Iceling Read online

  The fact that this captain from central casting agreed to take all of us like it was normal . . . I don’t know. Either this isn’t the first time he’s ferried dozens of bizarrely similar-to-identical teenagers and their adoptive siblings across these freezing cold waters or he’s the maritime version of the cops who ushered us through that checkpoint. Or he just doesn’t care. Any of those answers is unsettling, and I have to actively shove aside the worry that wherever we’re going, it’s a trap.

  Because I don’t much see that we’ve got a choice. This is where they want to go. It’s where they have to go. And honestly, I don’t see how I could go back at this point. Going forward might kill us. But going back . . . How do you go back to your family after all this? How do you look at your parents like you still trust them? How do you look them in the eye and not spit in that eye?

  Stan and Emily go below deck, but I stay up on the top while I can stand it, trying to see as much as I can for as long as I can. Callie’s with Tara, and they’re holding hands.

  hey, I text Dave once I’m alone. Dave’s been texting me this whole time, but I haven’t had it in me to answer. And since it might be a while until I have another chance to get in touch, I figure that checking in, letting him know I’m safe right now, is the least I can do. sorry i’ve been gone. we made it up here. we’re on a boat now. the reception is weird, i don’t even know if you’ll get this. but anyway, either way, i wanted to tell you that it might be a while before i text again. i’m in a place right now—mentally, you know—where i kind of need to be present. ok? i’ll call when i can. i miss you.

  Bobby’s up top too, on the upper level, leaning out over the railing several feet away from me. I catch his eye and wave, and he waves back, but then just goes back to staring. I follow his eyes and see that they’re on Greta, and there’s something wrong with the way he’s looking at her. Like he’s happy to see her so content and at home with another girl just like her, whom she can communicate with in ways he could maybe only dream about, but there’s something else there that makes me think he’s worried or scared for her too. Like he knows this joy she’s feeling is going to lead to something terrible. And I just watch him for a moment like that, as he leans farther and farther out over the guardrail, staring at the sea and at Greta, his eyes not changing at all.

  NINETEEN

  I THINK ABOUT going back down with Emily and Stan but decide to go check on Bobby.

  “You okay?” I ask Bobby.

  “Just fine,” he says, dressing his face up like it’s full of cheer. Except I can see even more clearly from up here that something’s bothering him. He’s not looking down at Greta anymore but rather staring out to sea, and his hair’s blowing all over his too-stoic face. He looks as though he’s ruminating over a mistake he made, one that caused something irreparable. Or maybe I’m just making all of this up because in a way that’s really what I feel like, but then again I don’t know how I feel except still so utterly horrified by the amount of things I’m learning I don’t understand in this world.

  “Okay,” I say. “Do you want any company?”

  “Actually, Lorna,” he says, turning to face me only after he’s said my name, “I’d kind of really like to be alone right now.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Yeah. Of course.” And then Bobby doesn’t say anything, not even “Thank you.”

  I head back to the first level, more than a little disconcerted by Bobby. What’s going on with him? What was that look in his eyes? Maybe he’s just going through what we’re all going through and I’ve been insensitive toward that because he’s older and because even he admits that Greta was more Alex’s than his. He dedicated his life to trying to find a way to communicate with Greta, and here she is, communicating away with a total stranger in ways he can’t fathom or quantify. Maybe that’s what’s eating at him.

  But I don’t think it is. Not totally, anyway.

  I’m making my way down the stairs when we hit a wave and bounce, and I have to cling to the railing to steady myself, and even then I almost flip over the other side. I finally get my footing back, and the boat’s still bobbing with the residual energy of the wave. I take a deep breath and keep going.

  Downstairs there are some kids in a corner, crowded around a power strip and punching at their phones furiously with their thumbs. I scan the group quickly for Stan, and when I don’t see him I get out my phone and text him.

  where, I type.

  sitting down, starboard, he texts back.

  So Stan and I can text, at least.

  I find him sitting alone on a bench with a view of the water out a porthole. “Where’s Emily?” I say.

  “Trying to find something to eat,” Stan says. “She said she was fully prepared to trade half the contents of her backpack for a goddamn Luna Bar.”

  “Wow. That’s a real dedication to Luna Bars,” I say. “So . . . I just talked to Bobby.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He’s acting pretty weird.”

  “Hasn’t he always been weird?”

  “I mean weird for Bobby. He says he’s fine, and he seems happy for Greta, but . . . I don’t know. There’s something else going on, I can tell.”

  “Of course there is. Lorna, what we’re doing here . . . everything that’s happening right now . . . it’s insane!” He gestures to a big group of Icelings gathered near the front of the ship, all of them paired off and engaging in some form of physical contact with another Iceling. They’re staring out ahead, to the island we’re approaching. He turns back to me. “And maybe really, really dangerous.”

  “I know,” I say. “Of course I know that. And, like, we knew that. Sort of. But I think it’s something else.”

  “Well, he’s a linguist, right?” I nod, and Stan goes on. “Well, maybe he had some theory about how the Icelings would be around each other, how they’d communicate, and it turns out he was way off-base.”

