Snowhere To Be Found

[Grand Moff Hissa]

((Olive Mayo continued from Goblin Castle))

After the conversation, it took a really long time to search the town, even with help and even with splitting up. There were lots of houses, and Olive moved more carefully now.

Sometimes there were sounds nearby, maybe conflict. When this happened, Olive would go low. She crouched behind bushes. She lurked under windowsills. If she had to, she flopped on her belly in the snow.

It was hard to tell if a house had someone in it or not without going inside. Most of the houses didn't have anyone, but if there was any doubt Olive just moved on. Now that she'd found people she saw kind of eye-to-eye with, she wasn't sure she needed anyone else. The risk felt bigger than the reward. Plus, they might have weapons and be dangerous.

There were garages attached to some of the houses, but all of them were disappointing. Some were empty. Others were full of old, busted junk. Olive wondered if she could turn tennis racquets into snowshoes. Was that something a real person had done, or something from a cartoon? She couldn't remember, and she wasn't having enough trouble moving around for the feelings of genius from success to be worth the risk of the feelings of stupidity from failure.

When nobody was looking and the wind was loud, Olive would sometimes throw more rocks through windows. It wasn't as nice as the first house, but trying to do it sneakily became a game. These houses had been here a long time. The windows could've been broken for years. The evidence is strictly circumstantial, your honor.

The search continued well into the night. Olive wasn't that tired, but the slow progress became glacial after dark. Inside the houses, it wasn't as chilly, but there were more places to hide and less to run. Olive mostly kept the flashlight off. She knew how quickly batteries could die. Plus, light would be obvious at night. She just did quick blinks, on and off, and otherwise used the natural light that came in through the windows. The houses were mostly all the same inside. Her snow pants gave some padding when she banged her legs against walls or furniture.

Olive had just searched yet another garage. She found nothing. This one had some shelves on it, so she crossed the dark, chilly room, but there was nothing on the shelves. There was nothing under them either, except dust and little piles of wood chips where it looked like a mouse had gnawed through the siding. Olive was looking for cobwebs. She'd read that spiders lived on every continent except Antarctica, unless you counted sea spiders which were sort of different. But an island wasn't really a continent, so she couldn't rule anything out spiders or no.

After finishing the search, Olive turned and headed back out of the garage, to rejoin the others and maybe suggest turning in for the night. She kicked the door between garage and house shut behind her, then took another step.

The noose around her neck that she'd forgotten was draped over her shoulders went taught with the force of her step and yanked her backwards, at the same time exerting pressure near the base of her skull. Her head slammed into the door and her throat was constricted. She couldn't breathe.

Olive's fingers scrambled at the rope. It was rough, catching the fibers of her gloves. She coughed and wheezed and tried to pull away, but it held tight.

Then she realized: the door. She'd gotten the loose end of the rope caught in the door.

Her hands now grasped for the handle. She found it and turned and pulled it open, and was able to slump to her knees. She pulled at the noose, and now was able to loosen it enough to slip it over her head and off. She sat there on the floor, gasping. She felt tears on her cheeks and wiped them with her gloves.

A few minutes passed. Olive stood up and cleaned her glasses. She put the rope in the bag this time.

No snowmobiles here. That was all the others had to know.

((Olive Mayo continued in The Hunting Of The Snark))