The Quality of Silence

by Rosamund Lupton

  Yasmin remembered Ruby’s face as she’d tried so hard to make this grotesque image something that was a part of the natural world; something her father would have sent. She’d realised that Ruby no longer took on trust what she told her; that Ruby had to create evidence for herself that her father was alive. She felt fury now and anguish that Ruby had been tricked, however willingly, into thinking these photos were from her father; that she’d so carefully blogged what this man had sent her.

  Musk Oxes look really big and frightening but they’re gentle vegetarians and they only have big hooves so they can crack the ice and get water and walk around on the snow without sinking. Inupiat people call a musk ox umingmak, which means ‘the bearded one’.

  Yasmin remembered Ruby telling her about musk oxen, but she had interrupted, telling her to use her words, focused only on wanting Ruby to talk with her mouth. And Ruby must have sensed her lack of interest – did she even try to disguise it? She read what Ruby would have told her, had she allowed her to speak.

  Musk oxes are very brave. Wolf packs hunt musk oxes and they always kill the smallest ones (nearly always). So when they see a wolf pack, all the grown-up musk oxes make a circle around the babies and children. They put their bottoms inwards to the circle and their horns out, to look fierce. About a hundred years ago, people hunted them and the musk oxes did their circle around the babies and didn’t move and the hunters just shot them and shot them. And when one of them was injured they surrounded the injured one and tried to protect him or her too. Hunters thought they were stupid, but really they were brave.

  Yasmin was moved by Ruby’s description of the musk oxen and by her knowledge. She clicked on the next page of the blog.

  Ruby had uploaded the photo of the dead raven and scrupulously copied down the numbers.

  (You’ve told me lots about ravens, so I’m going to write what I know and then you can put in all the things I’ve left out.)

  Ravens are the largest of all the songbirds and sing lots of different songs. They sing when they’re frightened, or sometimes when they’re just talking to each other. They do croaking sounds and knocking sounds, but mainly they like to sing.

  Ravens choose a husband or wife and stay together all their lives. They’re very loyal. Sometimes they get as old as thirty together.

  When they fly, they like doing somersaults and barrel rolls. Sometimes they carry sticks when they’re flying, or feathers, and they pass them to each other, like playing catch in the sky.

  Yasmin could hear Matt chatting to Ruby about ravens and Ruby’s delight in it; she could feel the warmth between the two of them.

  After baby ravens are born, they stay with their parents for a year. Sometimes there’s a third raven, like a godparent raven, helping the parents get food for the young ones and helping to teach them. Ravens are super-coolio copycats and play jokes; they can imitate other animals and even humans.

  Ravens stay in Alaska all winter. If there’s a snowy hill, they love sliding down it, like they’re tobogganing, and they take turns, going one at a time. And they don’t just play with each other, they play with animals too, even animals like wolves and bears. Isn’t that amazing?

  Yes, thought Yasmin, it is. She looked again at the photo and instead of seeing the demonic bird of Western literature and the ugly captive symbol-laden birds at the Tower of London she saw birds who sang and tobogganed and kept a mate for life. No wonder Ruby liked ravens so much; no wonder Matt did. She’d already realised that there was wildlife here for Matt to film, but now she had a glimpse of why he might want to.

  Ruby had wanted to tell her an Inupiaq story about a raven. But she had told Ruby to use her proper voice. And then, when Ruby didn’t speak with her mouth, she’d thought that there probably wasn’t any story.

  She clicked onto the next page of the blog.

  The photo of dead wolves, almost buried in snow, filled the screen. She saw again the glint from a harness in the bottom right-hand corner, a husky dog just visible.

  Ruby hadn’t told her anything about wolves. Not one single fact. She hadn’t even attempted to.

  How often did she silence Ruby, without even being aware of it?

  (Why did you take this photo, Dad? Was it because the poor wolves had got trapped in the snow? I thought animals in Alaska were really good at not getting trapped in the snow. I think that these photos aren’t for our blog, but work. And you’ll tell me all about it when you see me.

