by Various Orca
I’m going to die.
I’m numb all over. I feel like my body doesn’t exist anymore, it’s just me and my brain sending waves of panic through me, telling me it’s all over, I’m finished, I might as well just go back to sleep and let it happen. That’s supposed to be the thing about freezing to death. It’s supposed to be painless. You just lie down and go to sleep and never wake up again. Maybe I could dream about Mom. Maybe I could manage, for once, to picture her the way she used to be, the way she really was, not the way she ended up. That would be nice.
Do you really see your life flash before your eyes just before you die? If that turns out to be true, she’d be there. She’d be the biggest part of it. My mom and her smile. My mom and the flowery scent of her as she sat beside me at the kitchen table and patiently explained a math problem for the hundredth time. She was always patient. Always soft-spoken. She never yelled. She never said anything mean. She never made me feel stupid when I didn’t understand something or like a failure when I messed up. She just wanted to understand—what happened and what can we do to make it better? And when she said we, she really meant it. How can I help you, Rennie? Not like teachers or principals or vice-principals who said we when they meant you and never let an opportunity to express their disappointment go by. So there we were in the car, me being a total pain, bugging her to take a side trip she didn’t want to take so that I could buy some comics I didn’t really need to impress a kid at school I didn’t really like. I’d just wanted to show him up for once. I’d driven her crazy when all she wanted to do was get home to the Major, which I never understood; he was such a hard-ass.
And she’d caved.
I’d pumped the air, like I’d scored a game-winning touchdown.
The next thing I knew, we were driving down a twisting road blasted out of the Canadian Shield and seeing Danger: Falling Rock signs every 10 kilometers or so.
And then I’d seen something I’d never be able to forget.
Lie down, Rennie. Close your eyes. Imagine. Picture her. Remember how good it was. How good she was. Especially compared to the Major.
Mr. Two Choices.
That’s all it ever comes down to with him: two choices. Black and white. Do or don’t do. Succeed or fail. He’s like a military Yoda: “There is no try.” Don’t go crying back to him that you did your best. If you’d done your best, you would have passed that test, made that team, got that job. Do or don’t do. Make your choice.
Lie down or stand up.
Stay where you are or keep moving.
Quit or keep on slogging.
And that’s when that old revenge streak of mine kicks in again. I can either let whoever did this to me win, or I can make it out alive and kick their ass.
If I fail a math test, it’s no big deal. Who cares about math?
But if I let some bully take me out on the way home—that’s a different story. Nobody takes out Rennie Charbonneau, not without a fight.
Nobody’s going to kill me either. Not without a fight.
Keep walking, kid. Keep on slogging.
I have no idea how long I keep going. My watch is gone. My phone is gone.
I have no idea what direction I’m going in.
I just keep moving one foot in front of the other until I’m ready to collapse. Then I hunker down in another snow pit and do my best to stay awake and angry. When I’m angry enough, I get up and walk some more.
Eventually it stops snowing.
I keep walking.
It starts to rain, and I shake all over.
I keep walking.
While I walk, I think about the old man and what he’d wanted to show me. I think about the turf shed and what I had seen—well, almost seen—back behind that stone wall. I think about Freyja and Baldur and Barnafoss. I think about the woman’s face sketched in my grandfather’s journal.
I keep moving, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot—even when I feel weak-kneed and feverish. I cup my hands and drink some rainwater. I remember that a person can go longer than they think without food but that water is a necessity. I’m sure in the right place for water—surrounded by snow and ice, glaciers, rain, geysers, waterfalls. Water is the one thing the Icelanders are never going to run out of. And whatever else happens to me, I’m not going to die of thirst.
I trudge.
I rest.
I drink.
I trudge some more.
The shaking gets worse. My teeth chatter. My clothes are soaked clear through to my skin.
Then the clouds thin and it starts to get warmer. But I’m shaking uncontrollably. The word hypothermia pops into my head. If a person’s body cools too much, it can cause death.
I wish the Major was here with me. He’d know what to do.
When was the last time I wished that?
How about never?
I picture his face when they finally give him the news. We’re sorry to inform you, Major Charbonneau, but your son is missing in Iceland and is presumed dead. We’re sending out search parties, of course, but it’s been a few days now and we’re not hopeful…
He’ll be disappointed. That goes without saying. Maybe he’ll even be upset. But there will also be a part of him that will say, Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised. If it was anyone else’s son, yes. But my son? No, I’m not surprised at all.
My knees buckle. I fall to the ground and lie there, facedown, crying, blubbering like a baby, too tired to get up, too afraid. It’s getting dark again. This time I don’t care.
SIXTEEN
I raise my hand over my face to shield it from the glare. Is this what they mean when they say you see a light at the last moment? Is this the light I’m supposed to walk toward? Is it the light that will guide me to my mother?
I struggle to a sitting position and lower my hand, squinting into the brilliant sun. Everywhere is whiteness, the way I imagined heaven to be when I was a little kid. Except it isn’t the white of clouds. It’s the white of snow.
Mostly.
I stand up. The whiteness stops in the distance and becomes black. I see something move. It looks like…
I squint.
