Avery did not sleep so comfortably. The morning light illuminated brown fur caught on the rough splintered wood of his improvised spike wall. In the bright light it was almost silver. It created in Avery a deep, permeating unease. The bear had been at least this close to his camp last night. Had the wall been enough to ward it off? Or was it merely biding its time? He had injured it pretty severely. Not enough to kill it, but enough to make it cautious.

He ventured beyond his little camp feeling like there were eyes on his back, and claws closing in on his throat.

Not far from his den there was a fallen tree, well-marked by bear claws. Avery rolled it out of the way, hoping the fresh decomposition had kept the ground warm. He started digging, using the metal top he’d torn off the flask to break up the cold ground. He had the other half of the flask with him too, and when he got deep enough to start finding hibernating worms and grubs, he dropped them into it.

It was with great reluctance that he left the shelter of the pines. The wind wasn’t as bad today as it had been when he arrived, but it was still cold as ice and tore through his clothes like they were nothing. He focused on the thought of a hot meal and kept going. The edge of the ice wasn’t far. He prodded at the ground ahead of him with a long stick, feeling for the change. When he found it, he kept going a little further, hoping for deeper water. Finally he knelt, sweeping the snow away from the ice, and reached for the rock he’d brought with him. Here came the scary part.

He took a deep breath, spread his weight out as much as he could, then brought the rock down hard on the surface of the ice. He flinched at the sound of the crack, heart racing, but the ice didn’t split, just chipped where he’d impacted it. Despite the cold he felt sweat on his brow. It took a moment to gather the courage to hit it again, then a third time. He couldn’t make himself do it a fourth, and settled for grinding away at the ice with the rock instead. Getting the hole open enough to work through took time, during which he nearly had about a dozen heart attacks. But soon the hole was there. He tied loose nylon thread from the damaged sleeping bag to his stick, and fixed a piece of tin from the flask that he’d beaten into the approximate shape of a hook onto the end. He speared one of the worms onto it, dropped it into the water, and hoped for the best. He settled deeper into his coat to wait.

The wind howled at him, dragging at his clothes and burning any inch of exposed skin. If he was going to be out here for an extended period of time, he’d need to build some kind of wind break. He shivered.

Maybe this was a mistake. Fishing wasn’t his sport, despite all his father’s efforts. He was pretty sure there were salmon out here in winter. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was wasting precious time and energy on something that was never going to work. His sad little stick and bent metal hook weren’t exactly high quality fishing equipment. Was he deluding and endangering himself for nothing? Though his mind went in circles of doubt, he stayed perfectly still.

Time ticked by and his stomach growled. He wished Dan were here. Dan used to go fishing with his father as well, but Dan’s relationship with his father was also much less contentious. They’d been fishing together just earlier this year. And more importantly, Dan knew how to cook. Whatever they managed to catch, he’d be able to do something with.

He shifted a little to unstick his pants from the ice. He remembered the first time his father had taught him how to clean and prepare his own catch. He wished he could remember what the old man had said about getting an even cook. He wished he could remember most of what his father had said about fishing. It all floated nebulously in the back of his mind, a slur of little snippets that he couldn’t make congeal into anything coherent. Things about slow still water near the bank for one kind of fish, fast moving currents for another, varieties of bait, weather conditions. He could remember the basic shape of it all, but not the specifics. All he could remember clearly was standing there squeamish with a knife, trying to work up the courage to gut his fish while his father repeated the instructions to him, looking at him like he was an idiot.

“Just give it to me if you can’t do it,” his father had said at last, frustrated and impatient. Avery had shaken his head.

“I can do it!” he insisted. “I just… You’re sure it’s dead, right?”

“Of course it’s dead,” his father huffed. “It’s going to be bones in the ground by the time you get the knife in.”

“I just don’t want to hurt it,” Avery said with a shudder.

“It’s a fish,” his father dragged a hand over his face, sitting down on a stump with an expression of weary disappointment. “It couldn’t feel anything even if it was alive. Just hurry up and finish it so we can eat.”

