The Shaman's Daughter

by Christoffer Petersen

  We stood there, hand in hand, one eye on the ice – always on the ice – another on Stripe as he whined at the mouth of a dark tunnel, the floor of which heaved with brash ice with every breath and surge of the sea.

  “Cave,” Maratse said.

  “She didn’t go that way,” I said, tugging at his hand as he took a step towards it. “She’s too smart.”

  “Stripe says she did.”

  “The dog is wrong, David.”

  “Imaqa. Sometimes,” he said with a smile. “But not today.”

  “David, wait,” I said, as he pulled his hand free of mine.

  Maratse took two steps, pausing as the ice surged and Stripe scampered further up the rocks. “I have to look,” he said.

  “We can get help.”

  “Iiji, but until then…”

  “I don’t know, David.” I pointed at the ice. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Hmm,” he said, and took another step toward the cave entrance.

  Maratse called Stripe to his side, brushing pearls of ice from the dog’s beard, before clicking his tongue and slapping Stripe’s rump, sending him back to me.

  “I’m calling for help,” I said, as Maratse reached the cave.

  He waved, and then ducked inside, splashing through the icy water, until the cave swallowed all trace of him.

  Part 15

  Another crash of a calving glacier sent my heart rate soaring. I fiddled with my phone, drawing curious looks and tilts of the head from Stripe, as I cursed my single working digit – now numb with cold – across an equally numb screen struggling to respond in the freezing temperatures. I gave up on opening my list of contacts and stabbed 701448, the emergency number for the police, into the keypad.

  I almost didn’t give my name, but a second iceberg calving gave me the courage to accept whatever consequences might come as a result of bending the rules. Hadn’t I promised the commissioner that I would keep him informed? Well…

  “This is Constable Petra Jensen. I’m at the ice fjord, at the end of the tourist path. I think we have found Luui Angakkuarneq.”

  Even with ice calving in the background, I could hear the excitement in the constable’s voice on the other end of the line. I promised to stay put, to keep my phone handy, and to call again should the situation change.

  I did everything but stay put.

  Stripe whined as I fiddled with the bandages around my fingers. The doctor had said the fractures were small, that the bones would knit, that they weren’t broken in half. She had even suggested the splints were more psychological help in my case than physical.

  It was time to put that theory to the test.

  I flexed my fingers, curious that they were numb, cold, not especially painful. I slipped my phone into the pocket of my thin Nuuk jacket, then unzipped the heavier jacket Maratse had given me. I spread it on the snow in the middle of the path, like an X marks the spot. Then, with an experimental click of my tongue, I nodded for Stripe to lead on.

  The surge was persistent, not violent, and yet within the ice and the chilled waters – way below zero – lay deadly intent. I followed Stripe to the mouth of the cave, holding my breath as I slid the soles of my boots across the glassy sleeves layered across the rocks. Stripe rushed to enter the cave, and I clicked my tongue – wondering if it was one click to go, two to come back.

  It didn’t matter.

  Stripe ignored me.

  I took a last look at the ice fjord, ignored just how unbelievably stupid it was to crawl into a half-submerged ice cave close to an active glacier – reportedly the fastest calving glacier in the world, the one politicians from around the globe visited to see climate change in action.

  And how big a carbon footprint did they create in doing so? I thought, followed by a more urgent thought: Focus!

  Stripe splashed through the icy water ahead of me and I followed.

  The walls of the cave radiated cold, misting my breath in front of me, pinching my cheeks, pearling my eyelashes. I flexed my fingers again, tempted to run them along the rippled surface of the tunnel, only to pull back as a surge of water rushed in from behind me, filling my boots, rising to my knees, and clamping my lungs in a grip of cold fear.

  It really was a stupid idea.

  Stripe bobbed in front of me as the seawater lifted his body. I splashed forward, curling one arm around him, lifting him higher as rounded shards of ice – some the size of small heads – bumped against my thighs, then my waist as the waters rose.

  “David?”

  My cry was more frigid breath than a call for help, echoing through the tunnel ahead of me.

