I take a deep breath and continue, ‘So I stuck the knife into his jugular and that’s when he started fighting back. But it was too late. He was dying already. And suddenly, his death wasn’t enough for me. I gutted him, covered myself in his blood. Then I sneaked out, broke into Erik’s house to fetch my things, and stole his aircraft. I had more luck than brains. I had little to no idea how to fly it, but it was my only means of escape. Headquarters is in Greenland. Or was, until I ran away. I hoped Erik would believe me dead and wouldn’t move his whole operation. But somehow…this seems too smooth, too easy. He has something up his sleeve and he’ll make sure I don’t survive this trip.’
I push myself away from Katvar, touch my hand to his cheek, and say, ‘This place is hell. I can’t take you with me.’
His expression darkens. ‘My decision is made.’
‘I don’t want to fight with you.’
The corners of his mouth twitch. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, either. Come.’
He smiles at me, lies down, and holds up a corner of his furs. Exhausted, I curl up around him, my arm on his chest, my legs pressed against his, my face in the crook of his neck.
The silence is eerie. We are in the middle of nowhere, as deep as one can possibly be in the middle of nowhere. Part of me can’t cross fast enough. That’s the part that wants to be done with these monotonous days of racing through the white expanse of ice and snow. The costs of this journey will be high. We know it, but we don’t feel ready for it.
When darkness falls and the northern lights sweep across the sky, I walk out into the snow and spill the blood of one of Katvar’s friends.
Katvar suffers and tries to hide it, because there’s no alternative. Seeing him hurt and lose his determination and spirit is almost unbearable.
The other part of me bristles with fear. I won’t call this part my monster anymore. I won’t give it personality and more power than it deserves.
I’m terrified to be so close to the BSA’s main satellite control centre. I’m terrified to bring an innocent man with me. He never killed a human being before he met me; he kills to eat, never to avenge, to hate, or take life for the sake of taking it. Politics are not part of his thinking. Katvar’s greatest value is to feel and express empathy. And that’s why he lets me lead him to his own death — he doesn’t want me to face this alone.
I wipe dog blood off my hands. The thin layer of gritty snow is blown about, forming small waves and eddies on the mirror of black sea ice.
I don’t trust the ice when it’s this dark. Frowning I look up at the remaining twenty-two dogs. They eat with relish. Do they know I’ve fed them Gull? I guess they do. And yet, there’s no hesitation. Maybe they have less problem with choosing survival over morals.
I turn and gaze at the snow cave we dug into the only snowdrift in the vicinity. Through a small hole at the side, wisps of steam exit. Katvar is making reindeer stew with the little meat we have left.
Six hundred and something kilometres. Two people. One bear paw and half a reindeer to eat. Twenty-two dogs who have only one another to feed on. Too many hungry mouths.
I hate this ice. It seems to want to stop us — a thousand small, salty hands grabbing at our skids, digging their fingernails into them. The Nenets didn’t warn us about it and I think it’s because they’ve forgotten. There’s only so much information your ancestors’ tales can convey. There’ll be great hunters, white bears and belugas, and the spirits of their ancestors. But there won’t be such everyday occurrences as sticky sea ice. Too boring to be included in a tale.
Tonight is the first time I believe we won’t make it. I’m starving and so is Katvar. We eat so little and every day it’s less. I’ve calculated that our last few meals before reaching our destination will be dog meat. And then there’ll be nothing. I bristle at the thought. Not because of my own palate. I don’t care about the taste. But because of Katvar. To him, eating his dogs must be close to cannibalism. How will he feel when they are all gone?
So many obstacles. So few alternatives, if any. We had to abandon Katvar’s sled two days ago when we crashed through jumbled ice and broke both skids. Since then, we are even slower. We can’t risk losing the second sled.
My face sinks into my hands and I afford myself the luxury of tears. Through the saltwater in my eyes I gaze at the black sea ice, the barest dusting of small, round snow crystals racing around on the smooth surface, chased by the wind. The northern lights caress the ice and I think of my nights in Katvar’s arms. His warm breath and his calmness. His lips on my hair. He wants me to heal; I can see it in his every gesture. But there’s no mending for me and I think, in a way, he understands that. One cannot make these things go away, not even with time and there isn’t even that. Time. If only…
I spit at the ice, stomp to my sled, and fetch an axe.
