Giants of the Frost

by Kim Wilkins

  We stopped for breakfast in the galley, which was at the front of the rec hall, across a narrow walkway from the admin building. Toast and tea for me; disgusting pickled fish thingies for Gunnar. I almost couldn’t eat watching him wolf them down. Maryanne, the cook-cum-cleaner, was flirting shamelessly with Magnus in an outrageous Manchester accent as they smoked together in the rec hall. We said hello, then Gunnar led me to the front of the admin building.

  “Isn’t Magnus married?” I said to Gunnar. “I saw a ring on his finger.”

  “Separated. He’s on the prowl.”

  “Maryanne?”

  “Anyone—but Maryanne is easy prey. I don’t think he’s really interested. I think he just likes to see the naked adoration in her eyes.”

  “How come your English is so good?”

  “My father is English, and I lived with his family in Cambridge for two years.” He indicated a large stone set into the ground. “Did you know that ‘Kirkja’ is Old Norse for church?”

  “No.”

  “This is the foundation stone for an early-eleventh-century church that once stood on this site. It was discovered when the plans were being drawn up for the station. Historians excavated the area while the main building was being constructed behind it. There was a television program about it.”

  I indicated the three-meter-wide satellite dish mounted on the roof. “Tell me about the communications system.”

  Gunnar was just as happy to talk about technology as he was to talk about history. He took me around the whole station, showing me the water tank and desalination machine, which sat at the back of the station next to the water, and the generator shed and hydrogen chamber on the northern fence. An instrument enclosure, full of pluviographs and anonometers and celometers and a score of other gadgets, lay between the admin building and the cabins.

  We entered the admin building via the back door, through a lino-floored storeroom and into a remarkably neat office. Magnus was at his desk, as was Carsten (Danish), the registered nurse who doubled as administration manager. Up a flight of spiraling metal stairs was the control room, where we found Frida, who was a maintenance engineer, and Alex (American) and Josef (Icelandic), who were both meteorologists. The other meteorologist, Gordon (English), had been on the night shift and was wisely in bed. The room was lined on all sides by desks, littered with stained coffee cups and half-finished paperwork, computers and other electronic devices. Both Alex and Josef were glued to a computer screen, complaining about a permanent echo on the radar. Gunnar took me out onto the observation deck. Rainy mist swallowed the forest and the other side of the island.

  “There are raincoats in the storeroom,” Gunnar said, noting my efforts to shrink back toward shelter.

  “It’s all right. It’s only drizzle.”

  He raised his arm and I caught a whiff of his musty sweater. “It pays to take a walk out east through the forest. It’s very quiet and beautiful and brings you to the beach on the other side in about forty-five minutes. The beach can be really cold if the winds change; sometimes they come straight off the Arctic, but the prevailing winds are westerlies and the cliffs protect us from them. The lake is nice too, though that’s where the ghosts live.”

  “I’m not bothered by ghosts,” I said, annoyed that he was continuing with the prank.

  He smiled at me. “No? You don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “I don’t believe in anything. And I don’t scare easy. Save it for the next trainee.”

  The door opened behind us and Magnus stepped out. “Awful weather, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Sure is,” I replied.

  “We don’t make it, we just forecast it,” he said. “It’s 8:00 A.M. Time to start work.”

  Gunnar backed away, apologetic hands in the air. “I’ll leave you with Magnus. If you need anything, just let me know. I’m in the cabin directly in front of yours.”

  I spent the day doing little more than filling out forms. Magnus was obsessive about administration. The last form he gave me was a questionnaire about meteorological instruments . . . well, he called it a questionnaire. To me it looked like one of those multiple-choice exams I’d left behind in my undergraduate years. It asked me to list the daily jobs in a weather station in their correct order.

  “I don’t know anything about the daily work,” I said. “My degrees are in math and geophysics. I’ve never used any of the instruments. I have no idea what kind of reporting relationships are set up here.”

  Magnus smiled his charming smile. “Go on, just fill it out. See how you go. You might surprise yourself.”

  I got two items out of ten right. Magnus thought this was funny. I thought it was a unique way to embarrass me. By the end of the day, I’d had enough of him and everybody else. I stopped by the galley and asked Maryanne if I could take dinner back to my cabin, and I holed up there in my pajamas and got really, really homesick.

  Someone knocked on the door around seven. I resisted the urge to shout, “Go away.”

  Gunnar again.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Stop saying ‘sorry’ every time you see me.”

  He held out a bottle of red wine. “I’m really sorry. I need to explain something.”

  “Come in.” I led him into the lounge room, a faded brown-and-grey room where I had the bar heater on high.

  He sat in one of the armchairs while I found two glasses that looked like they had been jam jars in a previous life.

  “So what do you need to explain?” I asked, sipping the wine.

  “I wasn’t trying to make fun of you with all the talk about the ghosts.”

  “No?”

  “No. Seriously, no. You thought I was playing a trick on you? Like an initiation?”

  “That’s what I thought, yes.”

  “I’m so sorry, Victoria. I want you to feel welcome here. Magnus is the expert on embarrassing people.”

