‘I want to feel your weight on me,’ I whisper into his ear and he says, ‘Yes,’ but then, ‘Not yet,’ and again, ‘Do you want me? Say you want me.’
His hand travels down my stomach and dips into the wetness hiding behind my orange curls. I feel him smile against my collar bone, feel his finger slipping into me and a second finger until he curls them and finds a spot that feels so sweet. I press toward him and move my hips, grind them against his hand and curl my arm around his waist, trying to coax him onto me, because I yearn, I yearn.
He takes his time showing me many, many delicious things one can do with lips, hands, and tongue. And when he finally shifts his weight and presses me into the bed, I sink, I drown, and open for him, and then he enters me and I do feel pain, the pain of separation, the pain of nights wasted and togetherness thrown carelessly aside. I grab him and wrap him up, pull him deeper, swallow and devour him and he comes with a shudder and I with a muffled cry.
———
Erik walks in without knocking. The morning sun has barely risen high enough to slant through the windows. ‘It’s time,’ he says and Jeremiah rises without a word.
We don’t look at each other. As we agreed.
He leaves and I stay in the house. As we agreed.
Sitting on my rug, I listen to the grinding of boots on hard ground. Low, calm voices. A measured discussion, it seems. He’ll be fine, I think, just when a lone shot is fired. I tell myself to stay seated, to behave like a wife who has been abused and mistreated for months, who is happy her husband is now dead.
When Erik strolls back in and tells me I’m to dispose of the body, all I can do is nod and stand and stumble forward. Jeremiah lies flat in the dirt, the sun shines down on him, an exit wound gapes at the back of his head. I don’t look there. I look at his mighty shoulders, knowing they’re still warm. I walk up to him and turn him over. He’s heavy. Heavier than he was last night when he softly lowered himself onto me, into me. Even his urgency didn’t make him as heavy as he is now.
‘Where do you want me to put him?’ I ask no one in particular.
‘The pit,’ Silas says.
I can hear the smile in his voice.
I grab Jeremiah’s wrists and start pulling. Slow progress. I look at his face, white lashes resting on pale skin, droplets of blood caught in them. I think of Snow-white. Red as blood, white as snow, black as…the BSA.
I swallow and keep pulling, keep my head low and my eyes dry.
We wake to a thunderous howl. A storm tugs at our tent. It’s not half as warm as a snow cave and I’m worried about our supply of oil for the lamp. The small flame can keep the inside of a snow cave warm enough for us to sit short-sleeved. Now, it seems as if all heat flies out through the thin fabric walls. I keep the flame low, waiting for the snow to pile up farther on the outside. It’s now at more than half of the tent’s height.
‘Will the dogs be okay?’ I ask.
Katvar cracks one eye open and nods. ‘A blizzard is no problem for them,’ he signs.
The dogs seem to be happy and warm enough, although they couldn’t dig into the rock-hard snow-ice mix, either. They are probably little snow mounds by now, almost indistinguishable from their surroundings.
I blow out the light and try to listen to the scraping of ice crystals across fabric. But the faint noise is drowned out by the storm. I imagine the howling growing softer and quieter as more snow piles up on our tent. I close my eyes, listening and trying to think of nothing. Exhaustion pulls me down quickly.
Something’s wrapped around my throat. A rope? No. A hand. I try to breathe. A rushing sound; that of oxygen deprivation. Voices reach my ears through the surge of half-consciousness. Or is it half-unconsciousness? I try to open my eyes and what I see is confusing. The inside of a tent. No. Men with semiautomatics, firing at me, at the Lume, at Rajah, at… The hand around my throat tightens. My view blackens and the noise in my ears grows unbearable. It sounds like…a scream. A hand on my head, grasping my hair, pulling, twisting my neck. My gun. My knife. Where’s everything? A hand in my hair. A soft caress. No pain. No blood.
A tap to my cheek wakes me. ‘Hm?’
Another tap; I open my eyes.
‘It’s late in the morning,’ Katvar signs. ‘We need to move.’
I’m shit tired. My joints ache and my eyes are burning. When I peel myself from my toasty furs, the air feels like ice.
