I pulled down the thick notebook of Aramaic poetry I’d committed to translating over the next six months. Opening to the first page, my eyes glazed over even as I translated the first line—something about a sunset, the ache of unrequited love. I pictured the ancient crypt where the original text had been found, the bones of the poet lying nearby ground to dust by time, his passions, musings, longings now my task to reveal. It would be impossible to devote myself to this. Almost irrational. How could I stay here, knowing I might hold the key to unlocking a living human child’s desperate needs, tragedies, secrets?
I showered, dressed, and just before leaving for class, wrote to Wyatt to ask about arrangements to get to Greenland.
He booked me on the next plane.
It left in eight days.
three
After a ridiculous series of security checks, I stood swaying under the harsh lighting of the military waiting area of the airport, a bleary, semi-destroyed version of myself. It was just past four in the morning, a barbaric, unreal hour. All night I’d packed and repacked my bag, trying to cap it at forty-three pounds—my limit, I was told—and still bring all I needed. Smacked down by Ativan, I reminded myself over and over that I only had to do one thing: Get on the plane. I rubbed salve on my hands—my skin always a bellwether of my sanity—though no amount of lotion seemed to touch this eczema.
A monstrous cargo plane the near black of a wet gravestone brooded on the rain-slick runway, red and orange lights blinking along its wings. No windows except those for the pilot. Maybe that would be a good thing. Workers loaded crate after shrink-wrapped crate of machinery and supplies into its low-to-the-ground belly through a two-story-high cargo door. How will this beast lift itself from the earth?
The flight to Thule, Greenland, the US Air Force’s northernmost base, was only the first leg of the trip to Wyatt’s frozen island eight hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. I’d scrolled up and down Wyatt’s email that spelled out flight details; no return trip was scheduled. In our call, he mentioned wanting to be off island by the last week of October, when the sun set and didn’t rise again until February of the following year. I shot off a panicky text. He assured me that the local flights—the ones from Thule to various villages or research stations—were arranged more casually and according to need, so there were no strict schedules per se. As to getting home, we were at the mercy of these military flights.
The day after I agreed to come, my government-issued polar gear arrived in the mail: quilted overalls, high-tech leggings and long-sleeved shirts, an orange parka, vest, and hat. Immense Gore-Tex gloves came most of the way to my elbows, and giant orange boots looked like ones Goofy might wear. I shivered to think I would need all of it just to survive.
“Hey,” came a lilting female voice behind me.
I whipped around, nearly smacking my knapsack into a young woman.
“Are you by any chance Valerie Chesterfield?” she asked in a British accent so sparkling I thought of champagne freshly poured in fluted crystal.
“Yes,” I said, reaching out to shake the hand she offered me.
“I’m Nora, and this is Raj.” A slight, handsome man with a ropy sort of strength under his Polartec sweater held out his hand with a bright smile. He wore round gold-wire spectacles that emphasized the intelligence in his deep-set brown eyes.
Nora was slender and hazel-eyed, with a wide, somewhat crooked smile and beautiful teeth under a slightly hooked nose. Shining black hair fell past her shoulders in natural waves—a real beauty in a charmingly imperfect way.
In a last-minute email, Wyatt had informed me I’d be meeting married polar marine scientists Nora and Rajeev Chandra-Revard at the gate before our flight. This news helped normalize the situation slightly: it wouldn’t just be me, Wyatt, the girl, and Jeanne—the mechanic—with whom I’d be living for seven weeks out in the middle of nowhere.
“So, this is all quite thrilling, isn’t it?” Nora said, hiking her daypack higher over one shoulder. She fizzed with energy and excitement; I did my best to mirror back something like it.
“A little, yeah.” A fresh influx of military men and women queued up for the flight, sniffer dogs weaving among them.
She laughed, eyebrows knitting slightly. “Just a little?”
“Won’t this be an incredible opportunity for you?” Raj said in an equally charming British cadence. “To decipher some unknown language? Wyatt told us you were quite the expert.”
Nora cast him a sidelong look. “Come on, darling, best not to discuss that here, remember?”