"” That was Hemingway’s motto whenever she prepared for a journey into the wilderness.

  Armand, however, had never imagined their expedition would look anything like this. Everything around him felt new, alien, and faintly terrifying.

  Their dog sled team consisted of three large sleds loaded with items he would never have thought of bringing. There was, of course, a tent, not large, but incredibly sturdy, then salted and dried fish for the dogs, food for themselves, skis and poles, thick fur blankets, a first-aid kit with painkillers, two rifles, a shotgun and a carbine, a flare gun, and a whole assortment of small jars filled with dried herbs. And, naturally, tobacco and a long-stemmed pipe.

  The entire snowy caravan was pulled by fourteen dogs, all Alaskan malamutes, bred for endurance and hard labor, tireless marathoners of the tundra.

  The plan had been to set out early in the morning, but Armand found it impossible to distinguish between dawn and dusk. The sky was a shade lighter, but not much. The sun’s disk barely brushed the edge of the horizon before vanishing again a few hours later. Hemingway checked the leather harnesses around the dogs’ chests and the joints on the sleds one last time. She moved with the precision of someone who had done this all her life.

  Armand, on the other hand, felt utterly useless. His only role, as she instructed, was to move specific items from point A to point B. The dogs, sensing they were about to take off into the wild, whined and howled with restless energy.

  The two largest and strongest, Attila and Hector, were harnessed closest to the sleds. At the very front were the leaders, the smartest of the pack: on the left, the elder one, called “”, and on the right, a much larger dog named “”. Behind them ran two younger dogs, still in training to become future leaders.

  When every last detail was checked, Hemingway turned to Armand.

  “Looks like that’s it,” she said. “Everything’s ready. We got lucky with the weather, everything’s frozen solid.”

  “How is that lucky?” he asked. “Wouldn’t warmth be better?”

  “It wouldn’t,” she replied curtly. “Between us and that peak you’re looking for lie a hundred streams and rivers, and countless lakes large and small. If it were warmer, the peat would be soft enough to swallow us up to the waist. If it were warmer, the sleds would be useless, nothing would move. The only way to reach your destination would be by air.”

  “I see,” he said with a crooked smile. “Then I’m “deeply grateful” for this delightful cold.”

  Hemingway laughed at his disgruntled remark.

  “Do you know how to ski?”

  “God, no. My travels have never led me toward winter sports. Or summer ones, for that matter.”

  “Well then,” she said, smiling faintly, “here’s your chance to learn. Everything’s packed. Let’s move.”

  She showed him where to stand. The runners stretched out behind her sled basket, and on a small rear platform Armand took his position, gripping the wooden handles. Hemingway did the same, glanced back at him, her eyes hidden behind dark ski goggles, and called out a sharp command to the dogs.

  The sled jolted forward, then slid smoothly over the snow. Moments later, they were racing full speed through the endless white.

  *

  At first, the landscape hardly changed. They set off heading south, forced to skirt around a mountain range. The trail wound upward, climbing gently toward the lowest of the passes. Armand struggled to keep his balance with every turn. It took him some time to learn the rhythm of the sled, but once he found a comfortable spot for his knees and loosened his grip on the handles, he felt as if he were gliding.

  Watching the dogs twist and turn, he began to sense the right moment to shift his weight from one foot to the other. The journey became a meditation. The settlement lay far behind them now; the dogs pulled in silence, tireless and steady, while the snow whispered softly beneath the runners.

  They reached the crest of the pass. Hemingway halted the team for a moment to determine their next direction. Before them stretched an endless plain, crossed by frozen winding streams, scattered groves, and clusters of white ponds shimmering faintly under a pale sun. The entire scene, bathed in twilight, looked as if it belonged to another world. Not Earth, but one of Saturn’s moons.

  The convoy of sleds slid down the slope and vanished into the vastness below. Hours passed. The snow murmured beneath them; the only other sound was the rhythmic patter of paws pressing into untouched whiteness. From time to time, Hemingway’s voice would break the silence - “Geee!”, and Armand would shift his weight to the left foot, or “Haaaw!” - to the right.

  The last ray of sunlight flashed across the tundra and disappeared beyond the horizon as they decided to stop, to feed and rest the dogs, and eat something themselves.

  After their meal, Hemingway pulled an old kerosene stove from the sled, scooped snow into a tin pot, and melted it down. She kept adding handfuls of snow until there was enough boiling water, then dropped in some dried herbs, strained the brew into two tin cups, and handed one to Armand.

  He accepted it with gratitude, wrapping his frozen hands around the metal, savoring the fleeting warmth. He raised it to his lips, blew across the steaming surface, then paused, eyeing the liquid suspiciously.

  “I hope this isn’t that infamous Labrador tea?”

  “It’s not,” she said. “Go ahead, drink. It’ll warm you up and bring your strength back.”

