Iceling Read online

“These are for fuel,” Stan says, pointing at the cans at his feet. Then he looks up at us and nods at the extraneous empties in our arms. “Those are for the raft.”

  “What?” Emily says. “You mean we’re not going to use these to carry fuel over to the other boat?”

  “No,” he says. “We’re going to use them to float the raft.”

  Emily and I look at each other as if in agreement that this is it, this life is over, our death warrant has just been signed by this one massively terrible idea.

  “Just trust me,” says Stan.

  We take the containers and screw the caps on tight, and Stan and I fasten them to the bottom of the raft, while Emily works on calming the Icelings and keeping them together so we can get them on the raft when it’s time.

  Stan ties off the last knot, and together we glide the structure into the water, tying it to the dock first, to test it. It’s all the way in, and I’m holding my breath, and then my heart both soars and sinks to see that it works, it floats. Stan smiles and leaps up onto the shore, where he takes the containers filled with fuel and piles them onto the raft one at a time, securing each of them to the dock wood with the rope that had been used to lash the tires hanging off the docks as bumpers.

  We can hear gunfire.

  “Ready?” says Stan.

  I nod, and he holds the raft steady as Emily and I coax Ted, Callie, Greta, and Tara onto the raft. But Greta won’t leave. Callie and Tara take her hands and sort of tug her along. All I can guess is that she doesn’t want to leave Bobby. Then there’s another round of gunfire, loud and cracking, and Greta jumps, first up, then out onto the raft. When it doesn’t shatter and capsize, I give Stan a thumbs-up.

  Callie was never super big on baths at home, so I’m a bit surprised she’s not kicking up more of a fuss about the raft, which is just planks tied together on top of tires, with the empty fuel jugs acting as buoys. Stan’s gripping a makeshift paddle, which is just a jagged plank.

  Now, finally, we’re all on the raft, every last limb just barely fitting within the perimeter of our close quarters. Stan pushes us off. The water around us is perfectly still, weirdly still, save for the modest wake our craft makes. Callie and Tara lean over the side and touch the water, and I flinch even though I know they can’t feel how freezing cold it is, that what is freezing cold to me is something else entirely to them. I can’t read their faces. Can’t read their bodies. But I try, because I can’t not. Here is what they say to me:

  Greta hates leaving Bobby. Ted hates leaving the island. Callie and Tara are still, I think, too stunned by all the death to really process this. They finally got home, and then everything around them died. What would that feel like? To have spent your life wanting to go back to the place you were born, and from where you were stolen, and then finally you get there! And you’re there for the most wonderful reason: to meet the next generation! And then the big event happens, and they’re all stillborn. And then come the people with guns, who don’t understand you, and they burn all the babies’ bodies, and they shoot your family. And this person pretending to be your sister drags you away from it to save your life, but for what?

  Callie, kid sister, I wish I knew. But there’s a chance we might still find out.

  IF IT WAS freezing before, it’s now the kind of cold that there isn’t a sufficient word for. Out here on the water, with not a single buffer between the icy air and the frigid water, it’s scary-cold, and I think but I don’t say it: We’ll freeze to death before we make it. But Stan knew exactly where he saw that dot of color. And it’s right up ahead. We’re getting closer now, close enough to see that it’s really more shaped like a boat and not a dot, and though the cold is closing in on me and my eyes are getting tired and my head is feeling so light that it’s heavy, the closer we get the more sure I am that the dot is indeed turning into something that can only be a boat. Emily says she can see it too, and I force myself to believe her. We have to see it. That has to be what we see. Because if it isn’t, then it’s just us, on this raft, in this freezing cold water, which is perfectly still.

  In the distance, we see the beginning of a sunset. But then, in an instant, that light turns from pale to angry orange, and for a second I wonder if Arctic sunsets are somehow sped up, if the sun works differently way up here on the top of the world. But then I watch the looks on Stan’s and Emily’s faces as they watch too, and then I look again and realize it isn’t the sunset. It’s fire. And then there’s this hiss in the air and a loud, low, ominous whistle, and then at least a dozen more, and the whole world howls and shakes, and the raft breaks, and we’re thrown headlong into the sea.

