Girl in Ice(25)

“Stop!” I pleaded. “You’ve got to stop!”

She slowed to a walk but seemed to make just as much progress. Still, I began to close the gap between us. I cursed my stupidity, the huge risk I had taken. Remembered what Wyatt had said about polar bears: Why do you think I’ve got a rifle with me every second I’m outside?

The girl scrambled along the lip of the glacier as if looking for a foothold, then disappeared into a funnel of snow. My heart spun in my chest. Had she fallen into a crevasse?

Wind swept the ice clean; she had dropped to her knees.

I pitched toward her, collapsing next to her; her tiny form lost in Jeanne’s spare parka. “Girl, are you all right? Girl?”

“Tahtaksah,” she cried as she gazed up at the break between the cliffs. She reached up her one bare hand—purple with cold—moaning two words over and over. They sounded vaguely like West Greenlandic for mother and father, but—tahtaksah—the word felt like pure emotion. Does it mean longing? Grief? I knelt on the ice and touched her shoulder; she didn’t push me away. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

But, of course, I knew where she was going.

“Come on,” I said. “We can’t do this alone, we have to go back.”

She wrenched herself around to look at me. That face: forlorn, bereft, but also determined—I’ll never forget it—so much older than her age. I reached down for her bare hand, but she pulled it away and began a run-walk sort of totter down the hill. I followed at a respectful distance, thanking the gods of the Arctic for her acquiescence. She trundled along in the vague direction of the Shack, but soon it was clear that wasn’t her destination. I thought to stop her but could see the fight had left her, so why not let her have her time outdoors? She was headed to the beach, where a gang of big bergs battled for position along the horizon.

I broke into a trot, suddenly a little queasy about her new plan. Desk-sized floes lined the shore, creaking as they ground into each other, jockeying for space. Long, shallow waves rolled under them, nudging them forward. Driftwood like dinosaur bones gleamed silver on a stretch of dark pebbles. A hundred yards out on a larger floe, a half dozen harp seals luxuriated in the sunshine, charcoal eyes and noses nestled in glistening fur. At our approach, gulls took to the sky as ravens shadowed us, scolding.

The girl casually picked her way among the rubble as if we were out for a stroll. Small but powerful waves offered up flattened bergs onto the bank before sucking them back to the seething dark sea. She turned and shot me a mischievous grin, all her previous sadness seemingly passed, before hopping onto one of the icy rafts, squatting as if it were a surfboard. Her weight had no effect; the disk of ice continued its ebb and flow until the waves subtly picked up speed and might and—bit by bit—floated her farther out, past the first line of bergs.

“No! No, get back here!” I jogged alongside her little craft—only a yard or so from me now, but utterly out of reach. Waves leathery with cold nudged her berg shoreward before sucking it back twice as far, the denim-blue sea like stained glass surrounding it, its broader base turquoise under the water. As if claiming her, the ocean drew her in, until an army of bergs five-deep separated us.

I speed-walked alongside her, begging her to get back to shore, somewhere in my brain aware that all I did was beg her: to talk, to stop crying, to pay attention. She laughed like I was the funniest thing she’d seen in years.

“Come on, please, come back here….”

The waves lifted her, lowered her with slow, peaceful movements. Grinning, she squatted on the cake of ice. She looked calm, happier than I’d ever seen her. Only ten yards beyond her, one of the seals wriggled across its berg and slipped into the water with a slight splash.

The girl pointed to herself and said, “Sigrid.”

Stunned, I stopped short. “Sigrid? Your name is Sigrid?”

“Sigrid,” she repeated, patting her chest. She pointed at me and said, “Bahl.”

“Yes!” I said, joyous even as I huffed along again, barely keeping up. “I’m Val.”

“Bahl,” she said, as if correcting me. She stood up, perfectly at ease on her raft.

“Sigrid, get off the ice, will you?”

She laughed. Loving the hopscotch, she jumped to another berg a bit farther out; it rocked slightly under her weight, but her balance was faultless. She motioned for me to join her, chanting my name in a singsong way. “Bahl, Bahl-y Bahl, Bahllalala Bahl…”

A disk of ice twice the size of hers sailed onto shore, delivered there by a rogue brawny wave. I considered it, attempting to calculate what might support my weight. I stepped onto it, falling immediately to my knees. A wave bloomed beneath me, lifting, then belching me forward. Like a slow, sick carnival ride, it sucked me away from shore, smashing and grinding its way among the smaller disks. I clawed my gloved hands into the ice and held on. Felt the telltale signs of my daily dose wearing off: colors turned migraine bright; bergs screamed as they bashed into one another, the sound stabbing behind my eyes.

Sigrid laughed, clapping and hopping all around me on the neighboring disks, until even she realized we were drifting steadily away from shore. I remained in precisely the same crouch I’d landed in; I couldn’t bring myself to sit, or stand, or move. Chatting away, she leapt onto my little island, briefly patting my back—was this a game of tag?—before hopping berg to berg to shore. Underneath me, the great blue ocean tongue lolled, hoisting, then dropping me down, but always dragging me farther toward the open sea.