  Armand took a generous sip. Hemingway nodded approvingly, then said with a perfectly straight face, “This one’s different. It’s an ancient recipe. A yak feeds on a certain kind of berry bush, then his droppings are dried and ground into powder.”

  She held his gaze, completely serious.

  Armand froze as if struck by lightning. His eyes darted between her and the cup while his brain desperately processed what he’d just heard. The sip he’d already taken refused to go down his throat, but he couldn’t spit it out either, not wanting to offend her. Caught between horror and politeness, he sat paralyzed.

  Seeing his inner struggle, the puffed cheeks, clenched throat, and a droplet of tea trickling down his chin, Hemingway burst out laughing and fell backward into the snow. Realizing he’d been fooled, Armand spat the tea to the side. When he saw her tears of laughter, he couldn’t help but laugh too.

  “Yak droppings,” he said through laughter. “Better known down south as bullshit!”

  That sent Hemingway into another fit of laughter. They laughed together, and every time she looked at him, the memory of his terrified expression made her start all over again.

  At last, she calmed herself, wiped her tears, and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. Don’t be mad. It’s just regular herbal tea, a mix of a few local grasses.”

  Armand nodded. “No offense taken.”

  In truth, he wasn’t just not angry, he was glad. He felt they had drawn closer somehow, he and this extraordinary woman. Alone in the wilderness, laughing and teasing each other, he had no complaints about how the day was turning out.

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  “All right,” said Hemingway, pointing into the distance. “See that patch of trees? That’s where we’ll make camp. It’ll take time to set up, so we should get moving.”

  She stood, brushed the snow from her gloves, walked over, and offered him her hand. He took it and rose; their faces ended up just inches apart. He found himself lost in her dark, deep eyes, and the moment lasted a heartbeat longer than it should have.

  Then she smiled, turned away, pulled down her goggles, raised her hood, and started toward the sleds. Soon they were gliding again through the silence, heading for the grove in the distance.

  *

  A journey through eternal gloom, that would be the closest description of what their small convoy faced as it pressed further north. The sun now appeared only for a fleeting moment each day, and in those moments, both of them would fall silent, as if in quiet reverence. The caravan would stop, and in a hushed stillness they would witness the sun’s vain, weary attempt to touch the frozen plain with a few rays of light. The shadows grew longer, the gleam shorter, and soon the same twilight would once again settle over the white expanse.

  “That was it. We won’t be seeing it again, not for the next few months at least. Farewell, Sun.” Hemingway raised her hand and waved to the fallen star. There was melancholy in her face, and Armand felt that same emotion press against his chest - farewell.

  Night after night, their small camp would rise from the snow, only to find itself again, by morning, packed and gliding onward. There was no longer any need for dividing tasks, each of them knew what to do and when to do it. As did the dogs. Gradually, they became a well-tuned team.

  On the fourth evening, seated beside the fire, they witnessed the sky’s own miracle, a celestial show unlike any other. It began with faint, wavering ribbons of green light spreading across the horizon. They wound their way through the heavens with a grace that seemed deliberate, then deepened into purple, then red, then green again. Like bodiless spirits, like a shimmering curtain driven by an invisible wind, the aurora danced in perfect silence, mesmerizing, ethereal.

  Hemingway had seen it before. But for Armand, it was pure enchantment.

  He stared, mouth slightly open, his gaze flickering from the heavens to her, searching her face for the same sense of wonder. And there he stopped. The shifting light flowed over her skin, across her forehead and cheeks, hypnotic. The aurora itself became irrelevant beside that sight. Only she held his attention. Only Hemingway. His eyes refused to look away. He could have remained like that forever.

  Sensing his gaze, as if feeling fine threads of invisible silk, Hemingway turned from the sky and met his eyes. In her world, things rarely, almost never, changed. It wasn’t monotony, but routine. Constancy. And suddenly, a storm.

  She had trained herself to conceal her emotions; here, it was necessary.

  Cold lands bred cold hearts. Rough lands, rough hands.

  And yet, somehow, she couldn’t be rough with him. And she wasn’t. She felt a tenderness rising within her, unstoppable now, even if she had wanted to restrain it.

  With his right hand, Armand tugged at the fingers of his left glove and slipped it off. Then he extended his bare palm toward her. She looked at his hand, then up at his face. The moment stretched. Slowly, she drew off her own glove, and, as if afraid to touch something too hot or too cold, Hemingway’s hand met his.

  Their fingers intertwined.

  Their eyes returned to the sky, and the old Aurora, as though she had been planning it all along, unfurled her colors from one horizon to the other.

  *

  The plain began to change. Like boiling porridge frozen mid-motion upon a hot plate, that was how the landscape appeared to Armand. An endless web of rounded hills, some small and others far larger, all shaped by the same unseen hand, created a labyrinth of passes at their bases, a place where one could easily lose direction, a land identical in every direction one turned.