It is. It’s a horse. All by itself.
Correction, all by itself with a couple of other horses.
I try to take a step and crumple to my hands and knees. I stay in that position, panting, until my hands begin to freeze. I force myself to get up again. I try again to take a step. My feet are so heavy that the best I can do is shuffle. I keep my eyes on those horses in the distance, tiny as raisins, and shuffle toward them. I don’t remember thinking about anything. I don’t remember feeling anything. I just stare at those sturdy little Icelandic horses and stumble toward them like my life depends on it.
Which it does.
At first, I’m giddy with excitement. Where there are horses, there are bound to be people. But no matter how many steps I take, the horses don’t get any bigger. They stay tiny, so tiny that when I hold my thumb up to one, it completely disappears behind it.
It crosses my mind that I’m seeing things. The horses aren’t really there. They’re just figments of my imagination. Maybe I’m not even walking. Maybe I’m still lying in the snow somewhere, close to death, dreaming that I’m walking, the same way I’m dreaming that I see horses. I’m dreaming hope for myself, release from everything I’ve been through. But the release isn’t going to be what I thought. I’m never going to get to those horses. They aren’t going to lead me home. And home isn’t what I imagined either. Home isn’t going to be the Major. It’s going to be Mom.
Then, so fast I hardly believe it, the horses get a little bigger.
My heart starts to hammer in my chest.
I can see the edge of the snow clearly now. The horses are just beyond it. They are getting bigger.
And bigger.
They keep their distance from me as I stagger toward them. The snow and ice slant downward. I trip and careen down an icy slope. Sounds like fun. Isn’t. The ice is bumpy
and jars every bone in my body.
Then the ice stops.
Just like that.
Stops at the edge of nothingness. But I’m still shooting forward.
I claw at the ground. I kick my feet straight out in front of me, trying to dig them in.
I feel myself lift off the ground, heading toward the nothingness—a huge abyss.
I think I scream.
My hands scrabble around for something to hold on to.
I feel myself falling, falling.
My fingers make contact with something. Grab at it.
My shoulders feel like they’re being ripped from their sockets.
My feet kick out into nothingness.
I hold tight to…I crane my neck upward…I hold tight to a spike of ice. I try to ease my other hand up to grab it, praying the whole time that it won’t snap off. I refuse to let myself look down and concentrate instead on getting a good grip and then swinging my feet to the side of the abyss to hunt for a foothold. Think about the task at hand, Rennie. Forget about everything else. Nothing else matters. Hold tight. Find someplace to put one foot.
My toe digs deep into a little hole.
My other foot dangles uselessly.
Then it catches too.
Now, slowly, ease yourself up. That’s it. Push. You can do it. Forget how tired you are. Forget how sore you are. Push.
I push.
My head comes up above the top of the chasm. I dig in with my hands and push again to get one foot over the edge. I flop onto the snow at the top and pull up my other leg. I crawl away from the edge of the abyss.
Only then do I look down.
I freeze.
There is nothing down there.
Nothing as far as I can see.
I scramble back from the edge on my hands and knees. Then I crawl, still on my hands and knees, around the edge of the abyss. Only then do I stand. My legs shake. My hands shake. Jeez! I pick my way down the remainder of the slope. It takes forever, but now I know the truth of the old saying: “Haste makes waste.” It almost made waste of me.
The sun is going down again by the time I’m off the snow—off, I think, the glacier.
I keep going. It isn’t easy. There’s no snow, but it’s cold, especially as the sun sinks, and the terrain is uneven. I’m on volcanic rock now. A lot of it is covered with lichen, which makes it look pillowy soft, but I find out the first time I trip and thrust out a hand to steady myself that there’s nothing soft about it. I cut my hand open—but I don’t feel a thing. I’m numb, and that scares me more than anything else.
When it’s too dark and I’m stumbling too much, I feel gingerly around for someplace to rest. I hunker down into a little ball again to preserve as much warmth as I can.
I wake to a sunnier, warmer day, haul myself to my feet and set off again. I keep an eye out overhead for an airplane or a helicopter that might be passing. I don’t see one all day.
I don’t see anything all day.
The sun sets again.
And I see a light in the distance.
A couple of lights.
They look like lights from the windows of a house.
I keep walking. I don’t care how many times I fall or even that I feel something warm and sticky on my right knee. I keep going. Go toward the light, Rennie. Go toward the light.
SEVENTEEN
The house turns out to be directly across from a restaurant and right beside a couple of gas pumps in the absolute middle of nowhere. I’m not kidding. A man answers my hammering. He looks around for my car, probably wondering why he didn’t hear it drive up. When he doesn’t see one, he looks baffled. He says something I didn’t understand.
“I don’t speak Icelandic,” I say.
His eyes widen.
“You’re American.”
Whatever. I feel like I’m going to collapse in a heap at his feet.
“I got lost,” I tell him. “I—”
“Come in.” He stands aside to let me pass.
His house is as neat as any I’ve seen in Iceland. It’s cozy too. A woman comes out of a back room to see what’s going on. There are a couple of young guys there too. They’re taller than the man, but they look just like him.
