Giants of the Frost (3 page)

My first day off was Gunnar's last day on the island before he hopped on the supply boat back to Norway for his annual leave. It was one of the few clear skies since my arrival, so he suggested a walk across to the other side of the island. He came by my cabin late in the morning.

"Hi," he said. "I thought I'd give you a chance to sleep in."

"Sleep? What's sleep?" I asked, closing my cabin door behind me.

"You said you only get insomnia when you're anxious. You've got six days off." He pointed to the door.

"You know you should lock that."

I fished out my key and did as he suggested. "I also get insomnia when I've
been
anxious. It takes me a few days to wind down. So, who's the thief? Is it Carsten? Frida?"

"Sorry?"

"You made me lock my door."

Gunnar laughed as we made our way into the forest. "Well, I'd say they're probably all trustworthy. But things occasionally go missing inexplicably. Magnus has a theory that thieves come over from the mainland, land at the beach, creep through the forest and steal things while we're all looking in the other direction."

"Do you think it's possible?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps. As I said, things do go missing. Since I've been here, we've lost an electric frying pan out of the galley and a DVD player from the rec hall."

I sidestepped a spider's web that glistened with the remnants of dewfall. "It's a long way to come just to take an electric frying pan."

"Yes, it's a bit mysterious."

"My money's on Frida. She's got shifty eyes."

Gunnar gave me a bemused smile. "You don't like Frida?"

"She doesn't like me. Can't you tell?"

"She's unfriendly to most people. I think I've seen her smile once, and that was when Magnus tripped over his office chair and hit his head on the desk."

The track narrowed in front of us. Trees clustered close, gathering shadows into dark pools. The air was very still and the only sounds were the crack and pop of tiny branches falling or being crushed underfoot, of small animals moving and birds searching for food. We fell into single file, trudging along in silence for a long time. I found myself puffing and marveled at how unfit I was.

"Are we going the right way?" I asked eventually, when it seemed the landscape around me hadn't changed in twenty minutes.

"Yep. Don't worry."

"Is it possible to get lost on Othinsey Island?"

"I don't think so. Though it would be a good place to hide. And it's just called Othinsey, not Othinsey Island. The 'ey' means island."

I caught up with him and elbowed onto the track next to him. "So it's Othin's Island?"

"It's Old Norse. Odin's Island."

"Odin, like the god?"

"Yep."

I gave him a mischievous grin. "Does he live around here?"

Gunnar didn't bite. "No. I expect he lives in Asgard with the rest of his family." I nearly tripped over a branch and Gunnar caught me, then politely let me go. I speculated on how many more seconds of body contact Magnus would have stolen, did a few calculations and deduced that Gunnar was ninety percent more polite than his boss. "So how come you know so much about Old Norse and gods and local legends?" I asked.

"I studied a little bit at university. I create games."

"Games?"

"For the PC."

"Like shoot-'em-ups?"

"No, role-playing games. Featuring mythological worlds." He dropped his head, embarrassed. "I know it's a little…"

"Nerdy?"

"Yes."

"It's fine. You're in good company. I'm obsessed with the weather. There's not much nerdier than that." I squeezed his arm. "So, you're going to make lots of money with these games?"

"It's an amateur interest at the moment. But, yes, one day, who knows?" The trees opened out, letting in the sky. A petrel swept past overhead. I looked down the slope in front of me and saw a still, grey lake. More trees stood on the other side. "Oh, God. That's beautiful."

"Be careful down the slope."

I made my way down the rocky slope to the edge of the lake and sat on an outcrop. I could hear Gunnar behind me, collecting skimming stones. He crouched beside me and handed me a small, flat rock.

"I'm no good at this," I said, proving it by plopping the rock directly in the water. Gunnar aimed and sent a rock skipping across the surface of the lake: one, two, three.

"Show-off," I said.

"I practice a lot. Not much else to do on Othinsey." He skimmed another, and another, and they skidded and fell until his hands were empty and I was sick of estimating trajectories and calculating averages. He sat next to me and the lake grew still. The water was dark green and murky.

"So why are you obsessed with the weather?" Gunnar asked.

