Melt

by Robbi McCoy

  In her mind, she endlessly rehearsed the moment of their meeting. When their eyes met, she would utter a nearly inaudible gasp of astonishment at seeing Jordan again after nearly a decade. Then she would say, with restrained pleasure, “Jordan! What a delightful surprise to see you again.” For her part, Jordan would be equally surprised and, Kelly hoped, glad, as someone might be at a chance meeting with an old friend. Or maybe she would forgo the feigned surprised and merely say, “Hello, Jordan. Nice to see you again. How’ve you been?” In a businesslike manner, she would shake her hand and look her in the eye with confidence. Jordan would say, “Kelly Sheffield, for Christ’s sake! I thought I got rid of you years ago. Now here you are following me to the top of the world, hoping that nine years could have changed the laws of physics and created a reality in which I could return your wretched love. Not in this universe!”

  Kelly shook the image from her mind. She’d never been any good at fantasies. They invariably betrayed her insecurities and were so much worse than reality would ever be. Same with dreams. Her dreams and fantasies played out like they were written by a sadistic puppeteer. There was no way Jordan would be that brutal. But her response to seeing Kelly again could very well be a gentler equivalent.

  “What about you?” she asked Pippa. “Have you ever been in love?”

  She snorted a short laugh. “I’ve never even been kissed. Not kissed for real. A dorky boy took me out once and kissed me goodnight so fast he almost missed my mouth. Then he ran away like he was being chased by a chainsaw murderer.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s not a lot to choose from here. Not the kind that interest me, anyway.”

  “You mean women?” Kelly ventured.

  “Yeah.” Pippa smiled self-consciously, then averted her eyes. “Specifically lesbians.”

  Kelly laughed. “That’s what I meant. No other lesbians in Ilulissat?”

  “As if! I barely know of any gay people,” Pippa explained. “I don’t expect to meet anybody here. This is how I figure it. In all of Greenland, there are only twenty-eight thousand females. In Ilulissat, there are two thousand females and a hundred and sixty girls in my age group. Over half of those are married, so that leaves about eighty. Nobody really knows what percent of the population is gay, really gay and not just experimenting, but I’ve heard it’s about three percent.”

  “That’s conservative,” Kelly pointed out.

  “This is a conservative place.”

  “Okay. You have a point.”

  “Mathematically speaking, that means there are two single lesbians, at most three, in my age group in this town. And I’m one of them.” She sighed fatalistically. “I’ve had my eye out for the other one, but so far, nothing.”

  “Those aren’t very good odds. But when you go away to college, everything will be different.”

  “If I ever do. Even if I do get to go to college, it could be two, three or four years from now before I even know another lesbian.” She grimaced. “Can you imagine staying celibate until you’re in your mid twenties?”

  Kelly sputtered. “Uh, that’s not a death sentence. A lot of people aren’t sexually active until their twenties. It’s really not that unusual, especially in a situation like yours where there isn’t anyone appropriate to date. There’s no urgency about sex. You don’t have to feel pressured about it.”

  Pippa shook her head, looking mournful. “It’s not just sex. It’s the whole thing. Going steady. Holding hands. Kissing.”

  “It would be nice if you had that.” Kelly patted Pippa on the back sympathetically. “I guess it’s kind of lonely here for girls like us, isn’t it?”

  Pippa brightened at the suggestion that she and Kelly were in the same club.

  Kelly stood and stretched. “Do you mind if I set up my camera and take a few shots here before we go on?”

  “No problem! Take as long as you want. We’re making good time. We’re over halfway there now.”

  Kelly walked out to a point with a particularly fine view of the bay and set up her tripod, her mind still occupied with thoughts of Jordan.

  She wanted to find out, after all this time, if the sight of Jordan still tugged at her heart, if the nearness of her still made her knees weak. Or if, as Jordan had predicted, she had merely had a crush and had outgrown it in the intervening years.