  “Piitalaat?”

  “Yes,” I shouted, splashing forward, buoyed by Maratse’s voice, and the rising waters. The first shivers rippled through my body and I stumbled into a lip of ice, then a shelf, tossing Stripe ahead of me. The dog’s claws scratched the ice. Stripe slipped backwards, and I pushed his rump, oblivious of the thrash of his icy tail across my face, but thankful when it was gone, as Maratse reached down and grabbed Stripe by the collar, heaving him up and onto the ice shelf, before grabbing my hand and pulling me out of the water.

  I shivered in front of him, teeth chattering, expecting a reprimand, a concerned look, some kind of rebuke for following him inside the cave. But, instead, Maratse grinned, and said, “This way.”

  Part 16

  “She has a fever,” he said, ducking as he guided me along the tunnel, and then up onto another shelf. “Unresponsive but breathing.”

  “She’s unconscious?”

  “Imaqa. I’m not sure.”

  Stripe whined, following his nose, tugging at Maratse’s grip around his collar. Maratse held him back, ducked to one side, and then nodded for me to go first. Luui had found a cave within a cave above the main tunnel. She lay on a thick blanket with another wrapped around her body. My breath caught in my throat as I reached out to her, pressing my cold hand to her warm cheek, rubbing my thumb across her button nose, brushing sweaty hair from her forehead.

  “Look,” Maratse said, pointing at Luui’s feet.

  I forced myself to turn away from Luui, to look at her backpack – almost as big as she was tall. It was filled with zipped bags of dried fish, another with raisin cake. There were bars of chocolate in the side pockets, empty wrappers on the ice shelf beside her, and three bottles of water – frozen – and a fourth tucked under her arm beneath her blanket.

  “She came prepared,” Maratse said, nodding at the sealskin kamiks on Luui’s feet, before peeling back a corner of the blanket to reveal the thick skins she wore beneath it.

  “She’s warmer than we are.”

  “Iiji.”

  Maratse let go of the corner of the blanket, then tilted his head to one side.

  “What?” I said, heart sinking as I heard thunder – a big calving, something that could flood the tunnel, maybe reach as far as Luui’s cave.

  “Helicopter,” Maratse said. “Landing. Close.”

  I turned back to the tunnel, dipping my head out of Luui’s cave, only to shiver at the sight of ice bobbing above the shelf we had just climbed up. Stripe fidgeted, whining until Maratse clicked his tongue, pulling the dog to his side.

  “Trapped,” I whispered.

  Maratse took Luui’s top blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “She’s warm enough,” he said, pressing a chocolate bar into my hand. “Eat. Then we’ll find a way out.”

  I moved back to Luui, pressing my cold fingers into her hot hand as I ate. The irony of taking food and blanket from the victim was not lost on me as I studied her face, the tiny beads of sweat either side of her nose. She was five years old and better prepared for the ice than I was. It reminded me of Maratse’s question – when had I ever seen her weak or vulnerable.

  “Never,” I whispered, as Luui stirred in her fever sleep.

  As long as she keeps breathing…

  This little girl had defied her parents, playing one against the other, planning he
r escape and preparing for her visit to the spirit world. It could have been a fantasy – some silly child’s game – but… I looked at her backpack, the way she kept her water warm beneath her armpit, under the blanket. I had to remind myself she was just five years old and then smiled as I imagined Tuukula and Maratse responding with an affirmative and slightly puzzled yes.

  But what was really going on?

  Was she travelling as Tuukula put it?

  Was she in the spirit world, and what would happen if we tried to pull her out of it?

  Maratse slid onto his knees and followed Stripe up a narrow tunnel. I glimpsed light brushing his forehead before he slipped inside – a long, thin stream of light, not unlike…

  “Arms,” I said, remembering Luui’s drawing of mo.

  Blixt saw a monster, something for Luui to fear and run away from, only to have the arms pursue her, chasing her, closer and closer. Tuumarsi described those same arms, and those three-fingered hands – not unlike my own numb ones – clutching at the ankles of one’s enemies, preventing them from doing harm. And what if those same arms, that same spirit, could also reach out and pluck Luui out of the spirit world, leading her back to her parents once she was done travelling as Tuukula called it.