The yapping of the dogs comes as a relief. They are obviously happy and eager to run. While I pack up the tent and strap it to my sled, Katvar feeds the animals and checks their legs and paws for soreness.
I move like a slug through honey, and Katvar is done with all dogs before I finish packing our stuff. He helps me and finally we are ready to leave.
The fresh snow is deep and soft and it takes too much time and energy to move the sleds out of a snow drift and line up the two teams. I’m already sweating.
I take off my snow goggles and rub my face. The landscape is a blinding white with cotton-coated firs and pines littered here and there. The trees are getting smaller the farther north we travel.
I gaze down at my legs that are knee-deep in the snow. The dogs’ bellies are buried in it. Snow dusts their thick coats. They tug and jump, but the sleds move only reluctantly.
Katvar oofs and the fur balls plop on their butts, impatiently snapping at the air and the snow. He steps off his sled, pulls on his snow shoes and signs to me, ‘I’ll walk ahead to make a path. We’ll switch in a few hours.’
Our progress is slow. He tries to compact the snow by stomping his snow shoes in short steps, wide enough to fit the width of the skids and the dog teams. The animals seem to think us ridiculous; they want to run and all we do is slow them to a crawl.
To help them pull my heavy sled through the deep snow, I push with one leg, then the other, a repetitive and almost hypnotic movement. Soon, I feel like an achy version of a perpetual pendulum. My head hurts and I want to eat handfuls of snow to cool down my body. I’m parched. We have to keep moving.
The sun skids along the horizon and at some point, Katvar stops walking. He looks exhausted. His knees wobble. I sneak a fistful of snow into my mouth, then cut up the last bit of the roasted reindeer leg and hand him a piece.
Sitting on the sled, with his eyes shut and his breath heavy, he chews his food while I distribute portions of raw meat to each of the dogs. I’ll have to make another kill today or tomorrow. We are almost out of provisions.
Despite a lack of appetite, I eat my ration, then break branches off the fir trees and throw them to the dogs. They happily chew them to shreds. I cut the fresher greens off the tips of fir twigs, scrape the abundant lichens off the tree bark and deliver a handful to Katvar.
He brings his fingers near his lips, then moves them toward me. I like this gesture; it’s much more mindful than most spoken thanks. With sign language, you have to look at each other, look into each other’s eyes. There’s sincerity in that.
He sees my tiredness and offers to keep walking. I shake my head no. It’s my turn, and I’m set on reaching our destination by mid-March at the latest, come what may.
I strap on my snow shoes and stomp ahead. After only a few moments, I grow exceedingly hot. Sweat drips from beneath my fur hood down along the snow goggles, and into my scarf. Flavours of fir and lichen linger in my mouth. The taste is unpleasant, but the hardy greens provide us with the much-needed vitamins our carnivorous diet lacks.
The wind picks up and blows snow in my face. My body tells me I’m about to freeze to death or burn to death or both. Hot and cold. Something’s wrong with me, but I’m sure I’ll sleep it off tonight.
I pull my scarf farther up my nose and cheeks, and my fur hood lower over my face to close the small gap of exposed skin.
My legs ache and my sweaty and now-cold shirt sticks to my back. I’m not worried about the dogs today. They’ve spent hours walking slowly. They must be bored, not exhausted.
Sweating, freezing, and nauseous,
I keep up my pace until the sun sets. Once in a while I glance over my shoulder to see if Katvar is still behind me, but now with the light fading and the snowstorm thickening, I can’t spot him anywhere.
The dogs begin to bark and jump. There’s something ahead of us. A dark shape between the sparse trees. It’s large, the size of a bear or wisent.
I signal the dogs to stay, pull the rifle from my shoulder, wipe my goggles clean, and approach whatever agitates them. The thing doesn’t seem to move, and slowly, its shape grows more defined.
It’s a door.
All of a sudden, it’s swallowed by blackness.
Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will...
Qur’an 2:223
Silas has the looks of a pretty boy of seventeen or eighteen. He walks like a dancer with his narrow hips swinging, his muscular shoulders held a little high and stiff, and, occasionally, he snaps the fingers of his left hand to a tune only he can hear. His sleek, black hair is tucked in a ponytail; the thing bounces when he walks. No one dares call him a faggot. You’ll die an unpretty death if anyone suspects you of being gay. But not as unpretty as if you dare hint to Silas that he might be a little…girlish.
