The Blue (The Complete Novel) (11 page)

Spots opens his mouth, but it’s only a yawn. A slow, long yawn. And then, he hangs his head down, like he’s submitting himself. Like he wants to be slaughtered. I see the shine of the knife in Russell’s hand when I turn my head. And then, just like that, Russell walks forward, like he wants to take on the seal by himself. I tell Russell no, not to go toward it. That it’s still too powerful for him. Even with the skeletal frame, the seal is enormous, and much heavier than Russell. But Russell walks forward, very slowly, and Spots watches, waiting, ready to die. Both of them ready to die. And I no longer have any say in it. Voley continues to bark, but his barks turn to snarls, and he cautiously trots forward on his three legs, still staying behind Russell, just enough so that he’s not out in front. And then, when I’m about to call to Russell one more time, to yell for him to stop and come back, because I think Spots is holding out on us, and that he’s really much stronger than his starved body looks, Russell freezes. Stops dead still without a word from me, knife raised, and he waits. Waits for Spots to make the first move.

I try to get to my feet to help but I stumble back down. With a second attempt, I manage to stand up by leaning everything on my left side and balancing. I take only one hop-step forward, hoping I can be of use, but Russell tells me to stay back. As if he heard the softest press of snow and movement of the slush when I jumped. And I do—I don’t move another inch forward, and even Voley stops, his fur up and all, but he stops. It’s just the two of them, waiting for the other one to crack.

Spots finally tests Russell. Just one flipper, a wave through the air. Like he’s flapping away the wind that’s beating at him from behind. And Russell’s wild hair blows back toward me, the gust increasing instead of dying down. And then the other flipper—Spots waves the other one, just the same as the first. But nothing more. Not one sign that he’s going to come any farther onto our floe. He doesn’t want to leave the edge, the safety of a sea retreat. And after another minute of motionless standoff, my mind settles to another strange observation—the floe isn’t riding swells. I wait for it, any sign of the movement under my feet, the same rolling we’ve felt for the past two days, but there’s nothing. And I know it can only mean one thing—that the pack is closed tight again. Finally, when I can’t stand it anymore, I tell Russell to back up. And as if on my command, he takes the step back. But as soon as he does, almost at the same time, the seal lurches forward, sliding along with his belly another couple feet onto the floe. Sudden and jerky, but extremely quick. Almost like he was going to bolt, but changed his mind when Russell froze again. When he figured out that Russell wasn’t going to run away.

            “He wants it now,” Russell says, “There’s no putting this off for him.”

            Voley moves forward with his limp, so that he’s side by side with Russell. And then, Russell takes a step forward again, just the same step he lost, reclaiming it, testing the seal. But Spots doesn’t move. He’s not giving up any ground, I tell him, but Russell already knows it. And I curse myself that I lost the pistol in the ocean.

            Part of me wants to dive quickly for the fishing pole, so that I can use it as a weapon, and jab out its eyes, but when I slowly turn my head, just for a minute, to double-check how close it is, I see that it’s too far. And then, I hear a bark. It takes me a startling moment to realize that it wasn’t Voley, but the seal that barked. It barks again, a dog bark, and I yell, Go away Spots! I don’t know why I do it, or what I think I’m doing, but I yell it over again—Go Spots! Get back in the water! Russell shushes me and I shut up, but my cries don’t seem to do a thing anyway. Spots doesn’t move, but then he hangs his head, almost all the way down to the snow, and then, from lowered eyes, he stares. Patiently waiting for us to take our turn.

I’m going to test him—I’m going to back up again, Russell says calmly, Just one step, be ready. And I stand as sturdily as I can, a crazy balancing act, still unable to feel anything in my feet and hardly anything in my hands. And I brace myself, waiting for Russell to do it. The wind blasts us again and doesn’t die off this time, an unending gust. And then, at last, like slow motion, Russell pulls back his left leg and retreats one step.

