A stalactite forms from dripping water on the stone ceiling of a cave. Usually limestone, but this can also happen in lava caves. Where the stalactite drips on the cave floor a stalagmite may form. Where the two meet, if they do, this is called a column. It takes a long time for them to form. Deep in its cave, a stalactite has surprising beauty.
It's been hours since I saw the sun. The air around me is darker but I'm also under the thick pine trees where the deep holes around the trees pull at the sled and I have to be careful not to walk too close to them. I don't use the headlamp unless I have to. Father's really too wide for the sled and his good arm keeps falling and dragging behind above his head like he's waving at the sky.
First I hear engines. I look up but there are no helicopters, there's no chopping in the air. The sky is clear black and the stars are all across it, the Dipper upside down and the Milky Way. The wind blows snow out of the branches, down at my face. And then there's headlights down below and coming in pairs, zigzagging their way upward and coming closer. I am not afraid. Father would not be proud if I was afraid.
The headlights stop and the engines rattle down and I hear car doors slamming. It's not long before there is shouting, voices. I slide the sled down under the cover of a fallen branch, careful not to let the sharp needles poke Father's face. He is hidden. My shoulders hurt as I step away and my hands from where they held the rope. I feel lighter, floating since it's so easy to walk.
I'm in the trees hidden and a flashlight jerks up the slope, one bright circle switching back and forth. The people are just dark shapes coming closer. There are three of them, then four even though it seems like twice as many since the moon is out now and the black shadows against the snow make it look like every one is two.
The first one is out ahead and now he turns and shouts back: "Up here! The cave's right here, the opening!"
"The mouth!" one of the others shouts and they laugh.
Down below more headlights come close and wink out. More dark shapes stumble and laugh upward sometimes with flashlights and sometimes just following the trail broken by the first people. I watch. I wait. I think of Father, cold and hidden nearby beneath the branch and the cold snow beneath him through the thin plastic of the sled.
Staying in the trees I climb closer to where the man said the cave was. I see light, flickering light from a fire. There's voices of men and women and loud music with drums.
"There you are!" a man says, off to one side of me where I wasn't looking. "Trisha!"
Closer, he is almost my age, almost a boy.
"No," I say. "I just."
"What are you doing out here?" he says. "I thought you were Trisha. Was just draining the main vein, you know, but it was like pissing an icicle, you know? Freeze to death. Your name's Helen, right?"
"Right," I say.
"So you came up with Carter and them. Cool."
"Yes," I say.
"Let's get back to that fire," he says.
It's so loud inside the cave. Everyone is shouting and a boom-box is playing music of more shouting. There's twenty or thirty people and the cave could hold more probably. Everyone is young like teenagers and only a couple older. Some of them are wearing puffy camouflage coats and snowmobile boots like they're going hunting. Others have on ski pants with racing stripes and matching jackets and gloves that have zippers on their backs. The air smells like dirt, like smoke, and the floor of the cave is hard dirt with stones in it.
I drift away from the man and closer to the fire where mostly boards and splintered posts are burning. Sharp nails stick black and hot out of almost everything. Cigarettes are smoked down, passed around, flicked into the fire. Tall shadows of the people climb up on the walls and ceiling, through the smoky air. It seems like they all go to school together and I think it's a high school but maybe they're a little older. They like to shout and jostle each other, pretending to fight.
A boy hands me a red plastic cup. I sniff at it and it's bitter. I pretend to sip at it.
"I love beer," he says.
"Yes," I say. I say cheers and hit my cup against other people's cups when they say it to me. Mostly I stand by the fire. When someone stands up from a log I sit down.
My left foot hurts and then it doesn't hurt. The ceiling stretches twenty feet above and slants down on the other side toward the back. The stone up there is black like there's been fires here before and the black stretches in a thick line across to the mouth of the cave which is where the smoke escapes. There, at the mouth, someone is trying to drag in a small pine tree or a broken off branch and someone else yells that it's too green and covered in snow to ever burn. For a moment I worry that the branch was taken off Father, but no one says anything like this and still I think of Father out there waiting for me to return and guarding my pack where there is food. I'm hungry now but there's nothing to eat in the cave.