The Blue (The Complete Novel) Read Free

time they turn, the thing hears me and splashes into the ocean again.
     
    Did you see it? I ask Russell as I get to the tent, stumbling to put my pants back on. Just now? he asks. I point at where the thing was, and then he lifts the rifle and he’s gone, running toward the edge of the floe. Be careful, I holler, and as soon as I have one soggy layer on I run after him, steeling myself against the light wind. But when I get there, Russell is staring blankly over the edge of the floe, watching the thin brown slit of ocean. He’s gone, he tells me. Did you see it? I ask. He tells me no, still didn’t see it. But one thing’s for sure, he’s starving the same as us. And first chance he gets, he’ll eat us, whatever he is. And then, after Russell’s certain there’s nothing coming back over the lip of the ice, at least not when his rifle is pointing down into it, he turns and we head back to the tent. Get in there, he tells, before you freeze. And like that, I’m jogging back to the stove and the softly glowing tarp, bent up in a high diamond by the poles dug into the ice. It takes half an hour, but finally, my body starts to warm up again, and my other clothes get warm enough to slip back into.
     
    Dinner, Russell says, and he digs into the bag and sorts out our small wad of dog pebbles. The bag seems close to empty. I know that he and Ernest packed more than one bag of dog food, but when I tell Russell it’s about time to open up the next bag, he doesn’t lift his head or react at all. His eyes stay down, covered in shadow in the corner of the tent. And all at once, the joy of the warm and the dry and being clean disappears, because I realize he’s been keeping something from me—something is much worse than I thought. It comes to me, and I have to ask: We lost the other bags, didn’t we? I ask him. He just tells me to open my hands, and then he drops in half the normal amount of pebbles. He lets some fall for Voley, and then he starts to eat his own. The only noise is the crunching. I ask again, Did we lose the rest of it? Must have been when we washed out fighting the ice, he says. What are we going to do? I ask. And then, he shovels the rest of his food into his mouth and tells me to wait here. Then he walks out into the new darkness toward the boat. When he comes back, he’s got one of the tent poles. On the end of it, he’s curled a piece of a tin can. And all I can do to hold back my immense fear that we’re finally going to starve to death is laugh. Wild and delirious laughter. Because all we have now is a few cups of dog food and Russell’s horrible excuse for a fishing pole. And not but a slit of the brown to dip it into.
     
    I didn’t realize until yesterday, he says. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You were down, so I waited until I built this. I think our stalker’s a good sign. Means there’s got to be fish.
                I don’t even tell him that that thing won’t catch any fish. He has to know that already. All I manage to get out is that the thing wants to eat us because there must not be any fish. And it comes like a fire into my mind that the only thing we can do is dig out the boat, try to free it from the ice somehow, so that we can haul it out toward open ocean. Open ocean that neither of us has seen in days. I tell him that’s what we have to do, and we have to start tonight, because we’re going to starve to death.
                She won’t budge, Russell says, And, she’s split. What? I say in shock. Anger rises up in me because he’s been holding back more than just one thing, trying to trick me into thinking everything is better than it really is. The false belief that we’ve got a fighting chance still. The way he’s talked the last few days it was like all we had to do was bide our time and we’d be under the sun in no time. But it’s all been a lie. I don’t wait for him to explain about the split, I just run out into the twilight, barely