The Icarus Project (14 page)

“Hey, Maya, come sit on my bed. I thought the three of us could hang out and do some storytelling. We can make up stories about the specimen found in the ice.” Karen patted her blue neoprene sleeping bag. She had a big goofy grin on her face. I had seen the look many times when my parents wanted to have fun with an activity that was secretly educational.

Kyle fell back into his pillow. “Aw, Mom. Do we have to?”

“Yes, it will be fun. We have the whole night, and in case you hadn’t realized, there is no television and no computer.
We’ll actually have to talk to one another. Back in the olden days, people told stories for entertainment.”

Karen waved the thermos at me, luring me over with more hot chocolate. Then she pulled a bag of mini candy bars out of her backpack. Bribery with chocolate always worked.

“OK, but what if in my story the person isn’t a real person?” Kyle asked. “I like fantasy. I don’t do history or real life.”

“Whatever story you want to tell is fine. Whatever is real to you will be real to us. You get to make it up. You get to decide every detail.” Karen beamed. She knew she had him.

“Sounds like fun,” I said, plopping down on her bed.

“I’ll start while you two think up your stories.” She cleared her throat and turned off one of the lights, leaving only the single glow of a lantern to illuminate the dome. She lowered her voice and began. “We have discovered the remains of an Inuit father from thousands of years ago. He was on his way home from a day of hunting, three downy geese hung from his back, their lifeless necks dangling. His heart was filled with pride. He had food for the next week. His wife would be happy. And then out of nowhere a wind rose up, blinding him. He dug a ditch in the snow to protect himself, but he became trapped in the man-made snow cave. The temperature plummeted. Chilled to the bone, he grew tired and weak. A fever gripped him,
showering him with a cold sweat. He drifted off and fell asleep forever, dreaming of his wife and children and the life he left behind.”

“That’s really good,” I said, and I meant it.

“Your turn,” Karen said.

I hesitated. “Maybe she was a warrior or a hunter,” I said. “She was tracking a herd of caribou and she broke through an ice forge. The water swallowed her up and froze around her.”

“She?” Kyle said.

“It could be a she,” I said.

“It looked like a dude. I don’t think it was a girl.”

“It’s her story, Kyle,” Karen said. “Maya can tell it however she wants.”

I continued. “She’s from a tribe of hunters, and … um … she was frozen in the ice capsule, cursed forever by a witch. She was cursed to be alone until another hunter came to set her free. The hunter was a man who prowled the night shaped as a wolf.”

“Good. Very imaginative. I love the wolf man. Your turn, Kyle.”

“Maybe this place is a graveyard and there are more people trapped in the ice. Like an army of warriors. Like the clay warriors in China. And the warriors will be awakened to fight in an epic battle,” Kyle said.

The idea of an icy graveyard was creepy. I didn’t like the idea of there being lots of people captured, frozen
in time. It was different when they were animals. There were mammoth graveyards all over the place, but digging up a real graveyard … that gave me the heebie-jeebies. I wanted there to be just one person, which would make it seem special. Because the person we found was one of a kind.

“What else could it be, Mom?” Kyle asked.

“It could be a shaman from an Inuit tribe. He was out talking to the mountains, listening to the wind. He was on a pilgrimage to the icy wilderness. And he stopped to rescue a wounded bird that had broken its wing and fallen to the earth.” She scrunched up her face and paused to think. “And a storm flew in, fast as a hawk. Snow thunder rumbled, and then lightning struck the ridge above him, sending a shower of ice and snow down on top of him, trapping him forever in an icy prison.”

“That’s another great story. You’re really good at this.” I smiled at Karen.

“She makes up stories all the time. It’s kind of her thing,” Kyle said.

“What are shamans really like?” I asked.

“The few I have met were wise tribal men and women. Some are healers or mediators. They are very spiritual. One even brought messages from the spirit world back to the living.” Karen’s face came alive when she spoke. “They speak to the spirits and convey wisdom, sometimes solving problems for their communities. They tell stories, like
we just did, and help hold communities together, making sure traditions are passed down,” Karen said.

