Ice, page 22
Holding on to my steaming mug, I clear my throat and look at Katvar. ‘We didn’t prevent it, you know.’
‘What?’ he signs.
‘War.’
His gaze travels up to the night sky. A cloud of breath exits his nostrils. ‘But you took this away from them.’
‘We did.’ I sigh and lean my head against his shoulder. ‘Back in Taiwan, when Erik told me to come to him, he said something about the balance needing to be restored. Before he hacked the Sequencers’ satellite controls, the BSA had weapons and technology, but lacked the intelligence the Sequencers had. He said to me and Runner, “Now, information, force, and technologies are in the hands of both sides. The final battle can begin.” He lied. He took control of the global satellite network and manipulated the Sequencers. All we did tonight was to restore the balance. Only…the Sequencers have no clue. They hate me now.’
Katvar kisses my forehead and wiggles his shoulder. I give him a bit more space so he can sign, ‘People manufacture weapons, ammunition, aircraft, and ships for the Sequencers or the BSA. Have you ever seen rifles as old and rusty as the Lume’s on a Sequencer? Remember Oleg’s rifle? Have you ever seen BSA commanders go hungry? To truly restore the balance, you have to give power back to the people.’
I remember Oleg’s shitty weapon. And I remember his two bullets and Dima’s other two bullets to protect an entire underground city. Two thousand people.
‘You want them all to go to war?’ I’m stunned.
‘No. I want them all to have the power to withhold what is needed to wage a war. BSA and Sequencers have been fighting each other for generations. They use people to make more weapons, ammunition, aircraft, ships, so they can keep fighting.’
A soft laugh rolls up my throat. ‘You want them all to go to peace.’ Funny. People can go to war, but they can’t go to peace. What does that say about humanity?
He shrugs. ‘It must be possible.’ His hand signals are slow and inaccurate, his arms tired.
I gaze at his profile, his high cheekbones and severe mouth. The northern lights flicker across his pine bark irises. ‘You are beautiful,’ I whisper.
His eyebrows shoot up and he looks at me, puzzled. I brush my palm across his cheek, my thumb over his lips, and kiss him softly.
His elbow pokes my side. ‘You left without saying goodbye,’ he signs.
‘I did.’
‘Can’t you imagine that I want to see you one last time before I lose you?’
I inhale to say something, but can’t form the words. All I have are excuses, half-truths. My gaze drops to his hands that now lie in his lap, compacted to fists. I curl my fingers around his white-knuckled, tight ones. Slowly they relax and slip between mine.
‘Micka,’ he signs with one hand.
I love how he pronounces my name. Four movements, quick and sharp like a blade.
‘I am frightened,’ he continues. ‘I haven’t been afraid before. But now I am. If we have a child, I…’ He touches his chest where the mark of the Taker is. His fingers curl to a fist. ‘I could never do it.’
‘I would never allow it.’ I gaze at him for a long moment. ‘If you wish, I will bring you back to your clan and leave. I’ll keep our secret.’
‘You called me, “my love.” His voice fails. His hands continue speaking for him, ‘You called me “my love” when you believed I was dying. I am alive. Am I still your love?’
A smile spreads over my face and I hide it in his fur collar. ‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘You are.’
Softly, he takes my hand into his again and looks up at the milky way. Every now and then, a brilliant streak flashes across the sky.
‘What a beautiful world,’ he says.
END
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VOW
Chopping up a human corpse is one thing. Drooling over it is quite another. I try not to think too much about it, but my growling stomach keeps pulling my focus back to axe and meat. A small part of me wonders if it’s even necessary to cook the guy. Why not gather the small scraps of frozen thigh muscle that spatter the snow? Why not stuff them in my mouth and stop the hunger?
My stomach is a bitch. It’s not even polite enough to send bile up my throat in disgust. Just a flood of saliva. Feed me, feed me, my body screams. There’s no pretence left. I’m famished. We are famished, and the corpse is the only thing standing between life and death.
Despite the thick furs I’m wearing, warmth is sucked from my body at an alarming rate. A storm pummels my back, and fingers the gaps in my clothes. Throws splinters of ice against the narrow strips of my exposed skin. I pull my scarf higher and my hood lower, but three seconds later the wind has weaselled back in.
If the sea weren’t covered with ice, it would be a roaring battlefield of grey and white, smashing against this black, flat rock that’s Bear Island. It’s mid-April now, and temperatures are still far below freezing. The ice holds. If I can’t get our machine airborne again, we’ll have to take our sled to the mainland. Both options are near impossible.
