Nectar

Alpine tundra begins between 11,000 to 11,500 feet. This is the tree line. 

We’d left the cabin two hours ago and the snow hadn’t stopped. Louise and Sam walked ahead of me, clouds of future plans hanging in front of them. I snorted to myself. The irony. All I had was refilling my bird feeders when I got home. 

The plan was to snow shoe towards the biggest mountain in the range and turn back when the sun had just passed its zenith, about one o’clock. I also had a watch, but after last year’s expedition, I’d learned how to use the sky to tell time.

“What’s that?” I called out. I’d just seen something shift on the horizon.

“Where?” 

I pointed right ahead of them. “It’s shimmery.”

The both looked for a few seconds, then Sam turned to me. 

“If you’re trying to prank us, Katie…”

“Oh, okay,” I said sarcastically. “Yeah, I’d definitely make up seeing a weird glinting in the distance. Yeah, that’s something I’d do, Sam. Especially after Dennis did the same trick last time and got us all lost in a whiteout.”

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Louise stepped backwards into Sam’s shoulder and pointed. “Shut up!” she said. “Where the fuck are the mountains?” 

“What?” Sam and I said in unison. We looked ahead. 

White. Just…white.

“They were right there!” said Sam. “What the hell?”

“It has to be mist or fog,” said Louise.

I shook my head. “It wouldn’t obscure the whole range.”

“Surely we should head back?” asked Louise.

Sam looked at me. I hesitated. It was early December. The odds of a whiteout were high. If we couldn’t orient ourselves…

“Yeah,” I said. “We should.”

Sam shared a look with Louise, who nodded. He squeezed her hand. Something tugged at my heart, but I ignored it and we turned around.

In the winter, many animals migrate south. Snow is on the ground even in June, and summer is very short.

I’d started out ahead of them, but fell behind to fix my shoes. We’d only been walking for ten minutes or so when they stopped and stood, staring at something ahead. It looked flatter there, but I couldn’t see. Something about it was obscured. The hairs on my neck stood on end.

“Is it a bear?” I asked. If the answer was no, I feared we’d be attacked by a pack of wolves.

“No, it’s a…” Louise trailed off. 

“It’s a pool.” said Sam.

“What?”

I met them where they stood and stared at a large rectangular swimming pool. The air was thick with coiling steam, almost mist-like. Stone columns stood by each corner, carvings of ravens on the sides like totem poles. The water was blue as the summer sky and Sam just stared at it, mouth agape. His breath hung in the air. 

“It's beautiful,” said Louise. 

“It’s terrifying,” I said. 

Sam started shrugging off his coat and grabbing at the fingers of his gloves. 

“I’m getting in,” he said, continuing to strip. He winked at me, then grinned, reaching out his hand to Louise. “Coming, baby?”

She inched back from his hand but smiled sweetly. “It’s freezing, Sammy. I’m staying here with Katie.”

I looped my arm in hers. “Sam, seriously, put your clothes back on.” 

He shrugged and ran off. I lost sight of him. 

I rested my temple on Louise’s and watched the snow falling beyond the pool.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“I have no idea. Sam!” I shouted. “Put your clothes back on!”

“Cannonball!” 

He sprinted toward the pool—from where, I couldn’t tell. It was as if he’d materialized from the surrounding white meadow. He bounded toward the pool like a little kid and grinned at us as he braced himself to jump.

“No!” Louise screamed, but he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to. 

Anna’s Hummingbirds normally have a body temperature of around 107 degrees Fahrenheit. When outside temperatures fall, Anna’s and many other species of hummingbirds enter torpor.

Sam hurled himself forward and grabbed his knees, eyes wild with an almost existential craving. As he fell, the coils of steam seemed to embrace him, from his feet to his head, and he’d barely hit the surface when he flailed, recoiling on instinct, and screaming in absolute agony. A high, animalistic sound I could not have paired to him split the air around us and grew more and more uncanny.

“Sam!” Louise rushed towards the pool, but I roared at her.

“NO!”

She stopped and turned to me, tears shining on her face as Sam’s screams continued. Water splashed as he fought against the pain, but I couldn’t see him or what state he was in. The scream never broke. It was as if he’d lost the ability to do anything except scream. He was boiling alive. He was being torn limb from limb.

Louise looked at me and I looked back, weeping as the scream grew louder and louder, filling our ears until we pressed them with our mittens.