  WE COME TO after who knows how much time has passed, and the pain is piercing hot and striking me at every angle. At first I think I must have washed ashore, that my body is frozen stiff and the piercing pain is actually just the process of my body freezing over. But then I force my eyes open, and the first thing I see is water, and then I take a weak look around to see more of the same, and then I realize that this is still happening. It’s not over yet. We still have to keep going. Our raft is smashed to pieces, and we’re still hanging on to planks, bobbing up and down. At first I think I am alone, but then Emily bobs into view and then Stan. But I still don’t see Callie or the other Icelings, and if my heart could beat any faster—assuming it can even keep beating after this beating we’re taking—it would be pounding out of my chest.

  Just about the only thing I can reason out right now is that this should have killed us. We should be dead. But we’re not. Why aren’t we dead? And then I see a flutter on the surface of the water, and that flutter turns into Tara, and she’s swimming from Emily toward me. And then I see a second flutter, and it’s Callie, swimming from Stan to Emily. And then Greta, and Ted, swimming all around from one of us to the other. Tara closes in on me, and I try to move but can’t, and then she makes contact, and all at once I’m hit with a very faint sensation of warmth.

  The Icelings go on like this, taking turns wrapping themselves around us, kicking and pushing their way toward us and then away and away and away. This makes no sense, I know it makes no sense, but somehow . . . they’re keeping us warm. They’re keeping us warm, and I can tell by the way they kick and breathe that they’re not at all cold. It makes sense how Greta could go out after Alex like that. Could try to keep him warm and save him. It’s what they’re doing right now.

  I’m feeling warmer by the second, slowly regaining my ability to take in the world around me and try to make meaning out of it. The sea is no longer calm. My ears are roaring. I open my mouth and try to say something, a test to see if my ears still work, but then a little wave bobs up and my mouth is full of water, cold and salty and I’m almost choking on it, so I start spitting it out. I have no idea why I had to think about it in order to do it, or why my eyes and brain and muscles couldn’t work together to see the wave and react by closing my mouth so my lungs didn’t fill with water, and then I try to close my eyes against all these thoughts, because if my brain and body aren’t really working right now, then I don’t want to waste what energy I have worrying about why and how my brain and body don’t work. I’m worried that if I worry anymore, then I’ll lose my grip on this plank and plummet to the bottom of the sea, because it’s just too overwhelming for my broken brain, the sheer amount of things there are to worry about right now—like drowning, or hypothermia, or death by bullets or fire or U.S. military missiles, which we might have avoided but which might still be seeking us out right now, there’s no way to tell because I can’t hear anything except my own thoughts, which are screaming, screaming about things like how many people and Icelings Jane’s team just murdered, or why we didn’t just stay home, why we thought this was even a good idea to begin with. Why did we think this was a good idea?

  And then there is a splash and another swirl of movement and motion around me, and I can feel more of it this time, because I just keep getting warmer. I
look over, and there’s Callie, leaving Emily’s side and making her way over to me, and then she reaches me, and then she’s embracing me, and the warmth increases tenfold. And now I remember: That’s why. Callie is why. We did this because of Callie, and Ted, and all the other Icelings, because it was the only thing that could be done. They needed to come here. We didn’t know this—any of this—would happen. I try to smile at her, but her face is not at an angle where she can see mine, and anyway I can’t hold my face like that for too long, and then a new wave of cold settles in and I start shivering and shaking.

  And then the roaring in my ears dies down a little, and I can hear something, a calm sound, soft and low, and I try to stretch my neck up as far as I can to see if I can make it out any better. I follow the faint sound and find Emily again. She’s awake, and right next to me, closer than I would have thought, and the sound is coming from her. It’s louder now, and I make out that she’s urging Stan to kick. I realize I can hardly feel my toes, an improvement from when I first woke up and couldn’t feel anything but pain, and I start trying to kick too. Emily sees me and gives me as much of a smile as our bodies will allow right now, and then we kick together, trying to move toward Stan, the Icelings still clinging to us and moving along with us. We close in on Stan and Greta, who is wrapped around him, and we nudge him with our legs as best we can until he starts to kick too.