            Just like that, as if timed to Russell’s movement, the seal jerks forward. Another couple feet, all in one quick burst. But the same as before, he stops himself and arcs up, his back raising his chest off the ice, towering, so that he looks as tall as Russell. And I know now—Spots isn’t going to take back any of his own steps, but with each one Russell gives up in retreat, he’s going to come closer, eating up the distance between us. I tell Russell but he already knows what’s happening, and he tells me there’s only thing to do now, and I need to help him the best I can. Use your thumbs—aim for the eyes, he tells me. I know that the moment I try to do anything I’ll lose my balance and fall to the ice, but I ask if I should try to get the fishing pole for him. Without turning his head around to see where I am, he asks me how far it is from me. I tell him it’s about six feet behind me. No, is all he says, If we go back, the seal charges, it’s not worth it. Then Russell doesn’t say anything more, and the stalemate continues and the only thing that moves is the wind. Right when I think Russell must be changing his mind, and that he’s decided to wait the seal out, and let it retreat to the water on its own, he says it: You ready?

            I tell him I think I am. And then, before he can do anything, in the last moments of the stalemate, I ask what his plan is. And he tells me: I’m going to tackle the son of a bitch to the ground. And with that, I just wait, ready to spring forward, imagining my thumbs sinking into the soft eyes of Spots, blinding him, keeping him from killing Russell and Voley. But it’s not Russell who starts the charge, it’s Voley—all of the sudden, in a three-legged rampage, he stops snarling and darts ahead of Russell. No! I shout, and before the words get out of my mouth and into the icy wind, Voley stops, just a few feet in front of the seal. But the seal doesn’t move, back or forward, and Voley growls with everything he’s got, warning the seal to leave. Spots doesn’t move. And I see why now—his eyes aren’t even on Voley—he’s watching Russell. He’s sized Russell up as our alpha, and Russell’s the only one he’s after. I tell Russell the seal’s looking at him, but Russell doesn’t respond. And then I yell for Voley to come back, but Russell cuts me off. Let him bark, Russell says. If he backs up, the seal will charge. And then he orders me forward, into the gusts: Walk forward with me.

I manage to take steps alongside him, keeping my arms out, embracing the new throbbing pain starting up in my leg again, telling myself I might not need amputations. I watch Spots the whole time I advance, but Spots ignores me. His eyes are on Russell, even with Voley snarling in his face, testing him. And then, without any instigation from us, he comes.

            The giant barrel chest lowers to the ice floor and he spreads out his flippers, sweeping forward in a clean jerk and knocking Voley away. I hear the whimpers but I can’t take my eyes off the beast. I steady my arms, putting all my weight onto my good leg, watching the seal pump forward with everything he has, and then, when he’s right on top of us, and I feel like I’m going to lose control of my limbs from the flooding adrenaline, Russell jumps forward, head on into the seal. They collide and Spots bats Russell away like he’s a doll. I watch the pathetic knife slide across the ice and get stuck in a pool of slush about three feet away from where Russell lands. The seal turns its head to see Russell struggling to get back up, and then, just as it’s about to dive down on him, its mouth open, I fall over right onto its back and grab with all my strength. My fingers slide across the rubber skin and slip, and as soon as I think I have a hold, I slide right down and roll underneath his body.

            I stare up in shock at the white and gray spots on the belly, and wait in terror for the ribs to drop down, hundreds of pounds with them, and crush me dead. The seal barks and rises instead, and I see the slender jaw from below, hanging down, its teeth ready for the death bite. And I have no way to jab its eyes from down here, or do anything at all, but wait, and hope that it doesn’t drop its body back to the ice and squash me. In the pause of terror, as I watch the thing loom over me, ignoring my presence, I hear Russell: he yells at me to roll away now, and like an alarm waking me from stunned terror, I realize he’s right—the body starts to fall back toward me. I twist and kick off with my left hand and leg, and drag my face through fresh snow. I hear the thud but I’m alive, escaped at the last second, and when I start to stand up again, the wind drives snow into my face, blinding me, and I can’t see the seal or Russell. When I blink and rub and can see again, it’s the final charge at Russell. From the ground, Russell stretches just far enough to grab the knife, and at the last moment takes hold of it, then spins onto his back to stare down the death blow. And then comes more barking, and it hits me that it’s not the seal but Voley—and there he is, just like in Blue City, somehow launching himself, this time with only three good legs. He claws part of the way up the slumped seal’s back and starts to slide off, but the assault stops the seal’s attack on Russell. Then, the barks change, high-pitched maddening barks that rise from the seal’s mouth now, and he slaps his flipper around to whip off Voley.