I start to tell them what happened. A version of it, anyway—the “getting lost” part. They take me into the kitchen, sit me down and wrap me in blankets.
I ask for water and get it. The woman makes tea and I wrap my hands around the mug and enjoy every second of the heat. She also brings me a plate of lamb stew. I wolf it down and immediately feel sick. Too much too fast, I guess. I tell them I’m fine. The man doesn’t believe me on the last point. He questions me about how long I’ve been gone, and I figure out it’s been four days. I sit there for a while, wrapped in blankets in the warmth of the house, and I start to nod off. By then I’ve lost track of time. I’m dimly aware of the man saying something. He is talking to one of his sons. Then he tells me to come with him.
He takes me upstairs to a bathroom. One of his sons appears with a bundle of clean clothes. The man wants me to shower. He says before I get dressed, he wants to look at me. He wants to make sure I’m okay.
I shower. I wrap myself in a towel. I let the guy look at me. At my feet in particular. He says everything checks out. He sounds surprised when he says it.
“I must call someone.” The way he says it, it sounds like he can’t decide who that someone should be.
“Um, where am I exactly?” I ask.
He tells me, but it means nothing to me.
“I’ll show you,” he says. “After you get dressed.”
I put on his son’s clothes—they fit pretty well—and go back downstairs. The man has a map spread out on the kitchen table. He points to where his house was.
I stare at the map. I’m at least a 160 kilometers from where I started. I think again about the noise I remember and decide it must have been a helicopter. Einar has a helicopter for his business. He flies it himself.
“How can I get to Reykholt?” I ask.
“Reykholt? You came from Reykholt?”
I nod. “Is there a bus or something?”
“I should call someone,” the man says again. “You have parents here? Relatives?”
“No one who would miss me.” For all I know, it’s true. “I just need to get to Reykholt.”
“Oli will drive you in the morning.”
Oli is one of his sons.
I say I’d appreciate it.
The woman makes me some tea. Then she shows me where I can sleep. I burrow under the thick eiderdown on the bed and fall fast asleep.
It’s late—nine thirty—by the time I get up. The woman is in the kitchen. She makes me a hearty breakfast with plenty of hot coffee. While I eat, I notice a computer in the next room.
“Can I use it?” I ask the man. “I’d like to email my dad back home.”
The man is so happy that I want to contact someone that he practically drags me to the computer. I log into my email account—and see that I have a message from Geir. He says he’s located five of the six notebooks that Gudrun kept about her big investigative piece on Baldur and the Russians. He has no idea what happened to the sixth. It’s possible it was lost. Either that or the police forgot to return it. He’s also attached scans of pages that contain notations in French. I open the attachment.
I start to read through the twenty or so pages of the scan, but there’s nothing helpful.
I glance at the man, who’s watching me from the doorway to the kitchen.
I skim the last page.
Something catches my eye.
I read it more carefully.
“It is okay if I print one page?” I ask.
The man nods.
I print the page, read it again as I pull it from the printer, and then fold it and stuff it into my pocket. I log out of my email account and off the computer, making a note to thank Geir later.
The woman has washed and dried my clothes. They smell fresh and lem
ony. I go and change into them. When I get back to the kitchen, Oli is waiting for me. I thank the man and the woman and follow Oli to an SUV. We take off.
Oli has the radio on and he’s humming along to a rock station. I’m thinking about that last page of Geir’s email. Part of me doesn’t want to believe what I read. If I’m interpreting it right, Brynja will be hurt—maybe badly.
When I see a sign that says we’re 50 kilometers from Borgarnes, I tell Oli I need to make a phone call. He offers me his cell phone.
“I don’t have the number,” I say. “I need a phone book.”
He pulls over at the next restaurant–gas station we come to. He goes inside. I see him speaking to a woman behind the counter who hands him something. He comes back to the car and hands it to me—a phone book. He gives me that and his cell phone and says he’s going to get a coffee, do I want one? I tell him I’m fine, thanks. When he goes back inside, I look up the number for the Reykholt police. I punch it into the phone and when someone answers, I ask for the only person I can think of who will believe me and maybe help me. I ask for Karl.
“Karl here,” says a voice with a familiar Yankee accent.
“It’s Rennie.”
“Rennie? Where are you, son?”
I tell him.
“How the devil did you get there?” he asks. “Tryggvi has a search party out around Askja looking for you. That’s where Einar figured you went. He said you were impatient to get there and didn’t want to wait for him.”
I bet he did.
“He tried to kill me,” I say.
“What? Who?” He couldn’t have sounded more surprised if I’d just told him I’d just escaped from the clutches of a troll.
“Einar. He knows I was nowhere near Askja. And Karl?” I hesitate. “I think Tryggvi’s in on it.”
“Look, Rennie, I don’t know—”
“The last I remember, I was in a turf shed at Einar’s. Then I woke up a hundred and sixty kilometers away. Einar must have dumped me there with his helicopter—”
“Now hold on. I’ve known Einar for a lifetime of summers. He’s a good man. And Tryggvi—he’s a pain in the butt, but he’s a cop. Cops don’t do stuff like that.”
