Melt

by Robbi McCoy

  “You know,” Kelly said, “I hadn’t thought of that. I’d have before and after shots. Sweet!”

  “I thought you’d feel that way. So why don’t you come out before all the excitement’s over?”

  Kelly sprang from her chair. “I will!” She kicked off her slippers, then remembered she was stuck. “Oh, wait. I have no way to get there. Chuck’s gone and won’t be back until tonight. Even if I had a boat, I’d need a pilot to go with it.”

  “That’s too bad. Maybe you can come tomorrow, but the chance to see calving may be over by then. Still, you can at least get the after shots.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said, frustrated. “Thank you for calling.”

  After hanging up, she hit her fist on the desk. “Crap!” Another missed opportunity. There must be some way to get out there. She supposed she could try to rent a boat and a pilot, but had no idea how hard or how expensive that would be. Chuck usually took care of things like that.

  Still trying to figure out a plan, she went to the kitchen to get an ice cream bar from the freezer, noting that there was no sign of lunch preparations. Jens was sitting at the table playing a game on his phone. Kelly could hear the beep beep sound effects. He glanced up and acknowledged her with an indifferent smile, then returned to his game. She unwrapped her ice cream and came around to look over his shoulder as he tried to break through a wall of colored bricks with a paddle and ball.

  “How’s your grandmother?” she asked, biting off a corner of the bar.

  The ball missed the paddle and the phone made a mocking wah-wah sound. Jens frowned. “She’s kind of upset. The earthquake did a number on her. She’ll be okay. But I think we may be on our own for lunch.”

  “Okay by me. I can always make a sandwich. I mean smørrebrød.”

  He resumed his game. She ate her ice cream, watching him play absentmindedly. Halfway through the ice cream bar, she asked, “Jens, you’re studying to be a doctor, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, his thumbs working the game.

  “So you know something about genetics.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How would a person get blue eyes if nobody in her family had blue eyes?”

  He looked up, quizzically. “Nobody in the entire family tree?”

  “Nobody to the knowledge of anyone living.”

  “There are three ways. Albinos have blue eyes. Light skin, light hair.”

  “She’s not an albino.”

  “You mean this is somebody you know?”

  “It’s Pippa.”

  “Oh. So we’re talking about a Greenlander. Another way is a spontaneous mutation. That’s how blue eyes came about in the first place. It happens once in a while, but it’s rare.”

  “What’s the third way?”

  “Through inheritance, but the only way someone can have blue eyes is if both parents carry the blue-eyed gene. It’s recessive, so you have to have a mother and a father with both a blue-eyed and a brown-eyed gene. If the two blues get together in the child, you can have a blue-eyed child, even though the parents are both brown-eyed.”

  “And the grandparents too?”

  “Yeah. None of these people would have blue eyes, even if they had the gene, until someone inherited it from both parents.”

  “And how far back could that go?”

  He shrugged. “Back to wherever the blue-eyed gene originated. As long as the carriers kept passing it on, it would still be there, even if it wasn’t expressed for several generations. You do see Greenlanders with blue eyes once in a while, like Pippa. The only way to know if it’s inherited or not is to have her parents tested to see if they have the gene. But that doesn’t solve the mystery of where it came from originally, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  Jens continued his game and Kelly finished her ice cream, thinking about Pippa’s blue eyes, which led her to think about Jordan’s blue-gray eyes and how frustrating it was that she was stuck here with no transportation.

  “Why aren’t you working?” she asked.

  “No more tours today. I had a group early this morning and I’ve got the midnight one. That’s it.”

  Suddenly Kelly had a brainstorm.

  “Jens!” she said, clamping a hand on his shoulder.

  “Wah-wah,” went the phone.

  He twisted his head to get a glimpse of her. “What?”

  “Your helicopter is available this afternoon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you could go out on a little pleasure trip if you wanted to.”

  “Yeah, if I wanted to, but I don’t.”

  “What I meant was, you could take me for a flight.”

  He looked suddenly interested. “You want to go out in my chopper?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anywhere in particular?”

  “Uh-huh. Can we do it?”

  He shrugged. “You pay for gas and buy me a beer.”

  “I’ll buy you a six-pack!”

  “Deal!” He reached a fist over his head and she bumped it with her own.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dr. Lund relied on his walking stick as they made their way toward the cave coordinates. He wasn’t quick or spritely, but he was solid and steady. Pippa guessed him to be about sixty years old, with a tanned, lined face and a slight hunch to his shoulders. She had told him everything she was going to tell him about the cave. She had told him about the rock cairn and about her belief that it marked a grave. He had agreed that if it was a burial marker, it was most likely not Inuit. It had the characteristics of the Norse people, though they didn’t normally bury people in caves. It could also just be a pile of rocks somebody built for the heck of it. She understood that, she told him, knowing that the evidence would speak for itself. She was tense with excitement and would have liked to run the entire way, but her companion’s pace held her back like taut bridle reins.

  “What are you doing on Disko Island?” she asked as they walked.

  “We’re excavating a Thule summer site.”

  “That’s cool. I know this was a place they came in summer to hunt. Down from the north.”

