Girl in Ice(80)

The door swung open wide. Sigrid, who had been leaning against it, tumbled out onto the floor of the Shed just as the light above me snapped on, catching me half-crazed, breathless, midswing.

I stood in a sea of shattered cores and splintered wooden cradles.

Jeanne leapt up into the freezer with the gun, crying, “How dare you!”

She lunged for me. Lost her footing and coasted across the floor on a chunk of ice, smacking headlong into the wall of battered cores. The gun skittered away, lost in the icy detritus. Groggy, she made a play for my ankle, but I jumped over her and out of the icebox, slamming the door shut behind me. I scooped up Sigrid, scraped the keys from the wall, and sprinted to the door.



* * *



THE SNOWMOBILE ROARED to life, and we charged out into the polar night, the sky pulsing with stars. Even by moonlight, the way to the frozen lake was unmistakable, the streaks of moraine in the glacier marking a dark path over the mountain pass. Tucked inside my coat, hooded head down against the vicious wind, Sigrid nestled close as we climbed steadily upward, snow churning behind us.

I paused at the apex of the pass. Surveyed the vast lake beneath us, thinking to cross a section of it, but who knew how thick the ice was now? The crevasse where Sigrid had been found, a crooked toothless smile, nearly divided it in two. I heard water flowing but couldn’t place where the sound was coming from. How far down was this river of meltwater? Adrenaline surged through me.

I cut the motor; I had to stop and think. I gathered Sigrid closer, but she barely moved and made no sound. I had to harness my breathing, ease my shocked heart. My goggles had fogged—here was a simple task—I took them off, blew hot breath on a skin of ice that had formed, wiped the lenses clear.

I snapped off the headlight. Our lonely cone of light disappeared. Diesel fumes swirled up and away. Polar night rushed in and erased us. We were nothing in the terrible blue expanse. The wind swept us clean, then covered us in sugar-fine sheets of crystalline snow. Something huge seemed to be listening to us.

All I could see was Jeanne frozen to death in the walk-in, but I couldn’t face it. It’ll take ten minutes…. The pain goes away fast, and then you’re warm. My mind blocked the image. I hadn’t meant to kill her. Don’t think about it now, or we will die too….

The vodka had already burned through me; my mind was as clear as the night sky, achingly sharp. I bit off nips of slicing air. Cold turned the skin on my face hard as leather; I slapped my hands, my cheeks, just to feel something, beat the blood back to moving. Clutched Sigrid to me so hard she moaned and turned away. I eased up on her. Forced myself to look at my surroundings. Car-sized chunks of tumbled ice jutted up at odd intervals across the sparkling tundra.

“Sigrid,” I whispered. I lifted her slightly, turned her to face me. Her eyes at half-mast under the slouchy hat, arms wet-noodle limp. “The cairns, Sigrid. Inuksuit. The first one. The map, please. Drawing. Help. Stahndala.” Fear. In her language, I said, “Rocks, many, ice eels, dead alive, paper, drawing, Bahl, want.” No idea where I’d put the map. Felt like I had brain damage. How could I lose such an important thing?

Her mittened hand crept up the side of my sweater under my coat. Tried with no luck to grab the cunning zipper hidden in the seam. Of course, that’s where I put it, so I wouldn’t lose it! I took off my gloves and rescued the crumpled piece of notebook paper. The flesh of my fingers waxy in the moonlight. My heart sank at the sight of her crude crayon drawing of the Shack, the glacier that led through the pass, the frozen lake… Good lord, where are we, where are we going? Sigrid pointed to a craggy set of low mountains in the distance and the slender river of glacial ice between them.

“That way? Are you sure?”

She turned the paper over, where the drawing continued. Jabbed her finger at the three cairns.

I tucked her back into the folds of my coat and started the engine, which seemed to make all the available noise in the world. We threaded between waist-high and taller ice formations like waves frozen in place. Infinite shades of blue and gray continually tricked my eye: Is that a depression, a shadow, an abyss? The light too flat to judge. Always listening for another motor, the only other motor in hundreds of miles. The snowcat.

But we were alone.

We banged and growled up through the narrow pass, only slowing to ease past natural rock formations that rose like soldiers guarding the stygian night. Descending over ridges of rough, uneven ice, we rocked so hard I was sure the machine would break apart beneath us.

Spread out before us, a snow-swept plain met the black bowl of night an untold distance away. I jammed the machine into neutral. Listened. Just the wind fluting past.

“Where now, Sigrid?”

She gestured weakly at the icescape. Peered up at me as if to say, Can’t you see? Her cheeks burnished red, smile like a Cheshire cat. She said, “Verohnsaht.” Joy.

I scanned the desolate landscape. My pelvis felt frozen in place on the machine, legs stiff, shoulders locked, hands petrified on the controls. “Sigrid, I don’t…”

But—there! There was something. Between snow-filled blasts gusting across the plain, a pea-sized black form took shape in the distance.

I shifted into gear and tore off. Quickly the mass grew taller, fatter, and vaguely man shaped, the absolute weirdest thing to find in a sea of nothingness. In minutes, I kicked off the motor. We glided the last several yards in white silence. The rock creature loomed over us, one stone “arm” raised as if in judgment, its jagged form blocking out the stars. Wide-set pillars served as stumpy legs, a thick slab capping them like a pelvis, a mammoth block as a torso. Two long flat stones rested on top—its shoulder girdle—a roundish boulder set squarely in the middle. A stone man who towered close to twelve feet tall. How long had this craggy monster existed, condemning everything that passed? A hundred years? Thousands? Wind and flying snow sheered across its unforgiving angles.