“Bahl,” she said, reaching toward me. “Bahl.”
“Coming.” I stepped down to the ice, but she had already raced off. Her voluminous red parka flapped in the wind as she skirted far too close to the crevasse, which had widened by several yards. Its wine-dark walls pulsed in the eerie light as if blue blood coursed through inky veins just beneath.
“I said stay in the cat,” Wyatt called over.
“Sigrid,” I shouted, holding my hand out to her. “You’re too close!”
Chin thrust out, she marched along the fissure as if to show me she understood the tone of my words but had no intention of heeding them. I caught up to her, and we walked together in silence, arriving at the gouged-out place where she had been freed from the ice. She paused there but said nothing. The edges were even softer now, molten-looking, an odd cave-like hole along one wall. Some decision made, Sigrid spun on her heel and jogged toward the mountains. I took off after her, feet heavy in my boots, but I caught her, or she let me. She pulled me along with surprising strength, chattering, pointing, and smiling as if she knew where she was going. I skidded along with her on the sun-goldened ice, ignoring Wyatt’s shouts.
Pausing, she squinted at the snow-swept, barren peaks, said in her language, “Mother, father.”
“Your mother and father are here?”
She nodded. Freshly inspired, she jerked me in another direction, and we were running again. I clung to her hand. Once more she stopped, looking disappointed by her choice. She wiped her nose, her too-big hat falling down over her eyes as she constantly shoved it back. Behind us, Nora, Raj, Wyatt, and Jeanne, now toy-sized figures on the ice, struggled to drag the strange contraption across the frozen lake.
I knelt down. Her eye looked worse, red, oozing, sagging down in one corner as if dragged by some singular force of gravity. It hurt to look at.
“We have to go back, Sigrid.”
She pointed to the mountains, their brittle black teeth jutting up into the violet sky. Under our boots, a deep-throated groaning sound, followed by a drawn-out, dull creak. Is another crevasse preparing to open and swallow us?
“Mother, father,” she pleaded.
“We can’t—”
A gunshot split the air. Wyatt was making his way toward us, shouting and waving his arms. Even at a distance, I could tell how pissed he was. I didn’t blame him.
I knelt to get close to her. “We’ve got to head back, honey, I’m so sorry. I promise we’ll come back for mother, father, okay?”
Sigrid’s face crumpled with disappointment. She looked on the verge of bolting, but I took hold of her arm, half dragging her at first until she realized I meant business and kept pace with me.
* * *
NORA KNELT ON the ice, arms wrapped around the bright yellow motor that whined and vibrated as if it wanted to dance away with her. The cord looped across a few yards of ice to Wyatt and Jeanne, who gripped either side of the T of the ice-core-drilling machine, its massive screw replaced with the heated metal plate that—rigged to the motor—spun against the ice. Raj leaned into the plate, using his body weight to try to guide it across the surface, but it wouldn’t budge. Steam rose up, quickly erased by frigid air. Momentarily exhausted, Raj sat on the ice to catch his breath.
“Turn it off!” Wyatt called over the motor.
Nora shut it down.
Wyatt lifted the plate out of the shallow depression, pushing it aside in disgust. It had burned a circular hole a yard across and a few inches deep. A light snow had begun, quickly covering the perfect circle of polished ice.
Raj got to his feet. “Are you sure this is where you took the cores?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Wyatt said.
“We’re going to have to do this a little at a time,” Jeanne said, circumnavigating her invention. “It’s a pain in the ass, but we can’t slide it. We’re going to have to keep making circles.”
She got down to her knees, casually brushing snow off the ice ring. Her gloved hand froze midsweep. She sat back on her haunches. “Wyatt,” she breathed. “Nora, Raj. You have to see this. Val, keep Sigrid back.”
twenty-five
Once they got the hang of it, they worked fast, burnishing contiguous rings until they’d covered an area the circumference of a good-sized room, all the while gesticulating, talking animatedly to each other. As if worn out from her jaunt on the ice field, Sigrid nodded off as soon as we settled in the cat, head resting on my lap, whistling softly through her stuffy nose. I couldn’t hear a word over the cat’s motor. My only thought was, What had they discovered that Sigrid wasn’t allowed to see?