  “That’s right. Are you interested in anthropology?”

  “Yes! Especially Greenland anthropology, but the subject I’m really passionate about is biophysics or phylogenetics, something like that.”

  He raised one eyebrow, eyeing her with interest. “Is that so? How did you develop an interest in phylogenetics?”

  Pippa shrugged. “I’ve been interested in it ever since I can remember.”

  He smiled knowingly, showing all his upper teeth. “Let me guess. Eye color?”

  She nodded. “I guess my interest in genetics is sort of a vanity thing.”

  “It’s not uncommon for something personal to spark an interest that becomes professional. People become cancer specialists because a loved one has cancer. It’s as good a reason as any. Maybe better, because it’s not just cold science. It has a real-world relevance for you.”

  “Exactly. I figure whatever I find out about my eyes, like proof that the Vikings survived by joining up with the Thule, that will contribute a lot to the general knowledge of the history of Greenland.”

  “That’s Greenland’s biggest historical mystery. If you solve that, you’ll guarantee your legacy.”

  Pippa smiled at the idea of having a legacy. “I hope this cave will give us some good DNA to work with. Then maybe you’ll have a legacy too.”

  Dr. Lund laughed good-naturedly.

  At last they approached the ravine. Unable to restrain herself, Pippa walked rapidly ahead of him to the edge and looked down into it, trying to pick out familiar patterns in the rocks to locate the cave entrance. What had jumped out at her easily the last time she was here was the hole she had fallen through, a dark gaping opening in the plant cover. But today that wasn’t evident. Everything looked different. She realized she must not be in the right place, so she turned on her GPS receiver and sat down, cross-legged, waiting for
it to get a fix.

  Dr. Lund walked up, breathing audibly.

  “It’s in this ravine,” she informed him. “I don’t see it, so we’ll have to use the GPS.”

  Dr. Lund nodded and sat on a large boulder, lifting his face to the sky with his eyes closed. He seemed to be enjoying himself on this little hike.

  “I’ve got a fix,” Pippa announced, standing. “Let me go down and locate it. You can wait here and I’ll call you when I find it. It’s a little tricky getting down this slope.”

  “Okay. Just give a holler.”

  Pippa descended into the ravine, knocking loose rocks as she went. They clattered down the incline. The coordinates led her to a spot almost directly below where Dr. Lund waited, but she was still not able to see either the opening in the ceiling or the one she had dug to escape. She stood directly on top of the coordinates. According to the receiver, the cave floor was thirty meters below her feet. That made no sense because the cave was only three meters high. The furthest from the cave floor she could be was four meters. So how could she be standing twenty meters above it on solid rock?

  She checked to see that the battery was okay and the device had a good signal. It was communicating with five satellites, reporting a solid 3D fix. She decided to walk up and down the ravine a few meters in each direction to see if she could find the cave entrance by sight. She went one direction without success, then went back the other direction, noticing that many of the boulders underfoot were unstable. They rocked and slipped when she stepped on them, something she hadn’t noticed before. Everything seemed off today.

  When she saw a familiar patch of blooming cottongrass, the very ones she had been picking when she’d fallen through, she dashed toward them. At the edge of the wildflower patch was a pile of rocks that hadn’t been there before. She was sure of it. With this landmark to orient herself, she knew where the ceiling collapse should have been. Nothing but boulders. She walked tentatively on top of them and consulted the GPS receiver. Thirty meters below her feet, it again reported.

  “Did you find it?” Dr. Lund called down.

  Pippa knelt and touched the rocks beneath her, a solid mass of boulders. She climbed down the side of the slope, slipping when one of the boulders broke loose under her foot. Shaken, she stood staring at the mass of rock, gradually realizing what had happened.

  A few minutes later she reluctantly climbed out of the ravine and faced Dr. Lund, who gazed at her curiously.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “I think the cave has been buried,” she answered quietly. “The earthquake must have brought down a rock slide and collapsed it. There’s no way in. Not that I can find. It’s thirty meters under.”

  Dr. Lund looked disappointed. “Oh, that’s too bad.” He stood, steadying himself with his stick. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

  Pippa looked up at him, confused. “What?”

  “That cave was probably created by an earthquake in the first place, don’t you think? A rock avalanche brought on by a quake. And now it’s been destroyed the same way.”

  Pippa searched his face. “We have to dig it out. To get to the grave.”

  He pursed his lips, a solemn look on his face. “We don’t actually know there was a grave. There was a pile of rocks. Maybe put there by a person. That’s all. It was one thing to move a few rocks and take a look, but now you’re talking about a major excavation to uncover something that may or may not be there or may have been moved who knows how far downslope by the rock slide. There’s no road to bring in heavy equipment. On the strength of no actual evidence, I don’t think anybody will go to the lengths required to get in here.”

  “But they have to,” Pippa objected. “This is important. It’s the key to everything. It’s the missing link that will tell us what happened to the Vikings. It will prove they didn’t all die off, that some of them survived by going to live with the native people. And they had children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and I’m a descendant of both Thule and Norse people! To know that, to be able to prove that with hard facts would be huge.”