  Maratse slid back into the cave and I caught a flicker of light in his eyes, like a child spiralling down a water tube at a holiday resort. Stripe followed a second later, bumping into the back of Maratse, sending them both sprawling onto the floor of Luui’s cave.

  “There’s good news,” Maratse said, after a glance at the ice bobbing in the surge of water in the tunnel below us. He looked at Luui, and said, “I found her way in. She came from the top.” He pointed. “How she knew about it…”

  “She can tell us,” I said. “If we can get out that way.”

  “She can.” Maratse nodded. He curled his hand around Stripe, tickling the dog’s ears. “You can and the dog will follow. But…”

  “But what?”

  Maratse shrugged. “The ice tunnel leads to rock. I won’t fit.”

  Part 17

  “No time,” Maratse said as I started to protest. He pointed at the water rising over the lip of the tunnel, spilling onto the floor of Luui’s ice cave. He took Luui’s blanket from my shoulders and pressed it into her backpack. “Here,” he said, scooping Luui off the platform and into my arms. I held her against my chest, felt her hot forehead press against my neck, as Maratse finished packing her backpack. He clicked his tongue at Stripe and the dog led the way.

  I carried Luui, crouching when I could, then kneeling, slipping forward, following Stripe, but aware of Maratse right behind me, and the ice filling the tunnel behind us. I had seen glaciers calve, seen the waters rise three metres, only to fall five metres as the water was sucked back into the bay. It could go on for hours. Perhaps, if one timed it right… when the waters receded…

  I pushed the thought from my mind, ducked my head and crawled onwards.

  Stripe scratched at the icy floor, then clawed his way up a narrow tube, wriggling when the roof shrank closer and closer to the floor. The ice retreated and black rock pressed through the thinning sleeves of the tunnel wall. The air steamed out of my lungs in front of me, frosting Luui’s hair, turning her cheeks white with powdered breath. When I couldn’t carry her, I tucked her head inside the thick hood of her sealskin smock and pushed her ahead of me. Stripe stopped, fretting in front of Luui and blocking the tunnel until Maratse clicked his tongue, called to him to keep going.

  And we did.

  Pushing on, avoiding the inevitable, choosing not to talk about how all of us were going to get out, not just the girls and the dog. I thought about Gaba waiting on the other side. If he came in the helicopter, perhaps he had explosive charges with him, the kind he used to breach doors and impress Atii when he invited her down to the shooting range.

  The thought – another distraction – was a welcome one, as I pictured Atii, high on her latest exploits, hair sprayed into what I called her go faster spikes sticking out over the back of her neck above her collar, giving her a speedy look, daring Gaba to keep up, warning him she would never slow down, not even if he caught her.

  Atii slowing down.

  Another smile, sudden heat and a flush in my cheeks as Stripe popped out of the tunnel and into the early morning sun. I pushed on, sliding Luui ahead of me, barely aware that we were alone, and that the tug of something heavy on my heel wasn’t Maratse.

  I stopped, heart racing, as I thought about mo.

  Was there danger ahead? Did he have hold of my ankles? Was he pulling me back, warning me, stopping me from leaving the tunnel?

  I turned my head, bumping it against the sloping roof of the tunnel to look behind me.

  It wasn’t mo.

  Hooked around my ankle was the strap of Luui’s backpack. Beyond that, deeper into the tunnel, out of sight, I heard the scratch of something, then a spark, a whiff of smoke, and I thought of Maratse leaning against Luui’s ice shelf, smoking one last cigarette, before…

  “Petra?”

  “Yes?” I turned my head back – too fast, winced at the pain of sudden, sharp movement. The light was obscured by dark shapes, followed by the baldest and glossiest head of the entire Greenland police force. “Gaba?”

  “Aap. Keep moving. It’s tight, but you’re nearly there.”

