I’d smelled it before, an animal smell, like cows in a field, but this was gamier, sharper. Not horses, but. I touched my pocket. No walkie-talkie. I’d left that back in my room. Another rule broken. Great job, Val. I felt a wild presence on all sides. I felt: assessed. A shadow broke the sun on my face, hooves crunched brittle ice; I looked up.
A herd of caribou—a couple dozen at least—surrounded me, their breath snorting out dragon puffs through flared nostrils, antlered heads cutting black puzzle pieces into blue sky as they towered over me. Heavy gray flanks over spindly legs that clicked as they walked, shining brown eyes set deep in inky faces. They swayed their huge necks toward one another and back at me as if confirming, She is nothing, no danger, keep moving. The musk of their exhalations so close they moistened my cheeks. In a casual gallop, they threaded around me, leaving me in their wake to grapple with an inexplicable state of longing.
* * *
I BURST INTO the Dome, full of the story of the caribou. Nora and Raj made me hot tea, settling me in their “living room,” the corner of the Dome nearest the heater where they’d thrown blankets and polar bear skins over several chairs. A propane lantern burned with a golden glow, sending around a little cheer; still, the dark blue hole in the ice opposite us exerted its own gravitational pull, and I tried not to look at it. After a few sips of tea, I brought out Sigrid’s drawings of squiggles and birds, spreading them out on their worktable among microscopes, specimen jars, and lab notebooks.
Raj glanced at Nora as he pulled up a chair. “We should tell you, Sigrid’s been giving us these drawings as well.”
I sat back, nursing the faint hurt that perhaps Sigrid had given up on me. “When?”
He shrugged. “Over the past week or so. Whenever she thinks no one is looking.”
“Mostly she gives them to him,” Nora said. “She loves Seal Man, you know.”
“What do you think of them?”
Raj drew his finger thoughtfully along the squiggly lines. “These could be a kind of seaweed, don’t know. But that bird does look like an Arctic tern.”
“Why would she want them, do you think?”
He got up and brought over a box of shortbread cookies: stale, processed, and delicious. “Want them? I have no idea.”
I retrieved the drawings of “suns” I kept in one of my Greenland books. Flattened them on the desk. “What about these? I must have thirty of these pictures. What do they look like to you?”
“Like circles,” Raj said. “Babe, what do you think?”
“Maybe she likes the shape.”
“Could they be suns, do you think?” I asked. “Or moons?”
“I guess…” Raj said.
“Think about it,” I said. “She could draw anything. Anything at all. And this is what she draws. Why? She’s drawing squiggles, birds, and then circles, the last one red, and look how she colors it, see? Like it’s, I don’t know—” My voice quavered, the possibility of what it meant haunting me.
“Like it’s what, Val?” Nora asked gently.
“Like those suns indicate days.” I extracted one of the earlier drawings. “Look. Fifteen suns, the last one blotted out with red Magic Marker.” I freed the next one in the pile. “This one, made three days later. Twelve circles. Twelfth circle colored red. But this one?” I held up one she’d drawn just days before. “Seven circles. Seventh circle, same thing.” I scrambled in my pocket, hands shaking as I unfolded her latest drawing. “This one is from last night. Five circles. The last one, look what she did to it.”
The red marker had torn the paper nearly in half.
“She’s trying to tell us she has five days to live. Don’t you see? She has five days unless we find her this snake and this tern. Otherwise she’ll die.” Hysteria rose in my chest, fluttering like a trapped bird. I clutched one hand with the other, trying to stop the quaking.
Nora and Raj exchanged a glance.
“Val,” Nora said. “Would you fancy a little drink, maybe?”
“A drink drink?”
She nodded.
“You have alcohol here?”
Raj laughed, got up, and rummaged around in a box of supplies. “All we have is this revolting Icelandic liqueur called—”
“I’d love some.”
Raj poured a shot of brown liquid into a metal coffee cup. It tasted like actual mud, but sweet. “You know, we’ve been a little worried about you, Val.”