Bite Deep

I'm cold. So cold, so tired, for reasons that have nothing to do with the chill outside.

I blame Anton, for all of it. All the way out here, he kept the heat off and the windows open, mile after mile. This on top of keeping me up all night talking shop about the ancient customs of ancient peoples. We started out talking about his upcoming family party and spiraled out from there. The opportunity of a lifetime, and he didn't stop me, not that I think he could have. Besides, the alternative was being alone and being alone at this time of year really does suck. Then we left, into the cold and the dark, made only colder and darker by the lights and the trees, signs of life and warmth within holiday-decorated homes.

The trip didn't end at any obvious place, just a turn-off from the main road leading to a place where the snow looked less bumpy than the other snow. Anton left the car without a backward glance. I made a downward glance at my dress shoes and grimaced, but I knew I would follow. He knew it too, knew me all too well, considering the short time we've known each other. I'd talked to him, confided in him, perhaps more than was wise, but no one else talked to me and he talked to no one. My feet couldn't get too much colder, anyway.

"Oh, screw it," I muttered to myself, "Bite deep." My nightly prayers had been much longer, way back when. Untold variations on 'make my life worth something.' As my faith dwindled away they had ceased to be pleas for another and had instead become instructions to myself. Over the years they had boiled themselves down to that, congealed into some cold mass that worked well as an anchor but not much else.

Anton waited for me by one side of the cleared space, staring at a distant hill. "Do you know where we're going?"

He pointed at the hill. "That is the way."

He led. I followed, to discover that my feet could get colder. By the time we reached the hill they felt like lumps, beyond pain. We found a path, of sorts, a semi-staircase that needed to be climbed and not merely mounted.

"I hate this part," said Anton, as we climbed.

There was more? "Which part is this?" Please, God, let it be the last part.

"The first."

"The second is better?" Hope, hope, hope.

"No. Just warmer."

Gee, cheer me up, why don't you. "I thought you said we were going to a party."

"I said we were going to a celebration," he corrected me. "You of all people should know the difference."

That's true. I did. A celebration, not a party, only observed every God alone knows how many years or so, supposedly the original festival from which all other Yuletides were derived. When he'd made the invitation, the cultural anthropologist in me couldn't refuse. At the moment, the hypothermia victim in me was much closer to it. I looked up the hill, saw mostly more hill. "You will let me know when we get there, I hope?"

"This is the way."

Without his assurance, I could not have made it. My hands were claws, my feet frozen, I could move only by putting one foot in front of the other without regard to a destination. He must have sensed my growing exhaustion, from his ever more frequent claims that 'this is the way.' It made a handy mantra, far better than Bite Deep.

We fetched up at a cave, very deep. "This is the way?" I asked.

"This is the way." He took my hand. "You game?"

What a stupid question. I hadn't gone through all that just to turn around. This was my love, my life. My career. All I had left.

In we went, lost into darkness immediately. Without his hand for guidance I would have run into a wall or something, I'm sure. There was none of that friendly glowing moss on the walls, like in the books.

I noticed the air movement, eventually. It got warmer; I could feel my feet again, not necessarily a good thing. Then I realized where we were going.

"What?" said Anton. He must have heard me chuckling behind him.

"Following the updraft, very clever."

"The breath of life is a warm breath," he replied, sounding a little quote-y.

Two can play at that game. "This is the way."

He laughed. "Very good."

The air grew warmer, the draft stronger. Between the cold and the heat I was getting terribly thirsty. Anton released my hand long before I had light enough to see by, but I used the sound of his footsteps and the draft to follow until I saw a light at the end of the tunnel and could make out his silhouette.