Silas is cruel. I can see it in his pale blue eyes, in the two pinpricks of his pupils. He glues them to his victim and doesn’t take them off until she stops moving and he’s had his fun.
Silas is my second husband. Not two minutes into our married life, and I’m lying flat on my stomach, my nose dripping blood on the floorboards. He plants a foot on my lower back until my hipbone digs into the wood beneath. His hand grabs my hair, hot breath scrapes along my neck.
‘Hmmmm,’ he purrs in my ear. ‘So you kissed a girl and your husband refused to discipline you in public. Did you plan to get him killed that way? Or did you accidentally make him soft? No. I think you planned it. You’ve fucked him stupid. Your cunt needs a thorough cleansing.’
Involuntarily, I grunt when he pulls me up by my hair. He will not get a scream from me; not one. I’ve seen his face, the joy and arousal written all across it when he tortures one of the girls. I’m a hand-me-down wife. If I weren’t of the commander’s brood, I’d be dead already. I guess Silas gets to kill me slowly behind closed doors in a way that gives just enough room for doubt. ‘If you kill her, you are dead,’ is what Erik said when he handed me over to Silas.
My arms are tied to the legs of the kitchen table, my bare knees and elbows scrape on the floor. I feel the tip of his boot press hard against my vulva. ‘Ass up,’ he snarls.
And up in the air it goes. I feel stupid and childish obeying him. Weak.
The floorboards are kinked. There’s a dead fly stuck in a crack, its wings stubbly and coated with dust. I think of what Erik taught me yesterday about the country of the Great Bear, where Polaris shines above the North Pole, together with the stars of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. He showed me how, through the centuries, the ice had retreated — the heartbeat of the seasons, of freezing and melting, of coming and going, until it diminished entirely and the pole turned from stark white to shades of black, blue and turquoise. The meltwater had stopped the ocean circulation. The tree line moved north, swamps formed where once was perpetually frozen soil, and most mammals of the frozen sea perished or migrated to avoid starvation. The peoples of the North adapted. The Great White Bear of the Arctic did not. I saw pictures of him. What a beautiful creature. Tall and strong, massive paws, thick and soft fur. And white. Beautifully white. I think of Jeremiah and shiver. It’s February. I’m naked. I should have made a fire. Stupid.
Ice-cold water hits my privates. Reflectively, I curl up and receive a kick against my pubis. ‘Ass up, I said!’
Pain tells me to stay down, fear tells me to expose myself and push my privates up in the air. Another bucket of water is thrown over me, a coarse hand scrubs over my ass and vulva, fingernails scrape across vulnerable skin. It feels as if he’s using a wire brush. I squeeze my eyes and mouth shut, and tell myself that my lower half doesn’t belong to me.
I think about what I read today in Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” about deceiving the enemy to win a battle. How to pretend weakness when in truth there’s strength.
I don’t feel strong today.
When Silas grabs my hips, I know he’s ready. I try to relax my pelvic muscles, they are not powerful enough to prevent the intrusion. What comes next is irrelevant, I tell myself. I think of the girl who blew herself up. How proudly she held her head high and walked into death. I will be like her. Proud, courageous.
It doesn’t help.
He tears into my anus and I feel like he cuts me open with a blade. I’m a pig to be gutted. A muffled cry slips through my lips.
‘Fuck, yes!’ he grunts and I bite down on my arm to shut myself up, to make my arm hurt and distract my brain from what Silas is doing to the rest of me.
It doesn’t help.
It hurts.
It hurts so much.
Please…
I find myself lying in a puddle of water, probably my own piss and shit, too. I’m shaking. There’s a bit of blood caked to the floorboards. My arm has multiple bite marks. My ass is on fire. I’m still tied to the table. Silas snores softly on his bed.
I pull my legs to my torso and try to curl up to conserve energy, to keep myself warm. But my skin is ice cold, the floor is ice cold, and the air makes my breath cloudy.
Something taps gingerly against my skull. From the inside. The drive isn’t safe anymore.
I don’t know where I am when I wake up.
