by Karen Swan
‘Sixteen years now.’ Anders was dressed for the elements again in jeans, heavy walking boots and a red padded North Face jacket. His skin was tanned too she saw, now that he wasn’t hooded and wind-blown, but unlike their tropical glows, his had a weather-bitten hue to it – reddening over the nose and cheeks indicative that he’d been chapped or burnt. There was a wildness to him, a feral undercurrent, as though he belonged more to the natural world than the human one.
‘It’s a cool thing to do, being able to fly. What made you start?’
‘My job.’
Bo nodded, feeling exasperated. Was this a conversation or an interrogation? ‘And what do you do?’
‘I learnt to fly in the air force but now I run an outdoor experiences company – mountain bike expeditions, kayaks, fast fjord tours on the rib – and aerial trips,’ he shrugged, indicating the chopper.
‘Yeah?’ Zac asked, looking intrigued just as Lenny walked back in. ‘Hey, Len, where’ve you been?’
‘In the outhouse, trying not to have a freaking heart attack,’ Lenny muttered, nonetheless nodding at Anders in greeting as he passed. ‘Morning.’
Bo burst out laughing again; he was still pale, and Anders grinned too, getting up to speed with what Bo herself had witnessed.
‘And I see no one thought to light the stove,’ Lenny said grouchily, going straight over there and resetting it himself. ‘It’s freezing in here.’
Bo caught Anders’ gaze and she widened her eyes in an ‘oops’ gesture.
‘Sorry, bro – we only just woke up. Here, have a coffee,’ Zac said, bringing a mug over to Lenny and handing one to Anders too. He came back a moment later with cups for himself and her. ‘So . . .’ he said, in an intrigued tone. ‘Outdoor experiences, huh?’
Anders shrugged and took a sip – looking pleasantly surprised by the taste.
‘How funny that should come up. You could be just the person we’re looking for,’ Zac continued. ‘We could really do with hooking up with someone who has local knowledge of the area and can take us to all the best, most remote, most extreme spots.’
‘I do not do the guiding in the winter,’ Anders demurred. ‘Only the summer. This is my off-season.’
Zac smiled, not easily deterred. ‘Yeah but . . . a strapping guy like you, flying choppers, driving ribs, marching up mountain tracks; you don’t do what you do because you have to. You do it because you love it. Isn’t that right? All that stuff, it’s in your blood.’
‘Of course.’
‘So then, even though you’re technically off-duty, you might be convinced to join us on our adventures. We’re not tourists, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘No?’ The sceptical tip to his eyebrows would irritate Zac, Bo knew; he prided himself on being regarded as a true nomad. ‘Then what is it you do?’
‘You ever heard of Wanderlusters?’
Anders shook his head. ‘No. What are they?’
‘Oh.’ Zac looked surprised. He gave a bemused laugh. ‘Well, they’re us. Me and Bo. It’s our blog – or, I suppose you might say, brand name. We’re digital influencers. And we have over nine million followers each on Instagram.’
‘9.45 to be exact and projected to become ten mill in twenty-three days although I’m on a personal mission to see if we can get it there for Christmas,’ Lenny said, from his squatting position in front of the stove.
‘You can be that specific about timings?’ Anders asked.
‘Critical mass,’ Lenny shrugged, ‘it gains its own momentum. Pretty easy to map and track!’
‘And you?’ Anders asked him. ‘Are you a wonder . . . wonder what?’
‘Wanderluster,’ Bo said.
‘Oh.’
‘Nah, my official title is photographer and brand manager, but for that you can read general lackey: log carrier, flight booker, fire starter . . .’ Lenny said with a sarcastic smile as he straightened up again.
‘Right.’
‘And we couldn’t do without him,’ Zac said, patting his friend warmly on the shoulder. ‘Lenny’s the one keeping this roadshow on the road.’
‘So, you . . . travel around and take photos of it for your followers, is that right?’ Anders asked.
‘Exactly,’ Zac grinned.
Anders frowned. ‘But how is that different from being tourists – apart from having lots of people looking at your photographs?’
