Chapter 26. The silence after the splash
My heart skipped a beat, making an exultant leap in my chest. He took a bite.
I saw how he froze by the stream, how his gaze slid along the shore — deliberately absent-minded, but I knew it was the gaze of a predator scanning the area. I saw how he pretended that he had accidentally noticed the strap. I bent down, picked it up, and unfolded the map. Even through the distance and the howling wind, I seemed to hear the rustle of parchment.
He read it. He looked at her for a long time. Then, glancing back—too theatrically, too—he tucked it into his bosom and walked back to the hut with a quick, worried step. The door closed behind him.
The silence that followed was different. Not empty, but filled. Tense as a bowstring before a shot.
"Have you seen it?" I couldn't help but stifle a triumphant whisper and turned to Ragnar, still staring at the telescope. "He took it!" He fell for it!
Ragnar, still as motionless as a statue, just grunted. There was doubt in his grin.
"He did it too fast,— he grumbled, his voice muffled by his camouflage balaclava. — As if he expected to find something there.
—He's a hunter," I retorted, dismissing his skepticism."He noticed the anomaly and checked it out. It's an instinct. A natural reaction.
But a tiny grain of doubt, thrown by him, fell into fertile ground. I peered through the eyepieces again, glaring at the silent hut. What was he doing there now? Have you studied the map? Making plans? Were you already on your way to the coveted "Genesis" tag?
An hour passed. Two.
The door wouldn't open. No smoke came out of the chimney. Nothing.
My initial elation began to slowly but surely sink into the icy waters of anxiety. Why doesn't he come out? Why doesn't he check it? Anyone in his place, having found such a hint, would have already rushed off!
"Maybe he's not as stupid as you think." Ragnar broke the silence again. His patience was also running out.
"He has to go,— I whispered, more to myself than to him. "He has to. Curiosity… It's stronger than him.
But inside, the thought gnashed more and more: And if not? If he understood? If he's just playing with us?
The thought was like a blow to the head. Humiliating, sobering. We were sitting here, freezing, making clever plans, and he... and he's out there, in the warmth, probably laughing at us. Above our naivety.
I crawled away from the edge and squatted down, feeling shivers running down my arms—not just from the cold. "He won't go," I said out loud, and the words sounded like a sentence.
"It's finally come to that,— Ragnar stated ruthlessly. — What are we going to do? Storm it? Or are we going to sit here until we freeze to death?
I closed my eyes, trying to drown out my uncle's voice of panic and rage. No. The assault was the last, most desperate option. A failure option.
—We'll... we'll wait until morning,— I said, forcing myself to sound confident. "Maybe he just doesn't want to go out at night." He will definitely come out in the morning.
Ragnar snorted, but didn't argue. We were frozen in expectation again, but now not of hope, but of something heavy and inescapable.
And there was silence in the hut below. A dull, mocking, understanding silence. She spoke louder than any scream. She said we lost this round. Even before it started.
And the scariest thing was that I didn't understand how.