Suddenly, new shapes in the air caught my eye. They darted and froze, then dove and shot up again. Hummingbirds. They flew as though hunting for nectar. Had they been there earlier? 

One came close to my face and circled above, then vanished in a cloud of trills and just as fast, my thoughts turned to sugar water, like a craving. It was all I wanted. I looked back to the pool and saw a burst of pink creeping out from the center of the water. It smelled incredible, like honey in milk. 

I reminded myself of Sam, feeling disgusted that I’d forgotten so soon, yet hungry at the same time. My mouth watered as the little birds shot toward the pool, racing and trilling, about ten of them. Oh, how I wanted to join them. Then they shifted a bit and hurtled down to where Sam had jumped in. 

His screams ceased as quickly as they had started. 

I stared at the bright pink water as it deepened in color. Then the water stilled, becoming mirror-like.

Silence.

Louise was staring into the pool, her eyes asking a question I didn’t know how to answer. Tears dripped from her chin. We locked eyes and I just shook my head.

Wind speeds in the tundra range from 25 to 125 miles per hour. Blizzards and blinding snowstorms are common and in a year, this tundra can receive 25 inches of precipitation.

“Sam,” said Louise. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” She asked it like a statement. 

I didn’t say anything. 

“He was so…certain it was safe,” she said. “Why?”

I looked at her. She was still crying. “He wanted to swim,” I said. “He took his coat and gloves off first. Maybe he got hot, like hypothermia?”

“Maybe.” 

I felt full, like I’d just eaten. Perfectly satisfied. I grabbed Louise’s arm again and pulled her to me. We walked past the pool and made our way the same direction the three of us had been going. When I glanced back to see if the hummingbirds were still flitting around, I couldn’t tell where the pool had been. 

“That’s weird,” I said. “It’s gone.”

“It’s gone?” Louise whipped around and rushed back. “But he’s gone too! Where did he go? If he’s really dead, he should be…” she spun around desperately, “somewhere!”

The snow was falling thickly, more than it had before. It soon coated Louise’s hat. 

“Then maybe he isn’t dead,” I said, placatingly.

“Then where is he?”

This wasn’t right. Louise was looking at me like I’d killed him and hidden the body. I shook my head and shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know!”

“This doesn’t make any sense!”

“You’re right, you're right. What should we do then?” I asked.

She looked back at where the pool had been, then at me, then behind me. I looked ahead and saw the patterns of falling snow ahead of us. The atmosphere was so clear, I could even see the pinpricks of distant snowflakes hanging in the air, catching what little light they could and shimmering slightly. 

“I guess…I don’t know. I guess we have to keep going.” Louise walked back over to me and continued slightly ahead. I felt like I was losing her all over again. 

“If he’s dead,” I started, “maybe we can bring a search party—”

“They’re not going to find anything.”

“No, I guess not.” 

We kept walking. I tried to keep up with her pace but couldn’t. At one point, I reached for her arm but she shook me off.

After forty minutes, I broke the silence.

“Toe-check, can you wiggle your toes?” 

Louise sighed. “I can wiggle my toes. Can you?”

I stopped and checked. “Yep,” I said and smiled at her. “We’re really nailing this, aren’t we?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. Then nodded.

“Are you hungry? I’m sure I have some snacks.”

“Stop it, Katie,” she said.

“What?” My heart sunk.

“Stop coddling me like I’m some fragile thing. I’m fine. I just want to get back to the cabin. Don’t you?”

I nodded. “Of course I do. I just want to talk to you like we used to.”

“Like we—? Sam just died and then everything vanished, Katie, what the fuck are you talking about?” She walked right up to me. “This is just like you, you know. You make everything about you. That weird argument with Sam? As if he’d been intentionally tactless? He was just joking about the prank and you took it way too far—”

“Too far?” I interrupted. “We nearly died because of Dennis—all of us! A prank is more dangerous on a snow hike than—”

“Yes—Dennis! Not Sam!”

“Oh, I see, so when Sam does anything, he’s a saint, but as soon as I stand up for myself, I’m attacking your beloved!”

Louise stared at me in disbelief. “Don’t you care that he’s gone?”

I squeezed my eyes before turning my back on her. This was insane. 

I looked ahead for the falling snow patterns I’d seen earlier, but couldn’t find them. Then I watched my gloves catching snowflake after snowflake. I looked again and could make out coiling, swirling shapes in the air.