‘Because we don’t just come in and take photos and leave. We live each place we go to. Become natives. We don’t do the whole five-star hotel with rainshowers and infinity pools shit. We want our experiences to be raw. Authentic. They’ve got to have integrity to them. Hence this –’ he said, holding his arms up and indicating the rustic little farm. ‘Perfect case in point.’
‘So you are going to become Norwegian shelf farmers then while you are here?’
Bo heard the wry note in Anders’ voice, even though his expression remained unchanged.
‘Yeah – well, except without the animals. But we’re certainly gonna live like them. No electricity or hot running water.’ He gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘It’ll take some getting used to, especially in a Scandinavian winter.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘But Bo and I know how to keep warm.’
Bo looked away, embarrassed, hardly able to believe he had just said that. Anders looked taken aback too and Lenny just did his usual eye-roll, knowing better than anyone just how warm Zac liked to be.
‘Well, I should go,’ Anders said, putting down his coffee and making to leave.
‘Whoa! Wait, wait, wait,’ Zac said, pushing out his hands in a ‘stay’ gesture. ‘We haven’t finished discussing you helping us out.’
‘There is nothing to discuss. As I told you, this is the off-season. I am not working.’
‘But it wouldn’t be working. This would be fun. Even better, this would be being paid to have fun.’
‘Yeah, that’s my gig,’ Lenny said, stretching back into a standing position. ‘Before he and Bo got it on, Zac here had his own cult following for his extreme selfies. He’s climbed Huascaran in Peru, Lhotse in the Himalayas, the Gevora hotel in Dubai—’
‘Got arrested for that one,’ Zac shrugged.
‘This is serious shit, not hiking on some trail with holidaying IT managers. Zac’s known for going to places other people, even other climbers, wouldn’t dare go. He’s all about the challenge.’ Lenny’s dark eyes shone intently. ‘You can guess what’s brought him here, can’t you?’
Anders didn’t even try, refusing to engage. ‘No.’
‘. . . Mount Ankenes?’
‘Mount Ankenes is not that high.’
‘Nuh, but Zac here is gonna climb up and walk through the crevasse.’
Bo sighed heavily and shook her head. Mount Ankenes was notorious (in certain specialist circles) for being the most monitored mountain in the world. A giant crack, thirty metres deep and seven hundred metres long ran across the escarpment and would one day shear off completely; as Zac and Lenny delighted in telling her, it would trigger an eighty-five-metre tsunami that would barrel down the fjord, wiping out the villages of Hellesylt and Gerainger. Both villages would be destroyed, that was an advance fact – nothing could stop it from occurring and the debate was simply a matter of when, not if: any day now or sometime in the next thousand years. Zac was hedging his bets on the thousand-year event model, even though it was classified by the renowned International Centre for Geohazards as a Class Six risk, the highest.
‘You are mad.’ Anders stated it as a plain fact, rather than with any sense of awe.
‘Very probably, my friend,’ Lenny shrugged. ‘But it will send his engagement percentage off the freakin’ charts and, I’m hoping, get us up to the Golden Ten.’
‘And that’s worth potentially dying for?’
‘That mountain’s not going to fall down yet,’ Zac said confidently, even though he couldn’t actually know that for sure. Nobody could.
‘For one thing, it’s not something you can just visit.
It is off limits to the public and only accessible by helicopter.’
‘Which is precisely why we need you,’ Zac said.
‘There’s nothing up there but a monitoring station.’
‘I’m not going for the coffee.’
‘It is security patrolled. There are cameras up there.’
‘They’ll have to catch me first,’ Zac laughed, sticking out his tongue and widening his eyes like he had learnt at school, doing the haka.
But Anders wasn’t amused. ‘I won’t do it. What you are suggesting is wrong. When the rockslide happens, it will trigger the biggest peacetime evacuation in Norway’s history. It is not a joke. People could die.’
Zac leant his elbows on his knees, not at all perturbed by the prospect. ‘Okay, well, look, just parking that particular idea for one minute – let’s not get hung up on that one climb just yet. Len and I can go it alone if we really have to. But what’s it gonna take to bring you on side for the rest of our stay, huh? For the next two weeks particularly, we need to find the inside track on this place and we need an expert to take us to all the best off-the-beaten-path places – rivers, caves, lakes, gorges, you name it. Lenny’s been researching as best he can but there’s no substitute for local knowledge. We could really use your help, man: you got the info, you climb, you got a chopper . . . You can name your price.’
