A shiver racked her body. Panic closed in again. Panic over the fact she was by herself here in the dark. That no one would find her. That no one would miss her when she was finally gone. The Sirens would move on. Sappheire would likely take her place as Athena’s favorite. She had no family left, no close friends. She was over two thousand years old, with countless battles fought and won under her belt, and her life had been reduced to this moment. To dying in an avalanche in the middle of frickin’ nowhere. Alone.
Don’t panic. Stay calm. Using her brain had always worked for her before. Somehow, it had to work again.
She kept her breaths slow and shallow. Used her fingers to claw out more space around her face. Wiggled her body to make room before the snow hardened and she was truly stuck.
From somewhere to her right, a muffled sob reached her ears.
She froze, listened.
Another sob. Then a scream.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
The crying cut off. Silence met her ears.
“Who’s there?” Skyla asked again.
“Me,” a muffled voice echoed. “I’m…here. I’m here.”
Relief pulsed through Skyla’s veins. She wasn’t totally alone. “What’s your name?”
“K-Katie,” the small voice said. “I’m eight. I—I can’t find my mom!”
Skyla tried to turn that way. She didn’t have much room, but her flailing earlier had created enough space around her so she could move. Able to get her hands in the vicinity of the voice, she started digging. Snow fell into her tiny pocket of air and began packing near her feet but she didn’t care. The fact she wasn’t alone was all that mattered. “Keep talking to me, Katie. I’m trying to get to you. My name’s Skyla.”
“S-Skyla is a weird name.”
“It is,” she agreed as she dug. Her fingers were numb, her heart pounding hard in her chest. But she kept on digging, because anyone was someone.
“I—I’m cold,” Katie said.
“Me too, Katie.”
“I’m so scared.”
Skyla’s fingers broke through and closed around flesh and bone. Katie gasped. Skyla continued digging, using her arms and legs to move the snow around as much as possible until the small child was only inches from her. When she could manage, she wrapped her arm around the human girl and pulled her close, the heat of her upper body against Skyla’s torso a stark improvement over the ice-cold snow packed tight now up to her waist.
“We’re going to die,” Katie sobbed against Skyla’s chest.
“No, we’re not,” Skyla lied. But even she knew things weren’t looking good. The utter darkness around them signaled they were buried deep. She ran through options in her head and decided trying to dig out was better than lying down and dying without a fight. On a deep breath, she let go of the girl and reached out to give it her best shot.
Her fingers dug into ice-cold snow. From somewhere deep below, a rumble echoed. Fear wound its way around her heart just as the earth shook with a force that knocked Katie into her and brought snow falling down around them.
“Skyla!”
Skyla grabbed onto the girl. “Take a deep breath, Katie! Fill your chest with as much air as you can!”
The shaking continued until Skyla wanted to scream. She knew they were dropping deeper into the snow, farther from salvation. She held tighter to the girl. Katie sobbed against her chest.
The shaking stopped. Skyla went right to work, digging around their faces to create another pocket of air. Then stopped short when she heard a noise.
She stilled. Listened.
“Is that…?” Katie started.
The sound echoed again. Muffled, but distinct. A voice.
Hope leaped in her chest. No, not one voice, Skyla realized. Several. There were people out there.
“Here!” she screamed. “We’re here!”
“We’re here!” Katie yelled at her side.
The voices increased in intensity, and then a flicker of blue light cut through the darkness. Then another, and another, until the snow near her face began to break away piece by frozen piece.
Adrenaline coursed through Skyla’s body as she struggled toward the light. Snow flicked into her eyes. Then a hand broke through, followed by another voice. This one not muffled, but clear and strong. “We’ve got another one!”
Relief was like the sweetest wine. Warm and brisk and encapsulating. Katie sobbed out her excitement.
“Grab my hand,” the voice yelled.
Skyla grasped Katie’s arm, pulled it up. “Take the girl first!”
Snow kicked back in Skyla’s face as Katie was drawn up and out of the hole, then Skyla reached for the hand held out for her and used her boots to dig in for leverage so she could climb.
Bright light burned her eyes as she was hauled out of the broken windows of the railcar. Voices echoed around her. She held up her hand to block the glare and saw dozens of people digging in the snow, some holding flashlights to aid the rescuers. A shiver racked her body, the night air decidedly colder than it had been in that frozen pit. From the corner of her eye, she saw someone whisk a blanket around a young girl with dark hair. Saw a man and a woman rushing toward the girl. They grasped her in a tight hug and rocked her back and forth.