  Dr. Lund regarded her for a moment before calmly replying. “Pippa, even if there was a body buried in that cave and we managed to recover it and positively determine that it was indeed a Scandinavian from the Viking era, how would that prove what you’re saying? It would say nothing about what happened to the Viking settlers one way or another. It would be one individual who died in a cave and was left there. We wouldn’t know why. We wouldn’t know by whom. It would be a valuable find, but couldn’t possibly lead to the conclusions you’re imagining.”

  “But the DNA,” she argued. “It could be analyzed and compared to mine. To prove she was related to me.”

  “She?” He narrowed his eyes at her.

  Pippa stared, then swallowed hard, realizing she had just moved into dangerous territory. There was nothing she could tell him about Asa. Science and scientists like Dr. Lund dealt only with the facts. He was right that the details could never be known from the evidence. Even if Asa’s baby was found, it would have nothing to say about Asa and Gudny and their life among the Skrælings. It would only prove a tiny piece of the story. The story that she had experienced wasn’t something that could be preserved in bone or hair. As far as she knew, the only place it existed was in her own mind. For science, that was worth nothing. And now the only part that would mean something to science was lost.

  Dr. Lund placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see it. If it had been the remains of a Viking, that would’ve been something. The bodies we find are almost always Inuit. That’s a big reason for the mystery surrounding the Norsemen. We can study the scant remains of their homes, the layout of stones they piled up to make fences, but the people…what happened to them…” He shook his head. “That mystery will not be solved today.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The helicopter circled Camp Tootega once before hovering over the cliff above it. Down below, Kelly saw Jordan standing in the middle of camp and waved to her.

  Jens put down as Jordan hurried up the path to meet them. By the time she reached the landing pad, Jens was already lifting off. Against the wind generated by the chopper blades, Kelly held on to her baseball cap with one hand.

  Jordan hugged her briskly. “You made it!” she cried over the noise of the chopper.

  They carried the camera equipment down to camp as the helicopter receded out of sight on its way back to town.

  “Where is everyone?” Kelly asked, glancing around the silent camp.

  “They’re out working. I stayed here to clean up. We had some damage from the quake.”

  “And Pippa?”

  “They should be back in a while. Will you wait for her?”

  “I have to. She doesn’t know it, but she’s my ride back.”

  “Frankly, I’m curious to hear how that went. Pippa’s been very mysterious about that whole business.”

  Kelly unzipped her camera case. “I’m afraid Pippa’s in for a harsh blow.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She had a dream or hallucination when she was in the cave. She doesn’t believe it was a dream. She thinks she was in communication with some ancient ancestor, that she had a vision of the past. It’s because of the dream that she thinks there’s a body buried there. She’ll be horribly disappointed when she finds out there isn’t one.”

  “Are you sure there isn’t?”

  Kelly glanced up with curiosity. “The only evidence is Pippa’s dream. And the runes, but I’m sure they aren’t authentic.”

  “You’re a very practical woman, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You didn’t used to be. There was a time you’d have been totally ready to believe in a possibility like channeling an ancient consciousness.”

  Kelly picked up her tripod in her free hand. “I know. But I was a silly romantic fool back then, wasn’t I?”

  Jordan raised one eyebrow, lookin
g like she didn’t know how to take that remark.

  “Pippa’s a really smart girl,” Kelly stated. “She wants to be a scientist and she could go far. But this tendency to fantasy is…”

  “Immature?” suggested Jordan.

  Kelly nodded with a smile.

  “Isn’t that what being young is all about? You have unrealistic dreams and fantasies. It happens to everyone, the dismantling of our utopias bit by bit. That’s the definition of life.”

  “I just don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “But she will be if she does any living at all. In the meantime, I don’t see any harm in her believing in this particular dream. There are so many more destructive things to believe in. Many great thinkers have been inspired by dreams. They enable your imagination to burst free of what you think you know.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  If she appeared more cynical to Jordan now than she had as a nineteen-year-old, it was only because she had learned not to voice her more fanciful ideas. That was what was meant by “act your age.” It meant to control yourself. To stop yourself from saying and doing things that would embarrass you or your family and friends. That’s why she hadn’t confessed that night in Jordan’s tent that she still loved her. Kelly wanted to show her that she had matured. She wanted Jordan’s admiration and respect as much as she had once wanted her love.

  Kelly jerked her head toward the glacier. “I saw it as we flew over. Quite a change. I wish I’d been here when it happened. Seems I missed all the action this morning.”

  “It was scary,” Jordan said, “but exciting too. Do you want me to carry something?”

  “Yes. Can you bring that bag? That’s got my lenses in it.”

  Jordan followed Kelly down to shore where she selected a spot to start shooting. She set up her tripod and stared at the sheer wall of ice facing them.

  “This is such a beautiful place,” she said. “Since I’ve been in Greenland I’ve noticed how the light seems different. It must be the angle of the sun. It changes the hues. It’s very subtle, but definitely there. The light is unusual at night, of course, but even now in the early afternoon, it’s like there’s a pale gold filter over everything.”