She woke as soon as Wyatt opened the door, squinting at him from under her hat.
He looked stricken. “Val, you should come and see this. Leave her here.”
But Sigrid had already wriggled out of my arms and vaulted from the cab. I jumped out after her, but she was sprinting toward the weird pattern of shining circles that gleamed like giant ice lily pads. Raj, his face closed and dark, knelt with his camera, snapping shot after shot. In a rare moment of stillness, Jeanne rested against her ice-polishing invention, staring down into the depths. Nora sat back on her heels next to a gleaming ring, occasionally reaching down to brush the snow away.
When Nora caught sight of Sigrid, she sprang to her feet, darting toward the girl with a cry. Nora caught her and swung her up in her arms, facing her away from the site.
“Val, she can’t see this, I’m telling you!”
Dread coursed through me; the looks on their faces chilled my blood.
Sigrid, more shocked than anything else, let herself be carried toward the cat until she saw me and started to struggle. Nora lost control of her, and she slipped free. Wyatt made a grab for her, but she shot her arms up fast and twisted cunningly out of his grasp, bulleting toward the shining ice.
She came to an abrupt halt at the edge. Far above us, seabirds rode the updrafts, carving graceful arcs across a silver sky. Snow lightly patterned Sigrid’s slouching hat and baggy coat. What is she looking at? Why is everyone so quiet, their faces turned away? The faint buzz from the morning splash of vodka in my coffee was no more, my body gone brittle with the cold, as if had I tried to move, some part of me would snap off. I wanted to run back to the cat, to anywhere that felt safe, but how could I not bear witness? The air an ache in my lungs, I made my feet move to stand next to her.
She didn’t budge.
She was a child in a state of wonder, of horror, of understanding.
Beneath us, a scene of utter devastation. A couple of yards under our boots, a ghastly diorama: several dozen Inuit people frozen in place in the midst of fighting, spears and knives drawn. Dressed in polar bear leggings, sealskin anoraks and boots. Many had terrible wounds, their necks gashed, arms severed, bellies disemboweled. Men, women, children. Some were twisted in impossible positions; others looked stunned into icy suspended animation. Like lunging statues, a half dozen sled dogs were caught on their hind legs, snarling, paws midchurn.
Sigrid dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl, clawing at the ice with bare hands. She stopped directly over a woman—a few yards beneath the ice—who had collapsed facedown across a man who lay on his back, a pool of blood under his head. A knife jutted from her lower back. Crying, Sigrid repeated one of her seven words, “Tahtaksah,” then, in her language, “Mother, father.”
Raj relaxed his grip on his camera; it hung limply around his neck. “We need to get her out of here.”
“No,” Jeanne said. “She deserves to see.”
Wyatt walked the perimeter of the polished ice, eyes never leaving Sigrid.
“Why did you bring her here…？” Nora murmured.
“I didn’t know it would be like this…” Wyatt’s voice trailed off.
I got down on my knees next to Sigrid. The snow had ceased, as if in respect for the ravaged scene beneath us. She swept off the last delicate flakes. “Tahtaksah,” she breathed. “Mother, father.”
“You’re sad,” I said. “For your mother, and for your father. I’m so sorry.” And that’s when I understood, kneeling with Sigrid just yards above the seven-hundred-year-old bodies of her parents, what tahtaksah meant. Seven words used constantly… Where had I read about the seven basic emotions? The Book of Rites, a first-century Chinese encyclopedia, named the “feelings of men”： fear, sadness, contempt, surprise, disgust, anger, and joy.
An attempt to categorize emotions. Tahtaksah. It had to mean sad, grief-stricken.
She was telling me how she felt before telling me what she thought. I finally understood: in her language, every sentence began with an emotion. What a compassionate, gentle way to communicate: prioritizing feelings over facts.
“What is she saying to you?” Wyatt crouched at the edge of the gleaming ice a few yards away.
“That she’s sad. That her mother and father are beneath us.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Nora said. “What good is this doing anybody?”
Raj wandered to the far side of the cleared area as if scouting a better angle for photos. He came to an abrupt halt. Got down on his hands and knees, set aside his camera, and polished one of the circles with a gloved hand. “Guys, you have to come see this.”