The only other alternative is to give up and die right here. I’m not ready for that.
It’s four hundred kilometres and then some if we fly. More if we take the sled, because jumbled ice will force detours on us. Lots of them.
It’s far. Too far for the tiny amount of food we have left. We can’t wait this storm out. We can’t hunt, can’t leave, can’t do a thing. Our food is running out. The man I’m cutting up is the last meat we have. Well…maybe not quite.
There are the three sled dogs we had to release because we couldn’t feed them. They are running free on the island, catching seabirds. I saw them tear into an arctic fox once. Aside from us, the foxes must be the biggest animals here. I wonder when humans last visited this desolate place. And if they starved to death here.
I shake my head. No point thinking about that.
Before the storm rolled in, I took down two fat gulls. Blew their bodies to clouds of bloody feathers. I shouldn’t even have tried, shouldn’t have wasted ammo. My rifle is not for hunting small birds. It’s made to kill people.
I should have hunted with bow and arrow, but that’s Katvar’s speciality. Problem is, he can barely see straight, let alone aim. And I suck at bow hunting. The even bigger problem is that the blizzard has dropped visibility to near zero, and all the birds have gone into hiding to wait out the storm.
Still, our dogs manage well enough. I’ve tried to steal what they catch, or at least find out where they’re hunting. But they won’t let me get close enough. They don’t trust me anymore. I’ve cooked most of their pack members.
I’ve had no luck fishing, either. Wasted hours hacking holes into sea ice, hours waiting and freezing my ass off in this storm. For nothing.
There’s only one source of calories left — the man I shot in Longyearbyen. Katvar and I have been skirting around the issue for the past two days. I don’t know what it does to a person to eat another person. But we can’t wait any longer.
I gaze down at the axe in my hand, at the chunk of hairy thigh I’ve severed. Fuck. We are about to eat one of the Sequencer’s best sharpshooters, and I can’t find a shred of regret in me. That’s the biggest problem I have right now — I’m not even disgusted with myself.
I pull down my scarf and spit in the snow. Or mean to, but the wind smacks the saliva right back at me.
‘How is your head?’ I ask as I crawl into our snow hut and secure the entrance.
Katvar lifts a shoulder in a shrug. It’s only been four days since a bullet grazed the side of his head. The memory of his limp body in the snow, a pink and scarlet cloud spreading around him, makes my throat tighten like a fist.
I swallow and hide the meat behind my back.
He lifts a hand to signal he’s feeling better. I ask if he’s hungry. Stupid question. Of course he is, but he pretends not to be.
He’s set up the burner already. Snow is melting in a blackened pot. I drop the meat next to it, and tuck the bear pelt tighter around Katvar’s frame. It annoys him, my hovering. He’s still too pale, too haggard. We both are.
‘Stew is coming up in a bit,’ I say, trying a smile.
A jaw muscle feathers. He knows what’s on the menu, but neither of us mentions it. I want us to live. Katvar’s undemanding love has sneaked into the cracks of my black heart, and losing him would kill what little empathy I have left. The world could go to fucking hell if it weren’t for him. I’m still breathing because of him. As unfathomable as it is, he loves me. Even my geography of scars, my chasm of darkness.
That’s why I do what needs doing. For him, I stomp through the whiteout to a frozen corpse in the snow, axe in hand. And I’ll keep doing it until we’ve eaten it all, and get out of this white hell. Until we make it, and dreams of food aren’t mere fantasy. I’d kill for mashed potatoes with butter, string beans, and blood pudding. Or roast duck. The thought makes my legs buckle.
I crouch down and begin carving slices off the hunk of meat, drop them in the pot, and add a small handful of lichen for flavour. Or rather, to cover the flavour of human flesh. Whatever it tastes like. I haven’t tried it yet.
I’d thought of cooking inside the airplane because I didn’t want Katvar watching me do this. I don’t want the scents clinging to our bedding long after we eat. I don’t want to be reminded of this meal when I kiss Katvar’s skin. But we can’t afford to waste the heat from cooking with the little fuel we have left.
He’s watching me. My neck prickles and my hands feel clumsy. I force myself to work fast. Shaving off the hair is the least I can do. I can’t skin the thigh, because we need what little fat it provides. If I had butter, I would…
I swallow a mouthful of saliva.
‘Did you know that before the Great Pandemic, people thought starving was sexy?’ I say, and cut a sideways glance at him. He looks like he’s waiting for the punch line. ‘I’m not shitting you. They really thought this…’ I wave at my bony frame, ‘…was hot. They starved themselves. Called it dieting.’ Scoffing, I stir meat shavings into the pot.