‘Why just two weeks? I thought you booked for a month?’
‘Yeah, but that brings us up to Christmas and the end of our sponsorship arrangement here; after that we’ll rest up a bit. Even Lenny’s going home for a while.’
‘I am?’ Lenny asked, looking surprised.
‘Well, aren’t you?’ Zac asked back, looking just as surprised. ‘You don’t wanna be here with me and Bo over Christmas. You got your own family, dude.’
Lenny paused. ‘I guess.’
Zac looked back at Anders. ‘Listen, as a bonus, we’ll also tag you daily on our posts – and, trust me, that is advertising money can’t buy. Nine million people daily seeing your company name on their screens? You’ll have more business than you can handle.’
Anders looked underwhelmed and Bo wasn’t sure he understood the dramatic impact appearing in their posts would have on his business. ‘I don’t want that much business, there’s only one of me. And as I said before, this is my offseason.’
‘You play a hard game, man, I’ll give you that, but I’m a stubborn pain-in-the-ass and we need you. Come on, what will it take? Name your price. Hit me with a number.’
Anders merely blinked, his face made for poker.
‘Okay, I’ll start,’ Zac said finally. ‘Ten thousand?’
Anders’ right eyebrow twitched ever so slightly. ‘Fifteen. Assuming you mean dollars.’
‘Sure – dollars, kroner . . . whatever you want.’
Wait, what? Bo looked up but Zac had that look on his face that he always got when he was ‘doing a deal’. He was used to ‘haggling’ with the locals and always liked to buy their goodwill with a gesture of generosity.
Anders stared at him levelly. ‘Dollars is better for me.’
‘Zac—’ she protested. But he simply held up a hand to silence her.
‘Okay, dollars is good, if we agree to at least keep the Ankenes project on the table and up for discussion. Our sponsors really liked the sound of it when we talked with them. They think it’ll make a great finale.’
‘Zac!’ Bo protested again.
‘Babe, please,’ Zac said shortly, without even looking at her. The words ‘I’m busy’ hung unspoken in the air.
‘It can stay on the table but I make no promises,’ Anders said bluntly. ‘Right now, it’s still a no.’
‘I’m okay with that, I reckon I’ve got your number, man. So – have we got a deal?’ Zac grinned, holding out his hand.
Anders shook it with more animation than he had shown at any other point in the past eighteen hours. ‘Okay, deal,’ he replied, nodding to the others, who were looking on openmouthed. ‘But I cannot start right now. I am taking my grandmother into the village and we will not be back until the afternoon, when it will be getting dark. We will have to start tomorrow.’
‘Excellent,’ Zac grinned. ‘Good man. Tomorrow’s great. That gives you time to get some ideas together for an itinerary and we need to get set up here today anyway – get some food in.’
‘Tomorrow then.’ And with a final, satisfied nod, Anders exited the building.
‘. . . What?’ Zac asked, seeing both Bo and Lenny’s aghast expressions.
‘Do you have any idea what the exchange rate is for the Norwegian krone to dollars?’ Lenny demanded.
‘About point eight?’
‘Point eight?’ Lenny scoffed. ‘Try, to the power of eight.’
Zac’s expression changed. ‘Huh?’
‘Fifteen thousand in kroner would’ve been just under two thousand in dollars!’
Zac’s expression changed further still. ‘What?’
‘I was trying to tell you,’ Bo said, exasperated. ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’
‘She was, man,’ Lenny agreed. ‘And you just blocked her out. Your pride just cost you – her, us – thirteen grand. You got robbed, bro, and you didn’t even know it,’ he said, slapping Zac sarcastically on the shoulder as he passed by, climbing up the ladder to his digs again.
Zac looked across at Bo, his face a curious mix of embarrassment and defiance. ‘Well . . . it’s money well spent, right? He’s got a chopper and maps and . . .’
