Voyage of Ice

by Michele Torrey

  Darkness gathered, darker than the night. It seeped through my skin, pressed on my brain, clawed down my spine, and grasped my heart….

  I blinked—an icy, leaden blink, one eyelid frozen shut. So cold … Just sleep…. Just sleep….

  Then I saw something through the darkness. It was as if the night had parted and I could see forever, though the snow kept swirling and it was a long, long ways away. Shapes in the dark-ness. Different shapes. Different from snowdrifts, from the end-less flat tundra. I smelled smoke. Saw dim squares of light.

  I'm dreaming. It's a nice dream—heaven, maybe.

  A spark of warmth fluttered inside me. Little at first, then swelling. And with the spark's swelling, I pushed the heavy dark-ness away with a will. No! Elizabeth can't die! Not while I have breath in my body!

  Slowly, as though someone else were moving, not me, I grabbed a handful of snow and mashed it into my face.

  Wake up! If you don't wake up now, you'll die!

  I staggered to my feet, reeling like a drunkard, and began to drag Elizabeth toward the shapes. She was heavy. So heavy. My hands were blocks of wood, unable to grasp anything. One step. Another. Many steps. Miles, maybe.

  Then the shapes came alive. Bursting out of the snow. Barking, growling. Warm breath, snapping teeth, and hot tongues surrounded us. I heard shouts. Voices. Men, women. Many people. Emerging from the ground. I felt hands on me, a tickle of fur.

  “Help,” I blurted, before I collapsed alongside Elizabeth in a drift of snow.

  Warmth.

  A sod home.

  Walls of whale ribs and driftwood. Gigantic jawbones sup-porting a sod roof. A skylight covered with dried intestine. The stink of grease and oil and urine. Children stared, giggling, clutching dolls of ivory dressed in bird skins. Men, lips pierced with bone, studied us, talking among themselves. Women smiled, their teeth blackened and worn, chins tattooed. They pried open my mouth and put food on my tongue. I swallowed, moaning.

  I heard a scream, Elizabeth's, and knew they'd pulled the har-poon from her shoulder. Voices murmured.

  Many hands rubbed my bare skin. Feeling—hot and needle-like—returned. It hurts! Someone was thrashing, crying out, “Elizabeth!”

  “I'm here, Nicholas, I'm all right.”

  So tired …

  I lay between two caribou skins, fur soft against my flesh.

  When I opened my eyes, three children sat cross-legged, staring at me. They looked at one another and giggled. And at the sound of a man's voice, the children scooted off the platform where I lay and ran across the floor of driftwood and baleen, squatting against the far wall, still watching me, still giggling.

  The house was crammed with people, twelve, fifteen of them, squatting, standing, staring. About fifteen feet by ten, the house appeared to be half underground, domed at the top. It was surprisingly warm, though the only sources of heat were two seal-oil lamps and the wind still raged outside. When the people saw me looking round, they smiled, speaking words that sounded like water gurgling over a creek bed.

  Elizabeth slept behind me on the platform, cocooned within her own deerskin blankets, her wounded shoulder bound with more skins. The look on her face was relaxed and peaceful, her breathing steady.

  I smelled meat cooking. Hunched over one of the lamps, a woman stirred something in a stone pot set upon a frame of antlers. Like the others, her cheekbones were broad, her skin bronzed, her eyes and hair black as a raven's. Another woman handed me a pot of liquid. I was thirsty and started to drink it but stopped when they all laughed—warm laughter like butter.

  Eyes twinkling in the dim light, the woman shook her head. And she made the motion of washing her face. I dipped into the bowl and washed my face. Smelled horrible, it did. Like … like pee! Grimacing, I hastily scrubbed my face.

  Just then, Elizabeth stirred. “Nick? Where are you?”

  I set down the bowl. “You all right?”

  She crinkled her nose. “Blood and thunder, what's that smell?”

  “Nothing … I—”

  “You look different.”

  “Me?”

  “You look … cleaner. I—I can see your skin.”

  I touched my cheeks. Why, the pee had cut through my lay-ers of grime, filth, and grease! My skin was right clean! Pee-clean. “Ancient recipe for soap, I guess. You sure you're all right?”

