Towards White

by Zena Shapter

  I nod, unsure why I’m frowning.

  “You’ll be fine, tough-girl.” He lifts my face to his. “If you need me, go to the glacier and wave. I’ll see you from there.”

  I look at how the bank angles around to the glacier. “Okay,” I say, recognising the shoreline from the autopsy report photographs. If this really is where Mark died, I should probably do this alone anyway—goodbyes are private things. I also don’t know how crazy things might get for me once I’m closer to the water. This is where all the voices have been telling me to go. The irascible yet familiar roar of the river echoes off the mountain face behind us and confirms I’m in the right place.

  So, as Ari climbs back up the track, I hobble towards the glacier.

  Chapter 16

  After a few steps I glance back, expecting to see Ari climbing or hoisting himself into the hollow entrance of his concealed cave. He’s already gone. Given how easily he scales heights, I’m not surprised.

  The triangular plain ahead of me is as dismal as it appeared from the other side of the Skepnasá. Between the river, the glacier, its lake, and the mountain trapping them all in, there’s nothing but an expanse of dark pebbles. A thick strip of brown sand and the odd grass stalk sprinkle the shoreline closer to the glacier. A crowd of boulders litter the riverbank itself, as they did in Ari’s photographs. That’s it.

  Still I scan the ground before each step, snapping photos with my phone as I head towards the glacier. Now I’m alone I relax my thigh, until I’m practically dragging my injured leg behind me. The drag disturbs silt underfoot and a dusty dryness tickles my nose. It reminds me of walking on outback trails back home, where storms of blush dirt billows out from behind passing utes, covering everything with a thin film of earth. Here there’s no billowing, yet everything’s topped with similarly fine grains, including the blocks of azure-white ice floating house-high atop the lake’s mirrored surface.

  As I near the glacier, droplets drip and splash from melting ice with more and more prominence, growing louder until they fall with such piercing clarity they sound like a dozen taps tinkling into a dozen empty metal buckets inside a vacant warehouse.

  Then, from nowhere, someone whispers my name. The voice is close, the breath warm.

  I spin around. “Hello?”

  I scan the plain. No one’s there.

  Slowly I turn back to the lake, glimmering, dripping, beckoning. My thoughts go to Mark and I move closer. Water is my sanctuary. I’m a different person around water. I wish I could touch its crisp flat surface, taste its chilled fresh water, without the risk of falling in. Mark died here, so touching the water could reconnect us somehow, one last time…and I want that so much.

  A gust of wind moans through the peaks behind me. I spin around again.

  “Mark?”

  The silence sends a shiver down my spine. I’m imagining things. Thank goodness I’m alone with this. I need to be alone with this.

  The lake’s glacial depths glint as occasional sunbeams peek through the cloud cover to strike through the water. Again I long to touch its reflective skin. Of course I’m not stupid—I’m not going anywhere near that edge. Amid the silt, however, I notice a shallow pool of water, and it too beckons. I can’t see the harm, so hobble over and crouch beside it—no easy feat when trying not to rip the Leukostrips on my thigh—and carefully, gently I reach forward.

  At first my fingertips feel wetness, then pain. They retract as though scorched by hot embers. The water is freezing and the shock of it unbalances me. Nothing but ice could survive in there.

  I huff my fingertips back to life and continue on to the glacier. The air grows misty from the constant dripping of melting ice, moist enough for tiny pale rainbows to thread their arches through those occasional rays of sun. Immediately below the glacier a chunk of ice bobs, having recently fallen as a long vertical shard from the glacier’s otherwise silt-dusted face. Left exposed behind is a clean, deep cross-section of lines that swirl horizontally in aquamarine and white layers. They look as fine and clear as the pink lines of flavour in a tub of raspberry-ripple ice-cream. I study the meandering lines. Like the rings of a tree or the soil-layers of a cliff, each winter’s frozen snowfall probably tells some element of the glacier’s story, its different hues bearing witness to the past. Did they witness what happened to Mark? Is that what all the dripping and gushing is trying to tell me?