‘Fuck you,’ I cry as I whack metal against the frozen sea. I’m angry at myself, at Erik, at the merciless Arctic, the cruel ice, and our stupid fucking fate or whatever one must call it. I don’t want Katvar to die.
After twenty or so curses, I have to admit the ice is sturdier than I had expected.
Katvar emerges from the snow cave and I shake my head when he offers help. He sits down on the sled, the pot of hot stew in his lap, and watches me beat the shit out of the ice that stretches all the way to Svalbard and that is so devoid of life it will kill us. He watches me whack at the fate we have chosen and yet, haven’t had a chance to deny. I wonder if he’s seeing me kill someone. The same movements — blade to body. Over and over. My lungs burn and can’t seem to suck in enough air to fill them. ‘Bitch!’ I growl.
‘Micka,’ Katvar croaks and then signs, ‘Your food is getting cold.’ He holds out the pot and turns the spoon in my direction.
‘Um. Thanks. Your turn. Don’t kill anyone.’ Panting, I grab the pot and sit down, watch him chip away at the ice.
We take turns until the sun spreads orange over the white. Snow and sky are set ablaze. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath and just then I hear the all-changing splash! of axe in water. One entire Arctic spring night spent on chopping through an ice cover of more than one metre thickness. Much of that time has gone into enlarging the upper layers so we could reach the next, deeper layers of ice. The hole is shaped like an irregular funnel with broad steps, its small opening to the sea a deep black with shreds of ice bobbing in it. This might even be two metres deep, I think as I gaze down into the hole.
‘My first time,’ I say.
Katvar raises his eyebrows.
‘It’s the first time I’ve seen the Arctic Ocean.’ I point at the hole.
When Erik brought me to Svalbard, I was unconscious. When he took me away from there, I was blindfolded. He never allowed prisoners and slaves to leave the camp. None of the women had ever seen the Greenland Sea. We heard its rushing and booming, and imagined how it might look. My sea was a deep turquoise when the sun shone, and an unsettling grey when a storm pushed it about.
‘Me, too,’ he signs.
I have an inkling that there should be humour in this situation. The ocean in a small hole. Ha! Someone laugh, please? I look at Katvar and see my own resignation mirrored in his stance.
Sighing, I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see lights popping in my vision. This winter is insane. There shouldn’t even be a thin layer of ice here. Maybe a lonely float, but not this! The Arctic has been ice-free for most of the past decades. Any other winter, we could have taken a boat to Svalbard and back again. No killing of dogs, no starving to death. Just a pleasant trip to the most dangerous place on Earth.
I open my eyes, kick at the ice shrapnel we’ve produced, and catch a glint in Katvar’s face. He’s grinning.
Maybe it’s good that this winter has been unusually harsh. No one will think of us crossing the ice. If we are lucky, no one is searching for us. We might be sharply visible when the sky is as clear as it is now, but the area to scan is enormous. If Erik doesn’t feel like tak
ing over the world in the next few weeks, he might not even be in the Vault.
I wipe away the hope that comes unbidden. One of many possibilities, I tell myself. A danger, should I bank on it for the sake of making myself feel better.
Enough of this already!
I fetch fishing lines and hooks from my sled. Katvar cuts tiny bits off the frozen reindeer and pins them on the hooks. Then we sit and wait. We have no idea if we can catch anything.
He cries an excited, ‘Whoop!’ when the first fish bites, and cuts it up immediately, so we can taste it and celebrate our first success with a full stomach. The sun climbs the sky — or maybe skids along the horizon depending on how you want to look at it — and we catch fish after fish, every one of them a small miracle. Rows of silvery animals lie in semicircles around us; we toss the dogs a fish each and they gulp them down greedily. I keep counting how many we’ve caught — twenty-two eaten by the dogs, eleven on my side, fifteen on Katvar’s. Most of them are as large as two hands — Katvar’s hands, not mine. If they are as fatty as the ones the Nenets gave us, one fish per dog per day might be enough to keep them running. Twenty-two dogs, more than six hundred kilometres. Eight days at our current speed, what with going around jumbled ice and not breaking our sled. Shit. We need one hundred eighty fish for the dogs alone. My hope crashes.
