He’s not coming back, I tell Russell, but he doesn’t look convinced. It’s like the rifle is glued to his face. We have to get back over, I tell him. Russell stands up straight again, like he’s considering what to do. Finally, he says it: No way to get back. And he’s right, and I realize why he didn’t try to jump over after me—if we’d all come to this side, there’d be no getting back to our supplies. I’ve done my rounds over the Resilience enough times to know, there’s no point where the Ice Pancake isn’t at least five feet below the Resilience, but in most places it’s even lower. And then there’s the gap of open ocean to leap over first. Impossible without a ladder. And Russell waits another five minutes until I tell him I’m freezing to death, and tell him the thing’s not coming back. But he’s not convinced. Don’t let this slide off, he says. Then, just like that, he tosses the rifle as far as he can onto the Ice Pancake. I walk slowly toward it, checking behind me to make sure Voley doesn’t get too close to the edge of the water. Here boy, I tell him, and we walk together and pick up the rifle. My eyes rove, expecting to spot the return of the seal at any moment. And when it doesn’t happen, and the rifle is safely in my hands, Russell tells me he’ll be right back. Where are you going? I holler after him. And all he says is that we were going to have to leave tomorrow anyway. And then, I’m all alone, watching every angle of the ice, staying as far as possible from the edges so that I’ll have plenty of time to get a shot off if the killer returns. But it doesn’t, and Russell does. And as frozen as I am, shaking uncontrollably, I shake it off enough to make sure the tent and the stove land safely over the gap. And then when he’s done throwing everything across, he tells me to start setting it up. Get the stove lit and warm up, he yells. And then he’s off again, just a pistol in his hand now.
When he gets back, and I have the stove going, he throws another two bags across. Just a few more trips, he tells me. And then I call up to him that I dropped the other pistol. It’s somewhere in the slush pocket. But he tells me one pistol will be enough. And then he’s gone again. And by the stove and the slipshod tent, Voley and I pool our warmth, waiting and watching. Hoping that our stalker has died and fallen to the bottom of the sea. After another half hour, when Russell’s confident that nothing else can be brought and thrown across the gap, he tells me it’s time. Time to jump. Even though he’s been doing good on his leg, I still worry he’ll sprain it again if he lands wrong. Or he’ll slip right before he leaps. But it’s like he’s superman—and he jumps up and glides through the air easily, sliding along his knees when he lands. Nothing to it, he says.
It hits me, with Russell now on the Ice Pancake, and all of our equipment. We don’t have a boat anymore. We’re finally at the mercy of the pack. But the reality of that slips away quickly and my mind melts again into the act of rubbing my body and drying out my clothes. Russell takes off his jacket and then one of his sweaters. Here, he says. What are you doing? I tell him, shivering. Yours are gone—wear these, he says. You’ll freeze, I tell him. Not where we’re going. I won’t be needing much of anything, when we get there. I tell him again that he’ll freeze, and to at least keep the sweater, but he refuses. Just means Voley has to snuggle close to me tonight, right Vole? Russell says, extending his arm to stroke Voley’s ears. Did you see him jump at the seal? I ask Russell. No, I missed it—I heard him land. I was trying to fix the jam and he just ran on his own and jumped. So I tell Russell while we both pet him—the great leap of faith, the flying Marvolo, and how he scared the seal just enough so that Russell could have time to fix the jam. If you hadn’t jumped boy, I tell him. But he licks me and I know he knows. It’s as simple as drinking water or breathing to him. Nothing he wouldn’t do to try to protect us. And when I’m satisfied that I’ve planted the legend securely in Russell’s mind, he tells me I’ve earned a rest. My turn to watch, he tells me. You know what, he says as he leaves the tent. What? I ask. I don’t think he’ll be back. Not tonight, anyway. And then Russell’s gone, and Voley and I fall asleep.
Chapter 4
There are no more rounds on the Ice Pancake. It stretches too far. Forever, all the way to the blue. I find out in the morning when Russell wakes me up. He tells me it’s my turn, but he’s been up all night. Watching for the seal’s return. Didn’t see it, he tells me. And then he hands me the gun and turns in.
Voley follows me out and stays for a few minutes, but then he goes back in too. Like he isn’t ready to wander around the new floe yet. Everything is covered in the half-light of morning, gray and dense, and there’s a low rolling fog creeping in over the pack. Far enough away that I don’t have to worry just yet about being hunted inside the mist. Even so, I keep the silver pistol ready. And my eyes explore everything. Between the pressure ridges I scan, and then drift up to the blue. Just to confirm it’s still there. And it is. And I can swear that it’s getting bigger still. I’ll have to ask Russell when I get back to the tent.
