Melt

by Robbi McCoy

  “You notice it more than most people, I suppose. You’re tuned into it.”

  “The first night I was here I spent the whole time outside taking pictures. I didn’t get to bed until four in the morning. It was so spectacular, light all night long, changing subtly hour by hour.”

  She screwed the camera down on the tripod and started shooting while Jordan stood nearby, silent, but by no means forgotten.

  “It’s sort of warm this afternoon,” Jordan observed. “Do you want a cold drink?”

  “Sure. That would be great.”

  “We have Coke and lemonade. Or there’s some local beer, if you’d prefer.”

  “Coke would be perfect.”

  “Okay.” Jordan flashed her a warm smile, then walked up to camp while Kelly snapped a few photos, feeling invigorated by both Jordan’s invitation to come out and her welcoming demeanor.

  This was a Jordan she hadn’t seen much of. She’d gotten a glimpse of it that night at the hotel restaurant. Now again today. She could almost imagine Jordan opening her heart. Kelly hoped she wasn’t just imagining it. At the very least Jordan was treating her like an equal, not just a troublesome student. If they could develop the beginning of a friendship based on that sort of equality, there was hope that Kelly could build on it back home. The important thing was to do nothing to scare her off. It would take time to attain the kind of trust Jordan required. Kelly was fine with that. As long as things were moving in the right direction, she could be patient.

  She walked up to camp, arriving as Jordan poured Coke into two glasses. “Did you get some good shots?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. Thank you for inviting me back for this. With all those new icebergs in the fjord, it’s a totally different scene.”

  Jordan pulled a tray of ice cubes from the freezer. “Do you want ice? We’ve got plenty!” She made a sweeping gesture toward the glacier and laughed lightheartedly.

  Kelly laughed too. “Yes, thanks.”

  Jordan held an ice cube in her open palm, looking at it thoughtfully. “Ice is an interesting mineral,” she said. “It’s powerful enough to tear down mountains, but if you apply just a little heat, it completely melts away.” Water dripped between her fingers as the ice cube started to melt. “It’s both strong and weak at the same time.”

  “A lot of things are,” Kelly observed.

  Jordan looked up from her hand to catch Kelly’s gaze before dropping the ice into her glass.

  “When are the others coming back?” Kelly asked.

  “They won’t be back for hours yet. They have to go all the way up to the furthest of our checkpoints and take readings and download images from the cameras. We can see what the earthquake did right here easily enough, but we also need to know what it did to the entire structure of the glacier, surface and subsurface.”

  Feeling parched, Kelly took a long swallow of her soda, then said, “Your work is so interesting.”

  “So is yours! Wasn’t it you who rappelled into an ice waterfall? And the other day when you were talking about photography, you seemed utterly enraptured by your subject.”

  “It’s true I like my work. Up till now, it hasn’t been this exotic. This place is just magical.” She set her glass on the counter. “The other day I took a walk south of town and came to a place where all around me the only color I could see was gray. The sky, the sea and the land—all gray. Even the ice looked gray. But it was still so many different colors, so rich with the differing textures and tones. It was like an artist’s study in gray. It was stunningly beautiful and I shot a hundred photos trying to capture that beauty.” Kelly sighed. “Frankly, I don’t think my camera understands Greenland. I’m still looking for the right settings for the light here.”

  Jordan watched her closely, seeming to be listening, but she made no comment or gesture to indicate she was. Still, Kelly had the impression she liked listening to her talk about photography, so she continued, turning in a slow circle to take in the scenery.

  “It could take a lifetime to capture that gray beauty in pixels. I mean, a photographer could literally work with that one scene for years. Like a paleontologist with a rich fossil bed or an archaeologist with an ancient city.” She faced Jordan, who still stared silently, raptly. “Or you with two miles worth of ice, spending your entire career on divining its secrets and never exhausting them. That’s how this scene felt to me. I had such a hard time tearing myself away.” Kelly shook her head. “There must be millions of scenes like that in Greenland. How many lifetimes would it take to master the entire rainbow of color here, I have to wonder?”

  They stood face-to-face, looking into one another’s eyes. The depth of feeling between them seemed profound. If Jordan had been almost anyone else, Kelly would have moved into her arms at this moment and kissed her, confident that the gesture would be welcomed. Maybe she would have done it anyway if the sound of a boat engine had not entered her consciousness just then.

  “That’ll be your ride,” Jordan said.

  Kelly realized she had only minutes left before she and Jordan parted company for the summer.

  “Jordan,” she said, gripped with sudden panic. “I hope we can see one another back home. I’ve been trying to play this so cool, but I’m scared to death I’m going to lose you again.”

  She saw a flicker of fear in Jordan’s eyes, a fleeting look of vulnerability and indecision. She had seen this look before, in the photo she had taken the other day and faintly in the past. But what she had never seen before was that this look was a response to her. Why? she wondered. Why would she be afraid of me?

  “Your being here this summer isn’t a coincidence, is it?” Jordan asked.

  Kelly shook her head, realizing she had just given everything away. She had just revealed that she was that same lovesick puppy she had always been, chasing the object of her desire to the top of the world for a pat on the head. Jordan would see her as pathetic, just as she had before.