  But she already knew she hadn’t outgrown it. She had never believed Jordan’s assertion that her love was a transitory infatuation. Jordan thought of her as a child, full of heady dreams and illusions. Even as a teenager, Kelly had been more grounded than that. Some might say more cynical, but she liked to think of herself as merely realistic. She hadn’t been a romantic idealist like many girls her age, prone to flights of fancy, but neither was she a pessimist like her mother. What she had found in Jordan was a woman whose spirit resonated deeply with her own, someone she would even dare to call her soul mate.

  She had never loved Megan as deeply as she had loved Jordan. She had tried to be happy with Megan, but her heart knew there was something more profound and satisfying available, if not with Jordan, then with someone else. In the end, that was why she and Megan couldn’t make it. She had always felt a little like she was settling for second best. She couldn’t forget the exquisite joy of all-consuming love, of wanting to give herself wholly and selflessly to someone else. She wanted to find out if that joy was still possible or if her heart had hardened. Even if Jordan was still unavailable to her, she yearned to feel that old emotional intensity, just to know it was still a part of her.

  There was also a chance that Jordan would see her in a different light now that she was older and more experienced. They weren’t that far apart in age, less than ten years. The age disparity wouldn’t seem so great now. It wouldn’t be out of the question for Jordan to see her as more of an equal. She might even be able to love her. But she hardly dared think that for fear of wounding her carefully guarded hope.

  These were the thoughts Kelly had been carrying around since signing on for this trip, all the while having no clue if Jordan was even available. None of the information she had found about Jordan’s many recent accomplishments had anything to do with her personal life. That didn’t surprise her. Jordan could be married with five kids and none of her students or colleagues would know it. Unless she had changed.

  She attached her camera to the tripod and turned it down snug. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pippa’s bright red jacket moving along a nearby ridgetop. Poor kid, she thought, with her wild, romantic heart and no place for it to run free. Was that better or worse than having a wild, romantic heart that fixed itself on a hopeless pursuit?

  She was soon immersed in her work, transfixed by the beauty and solitude all around her. She forgot all about Pippa…and even Jordan.

  Chapter Six

  Pippa’s head throbbed like thunder. She opened her eyes and tried to comprehend her situation, gradually realizing she was lying on the cold ground in the dark. Why was it dark? It was summer, the middle of summer. It never gets this dark in the middle of summer. She saw a circle of light above and her eyes finally made sense of it. She was looking at an opening to the outside. Through it, the blue of the sky was unblemished by any detail. She was in a cave, she reasoned. That was weird. There are no caves in Greenland. Startled by a whistling sound, she listened more carefully and recognized it as the wind passing over the opening above.

  She tried to raise her head to look around, but everything swam violently, so she closed her eyes and lay still until it was calm again. Then she tentatively rolled onto her side, feeling a sharp pain in her ankle. She must have fallen. She looked up again at the opening ten feet above. Her head hurt. She felt around until she located a sticky mass of hair at the back of her head. She realized she was bleeding…or had been bleeding. The blood was nearly dry. Maybe it wasn’t too bad. But what about the ankle? She tried to move her foot, then winced at the sharp pain.

  Peering into the dimness around her, she could see the outlines of large boulde
rs, but only barely. God, she thought, I hope there’s no polar bear in this cave! Then she remembered again that there are no caves in Greenland and wondered where she was. What country is this? I hope it’s America, she thought with sudden excitement. Or France or England. Or Africa. Maybe she’d fallen into a diamond mine!

  She remembered the penlight on her key chain and reached into her front pocket to fish it out. Its beam exposed the space around her: rock walls and a dusty floor containing smooth, featureless boulders. Against one wall was a pile of soccer ball- sized rocks about two feet high that looked like they’d been arranged there purposely like a stack of cannon balls. They looked like a cairn, but a cairn inside a cave would be a strange trail marker. Maybe not so strange a marker for something else, she reasoned, like a buried treasure. A buried treasure inside a cave, now that idea had potential. Her mind raced off with visions of gold doubloons.