  But I really want to write our blog anyway, because when I do it’s like you’re with me.

  And we’ll see wolves, won’t we? Ones that are alive and with their thick white coats? So I’ll write about those now, the wolves you and I are going to see.)

  Yasmin heard the sound of her name on the CB.

  ‘OK, Yasmin, I’m bankin’ on you listenin’ into the CB.’

  She’d kept the CB radio on to have the company of voices, but hearing her name she turned it up. It was Coby.

  ‘If you’ve heard me before, like a dozen times, then I apologise for gettin’ repetitive. And anyone ANYONE who interrupts me on the CB because they’re gettin’ sick of this stuff, has me to answer to in Coldfoot.’

  It was as if the raging storm had a calm answering voice.

  ‘Right. So you have a child with you,’ Coby continued and surely he must despise her for that, but his tone was warm. ‘We need to look after her, right? Keep her and you warm so that the both of you get through this storm OK. Bin askin’ the fellas here at Coldfoot and we’ve put together a cheat sheet on the best things to do.’

  She thought how when this was over she’d enjoy the idea of a cheat sheet on how to survive a polar storm in the middle of the arctic tundra. With Coby talking to her, she believed that there would be a time when this was over.

  ‘So first thing you gotta do is put on every single piece of clothin’ you have with you. If you’ve got three hats then you put on three hats, got that? Sleepin’ bags, towels, anythin’ like that, get ’em wrapped around you.’

  She felt like he’d give her a gold sticker at the end and wanted to boast that she had indeed done exactly that.

  ‘You probably got that nice warm heater goin’ full blast, right? But we need to make sure your exhaust ain’t leakin’ carbon monoxide.’

  Yasmin knew that people who got stranded in cars sometimes got poisoned by carbon monoxide because of snow blocking the exhaust outlet. But the outlet in a truck was very high so she’d thought that wasn’t a danger.

  ‘Can you see what’s comin’ out of your exhaust?’ Coby asked. ‘If you can, does it look funny, like thick and billowin’? That’s a sign that you’ve got some damage.’

  So it was damage that would be the problem, not a blockage. But it was impossible to see the exhaust in the dark and snow. Even if she could, the turbulence from the wind would disperse it immediately.

  ‘Now I’m guessin’ the wind’s roarin’ its head off, but before the wind started yowlin’ at you, did you hear any noises from the bottom of the truck. Like a loud rumblin’? The holes can make a rumblin’ noise.’

  Yasmin hadn’t noticed a strange noise, but there was so much else she was focused on she probably wouldn’t have done. She had seen ice wedged in the wheels, iron hard and destructive; it could have caused holes in the exhaust system. And if it was in the section running under their cab carbon monoxide could leak in.

  She’d left the heater on before, when she’d fallen asleep after Coldfoot, but the truck had taken much more of a battering since then.

  She pulled the sleeping bag up over Ruby, then turned off the engine; the heater and the light went out immediately.

  Coby’s voice continued in the dark.

  ‘Let’s go assumin’ a worst case situation and you’ve got yourself damage. So when you’re runnin’ the engine keep the windows open a little bit, both sides, keep good air comin’ in so the poison can’t build up. Brady here says to run the engine for ten minutes each hour, so I’m guessin’ it wou
ld be OK to run it for five minutes every half an hour.’

  She looked at the clock on Ruby’s laptop, which was backlit and fully charged. She’d time half an hour before putting the engine on again.

  ‘Adeeb’ll have a toolbox in the cab,’ Coby continued, calmly and slowly. ‘Most likely in the middle compartment, if his cab’s like mine. In the toolbox, he’s sure to have a knife. You need to cut into the seat covers and get out the insulation. Then pad yourselves out with it. Your heads too.’

  Yasmin looked in compartments and found Adeeb’s toolbox. Inside was a Stanley knife, thick tape, screwdrivers and a small ice pick. She took out the Stanley knife.

