A trace of diesel tainted the air.
The eel I stole from its brothers and sisters with my bare, bloodstained hands did not resist me; it contorted slowly as if cold stunned or moonstruck. Separate from its clan, it practically disappeared where I laid it on the snow; its nearly transparent flesh mapped by a fine netting of ebony veins. As if accepting its fate, it hardly moved as I prepared to cut off its head and gather the curative blood.
On the beach, just beyond the ice arch, the walruses grunted and snorted, flapping their flippers with a wet sound. The earth beneath us shook as they rolled and smacked against one another. I dropped down on the snow with the precious syringe, cradling Sigrid. I shook her, yelled her name. She was silent. Her head lolled, mouth slack; I thought, She’s already dead, what’s the use? I rolled back the sleeves of her parka and sweater, laid bare her thin arm. Found a tiny blue vein and did my best to inject her there. Drew her close, prayed out loud in her language, Hope, love, Sigrid, alive, wake up, wake up, wake up, as the rock hand pointed down at us as if to say, What have you done? Given her too much? Too little? Even for the minutes I held her there, the tide sneaked in a few feet, lapping at the shelf of eels already being subsumed by the frigid sea.
As the snowcat charged to the crest of the hill, she began to stir in my arms. Slowly at first, then with the vigor of a child wresting herself from a nightmare, ready to punch her way into consciousness. A surge of joy lit a fire in the base of my spine, warming me; if death came for me at that moment, how could there be sorrow? There could be no better thing I would do than what I had just done.
thirty-eight
Each squeal and slam of the snowcat doors—first the driver’s, then the passenger side—seemed to strike me bodily. As if finally understanding where she was and what had happened, Sigrid settled in my grip. Her eyes still looked terrible, but she patted my cheek gaily and her voice was strong. “Bahl, verohnsaht!” Joy. “Love, thank, eel, ice alive, more, please—”
From the crest of the hill: low conversation, the crunch of boots on brittle snowpack.
“Okay, Sigrid,” I whispered. “We’ll do that later, I promise.”
“Bahl, stahndala.” Fear. “Sea, awake, big”—she threw her hands out wide—“wave, eat, eels, no!”
“The tide is coming in, the sea will eat the eels, I know. We’ll gather the eels soon, okay?”
“Bahl,” she said, worrying the sleeve of my parka, unconvinced.
Two human shapes, Wyatt and Jeanne, stood framed between the stone monster’s legs, Jeanne leaning slightly to one side, echoing the stance of the rock creature. Sigrid wriggled out of my arms and dropped to the snow.
“Get up here,” Wyatt said.
Behind us, the herd of walruses had begun to move. They raised their yellow scimitar tusks and bellied along the edge of the inlet, their great bodies obscuring the bay of eels.
“What did you do to her?” Wyatt said.
I reached down to pick her up again; she let me. “It’s the ice eels. They’re down here, on the beach.”
He shrugged his rifle off his shoulder. Casually aimed it at us. “No more, Val. You tell me what you gave her, and she lives. It’s simple.”
“I told you! They’re here…” I gestured at the crescent of black eels, but even from where we stood it was impossible to make them out. They could have been anything—seaweed, a scatter of rocks, lava. “There must be millions of them.”
Her face featureless in the shadows, Jeanne stood as mute and still as the rock pile behind her.
“I’ve been telling you all along, Wyatt, it’s the eels. I injected her and look at her, she’s better—”
“I can see that. We can both see that, right, Jeanne?”
She shifted her weight. “Sure can.”
“I can also see someone who’s been fucking with me since day one.”
“Go! Go look for yourself.” I set Sigrid down, nudging her behind my legs. Found the syringe in my pocket and tossed it a couple yards up the hill. “See? I just dosed her.”
Wyatt shifted slightly, his silhouette a black hole where all light had been devoured. Gun still trained on us, he said, “Jeanne, go down there and see what the hell they’re talking about.”
But Jeanne just gazed out at the sparkling midnight water. With dull creaks and sighs, the waves flattened as they morphed into thickening sheets of ice. Perhaps in the midst of working out some sort of dispute, the gang of walrus snorted and honked as they broke into two distinct groups, now flanking the nest of eels.