“You look at these sometimes?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I can be sentimental, Val, not that I expect you to believe that. Your brother and me, we were like the Wizard of Oz, you know? Together we had enough heart, brains, and courage to figure this thing out, to understand how Odin survived the ice. But without him, I’m struggling. Anyway”—he tossed his hands in the air—“your brother had the biggest heart. I try every day to be more like him. Most days I fail.”
“He couldn’t have gotten through grad school without you, Wyatt. You know that.”
“Maybe. You should just take these, okay?”
With some effort—gathering the drawings would have brought me even closer to Wyatt—I got to my feet and turned toward my pile of gear. “When I get back. I’m heading over to the Dome while Sigrid’s still asleep.” I began to suit up.
“Why?” he said.
“Just a change from my room. I’ve got some books on Thule culture I want to show—”
“That girl knows exactly how to survive the ice. You get that, don’t you?” His affect changed: smile gone, warmth gone. He shuffled the drawings into a stack, so roughly a corner of one of them tore off.
I jammed on my hat, looked for my gloves. “It’s logical that she would.”
He laughed. “Let me tell you about badass. There was this hunter in a sealskin kayak. He’s out in a fjord packed with sea ice. He’s hunting seal, but his boat gets a tear from a berg. It’s sinking, so he thinks fast. He harpoons a seal, brings it into the boat, guts it through its mouth, inflates its body with his breath, ties it off at the neck, and rides that fucking thing to shore while his boat sinks.”
“That doesn’t—”
“These people survive, Val. They know how to do that better than any of us, in the harshest environment on earth. And that girl?” He rose, tucking the drawings under one arm. “She’s not helpless. She knows things. She’s seen things.” He came close, jabbed a finger in my face. “She’s playing us.”
Heart racing, I pulled on my snow pants, big orange boots, vest. “What do you want me to do, Wyatt?”
“What can you say in her language? Tell me.”
“Man, woman, seal man, yes, no, outside, caribou, numbers up to twenty—”
He waved me away. “She understands far more than that. Far more. She doesn’t seem to like me, is that the problem?”
“I—”
“Make me the bad guy. Whatever you have to do.” He folded two sticks of spearmint gum into his mouth, chewed with vigor. “Tell her it’s a secret between you two, what she did, what she took. I don’t give a shit anymore, understand? We have days left here, not weeks.”
I turned toward the door. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
He expelled an exasperated sigh and held out the clipboard. I took it and wrote in my destination and when I was headed back, even though I thought it was ridiculous. He snatched it back from me and tossed it on his desk.
“You think you’re special, Val? You think you’re safe?”
“What do you mean?”
“From the ice winds. You think any of us is safe?”
He stood too close to me, blocking the door, his breath stinking of maple syrup, stale coffee, spearmint. I angled myself away from him but couldn’t reach the doorknob. Seconds passed.
“Look, your anger is a bit much for me sometimes, Wyatt. It’s counterproductive to any progress—”
“You mean my rage?”
“Your word, not mine.”
He laughed. “My ex-wife? A yoga instructor. She used to tell me I carry my rage in my hips, that with enough fucking downward dogs I could set myself free, but you know what? I like my rage, right where it is, thank you very much.”
“There isn’t much light left… Can I get by, please?”
He stepped back with a melodramatic “after you” gesture.
I opened the door. Cold rushed me.
“Listen.”
I turned to him.
“Jeanne’s been working on something to help us out at the site. We’re headed back tomorrow, first thing. All of us. I need all hands on deck. The girl comes, too.”
He closed the door, and I turned to face the glittering expanse.
twenty-two
Step by step, I made my way toward the Dome, eyes on the ice beneath my feet, rope gripped tight. A snorting, scuffling sound to either side of me brought me to a halt. I tried to quiet my banging heart. Stared straight down. In all the big wide world there were only bright orange boots on blinding white. I heard a sharp animal whine, stuttering grunts. Breathed a bracing lungful of What is it?