  “He’s very good at it. And you can call me Vicky.”

  Gunnar laughed. “Really, Vicky, my intention wasn’t to make you feel stupid or afraid.”

  “I’m neither,” I said, too tersely.

  “I know that.”

  “Then why mention the ghosts?”

  “I’m really interested in history. Othinsey has a fascinating history and the ghosts are part of it. It’s part of the story of the island.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows?”

  I pulled my legs up onto the couch and made myself comfortable. “Go on, then. Tell me.”

  “This island was settled by Christians in the eleventh century. They built the church. One day a boatful of new settlers arrived to find everyone on the island dead. Slaughtered. Hanged with the intestines of the calves they’d brought, or burned, or pinned to trees with spears. As there was no sign of anyone having landed or left the island by boat, the story began that they were killed by vengeful spirits, sent by the old gods.”

  “And nobody tried to settle it again?”

  “A few attempts were made. Nothing lasted. It’s a long way from the mainland and too small to be self-sufficient. Rumors persist of ghosts—strange noises, sightings down near the lake—which frighten the less rational away. The handful of scientists we have here don’t care about those rumors. You don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I’m about the most skeptical person you’ll ever meet. My mother is another story. Every week she visits a new psychic, who tells her she’s going to win the lottery. She uses the same numbers every week—I know them by heart—and even though her psychic says they’re the right numbers, they never come up. But . . .”

  “She still goes back. I know. People need something to hope for.”

  “If she’d invested the psychics’ fees and lottery ticket money into a mutual fund, she wouldn’t be living upstairs at Mrs. Armitage’s in Lewisham.”

  “What does your father think?”

  “I don’t have one. I mean, I suppose he’s out there somewhere.
My mum raised me alone, unless you count the three husbands who each left in under a year.”

  “It must have been very hard for her. No wonder she needs to believe she’ll win the lottery.” He refilled my glass.

  “That’s very generous of you.” I smiled across at him, then wondered if the reason he was being so nice was because he thought he had a chance with me. I nearly groaned. A girl doesn’t make the decision to move to a remote sea-bitten island lightly, and coming to Kirkja had seemed an excellent opportunity to avoid entanglements of the heart.

  “Do you have a boyfriend back home?” he asked, confirming my suspicions.

  “Um . . . I just broke off an engagement. It was messy.”

  “How messy?”

  I sipped my wine: combined with extreme weariness, it was sending my brain in circles. “He got another girl pregnant.” Proud of myself for not saying, “He knocked up some tart.”

  “That’s very messy.”

  “Yes, so I’m going to enjoy a few years of single life. Love is highly overrated.”

  “Do you think so? I think it’s wonderful.”

  “It looks good in books and movies, I’ll grant you that. But in real life it’s just . . .” Never quite enough, never really there, never living up to its promise. “Let’s change the topic.”

  Gunnar left at nine. I liked him; it would be good to have someone my own age around. I had the distinct feeling that after the wine and the conversation I would be able to sleep, and I was right. I drifted off soon after slipping into bed. Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard noises outside in the forest. I thought about Gunnar’s ghosts and smiled. Some people will believe anything.

  Two

  Owing to a scheduling problem, I wound up working twelve days in a row. When Magnus realized the error (the vague and bumbling Carsten was at fault), he was both apologetic and full of bluster. “It’s a good thing; you’ve learned so much; few people would get such a comprehensive induction.” Then he gave me six days off.

  Six days off on a tiny isolated island where I had one friend, and he was about to go on holiday leave. How dull.

  Even so, I needed a break from working. Those first twelve days were a walking dream of new tasks, new words, new sounds and smells: the routine drudgery of observations and recordings; the dozens of objects whose names ended in “ometer”; the endless beeping of the computer system; the disinfectant Maryanne used in the staff toilet. All bookended by a confusion of sleepless nights. I had worked with three different meteorologists, and each one of them taught me the same tasks slightly differently, leaning conspiratorially close to say that “Alex does it wrong,” or “Gordon always leaves the radar too quickly,” or “Josef often forgets this part.” If it hadn’t been for Gunnar, who sought me out every lunch and dinner and talked to me like a normal human being, I would have lost my mind.

  My first day off was Gunnar’s last day on the island before he hopped on the supply boat back to Norway for his annual leave. It was one of the few clear skies since my arrival, so he suggested a walk across to the other side of the island. He came by my cabin late in the morning.

  “Hi,” he said. “I thought I’d give you a chance to sleep in.”

  “Sleep? What’s sleep?” I asked, closing my cabin door behind me.

  “You said you only get insomnia when you’re anxious. You’ve got six days off.” He pointed to the door. “You know you should lock that.”

  I fished out my key and did as he suggested. “I also get insomnia when I’ve been anxious. It takes me a few days to wind down. So, who’s the thief? Is it Carsten? Frida?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You made me lock my door.”

  Gunnar laughed as we made our way into the forest. “Well, I’d say they’re probably all trustworthy. But things occasionally go missing inexplicably. Magnus has a theory that thieves come over from the mainland, land at the beach, creep through the forest and steal things while we’re all looking in the other direction.”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps. As I said, things do go missing. Since I’ve been here, we’ve lost an electric frying pan out of the galley and a DVD player from the rec hall.”