  “My shoulder's stiff and aches something terrible.” Elizabeth smiled, though her eyes spoke of her pain. “Don't think I want to be heaving people over my shoulder for a while, or wandering lost in a blizzard.”

  “Are you sure you're all right?”

  She sighed, and I knew she was remembering the grave, remembering what she'd seen. “I guess. Not exactly something I wanted to see.”

  “I'm sorry. Sorry it happened.”

  “Me too. But it's done now, and I'm tired of wasting my time pining over things that are done and gone.”

  Meanwhile, Woman Who Cooks, as I'd begun to think of her, dished out steaming pieces of boiled meat from the pot and set them on a plate of baleen, while another woman handed us each a piece of dried whale blubber and motioned for us to eat.

  “Maktak.”

  Elizabeth and I chewed the blubber, aware that everyone watched. Oil seeped down my chin.

  Several of the women approached and touched Elizabeth's corn-silk braids, caressed her blond head. There was a murmur of excitement. More natives came to touch Elizabeth's hair. One woman pointed at Elizabeth's eyes, then mine.

  Woman Who Cooks then selected a piece of meat from the baleen plate—the flipper of a seal—and handed it to me, along with an ivory knife. She did the same for Elizabeth. People seemed pleased as we began to chew on the flippers. Then, one by one, they each chose a piece of meat from the plate and began to eat.

  I could hardly eat fast enough to keep up with the raging hunger in my stomach. The meat was tender, dark, with a pleas-ant taste.

  “They've given us the best pieces,” Elizabeth said, studying them as they studied her, grease glistening on her cheeks. “They're treating us like we're their honored guests.”

  “I don't suppose they've seen people like us before.”

  When we finished eating, licking our fingers of every tidbit, the men began talking to me, motioning with their hands. It seemed as if they were asking questions, as if they wanted answers. Meanwhile, natives entered the house through a hole in the floor, talked, stared, smiled, caressed Elizabeth's hair, and then left, only to be replaced by others—sometimes whole fami-lies, by the look of it. It seemed we were the village attraction.

  “We're from the whaleship Sea Hawk,” I said, talking to the man who appeared to be the leader. He was older than the rest, but not as old as the gray-haired man who sat in the corner, gumming blubber with his toothless mouth. “We were wrecked and our ship sank.”

  A look of confusion spread over the chief's face. He turned to the other men and they hunched down, talking with one another.

  “We need help,” Elizabeth added. “Our friends are still out there. They don't have any food.” She made the motion of eating, shaking her head when they offered her more meat. “No, we must go and find them. Bring them here.”

  Still the confusion.

  “It's no use,” I said. “They don't understand.”

  Elizabeth pointed to my ivory knife. “Carve a picture for them. Everyone understands pictures.”

  Of course! I reached for my clothes to get dressed, but the women immediately waved me away and handed me a set of skins. Soft and warm they were, sewn with threads of sinew. The women smiled as I pulled them on. I thanked them, hoping they understood how grateful I was. Dressed now in my furs, I stood to my full height. Natives gasped, mouths open in astonishment, gazing up at me from no higher than my chest. Again, they spoke to one another rapidly, their voices excited.

  Soon I was carving pictures into walls of driftwood. People crowded round me, pointing, talking. The whaleship, the ship-wreck, four people in a whalebo
at, our camp at shore …

  he dogs ran. I heard the huff of their breath, saw the white steam, the tongues flapping. Paws pummeled the snow. Legs pumped in long, easy strides. The baleen sled runners glided beneath us, snow crunching. Jeweled stars blanketed the sky.

  Elizabeth followed on a second sled, be-hind which followed a third sled. Surrounded by furs and the frigid air of endless night, we would soon arrive at camp.

  Soon … soon …

  After I had carved pictures into drift-wood, they had loaded each of us onto a sled, bundled in furs. At a command the dogs immediately ceased their yipping and whining, dug in, and bounded away.

  Soon … soon …

  “The sea! There's the sea!” cried Elizabeth.

  I saw the vague outline of dunes, of pressure ridges beyond. The natives had understood me! We were searching for the camp!

  At a single command from the native who steered the sled, the dogs changed direction and headed northeast. We had been traveling along the shore for perhaps only a quarter of an hour when suddenly the dogs' ears pricked up and they began to whine, running faster. I glimpsed a glow of orange in the distance.