  Beside her on the floor were the few scattered cottongrass flowers she’d dropped on her way down. She’d been picking them, she recalled. That was her last memory, stepping toward a patch of fluffy blooms with the intention of presenting a bouquet to Kelly as a cheery gift. Kelly was so taken with them. She’d never seen anything like them, she’d said, and had taken dozens of photos of them on her first trip to Rodebay.

  “They grow all over,” Pippa had informed her. “Very common, like weeds.”

  “What seems common has to do with your frame of reference,” Kelly had said. “I think they’re darling!”

  Kelly took a lot of photos. Not just for the articles Mr. Lance was writing, but of whatever caught her eye. She even took pictures of Pippa. Does she think I’m darling too?

  She decided to sit up again, but her head spun wildly as before. In the split second before her thumb released the penlight button and the cave went black, she thought she saw someone on the other side of the chamber. Adrenaline flashed through her body and her blood went cold as she lay perfectly still holding her breath, listening. It had been a face only, a pale face framed by light-colored hair. It was a woman. Maybe not a human woman. Maybe a ghost or a witch or a vampire, but whatever it was, it was a female one, for sure.

  Hearing nothing for two, three, four seconds, she fumbled to turn the light back on, but the room spun around her so fast, she grabbed at the floor, feeling like she would fall off. She squeezed her eyes shut again and curled into a ball, waiting for the spinning to stop.

  Flashes of light shot across the black field of her vision as she lay still and quiet. Then there were indistinct, flickering yellow flames as the world gradually slowed and came into focus. Though her eyes were still shut, a scene was forming. Bit by bit, the flames solidified into a small, cool fire in a stone fireplace with a stone mantel. Above that an intricately carved wooden cross hung on the wall, its design a fascinating network of curving tendrils like vines or snakes.

  An iron pot sat on a flat stone in the fire, its oily contents simmering.

  She reached into the fire with a cloth wrapped around her hand and lifted the pot out, setting it on the hearth. She stirred through it with a metal spoon to check that all the seal blubber was melted. This would be enough oil to fill their lamps for a couple of weeks, she estimated.

  Confused, she stared into the oily pot to catch her hazy reflection, seeing long, light-colored hair pulled back from her face. She reached up and pushed an errant strand back, noting the coarse texture, noting also how large and strangely colored her hand was. It was pale and marked by a network of ruddy freckles. This was not her hand…and yet it was. She felt oddly within and without her body at the same time.

  She glanced around the room. Like her hand, it looked familiar and strange all at once. It was no more than twelve feet across, with a hand-hewn wooden table and chairs and a cramped workspace along the wall adjacent to the hearth. An oil lamp stood on the table, cold. Next to a heavy wooden door there was one window with open shutters letting in a feeble light. On the worktable stood a pitcher, some cups, a pot, utensils and a basin of water. On a peg by the door hung her overcoat, and beside the door was the wooden bucket she used to milk the goats.

  The confusion sifted out of her mind as all of these familiar objects reminded her who and where she was. She was Asa, daughter of Torvald, wife of Bjarni, and she was home.

  As she stood upright, she felt the kick of her child in her belly. She recalled Bjarni’s cold gray eyes when she had told him about this one, another child on the way. He was not happy. Not like the first time, when his firstborn Alrik arrived. He had cried with joy at the sight of his son. That was twelve years ago. So much had changed since then. Bjarni was unhappy most of the time now. Their crops had failed again and many of the villagers had died from the winter sickness. Others had left on a desperate overland journey to reach Brattahlid, hoping that their brethren to the south were better off. That was last year. Nobody knew if they had made it or what they had found if they did. They had promised to send help, but so far there had been only silence.

  No help was coming from any source, Asa had concluded. There were never any ships, not anymore, but the sagas told of a time when there were. The ships used to come every summer, bringing grain, timber, livestock, cloth, tools and even new settlers. They were huge, beautiful ships that could hold many people and travel great distances. Asa had never seen such a sight. She had been born here in Greenland in this village. Her husband Bjarni had been born here too. And this child, son or daughter of Bjarni and Asa, would also be born here.

