Frost

by Wendy Delsol

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said, not even bothering to invent any more of an excuse than that.

  I looked out to the dance floor. Afi, Baldur, and Vigdis were still high-stepping it. I grabbed my coat from the rack at the back of the room and plunged into the cold, dark night. A few people were gathered around the exit; I hurried past them, needing quiet and space to think. Lost in thought and disoriented by the darkness, I walked aimlessly, thinking about Jack. Was I imagining the coldness to our good-bye? Was I, so new at the whole relationship thing, inventing dramas? So what if he was too busy to get hold of me. He was, after all, at some arctic field camp. And devoting himself to the opportunity. Was I being juvenile? Acting like the schoolgirl that — for the record — I was? And just what was that drop I felt in my gut back there? I knew I hadn’t invented that. Not even I could manufacture a reshuffling of organs.

  Outside, the air had turned brittle. After the warmth of the hall, my lungs rattled at the contrast. My feet slapped at the pavement until I ended up on a promenade overlooking a different section of the beach than where the polar plunge had taken place earlier. It was remote, with only a few lampposts illuminating a pedestrian path up above the water. The nearly-full moon hung like a paper lantern over the inky sea. Was I north of the festival? Or south? A gust of approaching voices scattered my brain fog; a huddle of dark shapes advanced.

  I’d lived in LA long enough to have a healthy stranger-danger radar. I had to make a decision quick. Continuing down the path would put me farther away from the hall and civilization — such as it was — though it would, at least, put distance between me and the others. Standing my ground, or an about-face, would force an encounter, an option with definite risks. The water was a dead end, nor did a scramble up the dark and sloped berm separating this path from whatever was directly above it seem wise.

  The pack, ten or so in number, drew closer. My weak-kneed limbs had taken the liberty of going with a let’s-see-what-they-want option. As the group pressed down on me, I could hear both male and female voices; they weren’t speaking English.

  When only ten or so feet separated me from these dark forms, one — a girl — spoke to the others and then halved the distance between us. I had no idea what she said, but her voice had a hard edge, and I would have guessed something along the lines of “I got this one.”

  Just as she was almost upon me, I was shocked to discover —

  “Jinky?”

  “Are you lost?” she asked. Her voice hadn’t softened any with the realization that we were acquaintances; it wasn’t a good sign.

  “No. Just walking.”

  Another girl had joined Jinky away from the pack. She circled as if inspecting me, like I was some kind of used car. I didn’t like it — or her. Had she tried to kick the tires, she’d have had a fight on her hands; I was getting pissed.

  “You should be dancing with the selurmanna, no?” Jinky asked.

  At the mention of the seal people, the still-circling car buyer reached from behind me and fingered my silver tassel. I spun around, giving myself points for knocking her hand away, but gave up a few for losing my footing in the process. Jinky, to my surprise, steadied me.

  “Watch out,” she said, removing her hand from my waist.

  I didn’t like her touching me, or the way she and her friends then laughed as if it were some kind of joke. Moreover, “Watch out” was something you said to someone before they fell, not after. Plus, judging by the way her eyes had narrowed and her voice had grown husky, I got the sense it was a warning — not a show of concern.

  “Will do,” I said, mirroring her icy stare.

  So what the hell had I done to her? Afi had even bought their stupid necklace. I fingered it, remembering what her mother had said. Good luck — on whose authority?

  With the festival hall as my determined safe house, I headed back in that direction, a course that required me to pass the others in Jinky’s gang. As I approached them, they spread out, forcing me off the path, but no one pursued me. I passed and managed a quick look at their ranks. They were your basic leather-clad, pierced, and tatted punks. If you ask me, you can judge a book by its cover; these were tough reads with dark elements.

  I walked fast, seeking the full bore of a streetlamp and the comfort of a crowd. When I reached the parking lot of the hall, I slowed my pace and punched my fists into the pockets of my parka. Empty pockets, what the —? I pulled the leather purse that came with my outfit out from under my coat, knowing it would be a pointless search. The pouch of runes wasn’t there, either. I turned back to the dark stretch separating me from Jinky and her pack of thieves. Did I dare go back and confront her? Were they long gone by now, laughing at the easy American mark? Had she been after the runes specifically, or were they all her lightning-quick hands had found? This theft, on top of the weirdness that had overcome me earlier, left me breathing in shredded rasps. With a bad feeling, I entered the festival hall. I’m not sure what I expected — some sort of incident to have taken place in my absence, as if marking the elapsed time as significant.

  “Ah, there you are,” Afi said. “I was starting to worry about you.” He smacked an itty-bitty glass down on the table. Not too worried, judging by the two empties in front of him.

  “I went for a walk,” I said, pulling my jacket tighter. A spasm wracked my body, and even my teeth started to chatter.

  “You’ve caught yourself some sort of chill,” Vigdis said, rising from her chair and placing an arm around my shoulder. “Time to go. This poor girl is as white as a ghost.”

  Ghost, I thought to myself as we made our way toward the exit. Like I don’t already have enough to contend with. They can get in line behind the Storks, Ravens, hovering souls, wicked trolls, and gypsy rune readers. How much more wacked could it get, anyway?