Avery brought his knife to the fish’s belly again, but despite himself he couldn’t push it in. He looked to Calder for support. Calder was sitting in the grass, poking at an anthill with a stick.

“You,” his father said suddenly, snapping his finger at Calder, who looked up, confused and wary. “Do you want to give it a try? Show him how it’s done.”

“I’ve never done it before,” Calder had said, uneasy.

“Neither has he,” Avery’s father pointed out. “I’ll show you.”

Calder had done what he was told, what Avery couldn’t, but he’d shrieked when the fish’s guts had spilled out and refused to do it again. He’d even refused to eat the fish when it was cooked, at least until he got a little hungrier.

Avery could still remember his shame at not being able to do what Calder had done, almost easily. He’d been determined to manage it the next time, and it hadn’t been as difficult as he thought it would be. The flesh was soft and the knife was sharp. He wondered if his father had been proud of him.

Avery’s thoughts were interrupted by a tug on his line. He held still, wondering if he’d imagined it, then he felt it again, stronger this time. He’d hooked something! There was no reel on his improvised rod. All he could do was drag upwards and hope the line held.

The fish, a salmon, broke the surface in a flurry of furious struggling that sent water flying everywhere. Avery was too thrilled that his hare brained attempt at fishing had worked to care. He dragged it away from the hole and threw it into a snowbank. He wondered if he should hit it with a rock or something, but it seemed like the air and the cold would kill it fast enough on their own. While he waited for it to stop moving he took a spare tent stake with a piece of the red sleeping bag tied to it and drove it into the ice next to the hole. If fishing really was a viable food option, then he would need to find his way back.

He stayed for several hours, until the bait was gone and he was too cold to see straight. He caught three fish in that time, all of them decently sized salmon. He lost a lot more than that, the bait snatched off his inadequate hook. But three was more than he could eat tonight. He buried two in the snow near the edge of the water and took the third back with him. It was about the length of his forearm and, he hoped, fatty enough to keep him going a few more days.

He thought about Dan again as the sun set while the fish cooked over the coals. He wouldn’t wish this on Dan for the world, but he couldn’t help imagining how much less hopeless he’d feel with someone else here with him. Not to mention how much better a chance at surviving they would have with someone else to rely on. But of course, these were just hollow justifications.

I miss you, Dan, he thought. I miss you so much it hurts. It feels like I’ve already lost a limb.

He glanced at his frost bitten foot, which he was keeping near the fire after the cold day on the lake.

And I still might.

The fish smelled amazing and his stomach didn’t so much growl as it did yawn like a cave mouth or a black hole. At the same time he couldn’t help watching the tree line, fearing any sign of movement if the smell attracted his enemy. As soon as he’d eaten, he would bury the bones as far from his camp as he could manage. But that wouldn’t help if the bear decided it was hungry while he was still eating.

He waited until the fish was thoroughly cooked, vaguely worried about parasites or diseases that might linger in wild caught fish, though it was agony for his stomach and his nerves to delay. When he could take it no longer he dug in with his hands, burning his fingers and lips as he wolfed it down as quickly as he could. He picked out the bones, worried about choking out here alone even as he wolfed down the tender white flesh rather incautiously.

It was gone all too quickly and he sat for a moment, digesting and letting the rush of being not-starving anymore gradually wear off. He wasn’t going to starve. Barring disaster, he could survive here pretty much indefinitely. That wasn’t a thought that brought him much happiness. He didn’t want to be here that long. He didn’t want to be here now. He collected up everything he hadn’t eaten and shuffled off into the snow to find a place to bury it.

I can hang in here for you a little longer, Dan, he thought as he limped away from the safety of his camp. But I really need you to hurry. Please.

He kept going till his foot was throbbing and his campfire was a glimmer in the distance. He wished he could go further, but this would have to do. He leaned against a tree for a moment, catching his breath before he started digging. His thoughts wandered, imagining what Dan might be doing now. If his thoughts returned to the other man too often, it was only to avoid thinking about the very real possibility that he was going to die out here, and the other hundred grim truths that crowded the back of his mind. Memories of Dan were a candle against the darkness. And even with a belly full of fish, Avery knew it was very dark right now.