‘One up on you,’ Bo snapped. ‘You know, you’re always so sure you know what’s right, but you don’t! Sometimes, you’re a bloody fool, Zac. You were right what you said to him just now – you are a stubborn pain-in-the-arse.’
‘Bo! Babe—’ But she was already picking up her rucksack and hoicking it into the bedroom with her. If nothing else, she had to get into some clean clothes.
Bo sat in the cabin looking out at the still fjord, the MacBook open on the table in front of her, her hand cupped in her chin. Zac and Lenny had gone down into the village on the kayaks to get a proper stock of food, leaving her to keep the stove going and to post something, anything, to the blog. With a dearth of any new significant shots yesterday or today, they would have to use something off the reel from the past few days on the road and she had been flicking through Lenny’s library – but it was an uninspiring roster to say the least. There were some out-takes of her piggybacking Zac on the Eagle Pass but they’d already used that and it had garnered 306,782 likes so far, a good tally; anything over three hundred thousand was a decent engagement rate. Lenny had taken some shots of her, asleep in the taxi at Alesund on the way to the hotel, and there were some decent pictures of them both on the rib, Zac punching the air as they approached the waterfalls. With the orange jacket on, it was quite a striking image, albeit a little blurred and the lighting wasn’t great. But perhaps a filter could sharpen it up and lift it? And the Ridge Riders badge on the arm of his jacket was clear to see. Definitely one to consider. She wrote down the frame numbers and continued scrolling.
Up next was a sequence of shots showing her climbing the steep path to the farm last night, but having been taken from below, the angle was unflattering and the light (fading fast) was even worse down there in the woods than it had been a few minutes earlier on the water. After those came the pictures of her and Zac on the grass last night when they’d first arrived, but Lenny had already posted her spin and Zac’s conqueror pose, so they were out too.
She came to the tickle fight on the sofa, her and Zac laughing, her eyes squeezed shut and head thrown back in exquisite agony as Zac grinned down at her. The sequence had a sexy dynamic energy to it, their teeth looking crazy-white against their tans in the honeyed room, as though they were being photographed in black light. She didn’t like that her jumper had twisted up, exposing her taut stomach, even though she spent half the year being photographed in a bikini. All their followers pretty much saw her abs on a daily basis, and yet switch t
o the northern hemisphere and being bundled under layers of clothes and it made a sudden flash of skin feel somehow exploitative.
Still, they were hardly spoilt for choice with material at the moment. It was always like this during their transition days, and until they got into a rhythm here they would have to eke out what mileage they could from these holding shots. Reluctantly, she noted down the frame numbers again.
Tab, tab, tab.
She stopped as she came to another photograph of herself sleeping, this time bundled up on the bed in the blankets. Yesterday evening? After her tantrum. Her hair had streaked across her face, but her cheeks looked rosy from the flush of deep sleep. She bit her lip. She never liked being photographed when she was asleep – the idea of someone standing over her like that, even if it was a friend . . .
The next batch was of her and Zac huddled under the blanket together, looking up at the crazily starred night sky. They were beautiful images, it was undeniable, one in particular showing the moonlight falling on their faces, partly in profile, Zac resting his cheek against the top of her head as they both looked out into space, searching in vain for the Northern Lights.
She hadn’t realized Lenny had been photographing them then – from the angle, slightly above and behind them, she supposed he must have taken them through his window in the eaves. She had thought it was a private moment between her and her fiancé but, of course, there was no such thing. Bo immediately knew that was today’s holding image for the grid – it perfectly encapsulated the heady freedom and intimate coupledom for which their followers so avidly loved them, and there was the rub, for clearly there was no way just the two of them could have captured that stunning image without Lenny being there. They needed him, he was excellent at his job. In order for her and Zac to be an Insta-famous couple, they had to live as a trio.
She captioned it, adding on all the hashtags that would bring them up on multiple search lists: wanderlusters, stars, starry, night, midnight, Norway, Norwegian, fjords, Gerainger . . . and pressed send. The little icon wheeled round and round and she wondered how long it would be before it picked up enough roaming reception and was able to upload.