  No, no one can tell me that, it seems.

  I glance over my shoulder and can at least see Ari’s right: from this angle both the narrow ravine and the Eroder’s back window are easily visible. Ari is injecting the glass with some substance in a syringe. I shiver, remembering the river, then realise there’s an unkind temperature radiating from the glacier too. I wander closer to the exposed lines.

  Centuries ago, snowflakes of a specific tinge once fell onto this glacier, where they froze and were compacted by later snowfalls to create the lines now before me. Soon, those lines will melt into the colourful droplets constantly dripping into the lake, then evaporate into the sky to fall down again as snow. Everything in the world really is cyclic: water, oxygen, nitrogen, life…energy. Irrespective of what scientists have or haven’t proved, spiritual survival must be, in all likelihood, a simple matter of logic. Where else would the electrical energy in our brains go when we die?

  I cock my head and think of Mark, of his cycle. If our consciousness truly is part of the Earth’s energy cycle, it’s entirely possible that Mark’s energy has become another form of energy now: a form I cannot see or hear, but can sense. It’s also entirely possible then that his energy could be here, at the glacier with me now, and that neither Anna nor I are going crazy.

  Fact: until we know the answers, anything is possible. Myth, history, and religion might have obscured the scientifically-true extent of mankind’s continuity from our current understanding, but Anna and Mark could be correct in believing the Heimspeki will help us finally understand our place in the world, and agree on it.

  Fact: we are all part of the order of things, a part of nature’s various cycles. What goes around comes around. Agreement would be a start.

  I reach up and let my hand glide over a silty wet surface of the glacier’s face, feeling its bumpiness melt beneath my touch. It’s beautiful, though it feels like my skin will stick if I let my fingers linger in any one place.

  We should value, Ólaf said earlier, every second of life, every cell in our bodies…

  I don’t want to lose a fingertip so keep them moving.

  “Got to live life as best we can while we’re here, don’t we Mark?” I say aloud, remembering more of Ólaf’s advice. “We could be gone tomorrow. Could have happened to me today in the river.” No matter what I do from here, I should take more care. It’s what Mark would want.

  A cool breeze curls around my shoulders, giving me goose bumps. The ice towering above continues to radiate a frosty glow—my jacket isn’t enough, I need gloves. I glance at the Eroder again. Ari’s out of sight. So I snap a photograph of the glacier then stroll towards the Skepnasá, tucking my hands under my armpits. The cloud cover has thickened, filling in the pale blue holes where sunlight once peeked through. The lake isn’t glimmering anymore either. I quicken my pace and cut across the plain to the river’s slush-battled banks, and the boulder where Mark was found.

  Now that I’m here, it’s clear no one could ever fence off this river. The idea is ridiculous. Still, why did Mark come here when he should have phoned me? Ari’s cave is wondrous. The glacier is amazing. But my brother could have seen them any other time. His missing head trauma was a report error. Folk in Höfkállur don’t like lawyers. Some activist doesn’t want me condemning their new legal system. Still, there has to be more to this.

  In search of answers I drag myself forward, pass the first and second boulders, until I reach the third. There I stop to take more photographs. This is where Mark’
s body grew cold, his beauty stolen like the cloud-hidden sun. I listen to the deafening reverberation of the river, the same as the haunting waters in my head, and wait. Yes, I’ve heard this sound before.

  “So this is where you are.” I pocket my phone and zip it inside. “Why did you come here, Mark? Why didn’t you simply finish your research and come home? I was so looking forward to seeing you. I hate to think of you here by yourself.”

  My throat sticks.

  “I miss you so much already. I want you home. I want a hug, an email, anything. I’ll even listen to you witter on about your stupid energy theories. You certainly picked a corker this time. Even got me thinking about this one.”

  I move closer to the boulder. If the riverbank can support its weight, it can support mine. Its skin is velvety with weathering, and when I lean closer I hear Mark whispering my name. I shut my eyes to listen, feel the heat radiating out from my head as he speaks.

