Back to ordinary ground, ordinary temperature, no remaining evidence beyond perhaps some scorched or disturbed earth beneath where the ice had stood.
That was what should have happened.
It didn't appear to be what had happened.
The mountain was still there. Not just present but apparently significant enough, visible enough, persistent enough that it had acquired a name in the mouths of the people talking about it.
The great white ice mountain. A landmark. Something that people were referencing not as a past event but as a current, observable, physical thing that existed in a specific place and could presumably be visited.
And attached to it, to its continued existence, to the fact that it hadn't dissolved the way it was supposed to — his name. Mr. White's name.
Spreading further, reaching more ears, accumulating weight in the public imagination with every day the mountain refused to behave like something that should have disappeared by now.
