The Puffin of Death

by Betty Webb

  “Iceland!” she snapped.

  I laughed. “Honestly, I really have to get my hearing checked, because I’d swear you said Iceland.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow. Zorah’s already made the arrangements.”

  Zorah wouldn’t meet my eyes, which meant it was probably true, and she felt guilty about it.

  “Iceland? Tomorrow? You can’t be serious.”

  “I am perfectly serious, Theodora. As you know, Jack Spense, our bear man, irresponsibly broke his leg surfing Sunday—compound fracture, I hear—and his doctor won’t clear him to fly. You are the only person left on staff whose passport is up-to-date.”

  At last an out. I began a lie. “But it’s not up…

  She headed me off at the pass. “Don’t bother telling me it’s not, Theodora, because I am quite well aware you were in Costa Rica last month, visiting your runaway father. By the way, you should have gotten my permission before you flew off so cavalierly.” Here, a harsh stare at Zorah, who had enough sense to keep quiet. “As I was saying before you tried to pull the wool over my eyes, you’ll be taking an Alaska Airlines flight out of San Francisco to Seattle at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, spend the night there, and the next day you’ll board the 10 a.m. Icelandic Air flight which lands, weather willing, at Keflavik Airport sometime early Wednesday. We’ve already arranged for a car to pick you up, and you’ll be sharing lodging with one of the Reykjavik Zoo people. The transfer paperwork will take around six days, I hear, because Icelanders move slowly in these matters.” She sniffed. “No sense of urgency, those people. Pack for weather.”

  Icelandic weather. A vision of glaciers and blizzards rose up in front of me. I’m California born and bred, and the thought of spending six days in freezing temps filled me with horror. “Six days? But, Aster…”

  “Yes, yes, I know you’re worried about that adorable little bonobo, what’s her name, yes, Keisha, as well you should, but Zorah and I have already taken care of that staffing problem, and I assure you that everything will be fine.”

  “But my own pets…”

  “I took the liberty of calling your mother, and she agreed to take in your animals, so you see there’s no problem, no problem at all.” She gave me a beneficent smile, Lady of the Manor to Obedient Serf. “I’ve even given you several days off with pay so you can see the sights. They say Iceland is a major tourist attraction these days.”

  “But…But why are you sending me to Iceland?” I hated the plaintive tone in my voice, but couldn’t seem to stop.

  With a look of satisfaction, she said, “To pick up a polar bear, of course.”

  ***

  Grinding my teeth, I drove home to Gunn Landing Harbor to pack. I’m normally an even-tempered person, but the fact that Aster Edwina felt she could disrupt my life any time she wanted enraged me. Still, if I wanted to keep my job, and I did, there was no way around it. The lush green California hills rolled by quickly, and twenty minutes later I arrived at the harbor. Due to severe zoning restrictions imposed by the California Coastal Initiative, the tiny village of Gunn Landing, population five hundred, has no apartment buildings and no rentals other than three already-taken fishermen’s cottages. Most of the village’s inhabitants, several zookeepers among them, live on boats. Mine is the Merilee, a refitted 1979 thirty-four-foot CHB trawler, berthed at Slip No. 34.

  I do not live alone. My usual bunkmates are DJ Bonz, a three-legged terrier, and Miss Priss, a one-eyed Persian, both rescued from the same pound. We are sometimes joined by Toby, the unfaithful half-Siamese who adopted me after his previous owner was murdered. Yes, I use the word “unfaithful” advisedly. Neutering hadn’t changed Toby’s roaming tendencies, and after spending a week or two with me, he always moved on down the dock to whatever boat took his fancy at the time. Right now he was with us again, which presented a problem.

  Should I take him to Mother’s with the rest of my menagerie?

  I realized the problem had already been solved the moment I walked down the dock toward my Merilee and saw Cathie Kindler relaxing on the deck of the S’Moose Sailing, her refurbished houseboat. In her arms she held Toby, who was licking her ear and pretending he would never love anyone else, the little liar.

  “Look who moved in with me,” Cathie called, over the noise of a Chris-Craft speeding out of the channel toward the Pacific. She was one of those women who could never say no to a homeless cat. “He spent last week on Deborah Holt’s Flotsam, but I guess they had a spat because here he is.”

