Girl in Ice(58)
I knelt down. Her eye looked worse, red, oozing, sagging down in one corner as if dragged by some singular force of gravity. It hurt to look at.
“We have to go back, Sigrid.”
She pointed to the mountains, their brittle black teeth jutting up into the violet sky. Under our boots, a deep-throated groaning sound, followed by a drawn-out, dull creak. Is another crevasse preparing to open and swallow us?
“Mother, father,” she pleaded.
“We can’t—”
A gunshot split the air. Wyatt was making his way toward us, shouting and waving his arms. Even at a distance, I could tell how pissed he was. I didn’t blame him.
I knelt to get close to her. “We’ve got to head back, honey, I’m so sorry. I promise we’ll come back for mother, father, okay?”
Sigrid’s face crumpled with disappointment. She looked on the verge of bolting, but I took hold of her arm, half dragging her at first until she realized I meant business and kept pace with me.
* * *
NORA KNELT ON the ice, arms wrapped around the bright yellow motor that whined and vibrated as if it wanted to dance away with her. The cord looped across a few yards of ice to Wyatt and Jeanne, who gripped either side of the T of the ice-core-drilling machine, its massive screw replaced with the heated metal plate that—rigged to the motor—spun against the ice. Raj leaned into the plate, using his body weight to try to guide it across the surface, but it wouldn’t budge. Steam rose up, quickly erased by frigid air. Momentarily exhausted, Raj sat on the ice to catch his breath.
“Turn it off!” Wyatt called over the motor.
Nora shut it down.
Wyatt lifted the plate out of the shallow depression, pushing it aside in disgust. It had burned a circular hole a yard across and a few inches deep. A light snow had begun, quickly covering the perfect circle of polished ice.
Raj got to his feet. “Are you sure this is where you took the cores?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Wyatt said.
“We’re going to have to do this a little at a time,” Jeanne said, circumnavigating her invention. “It’s a pain in the ass, but we can’t slide it. We’re going to have to keep making circles.”
She got down to her knees, casually brushing snow off the ice ring. Her gloved hand froze midsweep. She sat back on her haunches. “Wyatt,” she breathed. “Nora, Raj. You have to see this. Val, keep Sigrid back.”
twenty-five
Once they got the hang of it, they worked fast, burnishing contiguous rings until they’d covered an area the circumference of a good-sized room, all the while gesticulating, talking animatedly to each other. As if worn out from her jaunt on the ice field, Sigrid nodded off as soon as we settled in the cat, head resting on my lap, whistling softly through her stuffy nose. I couldn’t hear a word over the cat’s motor. My only thought was, What had they discovered that Sigrid wasn’t allowed to see?
She woke as soon as Wyatt opened the door, squinting at him from under her hat.
He looked stricken. “Val, you should come and see this. Leave her here.”
But Sigrid had already wriggled out of my arms and vaulted from the cab. I jumped out after her, but she was sprinting toward the weird pattern of shining circles that gleamed like giant ice lily pads. Raj, his face closed and dark, knelt with his camera, snapping shot after shot. In a rare moment of stillness, Jeanne rested against her ice-polishing invention, staring down into the depths. Nora sat back on her heels next to a gleaming ring, occasionally reaching down to brush the snow away.
When Nora caught sight of Sigrid, she sprang to her feet, darting toward the girl with a cry. Nora caught her and swung her up in her arms, facing her away from the site.
“Val, she can’t see this, I’m telling you!”
Dread coursed through me; the looks on their faces chilled my blood.
Sigrid, more shocked than anything else, let herself be carried toward the cat until she saw me and started to struggle. Nora lost control of her, and she slipped free. Wyatt made a grab for her, but she shot her arms up fast and twisted cunningly out of his grasp, bulleting toward the shining ice.
She came to an abrupt halt at the edge. Far above us, seabirds rode the updrafts, carving graceful arcs across a silver sky. Snow lightly patterned Sigrid’s slouching hat and baggy coat. What is she looking at? Why is everyone so quiet, their faces turned away? The faint buzz from the morning splash of vodka in my coffee was no more, my body gone brittle with the cold, as if had I tried to move, some part of me would snap off. I wanted to run back to the cat, to anywhere that felt safe, but how could I not bear witness? The air an ache in my lungs, I made my feet move to stand next to her.
She didn’t budge.
She was a child in a state of wonder, of horror, of understanding.
Beneath us, a scene of utter devastation. A couple of yards under our boots, a ghastly diorama: several dozen Inuit people frozen in place in the midst of fighting, spears and knives drawn. Dressed in polar bear leggings, sealskin anoraks and boots. Many had terrible wounds, their necks gashed, arms severed, bellies disemboweled. Men, women, children. Some were twisted in impossible positions; others looked stunned into icy suspended animation. Like lunging statues, a half dozen sled dogs were caught on their hind legs, snarling, paws midchurn.
Sigrid dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl, clawing at the ice with bare hands. She stopped directly over a woman—a few yards beneath the ice—who had collapsed facedown across a man who lay on his back, a pool of blood under his head. A knife jutted from her lower back. Crying, Sigrid repeated one of her seven words, “Tahtaksah,” then, in her language, “Mother, father.”