“Sounds cool,” I said.

“Have you thought about what you would like to do when you grow up?” Karen asked. “Maybe you’d like to follow in your mom’s or dad’s footsteps?”

It was a question I dreaded. I didn’t know what my discovery would be. “I’ve got some ideas, but mostly I want to find something no one’s seen before.” I rubbed a thread of yarn between my fingers. “I want to go to the best school, get grants—that sort of thing—so I can be in the right place to make a discovery. But still, I’m not sure.” If indecision were a color, it would be a pale one, faded like old blue jeans.

“Not school again.” Kyle rolled his eyes. “After this trip you’ll never want to go back to school.”

“You don’t need to decide right away,” Karen said. “You have a long time to figure out what calls to you.” She squeezed my hand.

I had always wanted to travel and be like a gypsy, but I guess I never thought about what it was I was hoping
to find.
I thought again of the doll that Mom had found in the rain forest. It wasn’t a real person, but it was part of a real person’s possessions, carried from mother to daughter. It was precious. And I knew that Dad wanted a mammoth. But what was it that I was looking for? That was the real question. Right then I didn’t know the answer.

“Maybe the frozen dude is Thor.” Kyle raised himself up from his sleeping bag. “Or a Viking whose ship was shattered in the icy sea, and the Vikings came ashore to hunt bears and caribou. And then this one Viking guy walked out over thin ice and it cracked, and he broke through the surface, plummeting down into the icy water beneath. And he was frozen like an ice cube.” Kyle exhaled. “And his Viking shipmates left him as a sign that they were here.”

“I thought Thor had a hammer. He would break his way out of the ice,” I said, just to be a pain.

“The hammer got too heavy. He couldn’t lift it, and he died with it in his frozen hands,” Kyle said. “He’s been waiting for centuries to be pulled from his icy grave.”

The shadow had taken on a life of its own. We all wanted the figure in the ice to be someone special, to fit our hopes and dreams: a warrior princess, an Inuit shaman, or a Viking hero trapped in the ice. Whoever or whatever it was, it was waiting for us to free it.

Like Dad had said, you don’t find the mammoth, the mammoth finds you. And though we didn’t find a mammoth,
something
had found us. Something wanted to be freed from the icy world that held it prisoner.

The next day Kyle and I entertained ourselves
by riding the dogsled with Justice and the snowmobiles with West. Learning to ride a snowmobile was a blast. Kyle got really good at it. West even set up an obstacle course for us to race on. We rounded the domes, wove in between crates, and maneuvered our way around a super-skinny snowman wearing a long red scarf looped around his neck like five times, compliments of Karen. Once we had the course down, we began the races.

We formed two teams: Team Yeti and Team Shark Bite. West and me versus Kyle and Justice. I pulled my snowmobile up to the starting line, which West had drawn in the snow with his boot heel. I stared through my yellow-tinted goggles at Kyle. The whole world glowed gold. Gold was the color of competition, of winning, of crushing my opponent, leaving him in my snowy wake.

West raised his arm. “Get ready!” he yelled.

“You’re going down, Yeti girl,” Kyle said.

“In your dreams, shark boy.” I revved my engine, leaning forward in the seat, preparing to fly.

“Get set!… Go!” West yelled and dropped his arm.

I gunned the engine and took off. Kyle won the first two races, but the third one was all mine. I could feel it. I navigated my way to the inside track and skirted the domes. At the orange cones I pulled ahead of Kyle. Bits of snow and ice flew through the air. I narrowly dodged a stack of crates and headed out across the flats toward the snowman. I felt free, tearing through the wind, plowing over bumps. Making a tight turn, I took a chunk out of the side of the super-skinny snowman, who was getting skinnier and skinnier with each race, since the closer we got on the turns, the more of his body got trimmed off by the nose of the snowmobiles.