  “Did you feed him?”

  “Just a smidge. Part of a salmon steak.”

  I had to smile. “You’ll regret that, because he’ll expect it every day now.”

  Briefly, because I could hear my other animals crying out for me, I told her my situation and asked her to look after Toby while I was gone.

  “Of course. But Iceland! Hope you’ve got a parka. Don’t they have volcanoes? Maybe you should take an umbrella, too, what with all that fire and ash falling from the sky.” With that encouragement, Cathie disappeared into S’Moose’s galley to spoil Toby with more salmon.

  I’d forgotten about the Icelandic volcanoes. It would be my rotten luck that one of the things would erupt while I was there, and all the flights would be grounded for a week or two, leaving me to babysit a polar bear on an ice floe where I’d end up as dinner.

  Muttering to myself, I opened the hatch and entered the Merilee.

  Miss Priss wanted food. DJ Bonz wanted walkies, then food. After I gave them both what they wanted, I began to pack.

  Chapter Two

  Keflavik, Iceland: Three days later

  I stood outside Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport, bundled in three layers of clothing topped by a Slimfit N-3B parka guaranteed to keep me warm at thirty degrees below zero.

  Unfortunately, it was sixty-five degrees above zero in Keflavik. The sun was shining and volcanic ash appeared nowhere in evidence. When Bryndis Sigurdsdottir pulled up to the curb in her blue Volvo, I had shed the parka myself and was about to strip to my undies.

  “Why’s it so hot?” I asked Bryndis, after stowing my luggage in the trunk.

  “Well, it is August, Teddy,” she replied. The blond Reykjavik zookeeper had to be six feet tall if she was an inch, and was wearing shorts and a tank top. I guess if you’re used to sub-zero weather, sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit seems broiling.

  “I hear you had an interesting flight,” she continued, as she pulled away from the Arrivals zone. “Some sort of ruckus that almost got you diverted to Manitoba.” Bryndis’ command not only of the English language, even its colloquialisms, didn’t surprise me since before leaving California I’d been assured that all Icelanders spoke fluent English.

  “Ruckus would be the right word. Some drunk guy sporting Elvis Presley sideburns started a brawl in First Class. He was with a group from Phoenix.”

  Bryndis nodded knowingly. “Ah, yes. Phoenix, in Arizona. Where the cowboys ride the range. They are wild men, correct? Rugged. Handsome.”

  “Drunk Elvis wasn’t ugly but he was sure no cowboy. From what I heard, he was a birder on his way here with a group of other birders to study vagrants. You know, non-native birds that for one reason or another, show up in countries where they’re not usually found. They’re…”

  I stopped myself in mid-explanation. Bryndis, a zookeeper herself, would know what a “vagrant” was in birder parlance. “Anyway, from what I could hear, the drunk guy started an argument with another birder about hoopoes, those yellow and black Egyptian birds, claiming one had been seen in some place called Vik. When another birder said that was impossible, Drunk Elvis called him a dumb piece of, ah, offal. He got loud enough that the flight steward booted him from First Class to the back of the plane with the rest of us peons.”

  Bryndis nodded. “But the drunk man was correct. In 2006, a hoopoe showed up at a farm near Vik, probably blown
in by a storm. A male, bright yellow plumage. He made our own birders very happy for two days, then disappeared.”

  “Still, not worth making a scene over.”

  Bryndis laughed. “You must not know many birders. They can be quite vicious. Especially the Icelandic ones.”

  For the rest of the drive into Reykjavik, Iceland’s largest city, she regaled me with stories about Icelandic birders coming to blows over waxwings and warblers. “But they always make up over drinks afterwards,” she finished, as she drove through landscape so weird it looked downright alien. Miles and miles of harsh black rock stretched toward distant, glacier-capped mountains. The rocks were only rarely softened by patches of startlingly green moss; the mountains—volcanoes, actually—looked set to blow at any moment, and they gave me the shivers.

  Bryndis noticed me staring out the window. “How do you like the scenery?”

  “Nice.”

