I screamed his name.
Back and forth his line lurched. What is happening to him? What is pulling him away? But there was no time to wonder. Some force of equilibrium breached and the stretched-thin cord set in motion, in fits and starts, the heavy box of diving equipment it was tied to, dragging the box across the ice toward me. The metal trunk gathered speed and momentum, shrieking across the ice floor while I could only watch. With a boom, it butted up against one of the struts that supported the building, just a yard from my head.
The strut bent, but held.
Bobbing in the slushy blue hole, I took a breath, closed my eyes, prayed, opened them. Sigrid slept on.
Raj’s line slackened. I couldn’t tell which was worse—the taut line or the alarmingly flaccid one. I roped in a yard or so, no resistance. This was too much. I had to put my head down in the water, see what was going on. I was useless just dangling there like fish bait.
I fit the goggles tighter over my eyes, the regulator in my mouth, and dropped my face in the brine. It was as if I’d plunged it into a bowl of ice shards. To calm myself, I visualized the final step on the laminated dive sheet: Practice breathing for several minutes before you commit to a dive. It will feel strange to picture oxygen being pumped into your lungs, but at some point, you need to trust, to let go and breathe…
I sucked in a mouthful of manufactured oxygen. It tasted like rubber, but I filled my lungs with it and consciously blew it out. I devoured another, and another, the sound of my breath roaring in my ears. Pale green digits glowed on my diving watch: 35:03. Already nearly five minutes had ticked by. Arm aching, I shone the blinking flashlight—three seconds on, two of utter blackness—down into the depths, following Raj’s orange line—tight again—until it disappeared in the murk. He was nowhere in sight, but as far as I could tell, the light gave up at around ten feet down. I tilted it up, sweeping its plum-colored gaze across the underbelly of the ice, a tumbling panorama of ghostly green caves.
Raj’s line jumped again. Danced back and forth across my sleeve, then slid to the sharp edge of the ice hole, as if whatever had him changed direction, the line so stressed it trembled like a guitar string until it snapped loose, its new tail fluttering in the violet beam.
I swept the flashing light in an arc beneath me. A thin, zebra-striped fish eyed me, then shivered past. No Raj. I had to stay calm. Breathe correctly. Keep hold of the light. Not leave my body. My heart banged in my rubber chest. A frigid vise tightened around my rib cage. Again and again, I shone the light across the gloom, until it lit up a human shape. A dark silhouette.
Nora floated facedown in the shadows, her arms out to either side like an angel’s, body undulating in the current. Her bright yellow tank and flippers glowed neon in the light. A diving rope tied around her waist kept her in place, as if she were a kite maneuvered by a sea creature on the ocean floor. I screamed into my mask, deafening myself.
I lifted my head out of the water, popped out my regulator, and gasped for air. Snatched up Raj’s line, held it up close. It had been cut at an angle, clean and straight across. What could have done this? Twenty-nine minutes, seven seconds of air remained. Raj was not in my sights, but I could still help Nora. I angled the regulator back in my mouth. Again, dropped my head down beneath the slurry of ice and brine, flipping my headlamp on as I had seen Raj do. This time I left the flashlight behind.
I gripped the edge of the hole and thrust myself down into the frigid blue depths, keeping my focus on Nora, whose arms drifted like seaweed. Above me lurked ornate ice caverns, silent emerald-green cathedrals, and whatever had taken Raj. My body colder than it had ever been, I opened and closed my fists as I swam; a head-sized jellyfish approached and belched itself away.
Fighting a constant current, I swam down to Nora and then beneath her as if I were flying in slow motion. Now I could see: a makeshift trap rested on the seafloor between two sharp-edged rocks. Could her safety line have been cut as she’d tried to pull it up? Was Raj’s line slashed as he tried to free her? I seized her arm and shook her; she was limp. Framed by her black mask, her beautiful face glowed alabaster, but her eyes were closed, mouth slightly open, lips blanched. She looked dead. I maneuvered myself above her. Untied the rope around her waist, meaning to bring her up. The moment the knot came free she shot up, banging into me, momentarily stunning me. Her body turned with the current, traveling sideways.
I kicked out after her, caught hold of her flipper but couldn’t keep my grip, and she slipped free. Her body rotated with dream-slowness once, twice, before she began to fade into cerulean depths, the black of her suit meshing with the fathomless void that was sucking her away, until only the twin yellow flippers and bright yellow tank glowed, and in seconds those were gone too.