I’m not sure how to express the sudden uncertainty. “This is where they’ve always gone. Weddell or Wilkes.”
“We’ll never make it round to Wilkes on this much fuel or supplies. That’d take a good couple of months.”
I shake my head. That’s not what I mean, I don’t think. My mind is working swiftly, worrying its way back through all I can remember of Niall’s meetings and research and the thousand bloody papers he wrote on this. Weddell and Wilkes have both been closely monitored because it’s where the animals migrate to. We know birds haven’t been reaching either of these places—any of the species capable of making it so far have died off, except the terns.
Harriet always said there would come a time when they’d stop somewhere closer and eat something different. But Niall believed they would fly to the ice, because it’s what they know, and that they’d keep going until they found fish or they died.
“Turn right,” I say swiftly. “Starboard.”
“What? There’s nothing west—”
“Go west, now!”
Ennis curses a storm but he changes direction and rushes about to adjust the mainsail. We carve a path through the ocean that places the peninsula and the South Shetland Islands on our left, and maybe I have lost my mind, maybe to think I could make a punt like this is insanity, maybe I have just killed us both.
People have been lost in the Ross Sea. There is very little shelter, no protection from the elements, and from February onward it freezes over, so there is no way in or out.
It is January third today. We’re likely never getting out of here.
Ennis turns to me. For seemingly no reason he grins and gives me a swift salute. I give him one back. Fuck it. Why not?
Because it seems to me, suddenly, that if it’s the end, really and truly, if you’re making the last migration not just of your life but of your entire species, you don’t stop sooner. Even when you’re tired and starved and hopeless. You go farther.
* * *
Our steel yacht, battered and bruised from the journey, makes its way doggedly along the coast of the Antarctic, and we spend our time staring into the dazzling snow and the stretch of sky, afraid to blink lest we miss anything. The weather turns quickly. Temperatures drop to minus two degrees Celsius. The waves rise. Ennis has his work cut out for him avoiding the dangerous chunks of ice that were once attached to land but now crack and float free. The sound they make as they land in the sea is a mighty whoomph. He calls them growlers and any one of them could capsize or sink us.
On day four of our westerly path the wind rises to seventy-five knots, which, according to Ennis, can be fatal in temps this low. I don’t understand why, nor do I ask, but I find out soon enough, on day six.
The rigging begins to crust over with ice. Ennis and I dart back and forth trying to hack it off more quickly than it can form, but it’s useless, and so Ennis tacks us port toward the shore. We’ve reached the Amundsen Sea, which has a gentler coastline than the Ross, so maybe it was fate we didn’t get as far as we meant to. I go below and start packing what remains of the supplies into my pack. The yacht holds compartments full of thick winter thermals, coats, and boots, which may be the difference between life and death. I am frightened, but what does that matter? If anything, it makes me feel more alive.
“What are you doing?” Ennis asks me. He’s at the helm, setting off the EPIRB—some sort of emergency radio signal to identify our position to rescuers. The boat’s done. It won’t carry us any farther.
“I’ll keep going on foot,” I say. “Wait here. I’ll come back.”
He ignores me and packs his own bag.
So we set out together, into the ice.
* * *
It is very hard going. It’s been some time since I’ve been able to feel any of my extremities. Yet it is warmer than it used to be. Everything is warmer, and melting, and changing, and dying. This may be the only reason we haven’t frozen already.
We rest in the day, buried under the surface of the snow, and we walk at night to stay warm. Keeping the sea to our right always, so we can find our way back. We hold hands sometimes, because it helps to feel less alone. I think of all my lost ones, of my mother and my daughter, of Greta, of Léa, hoping against hope that she is not among them, and Niall, of course, almost with each step.
On the third day of walking I’m pretty sure Ennis is done. His steps have slowed dramatically and he’s struggling to hold a conversation. We stop and sink onto the cold ground. I pass him a tin of baked beans from my pack, and we share it in silence, watching the still world around us. I don’t think I will be able to keep walking without him. Not if all I’m going to find is more ice.
“Why are you here, Ennis?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, just eats his beans, concentrating on the effort it takes to swallow.
But after such a long time, he says, “I didn’t want you to have to do it alone.”
It takes hold of my chest. The generosity of this, and the love. We’ve shared love, the two of us, that cannot be denied. I’m so grateful for it, and for not having to be alone. It’s how I come to know that whatever pretense I’ve been clinging to is done now. There’s no point, not now we’ve reached the end.
“He died,” I say softly. “My husband.”
And Ennis says, “I know, love.”
A slow turning of the world.
“We’re alone out here,” I murmur. “Aren’t we?”
He nods.
“They’re all gone.” I put the empty tin back in my pack, along with our two forks. But I can’t yet rise. I don’t have the strength. “I was almost there with him,” I say. “I was so close by. But I wasn’t there, in the end.”
“You were there.”
“No. I left him and left him. That’s what his spirit will take with it.”
“Bullshit.”
“I should have been with him.”
“You were. And he still went alone. We all do. Always.”
“It’s too far for him to go alone.” I press my eyes with trembling fingers. “I can’t feel him.”
“You can. Why else would you still be walking?”
With that he stands up, and I stand up, and we keep walking.
* * *
It only takes another couple of hours. I am trudging up a particularly grueling slope, worrying about Ennis, who has fallen a long way behind, turning back to make sure he’s still moving, and then I glance ahead.
And stop.
Because something just flew across the sky.
I break into a run.
More of them appear, swooping and diving and then I am cresting the slope and—
Oh.
Hundreds of Arctic terns cover the ice before me. Squealing and creaking their cries, dancing upon the air with their mates, caterwauling joyously. Sea swallows, they are called, for the grace of their dips through the water, and I see it now as they dive hungrily for fish, in a sea thriving with what must be millions of scales.
I sink awkwardly to the ground and weep.
For the journey they have made. For the loveliness left behind. For you, and for promises, and for a life that was given to fate but could not comprehend your death’s inclusion in that.