The snow came without warning, the way bad news does. One minute four hikers were crossing a ridge in thin sunlight, and the next they were walking inside a white wall: Ida, a nurse who had spent the week on night shifts and wanted only silence; Jonas, a student; his little sister Pia, who was nine and had insisted on coming; and Mr. Lee, a retired teacher who had been climbing this mountain for forty years and mentioned it, quietly, only when asked. They could no longer see the path, the wind was rising, and Jonas, who had suggested the shortcut, had gone very quiet. Then Pia pointed. Through the snow, so small that it might have been a rock, stood a hut.
Inside there was a wood stove, one candle and a deck of cards, and nothing else. But each of them had brought a little food: noodles, an onion, a stock cube and a piece of cheese. Ida lit the stove, Pia sliced the onion with the gravity of a surgeon, and Mr. Lee stirred the pot, and together, out of four small ingredients and four strangers, they made the best dinner any of them could remember. Afterward they played cards by the light of the one candle, told stories they had not meant to tell, and laughed until Pia fell asleep with her head on her brother's arm and the storm outside had nothing left to say.
At dawn the snow stopped, and the lights of a rescue team appeared on the path below, small and yellow and steady. Before they went down, Mr. Lee suggested that they should all meet at the hut again, and nobody needed to be asked twice. The next summer, there were four sleeping bags in the hut again.