  “It’s weird, right?” I say. “How they sort of just . . . ditched us? When we got here? I mean, maybe that’s what we should have expected, but still.”

  “No, I know what you mean. It’s almost like—no, it’s actually definitely like—the Icelings know something we don’t.”

  “Yeah. And now we’re the ones who need help navigating this weird place with its weird customs. But they don’t seem all that interested in helping us understand.” I spot Callie and Tara joining the group of Icelings we’ve been watching, and I feel my heart fall all over again. Stan follows my gaze over and sighs.

  “Don’t be sad, Lorna. It’s a good thing. It’s why we came here.”

  I nod, pulling my gaze away from my sort-of sister and her new real sister. “What the hell do you think is on that island?”

  The island that is now coming into view.

  We’re finally at a close enough distance where we can start to make it out, and it’s actually pretty breathtaking.

  And now that it’s in our line of view, our eyes play tricks on us, making us feel like we’re moving more quickly than we were at the beginning of the trip, or like the island is a magnet and we’re magnetic and it’s pulling us in. The closer we get, the more we can see. There are these mountains that are—wait, no, those are hills, snow-capped hills that rise up in a massive line across one whole side of the island. They look like mounds of packed ice and snow and topped with more ice and more snow—layers of ice and snow, like rings of bark on an old tree. The wind is whipping now, and we can see it rolling these big boulders of snow around, and they get bigger and bigger, accumulating with each tumble like snowmen in cartoons. Sprouting up in between and behind those icy ranges are what look like tall, tropical-style trees, almost like palm trees, with these low-hanging branches forming canopies covered in more snow and ice. As we cross these final lengths to the shore, our captain steers us around to what looks like some kind of dock or landing, old and odd-looking but maybe rec
ently reconstructed, and then I, along with every other non-Iceling being around me, suck in a terrified gasp.

  Because what we see in front of us now is nothing new. We’ve all seen it before. Our eyes narrow in on the wide-open space beyond the dock: a big, expansive field, trembling. The field from the sculptures they built. And then we get closer and see that the trembling goes even deeper—it’s so intense that the hills around it begin to vibrate. Even the air seems to shake. There’s this smell of green in the air. Like a greenhouse. Like something living. And something else I can’t quite place.

  “Holy hell,” says Bobby, who is now behind us.

  All we can do is stand there, taking it all in. All of the Icelings are crowded along the bow. They look like they’d walk across the water right now. There’s an energy building, a hum. Like how the sky gets before it opens up for a summer rain. The sky over the leftmost part of the island starts to get all purple and yellow.

  And everything smells like lightning.

  That’s it. That’s that smell from before. The one that wasn’t the green one. It’s lightning. Just like Dad talked about in the car way back at dinner, forever ago. Everything smells like lightning, and the ground is trembling, and I know this means something, but whatever it is is completely beyond me.

  “What the hell is this?” I say.

  “Couldn’t say,” says Bobby, not so much calmly as with an air of inevitability, as if to say that whatever’s happening right now is beyond us both in terms of our ability to understand it and our ability to change it. He’s staring out to the island like he’s looking for something he knows should be there. “Couldn’t say,” he says again, a little quieter.

  The ferry drops anchor right by the rickety yet nearly new dock. So used to rushing to our siblings’ side in moments of arriving and departing, we all leap from our places and seek out our Icelings, forgetting that they’re the ones who know the secrets of this place, and we’re the total foreigners. But then we don’t even have a chance to fully make that mistake, because all at once, the Icelings jump. They vault off the boat, none of them wearing jackets, and they hit the water and just light right out for that trembling expanse.

  And they’re off, they’ve lit out for a vision they’ve held maybe since birth, a vision of home, of the kind of home they’ve never even had a chance to know. And we, their siblings, we stand and we stare.

  TWENTY

  BOBBY’S GONE, DISAPPEARED in the swarm of shepherds and Icelings, but Stan’s still right here, with Emily beside him. The captain, obviously furious and shouting left and right, pulls us in as close as he can and lowers the gangplank, setting it heavily down on the dock, where it scrapes and rattles and bangs because of the trembling.

  “EVERYONE OFF!” he shouts, and we file out as quickly as we can, doubling up on parkas and hats and gloves, because this is the coldest any of us has ever been.

  The Icelings are long gone, and some of us are rushing after them, while some are lingering, moving real slow, as though they don’t want to stray too far from the vessel that might be the only thing that can take us back to anything resembling what we used to think of so fondly as “home.” Stan and Emily and I shove our way through, leaving the stragglers behind without a second look. Not because we pity or disdain them, but because we’re afraid that if we pay them too much attention we might start to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing and start to do it too. At least that’s what I’m worried about, so I keep my head down and push forward.

  Cursing myself for all the times I felt scared on this trip, because apparently I had no idea what “scared” meant back then, I look back at the boat so I can memorize exactly where it is, exactly where it’ll be waiting for us. I see the captain walking around the second level, scanning the craft for stragglers. He wanders the deck, checking behind benches, and then he ducks down into the stairwell and repeats the process on the first level before heading back toward the gangplank. And then he raises the gangplank and then the anchor. The Icelings are running around and pairing up. They’re moving their arms and then standing very still.

