Blue Hills

Silently sailing on, sailing.  Silence in the sea.  Silence in the world.

Except a soft crackling sound that grew around them, the sound of the ice; on all sides of Dolores Costello, fields of pack ice floated drowsily; some were larger than the fields Stinson had in his youth failed to kick a ball in. 

There were blue hills on the horizon, perhaps Akkitok, and the lights were spinning and raging overhead, blasting the frosted sheet with streaks of red and green, whipping a garden up from emptiness.

A crude wind began ripping through the air.  Even with gloves on, Stinson’s poor fingers were so shrivelled and tight it felt like they may snap off at any moment.  However the bones had started to adapt to the inelasticity. 

The creaking ice put him to mind of a fireplace spitting away busily on a lazy evening back home...so warm...so cosy...but... it was cold now.  Wasn’t it cold back home too?  Yes.  But not--------Stinson allowed himself this one expletive in the wild -------- not....this...Fucking... cold.  Forgive him Father, for it is windy....

The ice-pops and cracks were eventually overwhelmed by an eerie sound, something like a sustained whistle, which Stinson strained to make sense of – it came out of the wind suddenly like a matronly squeal from afar.   He kept listening and after a few minutes it sounded less like a whistle, and more like the sound of someone trying hard to whistle.  He knew this sound himself only too well – that tragic wheeze – as he too made that sound whenever he tried to whistle.

He went to the cabin and called for Katrine, who came up reluctantly to see what had got the simple-minded cleric so agitated.

‘Listen,’ he said.  ‘Can you hear that?’

‘I hear nothing.’

‘Keep listening,’ he implored.

The wind was picking up.  And, yes, wedged somewhere in the bellow was a sound Katrine had not been expecting to hear.  One was enshrouded by all that was ethereal and mystifying about the world in this refrigerated part of it.  But this sound was familiar; alien, but familiar.

‘It sounds like a voice, doesn’t it?’ said Stinson.

‘A voice?  I don’t know.’

‘Yes, it’s clearly a voice.’

‘Clearly?  Really?  Where could this voice possibly be coming from?’

‘I’m not sure.  But the extension of voices over great distances is not unheard of.’

‘Have you been overindulging in your scripture again?’

‘No—no.’

‘And what is your heavenly mouthpiece saying?’

‘I can’t make it out.  That’s why I called you up.  Maybe the voice is speaking Danish.’

‘I doubt it.  We Danes are not as loud and flashy as you English types.’