  My polite lie elicited a laugh. “Not to worry, this is a centuries-old lava field. After I introduce you to Magnus I will show you downtown Reykjavik, then tomorrow morning we will go riding along the coastline at Vik, a beautiful place that will look more pleasing to you than this. You do ride, yes?”

  “Ride? Certainly. And is Magnus, your, um, boyfriend?”

  “Yes, and your new one. We Icelanders believe in sharing.”

  My reaction got another laugh. “Magnus is your new polar bear, Teddy. In Icelandic, ‘magnus’ means very big. Great, actually. We will swing by my apartment first to unload your luggage, then go over to the zoo first for a quick introduction. You will enjoy a nice walk around there after sitting so long on the plane, will you not?”

  Sounded good to me, so I nodded. “Uh, does your car have air-conditioning?” I asked, as another rivulet of perspiration rolled down my face. I was still in three layers of clothing.

  She gave me a sympathetic look. “Not needed in Iceland. But tell you what. You can change into cooler clothing when we stop by my apartment.”

  I liked her already. A good thing, too, since I’d be bunking with her for a week while learning the ins and outs of polar bear care.

  ***

  Bryndis’ apartment, mere blocks from the Reykjavik city center, was quite small. A tiny kitchen, a tiny bathroom, a tiny living room that doubled as an office, and a bedroom with barely enough space for twin beds. Although completely furnished by Ikea, large posters of animals personalized the walls. The rooms were themed, too. The posters in the bedroom displayed mountain gorillas and orangutans. The living room—lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs. The kitchen—puffins and whooper swans.

  I felt right at home.

  The only oddity I found was in the bathroom, where I went to change clothes. Over the toilet hung a big concert poster of a female music group named Valkyrie. Underneath the lead singer, who strongly resembled Bryndis, ran a sentence in Icelandic that said, “Við syngja af dauðum.”

  Long underwear duly removed and outer clothes back on, I exited the bathroom to find Bryndis waiting for me in the kitchen with a tall glass of iced tea. After gratefully downing it, I asked, “Is that you or a twin in the bathroom poster?”

  “It is me, all right. Valkyrie plays all over Reykjavik, sometimes as many as three gigs a week. Is that the right word, gigs?”

  “Yep. But how can you handle that kind of schedule? I’m a zookeeper myself and know what a rugged job it is. And from what I hear, being in a rock group is rough stuff, too.”

  She shrugged. “Icelanders like to be busy, so we all do many things. In fact, there is a joke we like to tell on ourselves. Besides our full-time jobs, two out of four of us are in a band, one is writing a book, and the other works in the movies. Someone is always making a movie here. In fact, two different companies—one of them American—start filming here in a few days. Ragnar, a friend of mine, is going to be an extra in the American one.” Considering the bleak scenery I’d seen since leaving the airport, I guessed both movies were horror films. But not wanting to insult her country, I said, “What does that sentence mean, ‘Við syngja af dauðum?’ From the expression on your face, I pronounced it wrong.”

  She laughed. “No problem. Non-Icelanders have a terrible time with Old Norse, which is what we speak. Anyway, the sentence means, ‘We sing of the dead.’”

  “Cheerful.” Yep. Horror movies.

  Unaware of my thoughts, she flashed strong white teeth. “Icelandic music can be dark, but you will find that we ourselves are usually of a cheerful disposition. Now I have a question for you. Is it true you live on a boat?”

  When I told her about the Merilee and Gunn Landing Harbor, her eyes lit up. “As you know, I will be accompanying you and Magnus back to your zoo in California to teach more about polar bears, so perhaps you will show me your Merilee?”

  “Show you? Heck, if you want, you can even bunk with me. The Merilee sleeps four.” And wasn’t much smaller than Bryndis’ apartment.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, we were back in Bryndis’ Volvo, headed toward the Reykjavik City Zoo.

