The Icarus Project

by Laura Quimby

  “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.”

  “O
n 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.

  “Yeah, me too,” Kyle said.

  Ivan reached over and pulled on one of my braids that hung down outside of my hat. “White hair. It’s not normal in someone so young.”

  I snatched my hair out of his hands. “Hey, no touching.”

  “Ivan, leave the children alone,” Randal said.

  “It must have fallen from the sky.” It took me a second to realize Ivan wasn’t talking about me but about the discovery.

  “I need to know what’s happened in the cave,” Randal said to Kyle and me. “You two wait here.”

  Fat chance of that happening. I wasn’t about to stay out here in the tent with Ivan acting so strange. I was eager to see what had happened. I waited at the tent flap for Randal to make his way into the cave before motioning for Kyle to follow me. “Let’s go. I’m not staying here.”

  “Right behind you,” Kyle said.

  After making our way to the cave entrance, we passed through the narrow crevice. My gloves scratched against the rough surface. The walls felt like they were closing in on me, and then suddenly they opened up and we were in the cave area where the excavation had been established. I found a spot in the corner of the site, which provided Kyle and me with a perfect view. Excitement buzzed around us. Randal was talking to Dad in hushed tones. Jake was milling about with his camera propped on his right shoulder like an extra appendage.

  “Let’s see this discovery, shall we?” Randal announced, rubbing his gloved hands together.

  “This way.” Dad directed Randal toward the rough block that they’d been working on earlier.

  “I see that I have chosen the right man for the job,” Randal said. “You have done exemplary work over the past few days.”

  Kyle and I followed a few steps behind. The buzz of the generator grew. A flicker of light from a solar lamp cast an eerie glow on the cave walls. My heart raced as my eyes scanned the icy surface.

  I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  There was a big hole in the ice wall where the shadow had been the day before. It looked like some giant monster had taken a bite out of it. A huge chunk of ice rested on the cave floor. The block was crude: rough and cracked. They must have freed the shadow from the rocky ice wall, and now it sat like a giant glass coffin with a figure sealed inside.

  “What is it?” I whispered to Kyle, mesmerized by the flickering shadows playing on the ice.

  “I think it’s … I think it’s really a person.” Kyle nudged me with his shoulder.

  I couldn’t deny it now. Through a spiderweb of cracks on the icy surface, the figure looked like a person trapped in a giant ice cube. It had a face. More important, it had flesh. I had seen enough dug-up mummies and ancient bodies to know that this was no mummy. The flesh is the first thing to go, since flesh is mostly made of water, and once a person dies, the body pretty much dries up the same way a grape shrivels up into a raisin. This person was no raisin.

  “It looks almost alive,” I said. A pang filled my stomach.

  Kyle furrowed his brow. “Almost. But it’s been buried in the ice for who knows how long.”

  “Look at the skin. It doesn’t look dead.”

  “I know. But it’s been encased in solid ice.”

  “It’s not all shriveled up and decayed. How can the skin live?” I asked.

  “The ice is somehow preserving it.”

  I couldn’t hold my question in a second longer. I stepped forward so that the scientists saw me. Kyle followed behind me. My dad frowned, but I knew he was too busy to give me a lecture. “Will someone please tell us what it is?” I asked. “You must have some idea.”

  Jake and Dad exchanged a look. Randal stood marveling at the block of ice, and for once he was speechless.

  “Well, you have to tell us now. We’ve all seen it.” I stared at Dad.

  “We’re not sure,” Dad responded.

  “It’s a breakthrough. That’s what it is,” Randal said.

  “It’s a lot to take in, Randal.” Dad patted him on the back of his puffy brown snowsuit. “The point is we have potentially made what could be a groundbreaking discovery. We need to eliminate all possibilities before we get too excited.”

  “It’s beautiful. It’s the most magnificent specimen I’ve ever seen.” Randal looked over his shoulder at Dad. “I had no idea … No idea.” He gave a half-choked laugh, and glanced at Jake. “It’s better than we imagined. And now it is ours.”

  “But what is it?” Kyle asked.

  “Tests will have to be run … scans. An MRI will need to be done.” Dad looked at the ice. “It appears to be humanoid. A young humanoid male.”

  “A boy,” I said.

  “If that’s a person, then what are those?” Kyle pointed to the back of the form. Two huge arched objects filled the icy slab behind the figure. The frozen boy had two massive wings attached to his back, covered with hundreds of creamy, parchment-colored feathers.

  “They look like wings,” I said, stating the obvious. That was when I realized it hadn’t been the boy who had startled Ivan—it had been his wings.

  “What kind of a person has wings?” Kyle asked.

  No one answered, but we all had an idea.

  Randal stepped forward. “We must begin to study him.”

  “We will, but we must be cautious. The body might be a real specimen, or it might be another imitation,” Dad said, lowering his voice.

  “Can’t be. Look at the wings,” Jake said.

  “Wings can be faked,” Dad said. “Like tusks.”

  “I wouldn
’t fake this,” Randal said. “I couldn’t even dream of finding something like this.” His voice drifted off as he stared.

  Karen shifted. “Many tribal communities used feathers as decorations for ceremonial garb. Feather headdresses and costumes are not uncommon throughout history. We don’t even know how old the find is, let alone if the wings are a part of his musculature. We’ll need carbon dating.”

  “Tribal is a good hypothesis for the wings.” Dad paused and scratched his chin. “They could be just for decoration.”

  “They look too real,” Jake countered. “And if they are for decoration, then why are they white and not colorful?”

  “We won’t know until we investigate further,” Dad said.

  “The wings could be mechanical!” Kyle blurted out. “Maybe they’re man-made, out of metal or something, and they work like a hang glider.”

  “Whatever it is, it will be investigated to the fullest. It could be a modern-day missing person. Someone’s family could be looking for him. Wings or no wings.”

  “No way,” Jake said. “First, any lost kid in this area would have sent out a major search party and made all the papers, even if the kid went missing decades ago.”

  “You confirmed?” Karen asked. “It’s not a lost child?”

  Jake set his camera on the table. “Yesterday, after we saw that the shape looked human, I did some research. A lost person was the first thing I checked for. Last thing we needed was to discover a poor kid in a costume. I even contacted the nearest paper and the police.”

  Karen frowned, unconvinced, and Jake rolled his eyes, obviously highly annoyed with all the questions. But Karen didn’t back down. “This is important. We aren’t filmmakers. We’re scientists. We must research every possibility.”

  Jake sighed. “I researched thoroughly. I could ask some more, if that will make you feel better.”

  Karen eased up on Jake. “No, I should do it. It’s my responsibility. You’re the filmmaker. I’m the anthropologist. I’ll start researching and questioning the locals to make sure it isn’t someone’s missing child or a cultural icon. It could be a statue—a mannequin made for a celebration.” Karen began to gather up her gear and walked over to Kyle and me. “Are you two ready to go back to the dome?”