"My friends back in London say it's because I'm so bossy. 'Vicky wants to control the elements.'"

"Is it?"

"No. Ever since I was a little girl, I've always sensed that there's something wonderful about weather. It's so commonplace and yet so mysterious."

"What do you mean?"

"Every year it leaves a trail of carnage behind it. People freeze to death, or die of heatstroke. Houses are flattened in storms, or pulled to pieces in tornadoes. As a species we can do almost anything, but we can't control the weather. We certainly can't guarantee accurate forecasts. We study it, we look for trends, we pretend to understand it and predict it. It's a force so much greater than us that we've had to learn to live with, kind of like living with a temperamental monster." He smiled. "I've never thought about it much. I just listen to the weather forecast to see if I need to take a sweater."

"That's the mundane aspect of it." I cast my eyes back toward the station. "As I'm finding out. Forecasting is very monotonous work. It all seems a bit pointless."

"The shipping companies need us."

"I know."

"Why did you apply for this job?"

"I need the money, and it's a step in the right direction. I'd like to work in climatology or geophysics research one day." I sighed, stretching out my legs in front of me. "It's hard, isn't it? Being a grown-up. Getting a job. Realizing, once and for all, that your suspicion you were formed for greatness was misguided."

"You never know what's just around the corner. Your mother could win the lottery." I smiled at him. "She could, I suppose." I indicated the tranquil lake. "Does anyone ever go swimming here? In the warmer months?"

"It's a bit treacherous. Hidden depths, lots of weed. Somebody drowned here once, back in the eighties. Besides, it never really gets that warm."

Behind us, in the trees, something thudded to the ground, then scrabbled in the undergrowth. I must have looked startled because Gunnar said, "Don't worry. Just one of the ghosts."

"Not funny. Really, what do you think it was? Are there animals on the island?"

"Sure. Weasels, squirrels, petrels, owls." He stood and helped me to my feet. "Come on, let's see the beach."

On the far side of the island, without the cliffs to protect us, the winds were cold and biting. The grey sand stretched away in both directions, waves pounding it mercilessly. I pulled up my hood. Gunnar's hair tangled and whipped around his face.

"See, this is why I don't believe Magnus's theory about thieves," he said, raising his voice to be heard above the waves. "Imagine trying to land a boat here."

"I expect there's a logical explanation. There always is."

"Do you want to know something else weird? You'll appreciate this. I discovered when I was committing some of the old logbooks to a database that items were often reported missing from the station after the aurora borealis was seen. In fact, since 1968, sixty percent of the items went missing within a week of an aurora storm."

I shrugged. "That's not enough to draw a conclusion from. Maybe the thief just takes advantage of everybody being preoccupied with the pretty lights. What's your theory?"

"I don't have a theory. ljust find it interesting. Mysterious."

"Mysteries are just scientific facts that haven't been documented yet." I was already outlining a hypothesis about solar winds, transcranial magnetic stimulation and temporary insanity resulting in kleptomania. Gunnar said, "You really are an incurable skeptic, aren't you?"

"The Queen of the Skeptics," I said with a royal wave.

"Life on Othinsey may very well dethrone you, your highness," he said, smiling.

"I doubt it."

He shrugged. "It's cold. Let's go back to the sheltered side of the island."

"Let's." I followed him into the trees and we made our way back to the station. Gunnar told me about his holiday plans—he was going to Amsterdam with some friends from Oslo—and I resigned myself to five days of thesis-writing before turning up to work again for more endless synoptic observations and data recordings. The near future seemed pointless, and I realized that if I hadn't caught Adam out, I would have been marrying him this coming weekend.

Gunnar sailed off on the
Jonsok
and I spent the rest of my long, long weekend decompressing in my cabin. A package from my mother came on the supply boat—I had phoned her on day two to ask for my bedspread and a few other things out of my bedroom—and I managed to make my new space a little more appealing. I spent one crazed, furtive morning writing a long letter to Adam about how glad I was that we weren't married, then tore it up before I was insane enough to send it. I worked on deciphering my stained field notes to write up my thesis and, best of all, I slept. I liked Othinsey a lot better when I wasn't witnessing it at 3:00 a.m.