As if he reads my thoughts, Katvar signs, ‘We will catch more. We will make your sled lighter, leave some of our stuff here in the hut.’
Then he grins at me. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For being angry at the ice.’ He nods at the deep hole. ‘Look at all this food. I had no idea this was possible.’
‘I didn’t, either.’ I gaze at the sun that will soon disappear again. The days are still so short.
I look at the sled, wondering what we could possibly leave behind. We’ve already left every unnecessary item with the Nenets — the two extra pots we didn’t barter, an extra bone knife. They didn’t want to accept my longbow. Who knows why. I could leave it here, but it might come in handy as firewood. The oil will be gone soon. So many obstacles…
‘I’m tired,’ I mutter.
‘Enough for now,’ he signs after seven more fish have been added to our provisions.
As we rub the silvery scales off our hands with the little snow there is, an idea hits me. Crazy, probably, but…I need to wash. I haven’t washed for weeks, or so it feels.
We chuck all the frozen fish on a pile next to the snow cave, I dash inside and drop my clothes on the furs. I wonder if the sea will feel warm, it must be more than twenty degrees Celsius warmer than the air
I step outside and bump into Katvar. He starts when he sees me naked. I grin at him and climb down into the hole. The soles of my feet are burning with cold.
‘Fish me out if I get a heart attack,’ I call and slide in with a splash. ‘Holy fuuuuuck!’
It feels as if the sea punches all warmth from my body and my skin is freezing over. The coldness makes my head hurt. Ice crystals on the water’s surface collide and produce little clinking noises.
I scrub my hair, ears, face, neck and work my way south. I bark a laugh when I realise that this one time, my own south is also the magnetic south of Earth. How cool is that? Pretty cool.
In fact, it’s so cool it’s shit cold.
Katvar runs across the ice, arms wrapped around his bare chest. He grabs the axe, loses his footing and slithers into the hole, axe blade scraping along the edge of the ice. I catch him by his waist as he plummets into the water.
‘Orrrr!’ he grunts and slams the axe into the lowest step of our ice hole.
‘Indeed. Good you brought that. Imagine us both trying to get out of a slippery ice hole and the fucking axe is just out of reach. What an unheroic end to our adventure.’
The corners of his mouth twitch as his head disappears. A short moment later, he breaks the surface and spits water into my face. ‘I’m a beluga,’ he signs and grins. ‘With a bad headache.’ His white teeth flash in the northern lights.
‘I love belugas,’ slips from my mouth.
Quickly, he looks down at the black water, maybe to find a whale.
As he begins to wash himself he bumps into me. I decide to give him more space, and pull myself out of the ice hole. I shake off the water and offer him my hand, but he doesn’t need it.
Together, we race into the snow hut, grab a shirt each and rub ourselves dry. I dive under my furs, shaking with laughter and cold.
He throws his furs next to me, crawls under them and scoots close. Very close.
I sneak my arm under his furs. His skin is all goosebumpy. Accidentally, I brush a nipple. His eyes darken.
A heartbeat later, our chests touch. I can feel his knee against mine, his arm slipping around my back, his breath on my face.
‘Tell me…’ His damaged voice fails. He inhales and rasps, ‘…to leave.’
‘I don’t want you to leave. I want…’
His gaze travels down to my lips.
‘I want…’
‘What?’ he mouths. ‘Tell me.’
‘I want to be yours. I want you to be mine. I want to taste you, kiss all your soft places. I want to be close to you. I want…’
Katvar is holding his breath, waiting for me to continue. And so I do. ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’
He blinks. A tear rolls from the corner of his eye down his nose and falls onto the furs. I can see the reflection of the small flame in it — like a drop of dew in the setting sun.