Katvar cocks an eyebrow. ‘No wonder they’re all dead.’ A noise draws his attention to the block of compacted snow that serves as the door to our hut. I hear it too. The dogs have caught the scents of our cooking. The wind carries their yapping. I crawl to the entrance and dig a gap in the snow. Ghostly shadows flit through the whiteout. Wind snatches barks from snouts, and hurls them out to sea.
Yep, I’m stalling. It’s completely irrelevant whether the dogs are right here or farther away. The food isn’t for them. It’s ours.
The stew comes to a boil, and I switch off the burner and secure the lid, then wrap the pot in layers of reindeer skin. It takes longer to cook that way, but saves a lot of fuel. Tucking my chin against my knees, I shut my eyes and breathe slowly, conserving energy.
A rustling makes me look up. Katvar is moving on our bed of brush and furs. I ask how he’s feeling.
He rolls his eyes. That’s when I remember that I’d just asked him the same thing a few minutes before. His injury makes me nervous. It’s not healing, and last night it started bleeding again.
‘I want to take a look.’
‘You just did this morning,’ he signs.
‘And I’ll check it again and again until I’m happy with it.’
With a soft grunt, he lies back down, and lets me do my thing.
I undo the bandage around his head and check the sutures. Blood and clear liquid seep from torn skin. Looks exactly like it did a few hours ago. I spray disinfectant on the wound, just to make sure. Then I replace the bandages and gently press the gel pillow of the ultrasound scanner against the side of Katvar’s head. I’m looking for dark spots. I’m terrified he might be haemorrhaging. But there’s nothing.
He brushes his hand against my wrist and entwines his fingers with mine. ‘Micka,’ he croaks with his terribly damaged voice. ‘Lie with me.’
Startled, I almost drop the scanner. He rarely ever speaks. His scarred vocal cords make speaking painful and taxing. A leftover from the infection that nearly killed him when he was a small boy.
‘Rest for a bit,’ he signs. ‘Put your head on my shoulder.’
My vision swims. I swallow. ‘Are you giving up?’
He shakes his head. ‘I just want to hold my wife.’
His words tip me over the edge. The sharp precipice I’ve been walking for days. No — weeks, months.
A sob explodes from me, and I drop my head on his chest. He lifts a corner of our bear pelt and I sneak inside, curl a leg over his, wrap my arms tight around his frame that’s painfully sharp from starvation.
It all pours out then. That I am terrified. That I don’t want him to die. I can’t remember ever wanting to live, but now I do. I want to live with him. I want to cross this stupid, unforgiving sea and find a nice, warm place for us. Eat lots and lots of food. Have kids together. Not worry about injuries, death, war, and the BSA every single moment of my waking hours, and every one of my nightmares.
Katvar draws soft circles on my temple with one hand, and on the small of my back with the other.
I wipe snot and tears from my face. ‘So when the hell did we actually marry?’
He stiffens and draws back to look at me. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’
I grab his signing hands. ‘Don’t compare what we have, with what the BSA did to me.’ Did to me makes those two forced marriages sound harmless. I was lucky with one, and not so…lucky with the other. Memories of my dead daughter rise, and I shove them back down.
Katvar’s lids lower as his gaze slides to my mouth. He tugs me closer and kisses my temple.
‘But, really,’ I say. ‘Did I sleep through the ceremony? The elders you picked must have sucked.’
Katvar snorts and I start to giggle.
‘I don’t need anyone to declare us husband and wife.’ His signing is a bit awkward with me in his arms. ‘I’m yours. As long as you want me. And…probably long after that.’
I shift to look at him. A severe mouth, dark eyes. ‘I want you. But… But there’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t have more than you.’ That’s my cringeworthy way of telling him that I’ll never follow the tradition of his clan — the Lume — where women have several partners to increase the chance of survival for their children.
Understanding relaxes his features. ‘I know. I would never ask that of you.’
I almost ask if his clan would demand it. But no, there’s no going back for him. When he came of age, his clan banned him from ever choosing a wife because of what his father did to his mother. Katvar is the product of brother raping sister. To the Lume, he has “bad blood.” That he and I are together violates one of their core values.
‘What is it?’ he signs.
‘I’m sorry you can’t go home because of me.’
His lips pull into a smile. He touches my face and curls his hand around the back of my neck. Pulls me in. Kisses me softly. And whispers against my mouth, ‘You are my home.’
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