“I’m coming.”
I flipped up my hood, tightened the drawstring around my face. Climbed down onto the ice. A barbarous wind whooshed up; I teetered, took a step. Kept my focus on the mottled blue-and-gray surface, following Wyatt’s wide red back as he crunched across the snow in his rocking gait.
We stood only ten feet from the abyss. The fissure had indeed widened; the sharp edges around the block that had imprisoned Sigrid now softened from exposure to the sun; the deep blue of the ice had soaked in the heat. Now it looked hard and glassy, evil and grim.
“Why are you taking samples from here?” I called to him. “So near to where you found her?”
His glacier glasses repeated the serrated black peaks beyond, lonesome and windswept. “Question is, why did it take me so long to think of it?”
We followed Jeanne as she walked parallel to the chasm. In the distance, a herd of several dozen caribou picked their way down the glacial pass in a jagged black line.
“Val, keep way back from us. At least twenty feet, okay?”
I backed up awkwardly, away from the abyss, not having much of an idea what twenty feet felt like.
Jeanne, a smudge of red and black behind veils of fine falling snow, yanked at a cord on a small yellow engine. It started up like a lawn mower, its whine crashing into the silence. She and Wyatt hoisted a twelve-foot pole, the last five feet or so a bright red screw-shaped device. It was already turning fast. They struggled to hold the pole perpendicular to the ice—clearly they needed all their strength to keep it going straight down—then hauled it up bit by bit out of the ice. Working full tilt, they laid the corer down, gently bumping out into a wooden trough a perfectly cylindrical yards-long core that glistened blue and silver gray. Finally, they loaded the core and equipment on the sled we’d towed from the Shack for this purpose. I couldn’t help admiring their coordination, their grunting efforts, this dance in which each knew precisely what steps to take and when.
The entire panorama—snowcat, Jeanne, Wyatt, sled—disappeared and reappeared through curtains of snow and blowing fog. I had a sense of unreality, or of shifting realities. Beneath me: creaking, pings, atonal twangs as—miles deep—the ice settled ancient scores with itself.
The crevasse, a jagged blue wound, lurked only yards away. It beckoned me. I crunched a few steps closer. It exhaled its deathly cold breath up at me, its green walls darkening to black as they plummeted to unknowable depths. How far would I fall? Would it be lights-out, or would I impale myself on some ice sword a hundred yards down, lingering in agony until I froze to death? I flirted with this ghastly yet seductive choice. It would be easy, so much easier than everything I’d been trying and failing at: discovering the truth about Andy, deciphering Sigrid, battling my grief and fear. For several long, frigid seconds, I was lost.
* * *
WYATT APPROACHED ME, squares and triangles of red and black flashing in the blowing snow. Painfully, I slammed back into my body. Made fists of my freezing fingers in my gloves, couldn’t feel my feet at all. Sobriety edging closer, I extracted my bottle of vodka from an inside pocket and took a long pull. Instead of the soft release a pill usually granted me, the booze spun me off to a rageful, dark place: How much had Andy suffered that dreadful night?
“What are you doing, Val?” Wyatt gestured at the cat. “Come on, we have to get out of here.” He’d seen me drinking; he knew that’s why I raided the Shed; I didn’t care.
“Why don’t you tell me what really happened that night with Andy? You know I can’t prove anything. You have nothing to lose by telling me the truth.”
He stomped his boot on the ice and groaned. “Unbelievable.”
“You haven’t told me a damned thing—”
“Of course I have. Many times. Are you…”
Drunk? Crazy? “Not blow by blow, you haven’t.”
“You’re too close.”
I took a step toward the edge. Chunks of dirty gray ice dislodged under my boot, echoing as they ricocheted, plunging down to nothingness. “What was Andy working on? Where was Jeanne that night?”
“Val, you’ve been drinking—”
“Fucking tell me.”
His face grew strained, mouth thinning into a grim line. Snow crystals lodged in his three-day beard. “Look, Val, I’m just saying I’ve told you—”
“Where was she?”
“She was there. The whole time. In the Shack.”
“That’s not what she said.”