  On the way, I found another occasion to be grateful Icelanders spoke fluent English. As Bryndis had explained, their native language—unchanged since the eighth century when Vikings had settled the island—was almost impossible to learn. I couldn’t even pronounce the street signs because they were in Old Norse, and as such, had plenty of consonants but comparatively few vowels. For instance, to get to the zoo from Bryndis’ apartment, we took Baldursbrá to Snoori, then to Hverfisgata, turned right onto Laugavegur, which eventually turned into Engjateigur, then onto Sudurlandsbraut, made another right on Sigtun, and finally drove into Laugardalur Park. Along the way I’d given the pronunciations the old college try, and my attempts kept Bryndis in stitches until we climbed out of the car at the zoo’s parking lot.

  The zoo was smaller than I expected, and so was the bear, who was being housed in a small outbuilding, away from the other animals, lest his predator’s scent disturb them.

  Magnus was a cub, not the ferocious man-eater I’d imagined. White, with adorable black button eyes and nose, and soaked from splashing around the small kiddie pool he’d been supplied with. Although fairly uneducated about bears, especially cubs, I could tell he was underweight. At around six months old, he weighed less than forty pounds. But given the fact that polar bear cubs are usually born during November or December, when their mothers are hibernating, he shouldn’t have been alive at all.

  Anticipating my questions, Bryndis explained that the winter had been a short one, which had disrupted the polar bears’ breeding season.

  “The ice sheet is melting, the bears are starving, and many of them have stopped breeding. While others…well, you see the result. A hunter found the poor little thing abandoned on an ice floe up near Raufarhöln, and instead of shooting him, which most hunters would have done because we cannot allow bears to kill our sheep, drove him all the way down here to us.” She motioned toward the cub. The roly-poly bundle of fur was sucking from a huge bottle being held by another zookeeper. “As you can see, he is still being milk-fed, which is the only reason we can care for him here. But when he grows up…” Bryndis shrugged.

  Because Iceland had only one native mammal—the Icelandic fox—the zoo specialized mainly in domestic animals, not wild ones. Other than one large pool filled with seals, its exhibits were mainly confined to domestic animals, such as pigs, chickens, cows, and Icelandic horses, with a Russian mink and a Lapland reindeer thrown in for good measure. With the sole exception of Magnus, the zoo had no polar bears, and given Iceland’s arctic winters, had wisely passed on lions, tigers, and elephants.

  “As much as we love Magnus,” Bryndis continued, “we must adopt him out. Several zoos wanted him, but when Miss Gunn sent us the specs and photographs of your beautiful new Northern Climes exhibit, the Gunn Zoo became our first choice. So! Shall we head to the office and fill out som
e papers?”

  I could have watched Magnus nurse from that huge baby bottle for the entire day, but business is business, so I dutifully followed Bryndis into the administration building.

  ***

  Six hours later, and after a quick nap to shake off my jet lag, we were sitting in the Viking Tavern, Reykjavik’s most popular watering hole. We’d made the short uphill jaunt by foot, which gave me plenty of time to window shop on the way. Because of the extreme winters and the country’s lack of trees, most of Reykjavik’s homes and buildings were constructed of brightly colored corrugated iron, which gave the city a cheerful air. Along the way we visited an art gallery, a high-fashion dress shop, three standing-room-only bookstores—apparently Icelanders read a lot—and passed an upscale restaurant whose posted menu announced that they served everything from poached salmon and roasted reindeer to pickled ram’s testicles

  In a way, the Viking Tavern reminded me of one of the upmarket bars back in Gunn Landing, if you discounted the fierce-looking battle-axes and Viking helmets hanging over the long bar, and the frequent shouts of Old Norse over a background hum of English, Danish, German, and Italian. During a few lulls in the conversation, I could even pick up smatterings of Japanese. It was further proof that tiny Iceland, with a population of little more than three hundred and fifty thousand—almost half of them living in Reykjavik—had become a major tourist destination.

  When I asked Bryndis about this, she pointed out the country’s spectacular scenery, most of which I’d seen photographs of in the guidebook I bought back in the States.

  “But being so small, we do have our problems, especially here in Reykjavik.” As if to illustrate, she pulled her iPhone out of her handbag and brought up an app I’d never seen before. “Watch this.”

  She turned around and tapped the shoulder of a man at the next table. “Hi, Sven. I want to show my new American friend someone, so let us bump phones.”

  The man, a big handsome guy in a Viking sort of way, grinned. “Anytime, dear Bryndis.”