thirty-five
Complete and utter darkness.
Unfathomable cold.
Hell.
Instinctually, I narrowed my eyes, blinking fast to keep them from freezing open or shut. Let barely enough air in my lungs to breathe—I simply couldn’t warm it with my body. I knew I had a handful of minutes before my fingers froze. Blindly, I unzipped my jacket. Sigrid had welded herself to my torso; I peeled her arms and legs from me, forcing her to the floor of the freezer. She cried out pitifully.
“Sigrid.” I bent down to her in the blackness, both of us gasping at the stinging air. “Brave girl, strong girl.” I pulled her parka tighter around her, flipped up her hood and cinched it, all by feel. Her cheeks icy, her hot, quick breath in my face. She mewled, clutching at my snow pants. Tried to monkey her way up my legs, but I hauled her away. “Stay by the door.” I lifted her and set her down facing it, or where I remembered it to be. “Sit here. Stay still.”
I stepped away from her, into the center of the terrible cold black box. From the darkness she cried out, “Bahl!” I heard her crawling toward me.
“No, Sigrid, no!” I groped for her, found her hood, gripped her shoulders tight. “Don’t move. Taimagiakaman, okay? Taimagiakaman.” The necessity of staying alive. I half led, half dragged her back to the door; this time she let me. “Sigrid. Wait for me. Here.”
The moment I was convinced she had understood me, I grappled my way along the door, along the side wall of the cube, to the cache of cores stacked in their wooden cradles. Stopped, listened. The skin of my face stiffened as it froze. The blockade of ice rods radiated their own glacial breath. I could barely move my fingers anymore, my blood a frozen sludge, mind congealing.
Turning in a small circle, I called for Sigrid. Her answering moan oriented me in the space, but I couldn’t waste another second. I pulled the ball-peen hammer from the deep inner pocket of my parka, wound up, and swung at the bank of cores. Ice daggers blasted at my pant legs, stabbed me in the cheek near my eye. Again and again I pounded at a thousand years of Arctic climate history. Fragments of wood and ice skidded across the floor. I shut my eyes and didn’t stop. I might have been screaming.
The door swung open wide. Sigrid, who had been leaning against it, tumbled out onto the floor of the Shed just as the light above me snapped on, catching me half-crazed, breathless, midswing.
I stood in a sea of shattered cores and splintered wooden cradles.
Jeanne leapt up into the freezer with the gun, crying, “How dare you!”
She lunged for me. Lost her footing and coasted across the floor on a chunk of ice, smacking headlong into the wall of battered cores. The gun skittered away, lost in the icy detritus. Groggy, she made a play for my ankle, but I jumped over her and out of the icebox, slamming the door shut behind me. I scooped up Sigrid, scraped the keys from the wall, and sprinted to the door.
* * *
THE SNOWMOBILE ROARED to life, and we charged out into the polar night, the sky pulsing with stars. Even by moonlight, the way to the frozen lake was unmistakable, the streaks of moraine in the glacier marking a dark path over the mountain pass. Tucked inside my coat, hooded head down against the vicious wind, Sigrid nestled close as we climbed steadily upward, snow churning behind us.
I paused at the apex of the pass. Surveyed the vast lake beneath us, thinking to cross a section of it, but who knew how thick the ice was now? The crevasse where Sigrid had been found, a crooked toothless smile, nearly divided it in two. I heard water flowing but couldn’t place where the sound was coming from. How far down was this river of meltwater? Adrenaline surged through me.
I cut the motor; I had to stop and think. I gathered Sigrid closer, but she barely moved and made no sound. I had to harness my breathing, ease my shocked heart. My goggles had fogged—here was a simple task—I took them off, blew hot breath on a skin of ice that had formed, wiped the lenses clear.
I snapped off the headlight. Our lonely cone of light disappeared. Diesel fumes swirled up and away. Polar night rushed in and erased us. We were nothing in the terrible blue expanse. The wind swept us clean, then covered us in sugar-fine sheets of crystalline snow. Something huge seemed to be listening to us.
All I could see was Jeanne frozen to death in the walk-in, but I couldn’t face it. It’ll take ten minutes… The pain goes away fast, and then you’re warm. My mind blocked the image. I hadn’t meant to kill her. Don’t think about it now, or we will die too…
The vodka had already burned through me; my mind was as clear as the night sky, achingly sharp. I bit off nips of slicing air. Cold turned the skin on my face hard as leather; I slapped my hands, my cheeks, just to feel something, beat the blood back to moving. Clutched Sigrid to me so hard she moaned and turned away. I eased up on her. Forced myself to look at my surroundings. Car-sized chunks of tumbled ice jutted up at odd intervals across the sparkling tundra.