  “Becky,” he says. “Be careful. You’re not safe.”

  “But you told me to come here,” I say.

  He doesn’t reply so I open my eyes. The river is catapulting itself so violently along its course that focussing on any one spot makes me dizzy. Am I encountering the fata morgana again? My head reels, the world tilts. I feel the ground moving underfoot, a heaviness on my shoulders. It feels like a hand.

  “Mark?”

  The rapids snarl as I say his name.

  “Mark!”

  Rotten branches and glacial debris scrape the upstream riverbank with a thunderous moan that grows louder and louder, until I realise it wasn’t there before. The silt beneath me is crumbling like quicksand, the water before me surging. I’m too close, too close. I go to step back but my legs tremble with the moving ground. My gash wrenches as if gaping from its seam. My thigh doesn’t have enough strength to support me on flat ground, let alone on stirring silt. I’ve taken a wrong step, I’m standing on nothing but volcanic dust and I’m going to fall.

  I turn to look for Mark one last time, but the action makes me lose my balance and, as I drop sideways into the churning water, I scream at what I see.

  There is no ghost behind me.

  Chapter 17

  The hand gripping my shoulder is as real as the breath in my lungs and the thunderous crack ringing in my ears. I follow Ari’s panicked eyes towards the glacier, and realise the rolling moan I heard was a second chunk of ice breaking off the glacier. Now a torrent of water is raging over the banks as a gargantuan ice block sweeps down the Skepnasá towards us.

  “No, no—Becky!” Ari gasps, teetering with me. He thrusts his spare arm back to tilt us away from the river. Water floods the bank mere metres away. His desperate eyes lock with mine, his teeth gritted like nothing will stop him from fighting gravity—but it’s too late. The bank is already crumbling and, with my arms flailing, our angle is irrecoverable. He should let me go, save himself. He doesn’t. A bubbling cauldron of dark water and ice devours the silt beneath us, and we collapse into the river.

  “Don’t fight the current,” Ari yells as we fall. “Trust me, no control, just go with it! I know how to—”

  I hit the water fast. A freezing wet slush caves over me, slapping me all over with a vicious cold. Liquid frost blasts into my ears and constricts my skin. My eyes widen with the instinctive horror of where I am. My arms and legs jerk into action against the freeze but all I am is under water, rocketing along its course. I kick and thrash against any sludge gleaming with the promise of sky, of air. My chest pounds as my body fights the asphyxia. I can’t breathe.

  I can’t breathe.

  My lungs heat. I don’t know what to do. This current has a mind of its own. It’s nothing like being in the ocean. It’s nothing like swimming in warm waves, even those as tall as skyscrapers that sometimes force me to gulp air and water as I kick for the shore. This is much faster and there’s no knowing which way is up. My fingers and face feel like they’re coated in ice. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

  Then a surge from somewhere beneath propels me upwards. I see clouds! Peaks! I’m going to make it!

  I push up until my mouth breaches the surface. I gasp, suck oxygen down. But no, this isn’t an escape. It’s a tease. Too soon a merciless cold yanks me back under and I’m moving fast again. The current is more determined now, slamming me forward with the speed of a skydive, pinning my arms behind me and beating my head with cubes of frost. Undercurrents roar like jackhammers. I need to get to the surface.

  The current has other plans.

  With a cackle, it aims me at a boulder lodged in the riverbank ahead. I arch my back away but it’s no good—I slam into it face-first, my nose smashing into my skull. Cherry-bright blood bursts into the water. Soaring pain blazes through my head. I want to scream with the agony. I reach for my face but the current wrestles against my squirming and lines me up again, gurgling frenzied laughter through the roaring deluge. I squint ahead to see what’s so funny. There’s another boulder.

  Don’t fight the current.

  I re-hear Ari’s words, but my brain yells at me to fight, to swim away from the boulder.

  No control, just go with it.