  “Oh my god, Stan!” I shout, pointing to the ferry, my head swimming with lightning and feeling like I might throw up.

  “Hey!” shouts Stan. “What the hell are you doing? You can’t leave!”

  We’re screaming at him, pleading until our throats are raw, but the captain only works to abandon us faster. Some Icelings run through and around us, and we jump back and stumble, startled. The anchor is up, and the captain begins to pull away as the Icelings assemble up ahead, and they stand still, and they sway. People are calling out to their siblings, and some are trying to grab hold of them, but nobody can keep any hands on them; they’re in the wind. They’re up ahead.

  And I’m just staring at the ferry, only registering this in the back of my mind, because what used to be in the back of my mind has now crawled its way to the front. It’s the only thought I can hold right now. In that it’s gripped me, completely.

  “Stan,” I say. “They probably knew about the boat. Or even arranged it.”

  “Who knew about it?” Emily says. “Who arranged it?”

  “The government,” Stan says, his voice flat and dead.

  “What? What are you talking about? What do you mean? What the hell do you mean?” Emily’s eyes go wild.

  “What I mean is that if we made it this far, it’s probably because the government—whoever in the government believes our brothers and sisters are monsters—wants us to have made it this far. If we weren’t supposed to be on that boat, we wouldn’t have been on it. If that guy hadn’t been instructed otherwise, he’d be waiting right there for us, to take us safely back to shore, just like we paid him to. And if for some reason we had decided not to get on that boat, I’m pretty sure something really terrible, maybe involving bullets, would have happened to us.”

  Meanwhile, everyone else has just noticed that the ferry’s gone.

  “Hey!” they shout.

  “Hey, come back!” they shout.

  “Are you SERIOUS, man? You can’t do that! COME BACK!” they shout, they plead.

  “We’ll die here! You can’t leave us here! It’s freezing!” they scream.

  “Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God, we’re gonna die,” they cry. They fall down around each other. Four people have fallen into the sea and are trying to get out. I can’t imagine they won’t freeze. Did they think they could swim to the freighter that ferried us over as it sails itself away?

  “Jesus, people,” says a voice of reason. “Get it together. What’d you think would happen? We came out here for them. We came to help them.”

  “What about us?” comes another voice, and I know I need to calm and quiet that voice right away or else everything will fall apart in a way that’s worse than I’ve yet to imagine.

  “Hey!” I shout. “HEY. Look at them. They’ve spent their whole lives quiet, locked up inside themselves, away from home! We get to live in the world. We know our parents are our parents and our friends are our friends.”

  Emily, standing next to me, takes a step forward. “We get to make out and drive cars, and when people say things to us, we know what they’re talking about!” she shouts. “The least we can do is finish what we started.”

  We’re answered with nothing but grumblings and panicked whines.

  “THE WAY I see it,” shouts Bobby to anyone who’s calm enough to listen, “all we need to do is get enough people to start moving after the Icelings, and everyone else will follow. The longer we stand around, the more time people will have to freak out and worry and come up with reasons to just stand around here and freeze to death.”

  He’s right, I think. I make to turn to the Icelings, to spot them so we can follow them, but they’re all gone. While we were all yelling, they lit out for parts unknown that were calling to them like home.

  “Damn
it,” says Stan, seeing what I’m seeing, which is everything but our siblings. “Let’s do it. Now. They can follow us, or they can stay here and freeze, but we need to go now.”

  WE TURN AROUND and follow the path that’s been cleared and trampled down by the Icelings, which thankfully leads us right to them—or the smallish speck of them, at least, because they’re so far ahead of us. From what we can see, they’re running up to this stacked-high pile of what looks like driftwood. But then the closer we get, the more shape and structure the wood pile takes on, and now I see that it’s probably not a pile at all but more like a shed. Except the shed looks like it’s . . . growing up and out of the ground. There’s no snow on it. The snow won’t even touch it. The wood looks old, but not at all rotted from the snow and wind like you’d expect. There are no windows. Just two broad gray boards for a roof and four gray walls made of smaller boards and then a small and asymmetrical opening that looks like it could pass for a doorway.

  To say this structure gives me the creeps is a real and serious understatement. It’s straight out of a horror movie. All it lacks is a creaking door and a pile of fresh bones out back, and I actually can’t rule out that second detail just yet. I’m shivering, and it’s not from the cold.

  I’m expecting this to be the Icelings’ first stop, but they breeze right past it—and I am in no way sad about this. I am in no way excited about coming back this way and seeing this place again either. Some of us linger here and check out the shed, but me, I’m going to keep going.

  “What the hell was that?” says Stan, who’s a couple of footsteps behind me now, the shed having tripped him up a bit.

  “Creepy as heck,” says Emily, and I just nod, because for some reason even I don’t know, I need to get that thing out of my mind. Pretend it doesn’t exist, not give language to it at all.