  Hemingway decided they should make camp before venturing into that rippling, frozen sea. It was the wiser choice. Better to face it with a full day ahead. They pitched camp on the slope of the first pingo they encountered, following their now well-rehearsed procedure. That night, fine snow began to fall. The temperature dropped sharply. There was no fire, no trees in sight, nothing but bare, icy mounds.

  By morning, they set out again, pushing through the maze of narrow corridors. From time to time, Hemingway checked her compass, glanced toward the sky, but the stars were hidden behind thick clouds. The snow grew heavier with each passing minute. Progress was slow, but steady. Hemingway signaled Armand to get off the sleds to lighten the load, and they continued on foot, walking alongside the team.

  A few hours later, the wind began to rise, howling down the slopes. It stripped the snow off the hilltops and hurled it toward them, fiercer with each gust. Soon, moving forward became sheer torment. Hemingway stopped the caravan and approached Armand. The wind was so loud she had to shout.

  “Listen! There’s a frozen river ahead of us. In summer, it flows between these hills all the way to the sea. We have to cross it and make camp on the other side. We can’t go on in this weather!”

  His whole body trembled; snow lashed at his face. He knew she was right, they had to stop.

  “Alright. I understand. Let’s go.”

  They pressed on and soon broke out onto an open flat. The hills fell away behind them, and the wide riverbed, now frozen solid, opened before their feet. Step by step, they moved out onto the ice. The wind, unhindered by any obstacle, swept the snow in wild torrents. Ahead of them there was nothing, only the vast, rippling whiteness. Under one brutal gust, Armand fell to his knees. Seeing him struggle, Hemingway rushed to him and helped him up. She was now seriously alarmed. She knew this was too much for him. It was nearly too much even for her, though she was no stranger to Alaska’s merciless wonders.

  She began to look around, hoping for some kind of shelter. But there was none. They were in the middle of the river, nothing but ice and wind in all directions. She turned back to Armand, only to see him staring off into the distance.

  “Hey!” she shouted, gripping his shoulder. “Hey! Do you hear me?”

  He looked entranced. Slowly, he raised his hand, uncertain of what he was seeing in the whiteness. A dark shape, far off, utterly out of place in this desolation. Was it real, or a trick of the storm? Following his gaze, Hemingway froze. What on earth…?

  The wind eased for an instant, and the view cleared.

  Before them, no more than a hundred paces away, rose the hull of a ship - locked in ice, slightly tilted to one side. No more than forty feet long, an old Gillnetter from the 1950s.

  For a few heartbeats, they simply stared, overcome by disbelief and awe. Then a fresh blast of wind tore through, forcing Hemingway to act. She seized Armand by the sleeve, shouting something to the dogs. To him, her urgency seemed unnecessary. He no longer felt the cold. He barely felt the ground. It was as if he were floating, or drifting.

  On the ship’s starboard side, the railing was gone, and the deck met the ice almost seamlessly. She led him that way, across the frozen incline, and toward a small raised cabin. Inside, a narrow staircase led downward, into the hull. She pushed Armand below and settled him against the wooden wall.

  “Don’t fall asleep! You hear me? Don’t you dare fall asleep! I’ll be right back.”

  She grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and shook him hard.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Alright, alright... I won’t sleep.”

  “Promise me!” she shouted again, shaking him. “Promise!”

  “...I promise...”

  She shot out of the cabin like a bullet, drove the dogs inside for shelter, then sprinted back to the sleds. She gathered the sleeping bags, their clothes, and the kerosene lamp. Returning, she shut the cabin door behind her and descended the steps. She spread the sleeping bags across the floor, unrolled the feathered lining, and lit the portable stove. Warm light spilled over the interior, warped beams, like the ribs of some massive fish, surrounded them. Old nets, broken barrels, coils of frozen rope.

  She turned to Armand and began undressing him. His hands were like ice, his head drooping, but his eyes, his eyes remained open. He was keeping his promise. She laid him onto the opened sleeping bags, soft with down.

  In the flickering lamplight, he watched as she stood before him, then slowly began undressing herself. The contours of Hemingway’s bare skin gleamed with alternating shades of gold and shadow. She moved toward him, slid in beside him, and pulled up the zippers of one bag, then the other. Over their heads she drew the hoods closed.

  A hush fell. The storm howled somewhere far away.

  Here, only warmth, slow, spreading, tender. He felt the heat of her body seeping into him, the soft pressure of her breath at his neck.

  Time seemed to halt. Or perhaps he simply wished it would. He turned his face toward hers.

  In the pitch-darkness, he couldn’t see her, but he felt her completely. He imagined her eyes, her lips, as clearly as if it were broad daylight. She shifted atop him; his hands found her hips, burning beneath his frozen fingers as if made of molten metal. Her lips touched his lightly, testing, tasting - before melting into a long, endless kiss.

  The hills were no longer real.

  The frozen river - gone.

  Hemingway moaned, the ship’s hull creaked, and the wind screamed, somewhere far, far away.