  The entire drive back to Vigdis and Baldur’s, my mind was casting about like one of those fly-fishing reels — but catching nothing. My shivers continued. Even I didn’t know if I was sick, tired, or freaking out.

  Somehow, I knew that Jinky’s theft of the runes was deliberate; she got what she came for. Her witchy “Watch out” still had me spooked. And that drop in my gut, it had been some kind of visceral reaction, but to what? Creepy that it came so quickly on the heels of the odd rune reading. And she had mentioned a “loss” and “reversed love.” I stared out the car window with worst-case scenarios rushing at me faster than the roadside mile markers.

  We pulled up to Vigdis and Baldur’s away-from-it-all home, and I was suddenly overcome with foreboding of what awaited inside. I didn’t know what it was, but it was something. My antennae-like hackles were sure of it.

  Vigdis, my backseat companion, put a hand on my knee. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” But for how long I didn’t know.

  We trudged silently from the car to the house, its location feeling all the more remote and as removed from reality as it was from civilization. Once in their tidy front room and removing coats, Vigdis said, “A phone message,” and pointed to a flashing red light atop a paper-strewn corner desk.

  Before I could brace myself, Vigdis took two purposeful steps and pushed a button. My mother’s voice filled the room.

  “Dad, Kat, I hate to bother you while you’re on vacation.” She didn’t sound right, even allowing for her delicate condition. “But something’s happened. I wouldn’t feel right not telling you.”

  Oh, God, was it the baby?

  “Stanley phoned earlier,” my mom continued. “It seems Jack has gone . . . missing . . . as has Brigid. They were on a routine outing, but somehow they got separated from the others.”

  My lips were shut, my molars clamped, but somehow screams were careening through my ear canals.

  “I wouldn’t have called you”— I could hear in the way my mom’s voice quivered, in the gulf from one word to the next, that she was searching for a way to soften her words —“except it’s been over twenty-four hours and . . . well, just call me when you get
this. I’ll tell you what I know. Sorry, honey. Reverse the charges. It doesn’t matter what time.”

  “Is Jack the . . . ?” Baldur whispered.

  “The boyfriend,” Afi finished for him.

  I sensed six eyes raking over me with concern.

  “I need to call my mom,” I said.

  “I’ll dial,” Afi said, reaching over me.

  Whether the call was direct, or routed through an international operator, or the result of tin cans stretched kitchen-to-kitchen, I hardly knew. Nothing mattered until the phone was passed to me and I heard the sound of my mom’s voice.

  “Mom, what’s going on?”

  “Oh, Kat, I wish I had more information.”

  “Tell me everything you know.”

  The report, repeated three times, was that yesterday — Monday — at noon, two dogsled teams had departed from camp for a remote field station in order to collect ice samples. Jack and Brigid had been on one sled, and two scientists based at the station had been on the other. A storm had blown up. The scientists had made it back to the base camp; Jack and Brigid had not.

  “The good news,” my mom said, “is that Brigid, though she may have become disoriented with the whiteout conditions, is familiar with the area.”

  “So there’s still hope?” I asked. “They’re still out there looking?”

  “Of course. There’s even a military patrol that’s been called in to assist with the search and rescue.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?” There was something. She had skipped a sentence. It was like a bad dub job when an R movie got cleaned up for TV.

  “The dogs. They should know their way home. They’re trained to return. It’s partly why they’re the preferred mode of transportation; their sensory tracking system is better than GPS. Usually.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  I heard my mom draw in a long breath. “Brigid, before leaving on what everyone assumed was just routine data collection, packed up. She loaded the sled with all her things.”

  “What?” My brain heard the words, but I was still processing the information.

  “It’s such a mystery to everyone. From their location, there’d be nowhere to go. They had headed due north, where the terrain only gets more remote and more rugged. It’s completely baffling.”

  I was quiet for a long time; too long — my mom sensed my mood.

  “Kat,” she said, “don’t lose hope. They’re still searching for them. Just because it’s odd doesn’t mean there won’t be a good explanation later, when they’re found.”

  “OK,” I said with a catch in my voice. “What can I do?”

  “There’s nothing any of us can do. Those who are in a position to help are doing it. The rest of us just have to wait, and have faith.”

  The faith part would be hard, but I’d try. The wait part, that felt wrong already.

  “You promise to call me the minute you have any more news?”

  “Of course, honey,” my mom said.

  Before hanging up, I asked my mom how she was feeling. She said fine, but I could hear how tired and weak she sounded. If there were developments with her condition, she wouldn’t tell me — not now, anyway.

  Aware of the others looking at me and of the way silence had elbowed its way into the room, I walked to the couch and plopped down. Adrift in thought, I nervously fingered my new necklace, rolling it between my thumb and forefinger. With each back-and-forth pivot, the stone revealed a different facet, as if changing from a shard of glass to a ragged puzzle piece to a mirror fragment. I thought about Stanley’s research attracting Brigid’s attention. Her interest in Jack. His inclusion, as a high-school student, on the research team. His growing distraction and coldness to me, which started the very night of her arrival. Now both of them were missing. If I could deliver souls and Jack could manipulate the weather, what else was possible? Hulda had told me of the other realms, one of which was Niflheim: the land of snow and ice. As far as conclusions went, the one I was jumping to was nuts. The kind of crazy that came with a white jacket. Still, I remembered what the rune reader had said. I had a journey ahead of me. But where, exactly? And how? And what would I tell Afi and my mom? These questions battered me like a twisted ram’s horn.

