I closed one hand around Leo’s struggling shoulders and clasped the hood of his insulated coveralls with the other, the quick popping noise telling me it had detached from the rest of him. He lurched sideways in an attempt to free himself of me, but I held on with one hand and dragged him back to the black water behind us. I threw the hood away and slapped a hand on Sancho as the current yanked at his legs.
I could feel Leo wrench away from me again. He was a monster; his huge shoulders and chest were disproportionate in comparison with his lean waist and limbs, and his head seemed like some block teetering out on the end of his stem-like neck. If my suspicions were correct, Leo Gaskell suffered from lack of appetite, insomnia, exceedingly high blood pressure, palpitations, and cyanosis with cerebral hemorrhage next on the list but, right now, he was just strong as an ox.
There were fissures in the surrounding ice, and the thumping of the trapped air and water was as loud as our struggling. I could see large chunks of the ice breaking apart where Sancho was sinking. I tightened my grip and tried to drag him toward me, but Leo took advantage of my brief distraction to twist sideways again and bring his booted foot up and into my face. I heard the surprising crack and grinding of broken bone. I tried to stretch my facial muscles to check the damage, but nothing felt as if it were moving.
I couldn’t hang on to Sancho and Leo; Leo slipped my grasp, getting half his body onto the thicker ice at the edge of the creek, and he watched as the ice surrounding Saizarbitoria and me broke off with the sound of pistol shots.
The last thing I saw of Leo Gaskell, with my one eye, he was smiling, showing those twisted and rotting teeth.
There wasn’t a lot of time to prepare for the effects of the water, and maybe that was a blessing. There’s a tingling and a high itch that shrieks in the back of your head when you hit water this cold, probably some kind of alarm that’s telling your body that this is a really bad idea. All I could think to do was keep a hold on Sancho’s jacket as I felt him slip down with me. I couldn’t feel the bottom, and the ridge of ice around us was breaking away in handfuls. My legs went along with the current, pushing against the undersurface and giving me just enough leverage to shove Sancho’s chest up and onto the ice.
I turned my head sideways, trying to get the rest of Saizarbitoria’s unconscious body out of the water, and it was then that the ledge I was hanging on to completely let go. I released Sancho so that he would not be dragged under with me and scrambled with both hands to get another grip on the broken lip of the ice, but it was too late. I was cognizant enough to draw a deep breath as the ice broke beneath me.
The sweeping current of Clear Creek yanked me below as my one eye looked for the surface by following the bubbles as they swirled away from me and began a stately rise to the air above. Paisleys of plum and electric green and the stark white of the moon reflected in the world I had come from. I hoped that I had gotten Saizarbitoria far enough up so that he would not be pulled under as well.
I was bleeding adrenaline, and the areas of unprotected skin were now absolutely numb. There were shadowy, echoing sounds that approached from all directions. With a sudden exertion, I slapped my hands against the smooth facade of the underside of the ice as part of my remaining air escaped with a faint rumbling noise that matched the thumping of my hands against the hard surface.
The one eye was still functioning, so I strained to see the bubbles, but the view was distorted and confusing and I continued to feel as if I were falling backward. The weight of my head pivoted me to the side and my arms trailed out behind me. I frantically tried to right myself and turn back, but my arms wouldn’t move, and my fingers felt motionless.
The dull glow of the surface didn’t appear from above but seemed to radiate all around me. Somehow it was lighter now, and I could just see that the bottom of the creek was scattered with broken tree limbs and large stones. Everything seemed to glow with a pale light with no shadow, and grand sweeps of bubbles stood still in the frozen water with deep cracks that shone like knife blades.
The back of my head hit something hard as I moved along, and a little more air escaped. I could taste a small amount of blood in my mouth, and my head was yanked down with the current and a sharp pain lingered in my side. There was a continuous thumping, but it was more rhythmical than before and was now accompanied by a continuous baritone that pressed painfully against my ears.
The vertigo caused by the current had subsided to a dull ache of inverted velocity. The uniform horizon had shifted from green to an almost impenetrable black, and the only thing I could hear was the sound of the drums that pounded my skull against what felt like solid rock.
With all the energy I had left, I pivoted to one side and tried to break free from whatever was holding me. I tried to drive my elbow into the ice above as the current knocked me back and forth. I shifted, this time keeping the movement more compact and not allowing the water to rob me of momentum: a resounding thump and then nothing. The bleeding adrenalin staunched, and air was now the issue. I slammed my hand against the ice this time, and the sound reverberated along with the drums. Shadows moved in the dull glow of the surface as I flailed against it with wooden fingers. I stretched my arms out in an attempt to widen my hunt and searched for any opening, but there was none. I almost laughed when the shadows appeared above me, and there was a strident sound, a shrieking din that sounded like the warbling pitch of Cheyenne plainsong, and I must have been hallucinating because it seemed as if a huge blade had knifed through the thickness of the ice. I fumbled a hand toward it, but it disappeared, and the pressure in my lungs built to the point of explosion. I felt my diaphragm tense as it prepared to blow my lungs clear of my last breath. I held it for a few seconds more, just as the broad blade of something like an axe appeared again.
They say that your life passes before your eyes, but that’s not what happens. What happens is that you think of all the things you didn’t get done, big things, small things, all the things that are left.
I exhaled and immediately drew in two lungs full of frozen water. There were still sounds, the echoing thump of the drums and the shrieking din of the discordant song, but they slowly faded as I wavered there in the current. The pressure pulled my chin down to my chest, and I noticed a white round speck lodged against the dark mud at the banks of Clear Creek just before the rushing eddies rocked me into the black.
“How is my English?”
Her voice came from the right and was slightly behind me. I dipped my head and looked under my arm to see a beautiful pair of naked suntanned feet. She was standing in the same swales of buffalo grass as she had before. I turned to look at her. “Good, better than my Basque.” She was gorgeous and was wearing what she always wore in my dreams, a flowing summer dress with small white dots on a dark background. A breeze drifted from the mountains and pushed the chiffon against her legs, and the sun glowed warm against the Big Horns. She was petite, and my first instinct was to place my hand at the small of her back and lift her up so that I could get a closer look at the perfect face hidden in the swirl of dark hair. She reached a hand out, then let it drop in resignation, and glanced toward the ridges of the canyon above. I followed her eyes and noticed that clouds had gathered where the mountains and sky met. There was a long line of Cheyenne warriors on horseback pressed in formation to the horizon at the break of the canyon. “Friends of yours?”
She laughed. “Yours.”
I looked back at the feathered headdresses, the beads, the fringe, and the weapons. The horsemen were painted, along with their horses, and their power stopped my breathing. One of them stood in the saddle and looked down at me, the hair a different color than the rest. “Is that somebody I know?”