  “Fire! We've found them!” I laughed, joy bubbling like a happy melody.

  Dexter, Garret, Sweet, and the others crept out from their shel-ters, faces smeared with grime, eyes shrunken, staring slack-jawed as the sleds came to a halt and the dogs lay down in their harnesses, panting, taking bites of snow.

  Thin as a bone, Dexter shuffled toward us. “We thought you were dead. We found human remains. Signs of a polar bear attack. We thought that—we thought—”

  I'd never seen Dexter weep before.

  He flung his arms round me and sobbed. I held my big brother, tears lodged in a lump in my throat. Then someone else was there. Elizabeth. Wrapping her good arm round us. Then others—Garret, Sweet—limped over, until we formed a circle of arms and bodies.

  Suddenly, Garret whooped a big holler that got the dogs to howling. “We're saved!” he screamed, head back to the heavens. “Thank God, we're saved!” He began to dance a little jig, but had to stop when he erupted in a fit of coughing. Bent over, he spit out a tooth, blood spattering the snow. “Didn't need it anyways,” he said with a scurvy smile.

  I introduced my friends to the natives. “They saved our lives,” I told them. The natives didn't seem to know what to do with an outstretched hand, but my friends grabbed their hands anyway and pumped them, grinning like Cheshire cats.

  The native men caught a seal that day, and we had a feast before we broke camp. We sat round a fire, hands glistening with grease, cheeks and bellies distended with meat, as I told the story of what had happened that night, the night Elizabeth was 'pooned, the night Briggs was killed by a polar bear.

  “I ain't never heard of such a thing,” Garret said after I finished.

  Dexter squinted, waving smoke away. “We knew something bad had happened, what with the biscuit we found at the grave and everything all—you know—messed up.”

  “But don't worry yourself none, Miss Elizabeth,” said Garret. “We fixed up your papa's grave. Good as pie.”

  “'Tis a mercy ye weren't killed,” said Sweet. “That Briggs was a bad apple, he was. Rotten to the core.”

  Elizabeth raised her cup for a toast, eyes shining, suddenly looking much older than her sixteen years. “Here's to better days. Days of good health, new friendships, and someday, home, wherever that might be.”

  We all raised our cups. “Hear! Hear!”

  As we broke camp, Garret sang a chantey, “Jolly Rovin' Tar,” and everyone joined him, splitting the Arctic night with our lungs. And as we gathered our things together, we gave the natives all the tools, rope, whale oil, sailcloth, coal, and whatever else they wanted. It was theirs in return for our lives. All of us agreed. The owners of the Merimont need never know.

  We spent the rest of winter and all of spring with the natives. Briggs had been wrong about them. Wrong when he said they were stupid, savage beasts. Of course, I don't know why I was so surprised—Briggs was wrong about lots of things.

  They divided the ten of us up, two into each of their sod homes. They welcomed us like long-lost brothers, or a long-lost sister, as the case may be. They taught us to hunt seals through breathing holes in the ice, took us south along the river to hunt caribou with sinew-backed bows and arrows tipped with antler, taught us to make bolas of sinew and ivory, which we flung into flocks of seabirds. The women sewed each of us an outfit of fur clothing, first softening the skins by chewing them.

  Evenings we all sat round the communal gathering house with our new friends, tried our hand at wrestling, weight lifting, and other feats of strength, afterward dancing to chants and drums, or listening to them tell yarns. And though we couldn't understand them, just watching their hand motions and expressions and laughter, their stories seemed like magic, as though we were in another world and another time—which we were, I expect.

  Come March, as openings began to appear in the ice, the whales returned. The natives set up temporary camps on the ice, and if a whale was spotted, it was a mad dash, sometimes on foot, sometimes in their umiaks—boats of driftwood and seal-skin—to harpoon the whale. A successful kill made for long days of butchering and celebration. The meat was carried back to the village, where it was stored in ice cellars in the permafrost. Unlike us Yankees, the natives used the entire carcass, down to the bones. It was either eaten or put to practical use.

  The snow started melting in May, exposing bare patches of earth. The air smelled of moss, of dampness, of spring. Our camp lay next to a frozen river, and the ice atop the river melted and gurgled down to the sea. We exchanged our winter clothing for summer furs, which all of us had helped sew despite the gestured protestations of the native men that sewing was women's work. Meanwhile, as the ground thawed into a spongy soup of moss and lichen, we moved from our underground homes into tents of caribou hide and sealskin. Then, in the mid-dle of June, on a day when the sun never set, the ice block at the river's mouth suddenly released and water gushed out over the sea ice.

