The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(25)

“You are at the De Quincey Langport Arctic Research Centre, just inside the topmost edge of Norway.” Vanessa was astonished at how level her voice sounded. It was the simple recitation of facts that helped. Yes. Here they were. Exactly here. And now. He took several moments to think about this during which time Vanessa looked at him, at the ingrained dirt of his skin, the bright light of his eyes, the intensity of his expression, the leather broguing of his well-worn boots. She had a strong sense of déjà vu. Not déjà vu. More intense, an idea of recognition.

He did not move from his safe haven in the corner and Vanessa stayed beside the cold hard edge of the countertop. A fact. A stainless steel fact to link to so that she didn’t drift.

“Where was I?” he asked. Vanessa thought that the quick answer was in the ice of the frozen lake but she also understood that this man wanted to know exactly where he had been found. She recited the co-ordinates.

“Do you…have a map?” he asked. Maps seemed good to Vanessa, a map was something she could hold onto. She took one step into the room, tugged out the map from her workpapers and unfolded it. She looked over the landscape, a group of trees, a river, a lake, a forest, some high ground, some low ground, the reality of place. For some sort of mental safety that she didn’t quite understand, she placed her left hand firmly over the spot where the research centre huddled in the weather.

“I found you just along this inlet…by the…” she was talking and pointing, her finger smoothing over the paper of the map and her mind recalling the exact place, the exact events, the needle of the compass spinning, showing her exactly the way. “Here…by this eastern edge of the lake…we’ve been taking samples and…” she realised then that the man had not moved from the corner.

“Are you…?”

“Atrophied. Slightly.” as he answered she saw he was in fact leaning against the wall for support. There was a shimmering of fear in his face and a nervous edge to the smile he gave. He ran his hand through his unkempt hair, pushing it back from his face.

“You were the one who chiselled me out of the ice?” he asked.

“Yes.” This answer seemed to pain him.

“The rest of your colleagues?”

Vanessa did not want to answer. Stating the truth out loud made it real, unmanageable. The Ice Man stared her out.

“All dead?” he asked with an air of certainty.

Vanessa nodded. His face was distant with thought.

“It is a harsh place.” He looked back at her with fresh energy. “You found me.”

“I dragged you back on a tarp. I thought you were an archaeological find. Prehistoric.”

He looked shocked at this and startled as if something tremendously important had just popped back into his head.

“Archaeological?”

“Yes. You know. Like Lindow Man…?”

“Who?” Ice Man looked puzzled.

“Or Tollund Man? The bog bodies…? Except you were…in the ice….”

He looked, not quite blank at this, but still, he did not know what she meant.

“Bog bodies?”

“The ones they found at Tollund in Denmark and in Cheshire. Ancient people. Preserved.” Vanessa felt a sense of dread as once again he took several moments to process his thoughts.

“What year is this?” the man asked at last. Vanessa’s heart was pounding very hard now, there was a damp woolly smell coming off the tweeds the man was wearing. She had to take a second to sift her thoughts and find her voice amongst the layers of clothing that were struggling to keep thoughts or heat in.

“What year do you think it is?” she whispered. The man looked very directly into her eyes and revealed all his fear and sorrow.

“1925.”

Vanessa struggled. She managed to nod but was shaking hard and had a feeling that she was in a nightmare and that at any moment she might wake up and the body in the ice would still be waiting in the workroom, unthawed. Everyone would be alive and argumentative. She could feel the folds of the map beneath her fingers. A little frost had formed on the surface of it.

“What year is this?” as he asked once again Vanessa picked up the pencil from the pot and wrote the answer down.

“1985.” he read the number, traced his hand over it. “Sixty years…” he said, almost to himself, his face concentrating, calculating. Vanessa noted the rough state of his hands, the healed over scars and nicks, the dirt beneath his nails. He made an attempt to stand, managed to stumble towards the bench. Vanessa rushed to help him, her arms looping under his shoulders, his weight bearing down on her. She looked up, at the dark, greying hair, the bearded face, the eyes one brown, one green.

“There’s no time.” he said, and it began to snow.

The snow fell exactly like a blanket. Vanessa, holed up in the kitchen for the duration, divided her observations between the sleeping Ice Man swaddled onto a camp bed by the far wall and the view of the lake through the triple glazed window. The sky was the most beautiful colour she had ever seen, a bronze green that intensified as the snow fell in heavier flakes.

The snow stacked, layering and layering until the triple glazed windows of the research centre were half hidden by drifts. As the view of the distant lake vanished so a small dark space of fear and doubt stained Vanessa’s heart.