Chapter 16: Lake Lights

The northern lights came up over the spruce as we crossed the lake, a green curtain that unrolled from the north.

I stood on the runners with Moose, Juno and Birch stretched out ahead of me, and I forgot to be afraid.

Pip stayed home in the cabin with his taped paw, and he had howled about it until we shut the door.

Astrid rode in the basket with the green bag over her knees and her face turned up to the sky.

The sled hissed over the ice, and the dogs ran with their breath streaming silver.

"Left at the island," Astrid called back. "Then keep to the shore."

I leaned into the turn, and Moose took it without being asked, as if he had made the run a hundred times.

Maybe he had.

The east channel opened ahead of us, a long flat ribbon between two stands of black pine.

In the middle of it the ice was dark and glassy, and near the far bank it shone with a different, whiter gloss.

"There," Astrid said. "The white patch by the willows."

I called "Whoa," and set the snow hook, and the dogs dropped their heads and panted.

The lights burned over the channel in long green and violet bands, and every ripple of them lay across the ice like a second sky.

Astrid climbed out of the basket and walked to the edge of the bank.

I stayed by the sled and let her go alone.

She stood for a long time with her hands hanging at her sides.

Then she began to talk, not loudly, to the white patch by the willows.

"I'm sorry I was ten feet short," she said.

"I've said that to the ceiling every night since April.

I wanted to say it to the place."

The lights rippled, and nothing answered.

"There's a woman here with four old dogs. You'd have loved her. She'd have made you laugh until you fell off your sled."

Her voice broke on the last word, and she wiped her face with her mitten.

"I'm going to scatter you here in April," she said. "And then I'm going to live."

I crossed the snow and stood beside her.

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