He knelt to begin digging, then froze as a disturbance in the brush ahead of him shook the snow from the leaves. He held still, his heart a drum beat in his chest, as the bear shouldered its way through the low pine boughs between them. The last light of the day fell on its harrowed face. One eye gleamed yellow and baleful, the other was swollen shut, lost among a nightmare landscape of burns that covered that side of its heavy head. Whatever it did to him, Avery thought, the bear was unlikely to survive the winter with such an injury. He felt guilty for that, despite everything.

He dropped the fish remains and stepped back, the light and shadow through the branches sliding over his skin in stark bands. Maybe the appetizing scent would keep it occupied while he got away. The bear stared at him with its single eye, slowly advancing as he retreated. It stepped over the fish bones without looking at them. Even as hungry as it must be in this dead of winter, this was not about food. This was about driving a threat from its territory.

It bellowed, the sound almost vibrating in Avery’s bones, and charged. Avery knew better than to think he could outrun a bear, especially with his foot, but he ran anyway, cursing himself for an idiot.

He threw himself between the trunks of a cluster of close growing pines and heard the bear pull up short, felt the wind of its claws as it swiped through the gap at him. He didn’t stop to watch it lumber around the trees to run after him again. He fled back toward camp, searching his mind for a plan, any plan, that might let him escape this. But the bear was closing on him fast. He could aim for trees too close together for the bear to pass or uneven rocks and ground that might slip it up, but with his foot he wasn’t exactly agile himself. It was difficult to gauge what was possible, difficult to even think, with a bear chasing you.

He limped past the perimeter of his camp, nearly impaling himself on the stakes, and heard the bear crash through them a second behind him and bellow in pain. It stumbled back for a moment, wounded and stunned, and Avery took the brief window of opportunity to snatch a sharpened stick out of the coals.

“What did I tell you, Dan?” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, turning to brandish the stick and just barely avoiding the swipe which whistled past him to crush his lean-to into so many matchsticks. “I told you I didn’t want to fight this bear!”

Still hollering, he jabbed at the animal with his stick, trying to frighten it and drive it off. But it seemed enraged past frightening by now. It only bellowed and lunged at him with its massive claws, trying to overwhelm him. It forced Avery backwards, stumbling on his injured foot, knowing that if it landed even one hit he was done for. He swung his branch and caught the bear in the side of the head still livid with burn scars and heard its bellow sharpen with pain as it stopped its advance, briefly stunned by the pain. Avery didn’t waste the opportunity, putting as much distance between himself and the animal as he could while he had the chance. He ran into the trees again, the opposite side of the camp from where he’d entered. The stand of trees went on a little further in that direction, then petered out into ice field again. He ran out onto the ice without even thinking twice. The remote risk of falling through the ice was preferable to the immediate risk of bear mauling. But the only thing that had kept him alive so far was luck and uneven terrain. Now he was on flat ground, where a brown bear could easily cover fifty yards in three seconds. Avery became abruptly very aware that he was going to die and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

A crack of ice made him freeze, but the split wasn’t under his feet. He turned, and saw the bear not more than a few yards behind him, pulling its paw free of a hole in the ice. It tried to lumber forward and froze again as the ice cracked threateningly. It looked at Avery across the ice, knowing it couldn’t reach him, reared up on its back legs and roared. Avery knew a warning when he heard it. “And don’t come back!”

Slowly, the echoes of its roar still reverberating through the mountain, it fell back down onto its paws. It watched him for another few long minutes, then it slowly turned away. He watched the bear amble back into the trees as the wind over the ice field tore at his clothes. He shivered, realizing that, while he was not going to die immediately, it was still on its way, swift and dark as a crow’s wing. His shelter was destroyed, his supplies cut off. He could not return to the trees. He stood on the ice alone, realizing there was nothing left to do, watching the bear recede in the distance as all grew silent except for the howling of the wind.

“Oh, Dan,” he whispered. “Where are you?”