  ‘Not sure if you’ve been hearin’ the police puttin’ out messages to you?’ Coby continued. ‘But they’ve been tellin’ you, you mustn’t get out of the cab. Not till this thing’s blown over. Not for any reason. Hold on here, other people are tellin’ me what I’m missin’.’

  She imagined these drivers around a table in the café in Coldfoot, hot coffees in front of them, stamping their feet perhaps to keep warm because she imagined it was cold even inside. They didn’t know if she was alive, let alone listening to this, and it moved her that even so they were trying to help.

  ‘OK, so listen up, Yasmin. This is real important. You’ve gotta stay awake, because you need to remember to turn the heater off. If you start gettin’ cold then move your arms and legs as much as you can, keep the circulation goin’. I know the cab ain’t that big, but move as much as you can.’

  She was cutting her seat open with the Stanley knife. There was wadding inside. If she made a long enough cut she’d be able to take a sheet of it out and wrap it around Ruby as an extra layer.

  ‘Gabe, here, says to tie something colourful to the radio antenna, once you’re safe to go out. But I reckon a chopper’ll be able to see you pretty clearly, only thing out on the road, so don’t worry too much ’bout that.’ He paused a moment and Yasmin was worried he’d gone.

  ‘I know you can’t answer on the CB,’ Coby continued. ‘You think there’s some psycho on your tail. And I don’t know ’bout that, but let’s say there is – and you think there is, so I’m goin’ with that – you’re not goin’ to answer back and give anythin’ away, right? So I’ll just keep comin’ on and doin’ my party piece at you till this storm’s let up. Got that? Good.’

  She wished she could say thank you.

  Outside it was minus forty-eight. Inside it was plus ten. She didn’t know how quickly the temperature would drop inside the cab. When it got to zero she’d wake Ruby and make her move around and keep her circulation going.

  In the dark cab, Ruby pressed up close to her, she carried on reading her blog.

  I know lots of people are scared of wolves because they think they’re like the wolves in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’; nasty animals that like killing things. Or because they make a frightening noise. But wolves aren’t like that at all, especially Arctic wolves. They’re really beautiful, with thick white fur that’s specially designed to keep the cold out. And Arctic wolves aren’t very big. I think the main thing people don’t like about wolves is that they are in a pack, and they surround an animal, like a herd of musk oxes, and then they get one little musk ox away and kill it. But wolves are much smaller than musk oxes so they need to do it as a pack. And they need to eat otherwise they’d die. And they don’t have much energy for chasing things, because staying warm in Alaska is a full-time job, and so they go after the animal that will take the littlest amount of energy.

  Anyway, we eat lamb, don’t we? Nobody wants to eat mutton. Though I don’t think a wolf minds much about what the musk ox tastes like.

  Yasmin could imagine Matt smiling at that, enjoying Ruby’s chatty blog. And she related to the wolves, putting what energy you have towards survival made sense to her.

  She’d thought that when Ruby was on her laptop she was lonely, leaving the real world to enter cyberspace, peopled by strangers, not realising that there could be intimate worlds inside it.

  She remembered back to Scotland, her fury that Ruby would be doing a blog, not understanding that it was about Matt and Ruby, that it was a place for them to meet and be close. One of many places. And she could have – should have – found places to join Ruby too.

  There was another page of the blog. She’d thought that when Ruby saw the dead Arctic fox cub, its pretty face smeared in blood, she’d known, finally, these photos weren’t from her father and had stopped blogging.

  The temperature in the cab was dropping quickly. One degree off freezing now. She took off the glove on her right hand, and felt Ruby’s face, as she’d done countless times when she’d been ill. Her forehead was warm, she’d let her sleep a while longer. Then she read the final page.

  (I saw something super-coolio today, Dad! And I want this to be about all the amazing things in Alaska, and I hope that’s OK. I don’t have a picture but maybe we’ll be able to take one when you’re with us.)

  I saw three moons!

  Cross-my-heart true!

  It was the usual one, and two other moons, one on either side of it, which are called moondogs. Mum told me all about them. Paraselenae is their proper name. They’re made by moonlight bouncing off ice crystals. They’re beautiful. The three moons looked like they’d shared out the sky.

