The ice began to crack beneath her boots and she froze; the only movement she was willing to make in that instant was a glance down at the spider-webbing lines encasing her.
“I only wanted to talk, Sam. Now look at what you did? Don’t make any sudden movements, try to spread your body weight.”
Sam’s eyes flicked briefly to Curtis, then to the rifle in his hands that he had been hunting her with. He only just recently lowered it. She’d seen too much, and he didn’t intend for her to get away alive, regardless. Her hand moved to her jacket pocket to clutch at her compass. Her lifeline. No one could know about the compass — especially not Curtis — so she was about to gamble with her life.
“What is there to talk about?” Sam asked, keeping perfectly still. “Where to hide my body?”
His face darkened. Curtis already knew that she knew, but it was another thing entirely to hear it out loud.
Another loud crack. Then another. Curtis began to back away slowly, making it evermore evident that he wasn’t going to help her. Hell, the ice was about to do his job for him.
The joke was on him. Sam jumped.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his new confusion evident.
She jumped again, bracing for the pain that was to come next. Somewhere in her peripherals she could see Curtis take a step forward as though he were having second thoughts, but it was in that moment that the ice gave way beneath her with a resounding crack. Sam fell through and was met by what felt like a thousand icy knives and the force of the water’s current.
It took everything Sam had to even move against the cold or to open her eyes, but she removed the now-glowing, vibrating compass from her pocket, gripping onto it for dear life. She looked at the wildly spinning arrow and the vibrating grew steadily stronger, as though it was just as frantic as she was. Her thoughts were scattered and fragmented, but she was able to clear her head enough to think one single word, and have it resonate through her thoughts clear as a crystal bell.
“Safety.”
The glow and hum of the compass engulfed Sam and, all at once, the spinning arrow came to a sudden stop and shot her body in that direction like a bullet through the ice cold water. Only… She began to feel warm, as though she were sunbathing on a Summer’s day.
It was like a waking dream, once she realized she was somewhere else. Sam could hear a couple of hushed voices and the crackling of a fire, feel the warm embrace of bundled fabrics and the weight of her aching muscles tucked within them.
“It’s been two days,” a man’s voice said somewhere through the haze of Sam’s mind.
“She was frozen half to death, and we don’t know what the poor dear went through before that!” a woman, this time. “She could have been missing, running away from something or worse. But… What I still don’t understand is that there wasn’t even so much as a track outside where we found her. She was just laying there.”
“Have you asked around at all? Looked to see if there are any missing persons reports?”
“I don’t even know where to start, really. What if she’s in danger? I thought about bringing her to the hospital, but what if she was trying to get away from someone looking for her? That might be the first place they look. And too much poking around can… Well, you’ve seen those true crime shows.”
Sam could feel the compass was still in her grip. She stirred, testing the functionality of her limbs. The voices went quiet then, and she squinted her eyes open to see a small fireplace, wood-panelled walls, and a man and a woman that were neither young nor old, but looked as though they’d spent most of their lives on a farm.
“You’re finally awake!” the woman said with relief, though her brow still creased with worry. “Would you like some soup? Or tea?”
“Give her a moment, Helene,” the man said gently.
“Where am I?” Sam croaked.
Helene paused, but with some hesitation eventually said, “You’re in Silver Creek, sweetheart. Are you from around here?”
Sam went white. “Prince George,” she said slowly. She was nearly 7 hours away by car, let alone making the trek on foot. The couple looked more shocked than she did, but a thought came to her.
Curtis didn’t know she was still alive, and she was far enough away now that he wouldn’t find her, anyway. This would give Sam a chance to figure out what the compass was for, and to come up with a plan to bring Curtis to justice. First though, she needed to heal. With that conclusion, she visibly calmed, and smiled a little to play it off. This seemed to calm the couple down as well.
“Well how in the hell did I get all the way over here, I wonder?”