  “I need to be alone for a little while,” I said, already standing and moving toward the hallway. “I’m tired and need to lie down.”

  I wasn’t tired, and the last thing I could think about at a time like this was sleep. But I did need peace and quiet to plan. Though I had no idea where I was going, how I’d get there, or what on earth awaited me. All I knew was that I had to find Jack. I’d go to any length — to the end of the earth, if necessary.

  My hands moved items from various points in the guest room — my toiletries bag from atop the dresser, a sweatshirt from the hook on the back of the door, sweaters and jeans folded on the desk chair — but my mind wasn’t there. It was miles down the road. My heart, unfortunately, had remained to plague me. The pain I felt was crushing; a wrecking ball couldn’t have done more damage. Jack. All the misgivings I had had after his departure rushed over me: a river of regret, what-ifs, and what-nows. Jack. I needed him; he needed me; we needed each other. It was a fact as elemental as the chart hanging on the wall in Mr. Fuller’s chemistry classroom. I felt so sad and alone. There was no one to whom I could divulge the depth of our connection, except Jack himself. And had I ever really? I’d felt too young, too inexperienced. I just hoped it wasn’t too late. Jack. He had to be OK, because without him I wouldn’t be.

  My plan was to head to the airport first thing in the morning. At least three times I flipped open my laptop, hoping to check flights to Greenland, information regarding the topography of Northern Greenland, and download maps of the area. No Internet. Dang. Not being connected left me with a sense of frustration, like finding your keys dangling from the locked car’s ignition.

  In the end, I alternately paced back and forth and wrote out everything I could remember about anything that seemed remotely connected: Ofelia’s warning, the selkie legends, the rune reading, and what Vigdis had said about The Snow Queen’s prologue. By one in the morning, my travel journal was crammed with random notations and my legs ached. Exhausted, I slipped into a long white nightgown, lay down on the bed, and finally succumbed to the tears I’d held back for a long time.

  I huddled in a ball for hours, drifting in and out of troubled dreams. At some point, in the very darkest hollow of that night, I again heard the strange music. It was soft, but not melodic, more of a rhythmic series of long, sad wails. Then the tempo picked up: an urgent, commanding beat. I sat up with a start. Padding across the cold floorboards to the small closet, I pushed my toes into the pillowy fleece of my UGGs, pulled my parka over my nightgown, and crept silently into the kitchen. I found the flashlight and slipped out the back door. My eyes lifted to the moonlit sky and my ears followed the mysterious music as I picked my way along the rough path that descended toward the fjord. This time I headed in the other direction. The shoreline was even rockier here. Huge boulders jutted out into the water and created a kind of seawall. Like a drumroll, I could hear waves crashing over the black rocks. The rush of the water piqued my curiosity; something in its swell and spill was unusual. I ventured closer to the water’s edge. A series of flat, shelflike boulders jutted into the fjord. I stepped onto one, then onto the next, and finally upon the third. The huge rocks were like made-for-giants pavers, but leading where? As if in reply, something splashed in the water. Despite the dark night, cold air, and slick surface, I crept to the very edge of the final stone and peered into the rippling waters below. Red hair. I swore I saw, by the light of the moon, red hair shimmering like a Garnier shampoo ad. It swirled in a billowy cloud. I dropped to my knees, scooping at the frigid waters with my hands. The fistful of golden seaweed I brought to the surface was confusing and disappointing. Just as I resigned myself to the notion that, for once, logic prevailed, I heard a rustle behind me, and a dark shape appro
ached, advancing over the rock jetty.

  Still in a crouch, I froze, terror icing me to the spot. The figure continued forward, and I knew I was in a vulnerable position: trapped on the edge of a dark rock on a remote stretch of beach with an icy fjord behind me. As the shadow grew near, its size came into perspective. A child? No. A girl. Long ebony hair. Mahogany eyes. Jinky. WTF?

  “A little cold for swimming, isn’t it?” Jinky, now within six feet of me, asked, though it sounded more like an accusation than a question.

  I stood and scouted left to right, readying, but for what I didn’t know. “I wasn’t. I thought I saw something is all. Anyway, what are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “It’s a small town. And trust me, there are other places I’d rather be, but I’m the type who sees things through.” She removed something from her pocket — my pouch of runes — and jiggled the bag. The stones tinkled within. “These are yours. I’ve come to —”

  “You stole them,” I interrupted, surprising even myself with the accusation.

  “I borrowed them,” Jinky said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Their safe return.”

  Well, damn. That was true enough.

  “You could have asked.”

  “I took the easier route,” Jinky said, her lips curling in a self-congratulatory smile. “For the record, I wish I’d left well enough alone, but I didn’t, so we can sit here and discuss the rocks themselves, or you can hear what I saw in them.”