‘Katvar?’
Slowly, he brings up his right hand and signs, one letter at a time, ‘I wish I could speak to you as tenderly as I love you.’
My heart produces a massive whoomp. Warm prickling spreads through my body. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as Katvar telling me he loves me. I touch my hand to his, fingertips resting against fingertips, palms against palms until all fingers slide and fall, embracing, interweaving.
It feels as if the last missing kernel of realisation falls into place, and two dots are finally connected. There is no unlearning, no disconnecting of these dots once the fragile line has been drawn between them. They’ll remain bound to one another until the end of days.
I whisper, ‘You do already. You always did.’
An explosion of flavours spreads in my mouth — of snow and fire, of the ocean, of blueberries with milk and honey, those of trust, respect, and…and the deep wish to see him happy.
With the urgent need to add Katvar’s taste to the mix, I lean in and brush the corners of his mouth with my lips, hoping he wants to kiss me back.
And, oh yes, he does! He tilts his head and offers more of himself. His lips are soft and warm, parting, yielding to mine.
‘Katvar,’ I sigh into his mouth.
He wraps his arms tighter around me, rolls me onto him. I push myself up and trace my fingertips down the side of his neck, along his collarbones and into the hollow of his throat. His dark gaze never lets go of mine.
I take in his nakedness, the knife marking his chest — the black lines and fine scars, and I wonder if anyone has ever touched him. The word deserted flits through my brain and brings flavours of scorched grass.
I lower my lips to his skin. There’s nothing here that tastes deserted. Musky, salty, sweet. Smooth and hard. I let him feel my lips, my tongue, and gently, my teeth too, from his chest, down along his stomach and the narrow line of black hair, his hipbones, his thigh, his ankle, his toes.
His breath comes in ragged bursts. I run my hand up his leg. When I kiss the inside of his thighs, he begins to tremble. When I bury my nose in the nest of black curls, he twitches and pushes me away.
I look up at him and, slowly, I wrap my hand around his cock. His eyes widen. He shakes his head no.
‘I don’t bite. Promise.’
A nervous grin rushes past his mouth, the shock never leaving his face. I hold his gaze as my tongue touches the tip of him. He throws back his head and
presses an arm over his face. Humming, I slide him into my mouth. I love how he writhes under me. His hand comes down on my head, fingers raking through my hair. Whimpering, he begs for more.
His flavours are now those of the word rapture — burning from the tip of my tongue down my throat. Hot, musky, and the salty bite of the Arctic ocean.
‘Micka,’ he croaks and gently pulls me up. I gaze into his eyes and see a devotion that makes my heart soar and clench at the same time. He runs his hand up along my spine and brings my face to his. His kiss is hungry. His arousal is pressing against my thigh and now, I’m trembling, too.
He breaks our kiss. His eyebrows draw together. ‘You okay?’ he signs.
‘I don’t know if you…want this.’
He touches his lips to mine and signs, ‘I’ve wanted you for a long time, Micka.’
‘You never said anything!’
‘I did. Very quietly.’ A fingertip flicks at the ivory dog at my throat. ‘You didn’t listen. And it was good you didn’t. It would have been very hard to say no to you if you had invited me to your bed before…this.’
‘Are you afraid?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘No. I’m not. There will be no child.’
No, there won’t. I find that very sad. I wish my life with him would be longer.
I touch his jawline and run my fingers down to his chin, tip it toward me and gently bite his bottom lip. ‘We are dying,’ I whisper.
‘We are living,’ he replies and buries his face in the crook of my neck, pushes me up and trails kisses down along my throat until he reaches my breasts.
I’m panting. I’m out of breath. He grazes my nipples with his teeth, presses his hand against the small of my back and I obey his urgent command and tilt my hips, slide down along his body, coming to a halt just before…
With a growl, he flips me onto my back. His arms are braced on either side of my head. I weave my fingers through his, bring his wrist to my lips and kiss the sensitive skin there. He moans. His body is hard against mine, not a thread of fabric would fit between us and yet, he hesitates.
Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 17