  I pushed Luui ahead of me, catching my breath as my shoulders slid against the rock, until I was stuck in the rock. I pushed again, cupping my palms against Luui’s heels until she was suddenly weightless, out of my hands, out of the tunnel, and into the arms of the big, bald leader of Greenland’s SRU.

  “We’ve got her.”

  The snow crunched as Gaba took Luui from the tunnel entrance. I dipped my head to one side, glimpsed Gaba hand Luui to a paramedic, then grinned as he returned to the tunnel entrance and stuck his face inside it.

  “We found your jacket, started our search, then saw the dog…”

  “Stripe,” I said.

  “Right.” Gaba turned his head from one side to the other, appraising the size of the tunnel entrance, before giving me one of his trademark no bullshit looks. “This is going to hurt, Petra.”

  “Okay.”

  “Give me your hands.”

  I reached forward, pressing my left hand into Gaba’s, while another officer grabbed my right. They counted to three, I gritted my teeth, biting back a cry of pain as they squeezed my broken fingers and pulled me out of the tunnel into the polar dawn breaking above Ilulissat Icefjord.

  “Constable,” Gaba said, once they had me standing, feet planted firmly in the snow. “If you ever pull a stunt like this again…”

  He kept it up for a good half minute, before shaking his head, pulling me into his arms and squeezing my last breath of air from my lungs, along with one word…

  “What was that?” he said, releasing me, slowly, gently. “What did you say?”

  “Maratse.” I pointed at the tunnel entrance – dark now that the snow had been brushed from the surrounding rock. “He’s still in there.” I looked down at Luui’s backpack, still wrapped around my ankle. “He’s too big to get out.”

  “Is there another way in?” Gaba pointed at the black crack leading to Luui’s cave. You didn’t go in that way.”

  “Down at the water’s edge,” I said. “But the tunnel is blocked, full of ice and water.”

  I turned as Gaba stepped onto a boulder to look down at the icy rocks sloping into the sea. The sea swelled with the gravity of calving glaciers and he swore.

  “It could keep doing that for hours. If he timed it… maybe slide out with the water as it was sucked back into the sea.” Gaba swore, and said, “I don’t know.”

  “Hey!”

  I turned away from the sea as three police officers lunged for Stripe as he twisted around their legs. I noticed the helicopter for the first time, and the paramedic passing Luui into the arms of a colleague sitting inside it, then Stripe caught my eye as he bounced off one bou
lder, leaped onto another, and then dived back into the tunnel.

  Once the shouting had stopped and the men stopped cursing the stupid dog, I was almost certain I heard the click of a tongue.

  Maratse.

  Part 18

  Everyone brings something different to the job. Atii, to Gaba’s annoyance, shoots better than he does. The commissioner has the plan, herding us all in one direction or another, driving Duneq to despair whenever I’m involved. But beyond his personal grooming and chiselled appearance, Gaba’s true talent lies in taking command of difficult situations – from apprehending armed fugitives, to pulling precocious five-year-olds out of ice caves, and then coordinating the recovery of a stubborn police constable enjoying one last smoke with his dog before the end.

  Yes, it’s dramatic. That’s what I bring to the table – the ability to ratchet any drama to the next level, and the one after that. I was getting good at it. But standing to one side as Gaba snapped his fingers, pointed, directed, and expected people to follow his commands, I wished, for the first time, that I had stayed at home.

  Luui was safe. If I hadn’t left Nuuk to look for her, she might not have been. But it was me who looked for Maratse, me who convinced him to help. Although, he had to be one of the easiest people I had ever had tried to convince to do anything.

  “Sometimes,” he had said, when I found him in the dog yard, “there’s trouble.”

  Perhaps this was his thing – looking for trouble and finding it. I caught the curl of a smile on my lips, thinking that other people might even say we were made for each other.

  “Jensen!”

  Gaba again. I was Petra when emotion got the better of him, Constable when he asserted his authority, and Jensen when all else failed, or I exasperated or ignored him.

  He and Sergeant Jowls should take notes.

  “There.” Gaba clicked his fingers. “I need your eyes up there, looking down, directing.”