Voyage of Ice (17 page)

“No.”

“I give up.”

Eyes shining, she brought my whale's tooth out from behind her back.

“My tooth! Where did you find it?”

“I picked it up off the deck, you know, that night. I've been keeping it for you. I meant to give it to you when it was safe. On the night of the shipwreck, while I was still locked in my cabin, I stuffed it down my coat.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my glove, then took it from
her gently. “I never thought I'd see it again. This is my father's ship, or
was
my father's ship. My father carved it.”

“Talent must run in the family.”

I set down the tooth and coughed, trying to hide the emotion in my voice. “So what are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

I'd been intending to ask her this question for some time now but hadn't known how to approach it. Seemed a delicate subject, it did. “I mean, what are you going to do, now that your parents are—you know—”

A shadow passed over her face. “I've thought about it a lot. I—I don't really know. My father has a sister who lives in New York. I suppose I could go live with her, if she'll let me. But I've never met her.”

“You could come live with Aunt Agatha and me,” I blurted.

“Do you think she'd mind?”

I blew the chips away from the block and gazed at her. Now that I'd thought of it, it seemed a fine idea. “Aunt Agatha would be happy to have another woman round to keep her company, I expect.”

“I—I could help with the housework. I could help with the garden, although I don't know how to grow anything. And maybe someday I'll go to school and learn to teach music. I've never been to a real school, with people my own age. I—I've given it some thought, Nicholas. I've got to make my own way, you know, just like you. And we could—you and I could—”

“What?”

She fiddled with her braids, twisting and curling them. Then, to my surprise, she leaned over and planted a kiss on my cheek. The kiss was warm, and I sat for a moment without moving, as if I'd turned into a figurehead myself. “I'd love to stay with you and your wonderful aunt,” she whispered. Then she put both her
hands on my cheeks and drew my face down to hers. I realized I was breathing hard.

She pressed her lips against mine. They were warm, so warm. The carving dropped to my lap. I felt myself kissing her back, pulling her close, felt her lips, her breath mixing with mine.
Should we be doing this? Here in the Arctic? With her father's grave so close?

“Nicholas, what's wrong?” She pulled away, her forehead creased.

“Nothing. Nothing's wrong.” I picked up my carving tool again, as if we'd merely had another walk to the beach, as if my heart weren't hammering like a cooper's mallet.

She turned away from me, silent, her jaw set.
Blast it all! I've gone and hurt her. Now she's not going to say any-thing for the rest of the winter!
“You're a fine young lady, Miss Elizabeth. I'm proud to be here in the Arctic with you. Proud it's me, and not someone else. I figure you're the most special …”

But I'd ruined it. Our special moment. I'd ruined it, and no matter what I said after that, I could never make it up. She didn't speak to me as we lay down to sleep, blowing out the lantern and letting the darkness overtake us. All night she lay with her back to me.

In the morning when I awakened to the darkness, Eliza-beth was burning with fever. “It's back,” she whispered. “My sickness.”

First the shipwreck. Then Thorndike dying. Then Dexter leaving. Now Elizabeth was sick again. If she died too …

Even the sun abandoned me. For the first time in my life, it refused to rise, instead fleeing south, leaving me stranded in the Arctic darkness. I don't know but what I'd never been more scared in my life. A right awful terror crawled into my chest and
hunched there all the time now. I wished I could shove a stopper down my throat and not have to worry that it would come screaming out. But I was scared. So scared.

I soaked hard bread in whale oil and milk and fed it to Elizabeth. I put the mix of food in the dipper and kept it warm over the fire, or else it froze before I could get it to her mouth. If any of it dribbled down her cheek, I scraped it off and put it back in the dipper. Nothing could be wasted. Nothing. I cut a corner from my reindeer fur and boiled it. Then I cut it into bite-sized pieces, dipped one in oil, and ate it, hair and all. Surprisingly, it wasn't half bad. A little hairy, of course. Fact was, anything solid was better than nothing. I fed some to Elizabeth, and she ate it without complaint.

Sometimes she stared at me with eyes that seemed shrunken yet bulging at the same time, ringed with dark circles. Lips cracked and dry, she didn't just breathe, she panted. Chills often overtook her, and she shivered violently. When that happened, I held her in my arms. It was then the terror most wanted to come bursting out. Then, just as suddenly, she boiled with fever. Off came the hat. The mittens. The coat. But then she turned cold again. It never ended. And as I held her in my arms, I wished for the millionth time I had another chance to kiss her.

For five days a gale blistered out of the northwest. Three times the wind blasted the canvas covering from off the rectangle of casks, even though it was secured with rope and tucked beneath the heavy casks. Three times I ran after it, ice needles stabbing my face, my eyes watering.

By the time I placed the canvas back, taking an hour, two hours, the canvas whipping like a sail in a hurricane, Elizabeth had turned white, motionless. The fire and lantern had gone out. I always kept sulfur matches and tinder in the lantern-keg, and so
got a fire going again, but each time I held my breath till I saw the flames.

Eating only a half pound of hard bread per day, plus whale oil, reindeer hide, and a little milk, I was so exhausted by the time I finished putting our shelter back together and building a fire and taking care of Elizabeth that every muscle shook and my knees trembled as though they belonged to someone who was ninety rather than sixteen. I lay beside her, panting, listening to the canvas snap and groan as snow flurries filtered through, dusting us with white.

When will this ever end?