  I sidestepped a spider’s web that glistened with the remnants of dewfall. “It’s a long way to come just to take an electric frying pan.”

  “Yes, it’s a bit mysterious.”

  “My money’s on Frida. She’s got shifty eyes.”

  Gunnar gave me a bemused smile. “You don’t like Frida?”

  “She doesn’t like me. Can’t you tell?”

  “She’s unfriendly to most people. I think I’ve seen her smile once, and that was when Magnus tripped over his office chair and hit his head on the desk.”

  The track narrowed in front of us. Trees clustered close, gathering shadows into dark pools. The air was very still and the only sounds were the crack and pop of tiny branches falling or being crushed underfoot, of small animals moving and birds searching for food. We fell into single file, trudging along in silence for a long time. I found myself puffing and marveled at how unfit I was.

  “Are we going the right way?” I asked eventually, when it seemed the landscape around me hadn’t changed in twenty minutes.

  “Yep. Don’t worry.”

  “Is it possible to get lost on Othinsey Island?”

  “I don’t think so. Though it would be a good place to hide. And it’s just called Othinsey, not Othinsey Island. The ‘ey’ means island.”

  I caught up with him and elbowed onto the track next to him. “So it’s Othin’s Island?”

  “It’s Old Norse. Odin’s Island.”

  “Odin, like the god?”

  “Yep.”

  I gave him a mischievous grin. “Does he live around here?”

  Gunnar didn’t bite. “No. I expect he lives in Asgard with the rest of his family.”

  I nearly tripped over a branch and Gunnar caught me, then politely let me go. I speculated on how many more seconds of body contact Magnus would have stolen, did a few calculations and deduced that Gunnar was ninety percent more polite than his boss. “So how come you know so much about Old Norse and gods and local legends?” I asked.

  “I studied a little bit at university. I create games.”

  “Games?”

  “For the PC.”

  “Like shoot-’em-ups?”

  “No, role-playing games. Featuring mythological worlds.” He dropped his head, embarrassed. “I know it’s a little . . .”

  “Nerdy?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s fine. You’re in good company. I’m obsessed with the weather. There’s not much nerdier than that.” I squeezed his arm. “So, you’re going to make lots of money with these games?”

  “It’s an amateur interest at the moment. But, yes, one day, who knows?”

  The trees opened out, letting in the sky. A petrel swept past overhead. I looked down the slope in front of me and saw a still, grey lake. More trees stood on the other side. “Oh, God. That’s beautiful.”

  “Be careful down the slope.”

  I made my way down the rocky slope to the edge of the lake and sat on an outcrop. I could hear Gunnar behind me, collecting skimming stones. He crouched beside me and handed me a small, flat rock.

  “I’m no good at this,” I said, proving it by plopping the rock directly in the water.

  Gunnar aimed and sent a rock skipping across the surface of the lake: one, two, three.

  “Show-off,” I said.

  “I practice a lot. Not much else to do on Othinsey.” He skimmed another, and another, and they skidded and fell until his hands were empty and I was sick of estimating trajectories and calculating averages. He sat next to me and the lake grew still. The water was dark green and murky.

  “So why are you obsessed with the weather?” Gunnar asked.

  “My friends back in London say it’s because I’m so bossy. ‘Vicky wants to control the elements.’”r />
  “Is it?”

  “No. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always sensed that there’s something wonderful about weather. It’s so commonplace and yet so mysterious.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every year it leaves a trail of carnage behind it. People freeze to death, or die of heatstroke. Houses are flattened in storms, or pulled to pieces in tornadoes. As a species we can do almost anything, but we can’t control the weather. We certainly can’t guarantee accurate forecasts. We study it, we look for trends, we pretend to understand it and predict it. It’s a force so much greater than us that we’ve had to learn to live with, kind of like living with a temperamental monster.”

  He smiled. “I’ve never thought about it much. I just listen to the weather forecast to see if I need to take a sweater.”

  “That’s the mundane aspect of it.” I cast my eyes back toward the station. “As I’m finding out. Forecasting is very monotonous work. It all seems a bit pointless.”

  “The shipping companies need us.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you apply for this job?”

  “I need the money, and it’s a step in the right direction. I’d like to work in climatology or geophysics research one day.” I sighed, stretching out my legs in front of me. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Being a grown-up. Getting a job. Realizing, once and for all, that your suspicion you were formed for greatness was misguided.”

  “You never know what’s just around the corner. Your mother could win the lottery.”

  I smiled at him. “She could, I suppose.” I indicated the tranquil lake. “Does anyone ever go swimming here? In the warmer months?”

  “It’s a bit treacherous. Hidden depths, lots of weed. Somebody drowned here once, back in the eighties. Besides, it never really gets that warm.”

  Behind us, in the trees, something thudded to the ground, then scrabbled in the undergrowth. I must have looked startled because Gunnar said, “Don’t worry. Just one of the ghosts.”

  “Not funny. Really, what do you think it was? Are there animals on the island?”