A Christmas to Bear Read Free

toboggan. Suddenly she was a one–woman bobsled team. A very good one, if you don’t take into account that bobsleds aren’t supposed to smash into pine trees.
    The impact came too quickly for Aria to register. It was one of those horrible moments that seem to pass in slow motion, and yet there is no reaction quick enough to prevent the inevitable outcome. She was still seated, but as she shot downwards, her loose right leg collided with the tree’s trunk. Now in a disoriented tailspin, she continued down the hill into the dense pine forest before finally coming to a stop a hundred or so feet in.
    At last she lay back, her head contacting the firm ground beneath her, and tried to breathe.
    You’re alive, she thought. That’s something. Be grateful. Smiling, though, was no longer a valid option.
    Aria knew that the force with which she’d hit the tree was too great; there was no way she’d gotten off without collateral damage. The idea that she should actually assess the repercussions of the collision was too awful, however. It meant looking at a leg that was in all likelihood bleeding, or worse. Yet at first there was no pain. Only a feeling of shock. She couldn’t even recall where she’d hit, only that she had.
    Nausea and dizziness hit her when she finally sat up and looked down at the leg. There was, thankfully, no obvious sign of damage. Maybe she’d hit at the perfect angle. Maybe she had superpowers and her bones were astonishingly hard. Maybe she could get down the mountain and no one would ever find out what an idiot she was, in spite of the solitary ski that was probably now being examined as evidence of the missing, foolish, lonely skier who would learn to live in the woods, consuming only snow and grubs for sustenance.
    Aria spent a few minutes collecting her thoughts before she had the courage to try and stand. Somehow, in all the mayhem, she’d held onto her ski poles. She used them to push herself up, tentatively rising onto her left foot, now a newborn fawn with only one leg, even more unstable than before.
    Success. Verticality had been achieved. And now it was time to shift some weight to her right foot.
    Here we go. Just lean a little to the right and put your foot down. You can do it, Aria. Just a little…
    And that was the moment when she knew that she was royally screwed.
    Something in her calf felt as though it would bend the wrong way and give out entirely if she were foolish enough to put an ounce more of her weight onto it; all Aria knew in that second was that causing herself further damage was not an option. Hot tears came into her eyes as she looked around, scanning the densely wooded mountainside for hints as to an escape plan. How would she get out of this? Hop down the mountain, hoping that a broken leg wouldn’t be an issue while she did so on a surface made up entirely of snow and ice? No, that would be insane. But the awful truth was that it was the only thing to do.
    She reached down, wincing as she tried to undo the binding on her left ski. If she could manage to hop at all in the clumsy boot it would be an amazing feat. And too ridiculous for words.
    The ski popped off at last and she was free. She planted her poles in the ground and freed herself by hopping once to the left, deftly avoiding the accursed ski that had served as her toboggan. That one brief leap was brutal. Pain shot up her leg as she landed, renewing the feeling of nausea with a vengeance.
    She hopped again, one step, then another, and another, until she could lean against the trunk of a nearby tree. The distance back to the ski hill now seemed like a thousand miles. Aria recalled a film she’d seen about a man who’d fallen and shattered his leg, then dragged himself miles to safety through a frozen landscape. That guy probably weighed 110 pounds , she thought. And he probably had something to live for, someone who loved him. I may as well let myself get eaten by wolves. At least they’d be happy about