My pulse raced. I was close to the finish, but Kyle was gaining on me. I had a few yards’ lead to spare and then I would be home free. Kyle swerved his snowmobile to go around me, but I stayed focused on the finish line. I dug in and plowed ahead.

Justice waved me across the finish line. Victory was mine! Score one for Team Yeti. Kyle pulled up alongside me and shook his head, but after a moment he grinned and gave me a thumbs-up sign.

After the races we ate lunch and warmed up inside the domes, and then Justice took us over to the excavation site. By the time we reached the site, the sky had darkened. The cave glowed faintly from the outside, and my heart raced with anticipation to see how far the team had
gotten. Justice needed to get back to the station to feed and put the dogs away for the night.

Randal met us at the perimeter of the site.

Before we could make our way into the cave, Ivan came staggering from the cave opening with a terrified look on his face. His neck warmer was pulled down, and his skin looked ghostly pale. His goggles dangled from his wrist, and his eyes were wild with panic. I wondered if he was having another attack of claustrophobia.

“Go on, you two. I’ll handle this,” Randal said.

Kyle and I pulled back and gave Ivan a wide berth. Randal approached the disoriented scientist and asked, “What’s happened, Ivan? Has there been an accident?”

Ivan’s gaze drifted over to him. “We … found something,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t go back inside. We should leave. We can’t move it.”

“What is it?” Randal clutched the man’s gloved hands, and excitement burned in his eyes. “What have we discovered?”

Ivan crumpled to his knees on the icy ground.

Observing the man’s distress, Randal pulled a two-way radio out of his pocket. “Justice, this is Randal. Over.”

Static burst from the radio, and Justice’s voice answered: “Copy.”

“I need you back here at the site immediately. Ivan needs to be transported back to the station. Over.”

“On my way. Over.” The radio crackled again, then went silent.

Randal knelt down to Ivan’s level. “Have a seat. Justice is coming to take you back.” Ivan made his way into a tent and then over to a crate to sit down. Kyle and I followed. A small space heater hooked up to the mobile generator took the chill out of the tent. Once Ivan had sat, Randal wasted no time bombarding him with questions. “What did you see?”

Ivan shook his head. His breathing was short and raspy.

“What is it?” Randal clutched Ivan’s jacket, his eyes widened, desperate for information. A nervous shiver went up my spine as I tried to imagine what could have scared the big man.

Ivan tilted his head toward Randal, and after a few excruciatingly long seconds, he said, “We found … an
angel.”

The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. “Did he say angel?” I asked Kyle.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, eyes wide.

“What?”
Randal asked, clearly not having expected that response.

“A fallen angel,” Ivan whispered through chapped lips. “It’s in the cave, trapped in the permafrost.”

“You’re mistaken,” Randal said, shaking his head. “It can’t be. We’ll just take a look and see what it
really
is. You’ve been working too hard, and the Arctic doesn’t agree with you.”

Ivan rose to his feet, more steady than he’d been a
moment ago. “It’s true. It’s true.” Spit flew from his mouth. “I know what I saw.”

“I’m not suggesting you’re seeing things. I believe you
think
you saw an angel,” Randal said. Well, actually Randal
was
suggesting that Ivan had imagined an angel. But if it wasn’t an angel, what had made Ivan think it was?

“We must not move it,” Ivan pleaded. “We need to leave it. Bad things will happen.”

“Now you’re just being superstitious.” Randal let out an exasperated sigh. His patience with Ivan seemed to be wearing thin. “Nothing bad is going to happen. The site is perfectly safe.”

Ivan didn’t look well. He slumped back down onto the crate. I pulled a bottle out of my pack and gave him a drink of water. I hoped Justice would hurry up. Randal must have been thinking the same thing, because he pulled out his radio and told Justice to pick up the pace.

“You believe me, don’t you, children?”

Ivan’s gaze latched on to me, and I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded. “Sure,” I said. But really I wanted to see this angel and understand what he was so upset about.