Voley’s in the tent again and I’m alone. But with the light, I don’t fear another surprise attack. The full night’s rest Russell has given me—by taking two watches in a row—seems to have drowned out my fears from yesterday. Optimism leaks back in as I try to guess at how high and far the pressure ridges are, way out there under the blue. They look sort of like sharp mountain caps, but they can’t be—they’re the same color of ice as everything else. An illusion. But maybe there is more land. And the ice rides all the way in toward a shore somewhere out there. As much as I try to think up an argument for Russell that will convince him we’re marching to live, and not to die, out there under the blue, I keep getting stuck on the food and the fuel. There’ll only be a few more nights. And then we’ll be out. No more warm or dry. Nothing to keep us going. No red powder. Just one last push and a last rest. But I ignore the thoughts of yesterday, and remember I am clean, and sit down in the snow.
I open my mouth to the snow and wait, but hardly anything lands on my tongue. It’s as if the snow’s barely on. And before we even get to the blue, it’ll stop. And then there’ll be nothing. For the first time in my life, nothing falling from the sky. Nothing but those beautiful rays of sunlight. As I’m thinking about the blue and the snowflakes I can hardly taste, Voley barks. My head swings back around to the tent. Voley’s outside again, his fur is up in a ridge, and he’s looking up at the cliff of the Resilience floe. My eyes follow the cliff up to the top and there he is: the seal. Just as big as he looked at night. But in the daylight I can see the shiny lines of ribs and his smooth and shiny gray coat. His face looks just like a dog’s. And slowly, I rise, point my gun, and walk toward the tent.
The seal doesn’t move—and either he can’t make the gap to reach us or he doesn’t want to try, because all he does is follow Voley with his head as Voley barks and jumps side to side. And then, when I get closer, the seal turns to look at me. His dark eyes tracing my every step, watching. And I watch him, my gun trained on his chest. I start to wonder if I could make the shot. But I don’t want to try. Besides fuel and food, I don’t know how much ammo we have left, and we’re down to two guns. And I’m not a good shot. I have to get closer first.
Once I’m alongside Voley, and then right up to the gap itself, I can see the thing in all the glow of the graylight that pours down through the smeared clouds. It’s to my shock that I realize that the creature is beautiful. No less beautiful for the fact that I know it’s a killer, and will stop at nothing to stalk us in the night and drag us down into the cold rain sea and devour us alive.
It arcs its head back to watch me approach, and I see the spots on its neck and chest. A leopard. And then I watch his nose going—up and down in sniffs—just like Voley always does, like he’s trying to catch a scent of me on the wind. He must be satisfied because he finally starts to wiggle his way along, and I get the gun sighted again right on his chest. I think about how I’ll have something to tell Russell when he wakes up—that I took our stalker down all by myself. But then, something strange comes over me. Like this thing is no less beau
tiful than the whale or the dolphins or the fox or Voley. And I know I should kill it now, when I have the clear shot, that there’s no excuse, that this thing tried to drag me to my death just hours ago, and would have if not for my jacket, but I can’t shoot: When it moves, and I see the limp in it, where the scarred circle broke the bones inside his flipper, and it has barely any speed on land, I can’t pull the trigger anymore. I see the same limp as Russell, and Voley. And then, as I recognize the weakness settling in me, and how it will get away, and come back at night to kill us, and I can’t afford any mercy, I pull the trigger. The sound rolls loud and clear, waking Russell, and the seal jumps, somehow doubling its speed. And then, as fast as it came, it disappears back into the Resilience floe. When Russell comes out, half angry that he’s awake, but more concerned because I’m shooting the gun, I tell him what happened, and that I missed it. I tell him how it’s wounded, but that it can probably swim just as fast. And how skinny it looked.
It’s starving, Russell said. Just like us. We’re probably its only hope. He tells me this with a strange ring of compassion in his voice. Then he says, It’s probably better you didn’t hit it. When he says this, I realize he must be weaker than me, because he’s crazy to suggest that it’s a good thing I didn’t kill the beast that’s been trying to murder us every night. But then he explains: We’d never get to him from down here. And I understand now—the same as the seal’s hunting us, its last hope for food, we’re hunting it. For its body. Because one of us is going to die, and that death will keep the other going, even if only for a couple days. And it worries me because if it’s so skinny, that must mean there really are no fish. I tell Russell this and he ignores me, already too invested in his fishing pole. He says, We don’t know that yet. And then he goes back to the tent.
It’s only ten minutes later that the seal reappears on the high ridge, watching us again. And I tell him to scram, because I shot at him once, and I’ll do it again, even though I know I can’t—not until he’s somewhere on the Ice Pancake. But the seal doesn’t listen. He just lays up, like he’s content to watch us all day. And that’s what he does. All day long, on the Resilience. Splashing down into the water a few times, putting me on edge, but each time, he goes around to some distant part of the floe and finds a way up to the Resilience again.