  Finally, in July of 1853, the ice unlocked and the summer sea opened. It was time to leave. We packed our belongings into our whaleboats and gathered on the shore to bid good-bye to our hosts. To Nogasak, whom I'd first called Woman Who Cooks. To her husband, Kunasluk, the chief. To their little daughter, Pannigabluk, who taught us to play kickball and a game with fat white hen bones. To others whose names and faces will remain with me forever. After giving them gifts—scrimshaw, new dolls, a bone flute—we shoved off and set sail, waving until those on shore disappeared into the fullness of the Arctic summer.

  Several weeks later, not far off the coast, as seabirds screeched and circled the nearby bluffs, we spied upward of thirty sails in the distance. Soon a whaleship approached under shortened sail. I heard the snap of canvas, the groan of hemp, the shouted com-mands. Saw the stares of the people aboard as they hove to. A girl's voice asked, “Mother, who are they? Have they come to trade?”

  “Ahoy there!” cried a man. He leaned over the rail, watching as our whaleboats touched the hull. “Who are ye and what be the manner of your business?”

  “Captain Coggeshall,” said Garret, standing up as he pulled down his fur hood. Red hair caught the sunlight.

  The captain blinked. “Why, if I didn't know better, I'd say 'twas Garret … Garret …”

  “Hix, sir.”

  “Yes, Garret Hix. I thought ye had signed aboard the Sea Hawk.”

  “I did, but we was shipwrecked up north last fall. We spent the winter with the natives.”

  “Shipwrecked! So that's what happened! When the Sea Hawk didn't return, everyone feared the worst. Where's Ebenezer Thorndike? Where's the Merimont? Last anyone knew, she sailed in your company.”

  Garret glanced at us and sighed. “They're gone, Captain. We're all that's left. Ten of us from the Sea Hawk, including Thorndike's daughter, Elizabeth.”

  The captain's wife had come to stand
beside him. At Garret's words, she paled, but seemed to recover quickly. “Well, Obed, where's your manners? Don't just leave them yammering from below, invite everyone aboard. Certain Miss Elizabeth would enjoy a bath and some real clothes. I've dresses that will fit her fine. I'll tell Cook to prepare hot coffee and a hot meal for every-one.”

  Soon we were all aboard the Alabaster, Garret's old whaling ship. The captain and mates wanted to hear everything—where we'd traveled, how many whales we'd taken, how the shipwreck had come about, how we had survived. True to her word, Mrs. Coggeshall whisked Elizabeth off. In a couple of hours, she emerged from the companionway to where we yakked round the wheel, her hair neatly washed and curled, her skin scrubbed yet sun-browned against a gown of pale yellow, Mrs. Coggeshall beaming from behind her. We men were quiet for a spell, as if Elizabeth were suddenly a stranger.

  As for me, my heart twirled. “You're looking fine today, Miss Elizabeth.”

  All the men added their agreement. “Right fine.” “Darn pretty.” “You clean up nice.” “Your parents would be proud.”

  Elizabeth smiled sweetly, as if she'd never been harpooned, never driven a dog team, never devoured raw meat, never skinned a caribou. “Why, thank you, everyone.” She turned to the captain, who seemed just as smitten as the rest of us. “It's a right fine day, Captain Coggeshall. A right fine day. Don't you think?”

  “Aye, Miss Thorndike. A fine day.”

  “So,” she said, peering off into the distance, “when can we go home?”

  hey call me a hero.

  Survivor of the Arctic. Rescuer of Miss Elizabeth Thorndike, who was 'pooned by a madman.

  But I like to think the natives were the heroes. For they saved Elizabeth and me when it was certain we would have died. I don't know if heroes have strokes of luck; I expect it's all part of the package. Some bravery, some luck. But somehow, deep down, I really don't believe it was luck at all. I was led to the village. Call it God, call it the will to survive; it doesn't matter. All I know is that on such a dark night in a snow-storm, I shouldn't have been able to see the village even if I had been standing in its cen-ter. But see it I did, from far, far, away.