Wilderness Read Online Free Page A

trees
    were holding hands – and house lights shining across
    fields of snow that hadn’t been touched yet.
    They drove slowly through a town the driver told
    them was called Muonio. They passed a long, flat
    building.
    â€œLast school before the Arctic Circle,” he said.
    And another.
    â€œLast hospital. . . Last supermarket.”
    He turned right and stopped in front of a row of
    wooden houses, and got out. The door behind them
    slid open and the cold slid in, and the woman who’d
    been sleeping smiled before she stepped out. Johnny
    heard her chatting to the driver. They laughed, and he
    heard the rear door – the boot – open and close, and
     the driver got back in and started the minibus.
    â€œSoon,” he said.
    Another left, a right, and the driver stopped again,
    in front of a two-storey building. This time, he didn’t
    get out. The boy and girl picked up rucksacks and
    shopping bags. They pushed on the side door. Again,
    the cold came in. The boy and girl climbed out. They
    heard the boot being opened.
    â€œStudents,” said the driver.
    He nodded at the building.
    â€œCollege. They learn to be guides.”
    He nodded to the back of the bus.
    â€œNot very good, I think. They cannot find skis.”
    He got out of the bus and grunted his way past
    their window to the back. They heard scraping and
    banging – no barking – and the boot was slammed
    again. The driver came back the other way, so he
    could shut the sliding door.
    â€œVery soon,” he said as he climbed back in. “Long
    day.”
    â€œYes,” said Sandra.
    They were off again, slowly, to the end of the street where there was just darkness ahead of them. He did a
     slow U-turn, and they went back past the little college
     and the two students struggling towards it, covered in
     bags and skis. A few more turns, and the town was
     behind them. They were on a straight road, streetlights
     for a while, then gone. And trees, in lines beside them,
     pushed low by the weight of the snow, branches out,
     holding hands, keeping the minibus safe on the road.
    The trees were gone now on the right side, and they
    saw a long black gap that the driver told them was the
    river.
    â€œSweden,” he said. “Other side.”
    They passed a bridge and, halfway across it, the
     border checkpoint. The lights were out, the
     roadblocks down.
    â€œCan we go across to Sweden one of the days?” said
     Tom.
    â€œYes,” said Sandra. “Why not?”
    â€œCool.”
    â€œSweden.”
    â€œTwo countries.”
    â€œThree,” said Johnny. “England as well. Manchester
     Airport, remember?”
    â€œOh, yeah. Cool.”
    The driver slowed down, as if he was searching for
     something in the trees, and then he turned right, and
     they saw that they were on a road that had been well
     hidden. The trees on the left weren’t there any more and the hotel was. They liked it immediately. Johnny
     smiled at Tom, and Tom smiled back.
    â€œCoo-il.”
    It was a low, long wooden building that seemed to
     be hiding in the snow. It was surrounded by smaller
     buildings, some lit, some dark, all like something built
     for a film. The minibus swung into a wide space – a
     car park, maybe, but no cars. There were banks of
     thick snow on each side of the hotel door, and
     untouched snow all around them, lit by high lights that
     made it brighter than any snow they’d seen before.
    By the time the driver pulled open the side door,
     Johnny and Tom were shoving each other to be first at
     the snow. Sandra heard, then felt, the crunch of the
     snow under her boots. It wasn’t as cold as she’d
     expected. It wasn’t really cold at all. She followed the
     boys to the back of the minibus. The driver opened
     the door, and stepped back to lift it. And they stepped
     back to avoid him. They moved from behind his back
     and looked – no dog. He pulled out their bags.