I’m warm. That’s good, I guess. I try to sit up, but I feel too woozy. My tongue is glued to my palate. I scan the dark room and see dogs littering the floor. I count twelve. Katvar must be out with the other team. One of them walks up to me and dips her wet nose against my cheek.
‘Hey Gull.’ I rub her behind the ears. She shuts her eyes, opens her mouth and sticks her tongue out. I swear these dogs know how to smile.
I move aside and pat the mattress of twigs, the sheet of fur. ‘Come, warm me up a little.’ She moves close to me and I snuggle up to her soft body and soon fall back to sleep.
A rumbling and the excited yapping of dogs wakes me. Gull jumps up and cold air blows at my skin.
Katvar bumps the door open, knocks snow off his clothes and cocks his head.
‘You woke up,’ he signs.
‘What’s happened?’
He pokes his finger in the air and grins at the package tucked beneath his arm. He acts as if that thing is the solution to all of humanity’s problems.
‘What is it?’
He clicks his tongue and shakes his head. Okay, a surprise then. I watch him add wood to the embers in the fireplace and set snow to melt in a pot. When he sits down next to me, he frowns. His hand signs are choppy. ‘I lost you in the blizzard. Found you lying on the doorstep.’ He nods to the entrance. ‘Don’t know how long you were lying there. Maybe an hour or two. You’ve had a high fever. Two days. Scary.’
‘Sorry. I can’t remember a thing. Just…lots of bad dreams.’
‘You scream every night. Only this time…’ He puts his index finger to his cheek. There’s a faint bruise. He grins. ‘You punch real good. I don’t want to be where your fist lands when you are fully awake.’ Katvar guffaws one of his throaty laugh-thingies, brushes his finger over the knuckles of my right hand and signs, ‘I’m proud to be your friend.’ Then, his expression turns solemn. ‘Tell me about your nightmares, Micka.’
Heat rolls over my skin. ‘I’d rather forget them.’
‘Hm…’ he says, looks down at his hands, then lifts them and signs, ‘I think you never noticed that…’
‘What?’
‘When you have one of your nightmares, I caress your hair and you stop screaming.’
‘I think I noticed. I…I thought it was a dream,’ I mutter. Feeling stupid, I lower my head back on the furs and cover my face with my arm.
Katvar shuffles to the pot over
the fire. There’s a lot of clonking and scraping. Curious, I crack my eyes open. He’s shielding my view with his torso as aromas of porridge and something fruity fill the cabin.
He gives me an apologetic smile as if to say, ‘I’m sorry I touched you,’ pours whatever he made into a bowl and holds it up, taps it three times with a spoon, and hands it to me as if I’m the Empress of Russia.
I’m stunned to see the contents: rolled oats cooked in milk, topped with dried blueberries. Not just a spoonful of blueberries. Nope. A good handful of them.
‘Katvar, this…where did you…how could you afford it?’
‘Shot a nice stag and traded it together with an iron pot for frozen reindeer milk, grain, bread, butter, cheese, and dried fruit. The village is only an hour from here.’ He jerks his head north.
‘Wow. I’m…I’m…’ I blow air through my nose, bring my fingers to my lips and move them toward Katvar. Thank you. The smile he gifts me warms the entire room.
The creamy richness of the porridge and sweet tartness of the berries spread softly on my tongue, layers upon layers of flavours and textures. I offer him every second spoonful and he declines every one of them. ‘Tomorrow we share,’ he signs. ‘Today you need it all.’
I’m full already, but I’ll not refuse his present. I lie down on my back, the bowl on my stomach, and shovel lazily into my mouth, savouring each tiny bit while he makes tea for us.
My teeth grind the blueberries to the tastiest mush in human history and I find myself smiling at no one in particular. I roll the flavours around in my mouth, push them to the tip of my tongue where they bite a little, and back farther down — almost down my throat — where the flavours grow muskier and sweeter and slightly bitter.
When all is eaten and I begin to miss the taste of blueberries, of milk and creamy oats, I say, ‘This was absolutely wonderful. You are wonderful, Katvar—’ My hand comes down on my mouth so violently, my teeth cut my lips. Flavours explode in my mouth, spread past my palate, to my ears and halfway through my brain.
Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 13