"If you are typical, then everything said about blondes might well be true."
His gentle chiding reached Cynthia across an immense distance, interrupting her retreat from life. The biting cold had faded to nothingness and sleep was only the blink of an eye away.
"Not yet, Goldilocks." The speaker was tolerant, superior, but still friendly. It could have been her father speaking, but he was half the world away, helping others in Africa--a distant resentment flared weakly, and then was gone.
At the far edge of her perception, a small part of Cynthia understood she was dying, but she'd exhausted her last reserves and it was too late. In a moment, she'd be asleep. Her consciousness dwindled, the sound of his voice and the acceptance she'd never wake no longer significant.
He didn't allow it. "It's never too late." His voice grew stern as his hand slipped through her sodden clothing to grasp the bare flesh of her shoulder. He wore no gloves, his touch impossibly cold, and the intrusion sent a quiver of electricity ricocheting through her body to her brain. She recoiled from her descent into death as the thin spark of her life flared feebly.
"A hundred paces and you'll live. Lie there and you'll die." There was no give in him, his icy fingers digging into her cringing flesh as he turned her towards him and dragged her out of death's embrace, back into a world of icy wind and biting cold.
She shuddered violently just as he grasped her left wrist to loop her arm around his neck, her involuntary movement almost pitching him face down in the snow. He staggered then recovered, startling her with a short bark of laughter.
"I'm saving your life, Goldilocks. You won't offend me by helping." His dry humour stirred anger too distant to be important.
She felt his right arm circle her body to grasp the waistband of her ski pants. Then he lifted her bodily, her jacket gaping open at the top and the bottom to funnel the wind through to her sodden thermal underwear. The arctic blast knifed through to her cringing flesh, paring away the layers of lethargy. Hope returned.
She heard someone whimper piteously and an insane fury swept aside all thought.
"Stop whining!" she snarled.
The whimper stopped.
"Good for you, Goldilocks. Feed that anger. You need it to survive."
In a distant corner of her mind, where a small part of Cynthia was still acting as an objective observer, her fear overwhelmed hope. Someone had found her, but shelter was impossibly far and he was alone. One death would become two.
She struggled to help, but only succeeded in making his task more difficult as he half-carried, half-dragged her through the deep snow. The thin crust of ice would not support their combined weight and he sank to his waist at each step while her legs floundered helplessly to find a footing on the slick surface.
"Keep those legs moving, Goldilocks," he urged, his voice cutting through the wind's howl. "It is not far now."
To Cynthia, even a single moment more was forever. She could feel herself slipping away, all feeling ebbing from her body. Her rescuer was tiring and she could hear desperation in the voice that echoed inside her mind. Worse, she could sense the advance of his fear.
They reached a screen of bushes and he broke through with a lunge that sent them sprawling full length into the sheltered lee of an overhanging rock ledge. Two metres away, yellow light gleamed around the edges of a rough plank door, but her thought processes were now too slow to understand its significance. The interrupted process of dying had taken charge and she was sinking back into the comfort of sleep.
"No you don't." He shook her awake. "I won't let you die!"
She felt him stagger to his feet, lifting her with him as he made those few final steps to sanctuary, battering the door aside with his shoulder. The bitter wind became just a sound as she felt herself lowered onto the dry wooden bed of a trolley. As the last tenuous threads of her consciousness unravelled and complete blackness engulfed the tiny spark of life, she felt a rush of pity for him. He'd tried so hard, but she'd let him down.