It was past midnight when she waited at the door, dressed in her parka and boots. I’d put her off most of the evening, because, you know, the Enormity. It had been months since I’d taken a pill, much less had one to take, and alcohol was scarce here. So, there I was. Sober, but not as steady as I wanted to be.
“Bahl?” she said, clearly losing her patience.
“Stahndala,” I said. Fear. “Big sky, night, dark, cold.” I shivered melodramatically in my snow gear.
She said, with sarcasm, “Okay, come on, let’s go,” a phrase she’d heard me say countless times by this point—she knew it cracked me up coming from her—then marched over to our bureau, where she scrambled through the sock drawer. Grabbed Andy’s heart-shaped lead piece, plopped it in my hand. Reached in her pocket and extracted the tiny troll she’d found in the walrus’s belly. Waving it by its pitiful pink hair, she said, “Joy! Bahl, Sigrid, safe, night, magic, warm.”
* * *
BATHED IN MOONLIGHT, we lay under caribou skins on the rickety dock. In the bay, a lone, truck-sized berg listed, creaking as it pitched over, seawater seething across its phosphorescent underbelly. Across the entire dome of night, the northern lights rippled green and purple, yellow and orange, each display morphing in the space of a breath. I’d never seen anything more beautiful.
Sigrid held my hand tight, said, “Excitement! Lights, sky, story, father, mother, child, true, Bahl, want?”
Pretty sure she was asking me if I wanted to hear some story about the northern lights.
“Yes. Tell me. Bahl want, true, lights, sky, story.”
She said, “Childrens, dead, spirits, play, dance, sky, alive.”
So there they were: eons of children’s spirits swirling in ecstasy across the night sky. “Tahtaksah,” I said. Sad. “Children, dead.”
She got on one elbow, eyes sparking in the dark. “Come on, let’s go, Bahl, verohnsaht!” Joy. “Dance, play, childrens, baby, spirit, always, mother see, father see, safe, night, love. Always. Okay?”
I understood. The spirits of the children were dancing happily, their mothers and fathers would always be able to see them, and they were safe up there.
I smiled, said, “Bahl, love, story, dancing, children, sky, night.”
And so I dwelt in the Enormity and did not fall up into the sky, nor was I erased by my grief; I was wrapped in the arms of the world and the night and a precious girl.
* * *
JUST BEFORE BED that night, I talked to Sigrid about the ice winds around the world, and my worries that humans were destroying the earth. An adult conversation, but she could handle it. I lost my way when I tried to explain the word hope. But she told me about a word in her language for a particular kind of hope: the feeling a hunter has when he’s waited all day at a breathing hole for a seal and one comes up but he misses with his harpoon, and even though the sun is going down and he’s hungry and cold, he knows he’ll try again tomorrow, and tomorrow he’ll be successful. He has no doubt.
I love that word.
acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Jennifer Bergstrom, my publisher at Simon & Schuster, Gallery Books/Scout Press. You believed in me once again, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be one of your authors. Enormous gratitude to Kate Dresser and Jackie Cantor for imparting the finest possible editorial wisdom; to Molly Gregory and Andrew Nguyen, who both kept me happily on track; and to everyone on the stellar Gallery/Scout team—you make book magic happen every day.
As always, I am indebted to my brilliant agent, Erin Harris at Folio Literary Management. Thank you for your warmth, passion, patience, and insight. You are a life changer.
To research The River at Night, I embedded myself in Maine’s Allagash Wilderness; for Into the Jungle, I spent weeks exploring the rainforests of Peru; for Girl in Ice, I was lucky enough to travel to Greenland in 2019 to help me understand the lay of the land. I can’t say enough wonderful things about Natural Habitat Adventures and their trips, but I specifically wanted to thank my knowledgeable and fearless guides, Drew McCarthy and Rachel Sullivan-Lord, and the entire Greenland team for keeping me well fed—thank you, Shelley Paul!—safe, warm, and in awe. Back home, linguists Drita Protopapa and Bill Nelson proved incredibly helpful. Deep gratitude to Dr. Jason B. Strauss and Jamil, Sophia, and Selma Roshaan for your insights. Margrethe Heimer Mikaelsen and Kirstine M?ller: I can’t thank you enough for your wisdom on all topics Greenlandic. As always, I’m so grateful for GrubStreet’s wonderful writing community.