A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) by Martin Leicht, Isla Neal

the steps, he must have done some pretty epic ice-dancing moves to spin around quickly enough to catch me. I’m kind of sad I missed it.
    “Doesn’t the hero get a kiss, at least?” Cole asks.
    I grin back. “Of course.” I’m moving in for the kiss when I feel the tug at my side. Looking down, I see Ducky’s fingers gripped tight around the side of my thermal. Clearly he was doing his best to rescue me too, but all he got for his efforts was a handful of pocket lint. When he sees me looking at him, he clears his throat and tugs his hand away.
    “You okay, dearheart?” Dad asks from the top of the steps.
    My eyes dart from Ducky to my father. “Uh, yeah,” I say, although I’m still feeling a little dazed. “Just fine.” I straighten up and give Cole a quick peck, which obviously disappoints him.
    There are three large sleds waiting for us at the staging area. One has space free for passengers, while the other two are already packed high with huge crates and sacks. Supplies for the prison, I suppose.
    I pile onto the first sled, and Cole squeezes up close beside me. “She looks cold,” he says, peering down at Olivia. Which, okay, is not exactly trending news, but still, at least he’s working on the whole “observant” thing. Actually, Olivia still seems too shocked by the temperature to cry. She’s just rapid-baby-blinking in this way that’s, like, disconcerting, to say the least. “Here,” Cole continues, undoing the thermal from around his neck. “This might help.” He drapes the thermal around Olivia and over my shoulders, so that it warms both of us.
    “Thanks,” I say, a little surprised. Here I thought Cole was going to jingle the jacket in her face to distract her from the chill. “That was good,” I tell him, smiling. I give him a teasing elbow to the side. “What’d you do, read a baby book or something?”
    Cole is very clearly pleased with himself. But: “She’s still blinking all weird,” he says. I glance down. Olivia is, in fact, still “blinking all weird,” her cheeks scrunched up as her lids rapid-fire open-closed-open-closed. “What is that, like, Morse Code?” Cole continues. “You think she’s trying to tell us something?”
    “Her hood,” Ducky says as he slides into the seat behind us. “Pull down her hood.”
    I oblige and tug down on the little baby lid so that it comes down to her nose. Instantly Olivia seems calmer. She lets out a satisfied baby sigh and wraps herself more comfortably into my curves. Within seconds she is asleep.
    I crane my neck to look at Ducky without disturbing the baby. “How did you . . . ?” I begin.
    “The light off the snowdrifts,” he tells me. “Her developing eyes aren’t used to such brightness.” He crosses his arms over his chest and shrugs. “I read a book or something,” he tells us before staring off into the distance.
    And that’s the last thing he says for the next two hours.
    Before long we’re underway, shushing and whooshing on our high-tech puppy-powered toboggan hurtling toward our gloomy destination. The sled jostles slightly as we zoom across the ice, jingle-jangling in this way that’s fairly Christmas carol-y and would be lovely and romantic if not for the fact that, like, we’ve just been banished to imprisonment, perhaps for the rest of our lives, simply because my baby doesn’t have a dongle.
    So, okay, yeah, our lives may be rapidly going to hell in a dog-pulled handbasket, but at least the view is spectacular. Honestly, I didn’t realize how beautiful ice could be beforeI came to this place. The dogs pull us down the makeshift path—which is just a slightly more trodden patch of snow, marked with neon-painted bamboo poles—and it’s just snow, snow, and more snow, as far as the eye can see. A desert of snow, really. But it’s not mundane, not in the slightest. Oh no. There are ice cliffs, soaring fifty feet or more into the sky, ice formations sprinkled here and there that look like