  Our world’s on fire, or maybe it’s drowning. We’re on fire, and we’re drowning. And because we don’t know which disaster is the right one, we stay like this for a long while, silent and treading water, half-conscious and drifting in and out of it all, blinking back and forth between flashes of the dock wreckage, the island, what we thought of as our lives until now. Our Icelings and Bobby’s Iceling continue to take turns keeping us alive until we’re warm enough to look around and think about what to do next. My periphery’s on fire. Flames lick at the fuel depot by the docks, all lit up and spitting sparks and burning bits of metal and wood and gas all over the sea. My ears are still roaring, though thankfully it’s quieted down quite a bit, and now I can hear the splashes our own bodies make in the water.

  When my vision starts to come back and I no longer have to blink and squint to tell the difference between Emily and Stan, I begin to take stock of our surroundings. We can see the boat. We know we can make it now. Emily’s the only one with a backpack. I’m sure we’ll regret it later, but our parkas were weighing us down. Thank God for layers, but still. Floating on a plank that Ted’s holding on to are two of the five containers of fuel we brought. I twirl around to see if the others might be near, and I see a flash of red bobbing up and down a little ways off. I try to swim to it but can barely make it a foot under my own strength. Then Ted grabs me, not ungently. I start to point to the big red-and-yellow container, but before I can he’s already gone, swimming out to the bobbing beacon, and Callie’s got one arm wrapped around me and the other holding on to the plank that’s holding the other two tanks. Ted comes back and plops the third container on the plank with the rest of them, and Callie lets go and brings her other arm around me again. I look over to the island. And every inch of it that I can see is on fire.

  And I guess that was all too much, because I’m exhausted again. Emily was apparently on the swim team and the gymnastics team, because she’s looking strong against all the struggling. Stan’s beat but mostly breathing, and me, I’m in shock and shocked that I’m still breathing. And so we’re quiet again for a while, and we all just let ourselves drift, let ourselves be held by the Icelings and the freezing water, clinging to whatever’s left to cling to, while the home our siblings have been dreaming of their whole lives burns to the ground.

  When I’m warm enough to cry, I cry. My tears mingle with the water. But I didn’t have to tell you that.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  AFTER AN UNKNOWN stretch of time during which I’m hovering in and out of various states of consciousness and feeling, I come to, sharply and for good, when a drone with spinning helicopter blades crashes into the sea about fifteen feet away from us. Its propellers smack the water first, and the water smacks back, forcing the fighting blades to send a few sad sparks into the air, like a flare gun to its friends, and then slow down to a desperate stop. In movies, things explode on impact. But in the water, nearly drowning things just sort of spark a bit, and then the blades try sadly spinning, but they can’t do it right, and it just kind of floats there, partially submerged and whirring until it can’t.

  We’re rocking in the wake of the fallen drone, Stan, Emily, our Icelings, and I, all awake and alert now. Callie’s fine. Maybe in shock, but she’s physically fine. She’s floating and breathing, and I’m just so glad to see her, and my face is so wet I can’t tell if I’m crying. The boat—the boat that is definitely a boat—is still ahead of us and close enough that we know we’ll make it. I’m about to ask if everyone’s okay when a high whistling in the sky, way out toward the island, sends my gaze upward and out, and I see two more drones faltering in the air above, heading right toward each other. They crash, nose to nose, smacking into each other, and then they explode in the air and fall, on fire, down to the sea that stretches between us and the still-burning island, where they fizzle and smoke.

  I have no idea how long we’ve been adrift, but my body is screaming like it’s been hours to days.

  “We only left about an hour ago,” says Stan. He’s pointing to his watch, which I noticed as far back as the hospital, noting that it was probably too fancy for a teenager but having no idea that it was a real nautical instrument that could go through all of this and keep on ticking.