  It was minus two now inside the cab, minus fifty outside. There was still fifteen more minutes before she could run the heater again.

  She opened a new document on Ruby’s laptop and typed

  You can see our breath like smoke. There’s no lemony smell of Mr Azizi any more, no smell of anything; the cold has killed it.

  The wind is rocking our truck, like we’re a battleship in a stormy sea.

  Mum’s being sergeant-major-Mum, saying we need to put on all our things – ALL of them, Ruby. So we’re even getting out flannels and putting them inside our hats to make another layer and when it gets warm again my hair’s going to smell of toothpaste. School only let me leave during term-time if I brought homework and I’m ripping pages out of my books to put as another layer. It’ll be the best excuse ever – ‘I HAD to tear up my homework otherwise I might have got hypothermia!’

  I have put Mr Azizi’s map, folded out, inside my fleece, really carefully, because it has Anaktue on it, and that’s where Dad is, and so we don’t want to tear it.

  Mum checks the thermometer. It’s minus six in here and minus fifty-four outside. We’ve got the little light to the cab on and Voice Magic. And Mum and me are wearing the special gloves Dad got us so we can still sign too. I’d be frightened if we couldn’t talk to each other.

  Mum says she thinks we’re in the eye of the storm. I look out of the windscreen to see if there’s an evil eye watching us, like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, but there’s just the reflection of our faces; but they don’t look like our faces because we have goggles and face masks on and lots of hats.

  Now we’re stamping our feet and waving our arms around, and Mum says we also need to keep ALERT. She says our job, each of us, is to keep the other one awake. So we’ll tell each other an interesting thing. I have to go first, but I don’t know what to say to Mum. I think she must see that I don’t know.

  ‘Can you tell me the story about the Inupiaq hunter on sea ice?’ she asks.

  I wanted to tell her ages ago, when we were still with Mr Azizi, because it’s a really happy kind of story and I thought it would cheer her up. But she didn’t think it was interesting then.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she says and I can tell she’s doing a big beamy mum smile under her face mask.

  ‘OK. A hunter was sitting all alone by a breathing hole in the sea ice,’ I say. ‘The ice seemed like part of the land because it was so, so thick.’

  She nods at me to go on, like she’s really interested.

  ‘He had to sit really still. For hours and hours and hours. The wind got stronger and stronger, like it is now I think. It tore the ice away
from the land and the ice floated off into the sea. To start with, the hunter didn’t even know the ice he was sitting on had broken off. He didn’t know there was deep deep sea between him and the shore. And the poor hunter got carried further and further out to sea on the ice. Dad said sometimes a hunter drowned or froze to death. But their families always held out hope.’

  That’s what Dad said – held out hope. But I think it should be held ON to hope, because hope is a warm thing you want to keep close to you.

  ‘Ruby? You said the family held out hope?’

  She’s worried I’m not ALERT, but I’m just thinking about hope.

  ‘Yes. Because this man was isiqsuruk—’ I fingerspell ‘isiqsuruk’ ‘—which

  means “a strong and enduring hunter” and he got all the way to Siberia on his bit of ice. And the next winter he came home to his family back over the frozen sea.’

  Mum’s smiling at me, but I can see tears in her eyes through her goggles, and I think the tears hurt because her eyes look redder.

  ‘That’s a great story, Ruby.’

  I think so too but I wish Dad had told her, because he tells it much better than me.

  We’re stamping our feet now in our big boots, which are tight because we have so many socks on, and we’re pretending we’re marching on parade, in front of Buckingham Palace with tourists taking our picture, and I imagine that Buckingham Palace has snow in front of it and the soldiers with bearskin hats stop marching and have a snowball fight so I run on the spot and wave my arms and pretend I’m throwing. Mum says I’m doing brilliantly. It’s harder for her than me because she has to stoop while she does the pretend marching and snowball fighting.

  Mr Azizi’s thermometer says it’s minus eight in here and minus fifty-six outside.