  There are bubbles up ahead too. The current is sucking water through some fissure in the boulder. I have to get away, above. I have to swim.

  Don’t fight.

  The voice isn’t Ari’s now, it’s Mark’s. I hear him as clearly as the pounding in my chest. Still, logic tells me to swim for the surface.

  Fact: that is where the air is.

  Trust me, no control…

  The voice is Ari’s: the voice is Mark’s. Mark wanted me to trust my gut more, and my gut is telling me to trust Ari.

  So I close my eyes and let the current take me. This is going to hurt…

  I smash into the boulder. My shoulder bone explodes with the pain. My legs and hips disappear into the vortex whirling through the boulder while my chest jams between the rock’s slimy husk, splintering ribs and wedging me in the crack. I struggle to free myself, picturing the bruises on my brother’s chest. Agony stabs my sides. I yank my body around, try to wriggle free. The same death can’t come to us both. It can’t.

  It’s also no use. I’m stuck.

  This is it. Ari was wrong.

  I’m entombed under an impenetrable arctic mire, at the mercy of a depraved current, and my parents are never going to forgive me. I should have swum for the surface.

  Regret strengthens my resolve and I heave against the current again. Nothing happens until panic buries me in its uncontrollable terror. There I rip and thrash like a newborn tornado, not thinking, just wild and irrepressible.

  No, this isn’t the way. Not my way. Emotions cloud clear thought.

  I close my eyes, remember the Sannlitró-Völva, monks meditating, and concentrate on pooling the electrical energy lashing about my brain into a blue pearl of calm. My panic becomes focus and, in that moment, I know exactly what I have to do. This isn’t about living anymore. If I want to see Mark again, in whatever energy form he’s in now, I need to think about my own energy and tip it towards being positive in the majority. Then, when I die, we’ll join together. I’d give anything to reconnect with him one last time. This is my chance. I find it and take it.

  Just in time.

  A stony weight thuds into my face to send a whole new realm of hurt down my spine, and the pain sends me over the edge. I have only seconds left.

  So, as my last bubbles of oxygen escape, I think about Mark, I think about my life, what joys I’ve had, how precious they were, and make my peace with the world.

  Chapter 18

  Silence pushes against my skull like a hangover. It would have been nice to have company here in the darkness. But nothing reaches for my consciousness and nothing is ever going to reach for it. Mark is still wrong about that. There is only a black v
oid tempting me to abandon my senses, to float free from care in its thick soup of absence. Perhaps it is different for those who die in other ways. But I doubt it.

  Becky!

  I can’t tell where the muffled sound is coming from because I didn’t put it there. It was quiet before. I wish it would be again.

  Becky!

  The voice sounds like Ari’s. Is he here too? The blackness starts spinning. I wait for the giddy half-dead world of my slumbering psyche to settle.

  It doesn’t.

  The voice doesn’t speak again either.

  Something jerks me instead. My mouth fills with liquid. My body shakes. The physicality of it jars me. A flame of hurt sears up my spine as it bangs against a metal edge. The hard surface beneath me vibrates with movement. Bruises throb. Slashes sting. Why must I feel them again? The inky black shroud dimming my senses is comforting. I don’t want it to fall away. Sinking deeper into the weightless black void seems a much better idea. I urge it to drag me down again into a noiseless fog, a yearning buoyancy, an absence of time…

  Here, it is peaceful. Here, the constant roaring of ice water in my ears has fallen silent. Here, I want to stay.

  I look up at the ceiling of the Eroder. Then everything goes white.

  Chapter 19

  I can’t tell if my disconnection from reality has been for seconds, minutes or hours before the muffled sounds return and become recognisable. I’m in a car, I feel its movement. I’m shivering, deathly cold. I’m also definitely in a car, not the river.

  My head throbs like I’m hungover and my body aches like it’s been contorted to fit inside a cramped space for hours. I drift closer to reality, then silence soon closes in once more.

  Open your eyes, I tell myself.