My first day back at work commenced with the dullest staff meeting in recorded history. Magnus set the mood with an eye-wateringly long rundown about how important certain matters of administration were. I spent most of it counting the number of people in the room (seven—Gunnar was away and Maryanne didn't usually attend staff meetings); calculating the number of fingers and toes in the room (139—Carsten was missing the pinky off his left hand); and coming up with an average number of digits per person (19.857142 recurring). Then each staff member in turn had an opportunity to discuss problems they had faced in the last month. I began to draw spaceships in the corner of my notebook. By the time it was my turn to contribute, I had an entire starfleet capable of neutralizing humankind once and for all. •

"I have nothing to add," I said. "I'm slowly grasping the basics of the work." Magnus glanced at his diary. "Hmm. Well, by the end of the month we'll be relying on you to have more than the basics. You're on duty solo from Wednesday the twenty-eighth until the following Wednesday."

"Why's that?"

"The World Meteorology and Climatology Conference is on in Switzerland. All the other meteorologists are going. I have to attend as I'm receiving an award. Gunnar's been working on a temporary automatic data collection schedule, but you'll have to launch the balloons and do as many synoptic reports as you can during waking hours."

I wondered if Magnus had factored my insomnia into his plans. Based on his behavior so far, it wouldn't surprise me. "Do I have to get up every three hours?"

"No, no. Unless there's something unusual going on, like a storm. I know it's a lot to expect of you, but it's unavoidable. You don't have to keep regular hours. As long as the balloons go up and the Institute gets some figures from time to time. If you get into trouble, Frida and Carsten are here to help."

"No, we're not," Frida said, tapping her diary with her pen. "Remember? Carsten and I are going to my sister's wedding in Bergen."

How ghastly: Frida and Carsten were a couple. He was at least twice her age. Why hadn't Gunnar told me this juicy tidbit? Boys never understand the importance of gossip.

A frown crossed Magnus's brow. "Is that this month? I'm sorry, I forgot." I worked it out before Magnus said it. With all the meteorologists away, Gunnar still on holidays, and Frida and Carsten off the scene, that left Maryanne and me on the island alone for a week. I started devising ways to get rid of Maryanne too. The fantasy of having a whole island in the Norwegian Sea to myself had quickly taken grip in my mind: solitude, genuine solitude.

"I'll be fine," I said. "I won't get into any trouble. I look forward to the challenge." And the space. And the freedom.

"I'll need to speak to Maryanne," he said gruffly. "If she's not happy about running the station on such a low staff level, I'll have to stay."

"But you have to collect your award," I squeaked, my deserted island now replaced by squirming imaginings of being stuck alone with Magnus.

"We have a few weeks to work it out," he said. "Perhaps we can get a replacement meteorologist from the mainland."

"Just as long as you know that I'm quite happy to work here alone," I said.

"You've made that abundantly clear, Victoria. Now, on to the next agenda item. Formulation of best-practice benchmarks for the operational plan." Or at least I think that's what he said. I had glazed over before the end of the sentence.

I soon discovered that Kirkja Station had a lot of traditions that involved alcoholic drinks, brought over from Norway by the
Jonsok
. They included (but certainly weren't limited to) Wednesday afternoon drinks, Friday evening drinks, Saturday afternoon drinks, and post-staff-meeting drinks. All this was paid for by the social club, which skimmed money from everyone's wages to raise funds. Norway was a nation with, possibly, the most expensive alcohol in the world. When I opened my first pay slip and saw how much the social club was taking out, I decided that I would have to ensure I got my money's worth. And so, while it's never wise to get drunk around your boss, I found .myself plastered in Magnus's cabin, with Frida, Carsten and Magnus himself. Alex, Josef and Gordon had long since called it a night. Magnus's cabin was as neat and ordered as he was. On the way back from his spotless bathroom, I found a photograph in a frame on his bookcase. Two children, perhaps around nine years old, smiled out at me.

"Are these your children, Magnus?" I asked.

"Yes. Matthias and Nina. They're twins."

I plopped back down into an armchair. "Do they live with your wife?"