see where he’s looking.
“I think…” Buff trails off. I think what? I want to ask but it seems I’ve spent all my words. He unclasps his slider and starts walking away, back up the hill. I groan, meaning “wait”.
But he’s already off. Whatever’s up there, I want to see it too, want to know what caused my fall. Burning holes in the clouds with my eyes, I lean forward and rip off my slider, feeling sharp pain hitting me everywhere, in places I didn’t even know I had. I laugh because it hurts so badly and I wonder if I’m becoming like Abe, laughing at pain.
“Holy shiverbones,” I hear Buff say as I crawl on hands and knees to where he’s standing, looking at something stumpy and dark, like a section of tree trunk, blotched against the snow. I could swear it wasn’t there a minute ago.