Mist. Mist had fallen, thick and sharp ahead of us. Just like before.

“Don’t turn your back—” Louise started but I interrupted her.

“Shut up!” 

The air thrummed and we waited. I wanted to run but the only way to go was straight into the mist. 

I was such an idiot. Of course it wasn’t over. 

Their breathing and heart rate slow, and their body temperature can fall as low as 48 degrees Fahrenheit. When the temperature warms, the hummingbirds can become active again in only a few minutes.

Something shifted and I noticed a figure within the haze, someone tall in bright red. As the air thinned out, or perhaps as the person moved gradually closer, the hairs on my neck stood up. He was limping slightly, stiff as though every bit of him hurt. I realized with a stone in my stomach that he was not wearing anything pink or red. He wasn’t wearing anything at all. It was his skin, vivid, stark against the swirling cloud around him and the new snow below his feet.

“Sam?” 

Behind me, Louise stifled a sob. “Oh my God,” she choked.

Every nerve in my body felt like it wanted to implode, curling in on themselves until they popped open again. I could hear every snowflake landing around me, see every curl of mist dancing in a ready taunt. 

Sam stopped walking seven paces short of me. He smiled, though his eyes shone with a darkness I’d glimpsed in Louise. I stared at his body, and my stomach turned over. Saliva filled my mouth as I dropped to my knees and puked.

“That’s right,” he said. His voice was smug above me.

“You—skin—” I muttered, pressing my stomach. I retched again.

“Please, Kate” he said, shuffling closer. “Come here.” 

I felt him bend down towards me and scrambled quickly to my feet.

“Stay back!” 

“Sheesh, I get it—Don’t touch. You know, Kate, I don’t think you ever liked me.” 

I stared at him for the second time. His skin was gone. Crimson muscle covered every inch of him; muscle, sinew, and tendon. I couldn’t look at his face. I started to heave again and looked away.

“I liked you. I liked you a lot,” I whispered. “You’d become one of my best friends. Even dating Louise, you were one of my best friends.” 

Kate. He said ‘Kate.’

Sam shifted the weight between his feet. I squeezed my eyes shut. “That’s a lie. Louise told me you were always the jealous type.”

I held back a new wave of nausea and made it sound like a laugh. I forced myself to look at him again. “Nothing much to be jealous of if you ask me.”

Sam grinned at me, then winked at my expression of revulsion. He glanced over my shoulder and stretched out his arms. “Finally,” he muttered.

“What’re you—” I started.

Behind me, the snow crunched and I turned just in time to see Louise rushing past me and into Sam’s arms. Though his body seemed to flinch at the contact, his eyes showed no pain. In fact, he caught my eye and winked, holding her tightly around her chest. At the same moment, the mist, which had clearly been waiting, at once lifted, revealing a snow-covered mountain range right behind him, right in the direction we’d been walking that morning. Sam chuckled at my astonishment.

“Bit turned around?” he asked.

“Give Louise back to me,” I said.

“No.”

“She’s my best friend!”

He laughed a high pitch laugh, cruel and unlike anything Sam had ever sounded like before he’d jumped into that pool.

The mountains flickered and suddenly they were a vivid, tropical green, the sky above as blue as summer and the mist returned in full force until I couldn’t see anything of Sam or Louise.

“Louise!” I shouted. “Louise!”

I whipped around, but didn’t dare run. The air was still swirling and I couldn’t see the snow anymore. That’s when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up again and a wave of craving returned. Sugar water. I smelled it in the air, and I smelled flowers, lilies and cherry blossoms and peonies and roses and the smell of rain on the pavement and it was so, so much like summer.

I tore my gloves off. Then my hat and scarf. I unbuttoned my coat and then pulled the zipper down. 

It was so hot. 

I could see a road toward the mountain, and I walked toward it, removing more of my clothes as I went. I could see birds flying and landing in the trees, taking flight as I approached them. A raven appeared right in front of me, croaking like a frog. I just laughed and patted him, but he followed me, croaking and croaking.

Then I heard the hummingbirds. Jealous, jealous, jealous. They trilled incessantly, darting in sharp lines around me and the raven.

“Oh, Katie, it’s your favorite season!” Louise stood just a few paces away in her swimsuit. The pool had re-appeared. “Come on, let’s do a cannonball together.” 

“What about Sam?” I asked.

“Who?”

I grinned and looped my arm around hers.

“One, two, three—cannonball!”