He paused. They watched the sky to the south turn lighter. The northern lights flamed unnoticed behind them as the pale halo of the invisible sun slowly brightened to its maximum. Their faces were white with near-freezing then and they turned to go back into the caves. “They had made their decision,” Schroeder went on. “I guess you and I did them an injustice when we thought they had lost their determination, when we thought they might want to hand their children a flint axe and say, ‘Here⁠—take this and let it be the symbol of all you are or all you will ever be.’

“Their decision was unanimous⁠—we’ll stay for as long as it’s possible for us to survive here.”

Howard Lake listened to Teacher Morgan West read from the diary of Walter Humbolt, written during the terrible winter of thirty-five years before: