Girl in Ice(74)

I sucked in a mouthful of manufactured oxygen. It tasted like rubber, but I filled my lungs with it and consciously blew it out. I devoured another, and another, the sound of my breath roaring in my ears. Pale green digits glowed on my diving watch: 35:03. Already nearly five minutes had ticked by. Arm aching, I shone the blinking flashlight—three seconds on, two of utter blackness—down into the depths, following Raj’s orange line—tight again—until it disappeared in the murk. He was nowhere in sight, but as far as I could tell, the light gave up at around ten feet down. I tilted it up, sweeping its plum-colored gaze across the underbelly of the ice, a tumbling panorama of ghostly green caves.

Raj’s line jumped again. Danced back and forth across my sleeve, then slid to the sharp edge of the ice hole, as if whatever had him changed direction, the line so stressed it trembled like a guitar string until it snapped loose, its new tail fluttering in the violet beam.

I swept the flashing light in an arc beneath me. A thin, zebra-striped fish eyed me, then shivered past. No Raj. I had to stay calm. Breathe correctly. Keep hold of the light. Not leave my body. My heart banged in my rubber chest. A frigid vise tightened around my rib cage. Again and again, I shone the light across the gloom, until it lit up a human shape. A dark silhouette.

Nora floated facedown in the shadows, her arms out to either side like an angel’s, body undulating in the current. Her bright yellow tank and flippers glowed neon in the light. A diving rope tied around her waist kept her in place, as if she were a kite maneuvered by a sea creature on the ocean floor. I screamed into my mask, deafening myself.

I lifted my head out of the water, popped out my regulator, and gasped for air. Snatched up Raj’s line, held it up close. It had been cut at an angle, clean and straight across. What could have done this? Twenty-nine minutes, seven seconds of air remained. Raj was not in my sights, but I could still help Nora. I angled the regulator back in my mouth. Again, dropped my head down beneath the slurry of ice and brine, flipping my headlamp on as I had seen Raj do. This time I left the flashlight behind.

I gripped the edge of the hole and thrust myself down into the frigid blue depths, keeping my focus on Nora, whose arms drifted like seaweed. Above me lurked ornate ice caverns, silent emerald-green cathedrals, and whatever had taken Raj. My body colder than it had ever been, I opened and closed my fists as I swam; a head-sized jellyfish approached and belched itself away.

Fighting a constant current, I swam down to Nora and then beneath her as if I were flying in slow motion. Now I could see: a makeshift trap rested on the seafloor between two sharp-edged rocks. Could her safety line have been cut as she’d tried to pull it up? Was Raj’s line slashed as he tried to free her? I seized her arm and shook her; she was limp. Framed by her black mask, her beautiful face glowed alabaster, but her eyes were closed, mouth slightly open, lips blanched. She looked dead. I maneuvered myself above her. Untied the rope around her waist, meaning to bring her up. The moment the knot came free she shot up, banging into me, momentarily stunning me. Her body turned with the current, traveling sideways.

I kicked out after her, caught hold of her flipper but couldn’t keep my grip, and she slipped free. Her body rotated with dream-slowness once, twice, before she began to fade into cerulean depths, the black of her suit meshing with the fathomless void that was sucking her away, until only the twin yellow flippers and bright yellow tank glowed, and in seconds those were gone too.

Watching Nora fade into the shadows, I couldn’t muster the will to move. For those moments, it was as if the connections from my brain to my limbs had been severed. I almost abandoned myself. I almost pulled out my regulator and drank my fill. But I couldn’t. Didn’t.

The numbers on my dive watch pulsed nineteen minutes, eleven seconds of oxygen left—but that fact did not set me in motion. Above my listless body leered a pockmarked ice beast, its twisted spinal column spinning off into the gloom, its massive jawbone glittering with fantastical teeth. Beyond the monster, stretching out into eternity, the ice ceiling dripped with blue and green stalactites. Forget above the ice, this is the Enormity, the truth no one talks about, the other earth, the fifth dimension, the underbelly of dreams, the inverse mountain, all of it unbearably exquisite and strange.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. This astonishing ice metropolis. In my head Nora’s voice came: The biggest danger is getting so blown away by the beauty or weirdness of everything down there you lose track of time….

A muffled explosion as a berg split and crashed nearby. My ears banged; water shuddered around me. I opened and closed my jaw. A ringing silence followed; had I lost my hearing? I kicked and waved my arms like a newborn, rotating my body in the murk until I had no idea which way was up.

Seven minutes, twenty-five seconds of oxygen left. I stopped struggling. Floated. Breathed my rubbery air. Found my way to up: the glowing ice; down was the shadowy seabed.

I couldn’t let go of the thought I have to swim after Nora.

Precious seconds passed, indecision paralyzing me.

Five minutes, twelve seconds.

But of course I knew: Nora was gone.

I had to get the eels, or Sigrid would be gone too.

I focused on the trap.

Kicked down to it. Trapped behind the slats of the box and fine red netting: a boiling knot of eels. The bone-white rope drifted in the current. I caught it, tied it around my waist as it had been around Nora’s. Avoiding the serrated rocks, I swam parallel to the seafloor. The trap jerked me backward as if it were nailed down. In despair, I circled back to it. Sand and grit had drifted into the trap, weighing it down. I clawed it loose from the seabed, momentarily lost in a cloud of swirling sand.