Her fever.

The storm.

The forever night.

Dexter gone.

And I'm so hungry.

So alone.

Is it really going to end like this?

I figured it was the first of December or thereabouts when the wind stopped. While I had carved daily notches on a cask to mark the passage of time, sometimes I lost track of day and night what with storms, and the sun no longer rising. If my reckoning was correct, we'd been shipwrecked now for over two months, and Dexter had been gone near a month. I'd fed the last of the reindeer fur to Elizabeth the night before.

“Don't leave me,” she begged when I said I was going to saw more wood for the fire. Her skin stretched across her jutting cheekbones, dusky with soot, her eyes small, frightened.

She's starving
. The understanding stabbed me afresh.
She's starving and dying. We'll never make it out of here alive.

I looked away and swallowed the lump in my throat.
What
can we eat now? Ninny?
“I won't be gone long. I'll keep watch on you the whole time. I promise.” Sighing, I gently pried Elizabeth's hands off my arm. Lighting the tin lantern for her, I took the other lantern and my blubber knife and left the shelter.

Ninny crawled from her cask, hooves clattering, and bleated softly, shoving her head into my hand. My eyes smarted when I thought of having to kill her. For now I rubbed her between her horns, whispered that she was a good girl, the best, and then headed toward the shore, snow crunching beneath my boots. Ninny bleated after me.

The ground gleamed ghostly white beneath the blackest night. Stars glittered like ice crystals. Snow and hoarfrost covered the debris pile. Already the end of my nose and my cheeks were turning numb. I rubbed them briskly with the back of my glove to keep the blood flowing. I set down my lantern and knife and went to work, frigid air like glass in my lungs. It was deathly quiet, and every noise I made seemed unnaturally loud.

Usually I dragged large timber spars up beside the shelter, where I sawed them into smaller pieces. But after trying to drag the first spar, I realized I no longer had the strength. I would have to saw them on the beach and carry them piece by piece. Doing even the smallest job now took all my strength and will.

I fetched my saw and again set to work, only vaguely realizing that something was wrong. Something out of place. Different. I sawed for a while, until the realization seared me like the touch of frozen metal against bare skin.

Where the land met the shore ice, enormous tracks mean-dered along the beach. My skin erupted with goose bumps and I suddenly felt sick.

Bear tracks.

I whipped round, scanning every direction, heart crashing, blubber knife ready. I heard myself swallow. Every icy crag
became a bear, every end of wood sticking out of the snow, a nose, as I slowly skirted the pile of debris. In the distance I heard Elizabeth cough.

Seeing nothing, I studied the tracks. It appeared the bear had stopped at the debris pile, investigated, but moved on. I followed the tracks down the beach for a ship's length, and they continued as far as I could see. The bear was gone.

Back to work I went.

Still, every fifteen seconds or so, I looked round me. Round the shelter, round the ice-covered sea, to the east and west, searching for movement. White against white. A black nose. I pricked my ears for the scrabble of claws. A huff of breath. After watching, listening, I went back to sawing. All I heard was the hum of the blade, my own loud breath, and Ninny bleating.

Bleating …

Bleating …

And as the hair raised on the back of my neck, I knew.

I was not alone.

hey came like phantoms.

Silent.

I saw them in the east, far away. Movement along the beach.

Nine of them.

Dragging a whaleboat behind them.

I waited, the terror inside of me thawing like ice under a warm sun.
They're here. Elizabeth and I are no longer alone. They've come. They're not dead after all. We'll spend the winter together. Maybe they have a plan for get-ting us out of here.

Maybe they have food. Bear meat …

I recognized Dexter first, leading the way. I don't know when I started to run, but suddenly I was dropping my saw, running, stumbling over snow, ice, and gravel, with a strength I hadn't known I possessed. “Dexter!” I screamed.

Dexter dropped hold of the rope and ran too. “Nick! Thank God you're still alive!”

Then we were clapping each other on the shoulders, splitting our cheeks with grins. Others surrounded us. Garret, Sweet, Briggs, and more. Giddy with relief, I began laughing like a crazy man.

We're saved! We're saved!

Elizabeth's eyelids fluttered open. “Where were you?”

“They're here.”

She looked at me with fever-reddened eyes.

“Sweet, Garret, Briggs—they're here! Dexter found them up the coast, close to where we shipwrecked. On the night of the storm, their boat got stove and they had to put in to shore. Then it iced over and they were stuck there like we've been stuck here. Of course, it isn't everyone—most folks didn't make it through the night of the storm, God rest their souls, but some did. Isn't that great? We're not alone.”

“I'm thirsty.”

I hardly paused for breath as I fetched her a drink from the dipper. “They're turning over their whaleboat now. They'll use it for a shelter. Dexter's helping them set up another shelter from our whaleboat.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and shivered. “I'm hungry.”

“I'll fetch you some food, don't you worry. Everything's all right now. We're saved.”

I practically skipped out of the shelter, so happy was I to have other people with me. “Garret!”

Garret was bent over, tying down a canvas. During the time he'd been in the Arctic, he'd grown a beard, scraggly and red. He'd also started chewing tobacco. As his beard froze from the condensation of his breath, he couldn't open his mouth wide
enough to spit. Instead, he leaned over as juice dribbled out. His beard was now an amber icicle, growing longer each time he dribbled. “Hey, Bones,” he said, opening his mouth with diffi-culty as ice crackled.