  “Not entirely, no. I wanted to see you again. That was part of the reason I decided to take the job.”

  The sound of the engine came closer, sputtering as it was cut. Their time was up. Kelly heard voices at the dock, but she didn’t turn to look. She didn’t want to miss her last few seconds alone with Jordan.

  “I’ve enjoyed seeing you again too,” Jordan said.

  Kelly searched her face, trying to find deeper meaning behind her words, but she was unreadable.

  Jordan reached for her and Kelly moved into her embrace. The hug was warm, but not intimate. No kiss this time, Kelly lamented.

  “Kelly!” called Pippa. “Kelly!”

  She glanced around to see Pippa running toward them. She spun back to Jordan. “Please call me. Let’s go to dinner or coffee or whatever you want.”

  Jordan seemed uneasy. “I’ll…yes, of course, I’ll call you.”

  Was that a genuine promise? Would she do it? Or was she just trying to avoid more melodrama?

  Any fear that Kelly had had about losing Pippa’s friendship was swept away as Pippa plowed into her and wrapped her arms around her. But the look on her face was unexpectedly despairing and her eyes were moist with the onset of tears. So she had already gotten bad news. Kelly glanced over at the elderly man who walked slowly up the slope with a cane. Had it been so obvious to him that the runes were counterfeit?

  “I’m so sorry,” Kelly said, holding Pippa affectionately. “I know how important this was to you.”

  Pippa looked puzzled. “How do you know?”

  “I just guessed…” Kelly began, reluctant to mention her skepticism again. “Well, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “The earthquake wiped the whole thing out. There was an avalanche. There’s nothing left. Dr. Lund never got to see it.”

  “Oh!” Kelly blurted. “That’s horrible. Can they dig it out?”

  She shook her head grimly.

  Kelly comforted Pippa while Jordan got the archaeologist a Coke and the two of them sat down at the
kitchen table. Then Kelly collected her equipment while Pippa said goodbye to Jordan and Dr. Lund. Jordan raised an arm and waved toward Kelly, then turned her attention back to her colleague.

  That was it, then, Kelly thought. She was sure she had blown her chance with Jordan with her too-obvious neediness. Why had she not been able to stick to her plan and keep cool? Why did she always have to wear her heart on her sleeve?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jordan watched Pippa and Kelly speed away, then disappear from view, the sound of the boat motor fading rapidly.

  During the moments Kelly had been speaking about her work, Jordan had been battling an overpowering desire to take her in her arms and kiss her. She had barely heard anything Kelly had said. There was no doubt now that Kelly wanted her too. She’d admitted it. She had come here with the purpose of reconnecting and seemed anxious to make sure they would be in touch back home. She seemed almost desperate, in fact. Kelly was still in love with her.

  She was filled with happiness to know that, but the idea of Kelly was still so hard to face. The last time she’d given her heart to someone, she’d been destroyed. Kelly had the power to do that to her too. Jordan knew she could feel so much for her…if she let herself. Wasn’t it a million times easier to turn away from all that and just go on living her life the way she had been?

  Dr. Lund was speaking to her, she realized. She focused on him with difficulty.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head, “why Pippa was so convinced there was a body in that cave.”

  “She had a dream.”

  “A dream?”

  “She believes in her dream.”

  “Believes it’s true, you mean? Why?”

  “Because she wants to.” Jordan smiled across the table at his perplexed expression. “Sometimes believing is sufficient to make it true.”

  He opened his mouth to object, then shook his head again. “I’d better get back. It was nice to see you again, Jordan. Come over to the island if you have a chance and take a look at my dig.”

  “I will.” Jordan stood and shook his hand. “Thanks for coming over.”

  After helping him launch, she walked back to camp. As she approached her tent, she noticed crackling static and indistinct words from inside. She hurried her pace and heard a clear message: “Jordan, come in!”

  She dashed inside the tent and over to the radio.

  “Jordan!” the tense, male voice repeated. “Jordan, please answer.”

  She pressed a button on the radio. “What’s wrong, Brian?” she asked.

  “Oh, thank God! We’ve had an accident. Sonja’s fallen into a fissure. We can’t reach her and there’s no way she can climb out.”

  “A fissure? In the glacier?”

  “Yeah. The quake broke it up quite a bit and left these huge gaps.”

  “How far down is she?”

  “Sixty, seventy feet. The problem is, the fissure is way deeper than that. We can’t see how deep. If she falls, it could be all the way to the bottom. No way to survive that. She’s sitting on a narrow ledge. All of our rappelling gear is in Curly. We thought of passing down some picks and crampons and having her try to climb out, but the ice is just too unstable. We can’t risk it without a tether.”

  Jordan took a deep breath. “Is she injured?”

  “No. She’s not hurt, but she is cold. And scared.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Camera three.”

  “I’m on my way,” Jordan said. “Tell her not to move. Make sure she stays calm.”

  “Malik’s talking to her.”

  “Good. You call for a rescue team.”

  “I will, but by the time they get here…”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Jordan rapidly loaded equipment into Curly and took off across the rough terrain, paralleling the edge of the ice river, driving as fast as she dared, her nerves raw.