  She glanced at the cross hanging above the hearth and wondered again if God had forgotten about His tiny flock freezing on this rock, that He had brought them another short, cold summer with poor crops, poor hunting and no food for their animals. As always, she felt ashamed of the thought. God never abandons any of us; that’s what she’d been told. If He doesn’t hear you, you’re the one at fault. You need to pray harder or work harder or be better.

  That cross was one of her few possessions that had come from Norway. It had been in her family for several generations and had gone to Iceland with them. It had made the journey here with her grandparents. Now that her grandparents and parents were gone, it was hers. Like the blue crockery she used for their table. The table itself had been made by Bjarni from scraps of lumber scavenged from an abandoned farm. He wasn’t a very good carpenter. The table, like most things he made, was rough and ill-proportioned, but it served its function. The luxury of beauty belonged to the past. Or some other world, as she had heard stories of.

  She sighed as her daughter Gudny pushed open the door and burst in from outside, bundled in her wool jacket patched in many places, her little face peeking out from her hood with a carefree smile, her blue eyes shining. She ran up and flung her arms around Asa’s legs. Asa embraced her, lifted her up and kissed her cheek, pushing the hood off her beautiful blonde curls. Gudny was always happy. She seemed not to know all the reasons not to be. Oh, what a foolish child to be so happy in the face of so much hopelessness! Asa laughed and gave Gudny a squeeze.

  “Do you want some milk?” she asked, setting Gudny on the floor.

  Gudny nodded eagerly. Asa removed the child’s coat, then gave her a cup of goat’s milk in a chipped blue cup. They had two goats left. It would have been none, but Bjarni’s brother had died of the sickness and Bjarni took his animals and furniture. There was almost nothing left for the goats to eat, though, so they wouldn’t last much longer. Once the snow covered the ground, the goats would starve. Then her family would eat the goats like they had the sheep and cows before them. Then what? No milk. No cheese. They would eat fish, Bjarni said. And seal meat. They already ate fish and seal meat. But without any milk to cook the dried fish in, it would be nearly intolerable. You can live on fish and seal meat, Bjarni insisted to his family. The Skrælings do it. When he had mentioned the wild, dark people, his mother Hild had protested, saying, “We are not Skrælings! We are Norsemen. We must have bread and milk. Have faith. God will provide.”

  They co
uld survive on fish and seal meat like the Skrælings, but even the fishing and hunting didn’t seem as good as they used to be. In days past, according to the elders, there were so many seals and walruses, they could take as many as they could carry back to the village. And no trouble either with the Skrælings. They lived further north. They were hardly ever seen. But now they were seen more often, parties of hunters in their long narrow boats gliding past in the ocean beyond the ice. When they appeared, a ripple of fear and loathing ran through the village and all the men became alert and watchful. There had been recent violence between the two groups. Several months before, a party of men had brought down a walrus. As they butchered it, they were attacked by a half dozen Skrælings who stole the walrus and left two men injured.

  Asa had never seen a Skræling except from a great distance. All she knew about them was that they were brown-skinned savages to be abhorred and avoided.

  Her mother-in-law Hild was bitter and unhappy. Since Bjarni was the only male left of her family, she blamed him for everything that was wrong. Her husband had died years ago. Her other son and his entire family had been taken by the sickness last winter. Her youngest child, a daughter, died in childbirth. Bjarni sometimes got angry at his mother and told her she should have gone with the others, the ones who left last year for Brattahlid.

  “How could I leave my family?” she had answered. At that time, Bjarni’s brother and his family had still been alive. “Besides, you know they never made it.”

  Most of the villagers had assumed the party couldn’t make it. The weather was rarely mild long enough to allow such a journey on foot. It would have taken a miracle, more than one person had declared, for that party to have made its goal. Even some among those who left expected to die. They gave their possessions to those who remained and wished them well, saying farewell with a grim resignation. If they had had dogs and sleds like the Skrælings, Asa reflected, they might have made it.