When Russell gets up later, this time for the rest of the day, I ask him how the seal could be getting back up to the Resilience floe. It’s too high all around, I tell him. Russell just says that the seal’s built for the water, and he doesn’t know how. But I can’t help but start to wonder if we abandoned the Resilience floe for no reason—that there must have been some place where we could have gotten ourselves back up onto it. But it’s no matter anyway, because Russell tells me it’s time.
We can’t wait around anymore, he says. I know he’s saying this because the first three hours with his fishing pole prove useless. And he says it’s time to start the march. I know he means the march to die, to just get under the blue, but I don’t say a word. I just help him pack everything up. We manage to fit everything into the bags but the aluminum poles and the guns.
I wait for a sign of my side pain to appear—the electric stinging that will ignite slowly along my stomach and ribcage, and make me useless to walk. But it never comes. And then I convince myself Voley will have to stop from using only three legs, and he’ll start raising his paws again, and show signs of frostbite, and we’ll have to stop for him. But nothing happens to him either. Nothing but the long trek across the Ice Pancake. Easy and slow.
I fall behind Russell for hours and watch his leg. And it seems fine. All of us fine. Some cosmic irony before our last day—like great mother nature wanted to bring us all back to health, better health than we’ve felt in such a long time, just so we could die. The days of rest on the Resilience floe must have done wonders for us, because we only stop three times throughout the whole day. When we drink and eat our ration of food, Russell takes out the thermometer. He tells me that it’s thirty-four degrees. And he says we don’t have to worry too much about frostbite for now. And look, he tells me. With his finger he points out the patch of blue. Bigger again than it was the day before. I tell him we’re doing good, and ask how many days we have left on fuel and food. Maybe two, he tells me. And then we march on, right up until the gray turns to black.
All day long, with every passing ten minutes, I turn my head around. Scanning the flat ice behind us. Even to the diminishing lip of the Resilience floe. Looking everywhere for the leopard seal. But he’s gone. Nowhere to be found. I tell Russell as we make camp for the night that he must not have been able to follow on his hurt flipper. Russell shows some disappointment in his face, like he actually wants the seal to follow us now. But he doesn’t say anything. Just tells me to help him get the poles back in the ground. Then he tells me we don’t need the fuel tonight. It’s only down to thirty-two he says. We have to conserve it. Even though I am cold, he’s wearing less than I am. I don’t argue. I just tell him we ought to all stay in the tent together to stay warm. He says that’s still not an option. We’ll need to stand a guard. Wounded or not, the seal still wants to eat us, he says. And then, Voley and I use each other, dead tired and exhausted after the day’s hike, sharing a slow collection of heat that takes us to warm places, far away from ice and snow.
Chapter 5
It’s halfway through the night when Russell wakes me up. He talks to me too fast, and I can’t claw my way back to the memory of what my dream was. It’s frustrating, because I think I was with Dusty, but it doesn’t matter, because Russell’s words are too immediate and urgent, and the dream is lost forever. The seal’s out there, he says, But I have to get some sleep. Then he just slides into the tent and gets alongside Voley. No more explanation. Everything’s almost pitch black without the stove going, and it takes me a while to force myself from the warmth of Voley’s side. Finally, Russell plants the pistol into my hand and I crawl out. Before I’m outside, my knee nudges against the rifle. I feel the sharp barrel slide and dig into my thigh, but then it gives me an idea. I grab the rifle and find a spot to sit by the tent. And Russell’s right—the seal’s out there. Way behind us, where the horizon jumps up onto Resilience floe. Just a tiny silhouette that moves back and forth every few minutes. He’s keeping his distance now. I raise the sight to my eyes, wait for adjustment to the dark, and watch him through the scope.
The seal dances, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. If it’s about the fact that he’s starving. Or if he can ignore it. My mind slips into the seal’s mind. I wonder if he knew anyone else out here. Other seals. Or dolphins. Where his parents are. How everything else died. And where all the fish have gone. And then, I scan over the horizon because I get the weird feeling that maybe there really could be more of them. All hunting us together on the flat ice pancake. Us with nowhere to run anymore. Forcing us to slowly waste the last of our ammo. Staying just far enough away so we can’t hit them. It’s as I think through my paranoia that I catch the sparkling. I realize it’s just where the blue is during the daytime. And then, all at once, I have an urge that I can’t control—to wake Russell up. I get into the tent and tell him what I see. He says he knew I’d find it on my own. And then he tells me to enjoy it, because my watch is going to go until the morning. And I let him go back to sleep and sit outside alone, enduring the cold by watching the stars. The first I’ve ever known. Beautiful and bright and hanging in just the smallest place in the world, but something in me imagines them everywhere, that they exist everywhere behind all the gray mess. Burning bright and showering their beautiful light forever.
The Blue (The Complete Novel) Page 3