  “Jesus,” says Emily. “It’s still burning.”

  “And there are still little drones in the air—the ones that haven’t crashed into each other or the water, at least. And honestly, they’re getting a bit too close to us for my comfort,” I say.

  “You think they’re aiming for us?” asks Emily.

  “I think right now I’m going to say yes and hope I’m wrong rather than say no and hope I’m right,” Stan says. And everyone gets quiet for a minute.

  “The boat’s maybe fifteen, twenty minutes away, based on how we’ve been going,” Stan says finally. “That’s assuming no one drowns and no one gets any sudden bursts of energy.”

  “Let’s go,” says Emily.

  SO WITH OUR Icelings, who just saved our lives and kept us living, still hovering around us like angels or ghosts, we swim. Bits of drones bob and sulk around us as we make our way toward that dot of color, and I’m bracing myself because I keep expecting to see other kinds of debris—nonmechanical debris, human debris—in the water, but so far we don’t, and I’m quietly, ashamedly grateful for that.

  We’re silent as we go, and the sea is silent too, the only noise around us the sound of our own breathing. All of a sudden the boat comes bobbing into view in between the waves and dips of our journey, and I feel a surge of energy and start swimming faster. We all swim faster, and we’re all trying so hard not to swallow more water than we can choke down and out.

  Suddenly, Emily starts to falter, and the plank she was holding on to slips from her grip. Her body slowly plunges down into the water, but Tara’s there for her before her lips can even touch the brine.

  “You okay?” I shout.

  “Yeah, fine,” she says. “Just exhausted.” She turns to Tara, who’s holding her around the waist and propping her up. “Thank you,” she says, and Tara does and says nothing.

  But then, without warning, Ted takes a sudden dive into the water.

  “Ted!” Stan shouts, but Greta keeps a strong grip on him and doesn’t let him follow after.

  I keep expecting him to resurface any second, but he hasn’t; he’s still under there. Stan’s freaking out, using all the energy he has left to dart around in place as much as Greta’s grip will allow, searching the water for his brother. Finally, full minutes later, Ted comes back with a huge plank, the
biggest piece of the dock raft, which I’d assumed was long gone. He swims back to our group, holding the plank above water, then sets it down to float.

  “Ted, you’re amazing!” I say, and Stan just grins like a proud big brother.

  Without taking a beat to pat himself on the back, Ted scoops us up, one by one, Stan, Emily, and me, and puts us on the plank. He takes the smaller plank with the fuel containers on it and grips one board in each hand, then the Icelings take turns pushing and guiding us along toward our destination. And as we go, up on the planks now instead of freezing in the water, they keep trying to hold us, or maybe just touch us to see if we’re still there, still breathing, or some other thing that I can never know. But whatever they’re doing, it’s nice. Or I’m choosing to interpret it as nice, or what it makes me feel is nice. Not that any of this is nice—the world is on fire, and hundreds of people might be dead mere feet away from us. But what I mean is that it’s nice to feel something other than cold water and cold legs and cold bones wrapped in cold veins.

  “Hey,” says Emily with some effort. She’s beside me on the plank, her body sort of slumped on mine for support. “You okay?”

  I look over at Callie. She drifts around until she finds a spot with a good view of the island, and she just treads water there while she watches it burn. She stares at it for a while, then turns back around. I turn away, I can’t even look at her right now, because I’m afraid of how much it’ll hurt.

  “Nope,” I say.

  “Cool,” she says. “Me neither.”

  I smile. I smile, and then, with some pain in my chest and gut and arms and legs, I laugh. I laugh because clearly my body needs to laugh so badly that it channeled all the energy it has into producing one tiny guffaw, regardless of the pain it sent shivering through my bones. And then Emily laughs too, and our laughter sounds so ragged and sick that I can’t help but smile again, and then the whole cycle starts anew. Stan’s pushed up next to me on my other side, and when I feel his body start I think he must be laughing too, but when I turn to him I see that’s not what he’s doing at all.