  When she arrived at the team’s location, she leapt out of the vehicle as it rolled to a stop and ran to the edge of the glacier.

  Malik lay on his stomach, his head over a deep, narrow crevasse, his dog standing beside him. The glacier had cracked open, the down side pulling away from the other. The technical term for this feature was bergschrund, a German word meaning “mountain cleft.” She recited the definition silently to herself. There was a dictionary of geology terms in her head, but as often happened when faced with a real-world example, the definition became superfluous, almost meaningless. It was just a word: bergschrund. This thing before her was too big and too awe-inspiring to capture in a word.

  She hesitantly peered into the eerie blue depths. Sonja sat looking small and frightened on a shelf of ice four feet wide, huddled over her knees. On her left was a sheer vertical wall. On her right was a menacing chasm that descended steeply, narrowing as it went. Jordan felt dizzy just looking and had to jerk away.

  “Did you call for a rescue team?” she asked.

  “We did,” Julie assured her. “But it’s hard to say how long it will take them. She’s too cold to stay there much longer.”

  “Malik tried tossing down his jacket,” Brian said, “but it missed.”

  “How did this happen?” Jordan asked.

  “She was trying to rescue one of the cameras,” Brian explained. “The quake knocked it into the ice, so she went out to get it. She reminded us, you know, about how you said one of those cameras was worth more than all of us put together.”

  “We know that was a joke,” Julie intervened, frowning at Brian.

  “There must have been an aftershock,” he said. “This whole section just split off. It knocked her off her feet and she slipped over. The camera fell in too. It’s way down there somewhere. Long gone.”

  Jordan took a deep breath. “I’ll go down and get her,” she said, steeling herself against the fear she already felt creeping into her throat.

  “Jordan,” Julie objected, “you can’t go down there. Just while we’ve been waiting for you, it’s been shifting and calving.”

  “What do you suggest?” Jordan asked.

  “We should wait for the rescue team. They’ve got all the right equipment for this situation.”

  “You just said yourself she can’t stay there much longer. Between the cold and the instability of the ice, waiting isn’t an option if there’s something we can do.”

  Brian intervened. “Now that we’ve got the ropes, we can lower one down to her.”

  Jordan shook her head. “That’s too dangerous. If she were directly below us, maybe, but it’s not possible to just drop a rope on her. If she has to move around to get to it, the ledge could fail. We can’t have her moving until she’s got a safety line. Somebody has to go down there and put the rope in her hand.”

  Malik stepped up to them. “I’ll go. I’ve been climbing ice all my life. I’m the most experienced.”

  Jordan gazed into his dark eyes, grateful for the offer. Though she knew how to use the equipment and had both experience and training in climbing, she had regularly avoided climbing situations where her fear of heights would kick in. This was one of those situations. She couldn’t even look down into that crevasse without getting dizzy. How could she hang over it at the end of a cable? For a second, she considered letting Malik go down. But she knew she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t let any of them go. It had to be her. If Sonja fell to her death during a rescue attempt, she had to be the one to shoulder that burden.

  “No,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be going.”

  “Another aftershock and the whole thing could come apart,” Brian cautioned. “Or maybe even worse, crash back together. There’s no point risking your life too…for her.”

  Malik stepped in front of Brian. “What the hell does that mean?” he hissed. “Her life is not important? Why? Because she is gay? Is that your point, you bigot?”

  Brian shoved him away. “It’s nothing t
o do with that! What do I care about that, you asshole?” He shoved him again, harder, causing Atka to growl menacingly. Brian was unfazed. He took a step closer to Malik, scowling into his face. “My problem with you has nothing to do with that. After all, Jordan’s gay too, and she’s the one whose life I’m worried about.” Brian shook his head in disgust. “God! Is there no end to the ways you think of yourself as special!”

  Suddenly Jordan realized what had brought Malik and Sonja together. She was stunned that she hadn’t seen it before. Malik tensed, looking like he was about to spring at Brian. She stepped between them.

  “Stop it!” she commanded. “We don’t have time for this. I’m going down there and you guys need to work as a team. I’m counting on that.” She motioned to the group. “Everybody stay off the ice! Brian, you’re on the winch. Malik, you stay on the rim and relay instructions to him. Julie, you’re in charge of equipment. I’m going to take a safety line down and get that around her first, then we’ll get her into a harness and pull her up.”

  While Jordan got harnessed, she tried not to think about the horrible possibility that Sonja wouldn’t make it. That won’t happen, she assured herself, remembering what she had recently told Dr. Lund about Pippa’s dream. Sometimes believing is sufficient to make it true. Jordan had never been good at believing anything that wasn’t a proven fact, but this was one of those situations where there was so much at stake she found it nearly impossible not to fall back on a different kind of belief. She closed her eyes and repeated silently: She’ll make it.

  As her harness was cinched tight, she scanned the sky for a sign of a helicopter, but there was nothing. No cavalry coming over the hill.

  Malik continued to speak to Sonja in a soothing voice. “Jordan is coming in,” he told her. “She is coming to get you. Stay still. Stay quiet.”