            I stumble forward and trip, putting too much weight on the wrong side, and when I see them again, Voley’s still hanging on somehow, biting and biting the seal’s back and the seal can’t reach him, as hard as he twists—thrashing left and right, and barking, and grinding through the ice—he can’t seem to sweep Voley away. From the corner of my eye I see Russell reach his feet again, position the knife, and make his own charge. It feels like we’re both going to converge on the seal at the same time, and all three of us will take him down, when Voley slides off finally, just before the seal rolls down onto the ice. The seal tumbles and gyrates away over the floe, belly flat and rolling through the slush, and I see no blood on its back—not a single mark. And Voley can’t rise to his feet. It seems impossible, because he slid off in time so he wouldn’t be crushed. And then I realize—Spots’s skin is too tough. Voley couldn’t get through it. Before I can figure out how hurt Voley is, I run right into Russell. His eyes on the seal, making its tumbling escape, and mine on Voley, and I smack right into him—the shock of white lightning sends me reeling, hard down onto the ice. And it’s when we’re down, trying to figure out what happened, that the seal rises up, like he wants to show us it really isn’t starving, that he’s still as massive as ever compared to us. His jaw opens again, showing the same teeth I’ve seen so many times now—canine fangs—and his eyes gleam wild with the same hunger and desperation that must be in ours. He strikes one time, with a single clean bark, into the ice with its flipper. After the impact he jolts forward, like a spring released, right on top of us, and then he plows down. I try to wait until the last second to try to evade, unsure if he’s coming down on me or Russell or both of us at the same time. I flick my eyes over to see if Russell’s still got the knife, but I don’t see it, and I close my eyes and roll at the last moment. And then, I hear the thunder: Tremendous, like the Sea Queen killing storm of Michigan is back to finally claim us after all, a hurricane angry because it’s been robbed of its victims, and after a 4,000 mile hunt, knowing we owed our lives to it, it finally found us. But then I know, by the sensation of a cold wet splash, and the salt in my mouth, that it’s the ice cracking, and no storm. The seal’s barks disappear with the incoming vortex of icy water, and the rain sea spits up and then rushes along the snow under me. I dig in with my hands and knees, scurrying away as fast as I can, like I’m escaping some kind of land slide. By the time I get my senses back, and realize that I’m alive, and that the floe has split apart again, I see my worst nightmare.

            I’m alone, on my own floe, with a wide lead of water separating me from all the other bergs. Russell lies, unmoving, on the next floe over. The knife is still in his hand, barely, just loosely clutched, limp at his side. I rack my brain to remember if the seal hit Russell, landed on him, pulverized his insides with its weight, but I can’t remember anything but the collision and then the thunder. And then I see just how bad things have become, when I scan for the sign of the seal’s whiskered head poking up out of the water. I don’t see Spots at all, just Voley. And he’s alone. Up again, and limping around, but isolated by the open ocean even more than Russell and I are from each other.

            I gather myself and rise to my feet, working slowly in disbelief over to the edge of the floe, intent to jump in, and swim to them, bring them each to me. But as I stare into the water, the white and gray form slides past. Quick but patient, unsure about the tiny floes left above water that we’re all stuck on now. It wants me to come in, I realize. And I pause—unsure if I should dive and swim like mad for Russell’s floe, and somehow claw my way up the floe shelf. Each moment that passes makes me feel like I’m wasting Voley’s life, and Russell’s, and I have to do something right now or we’ll be split apart forever. Russell! I scream. But he doesn’t make a sound and he doesn’t raise his head. I shout again. Russell! Russell get up! Say something! Say something!

            I try every way I can to get him to talk to me, to move, but he’s quiet and still. And Voley starts to whine from his floe, like he knows he’s drifting even farther apart from us with each passing minute. I look around in desperation and take in the weight of our horrible luck and it makes me cough and cry and feel my gut slip down and out of my body. It’s like Spots knew all along, and he was just toying with us—knew that there was a movement in the pack with all the wind, and it was weakening the floes from underneath, where he could see it happening—and the floes just waiting for the impact they needed from the seal’s body to complete the final split. And then, just when I think I hear something, that it might be Russell, and that he’s finally coming to, I realize it’s coming from the wrong direction. From directly behind me. Not where Voley is, and not where Russell is—but from another fragment of the old floe. When I turn around, I see Spots. Watching from me from his belly. Back up on the ice. He nods his head side to side, like he’s dancing again because of the adrenaline the break caused. It looks like he’s unsure about whether or not he wants to press his attack now that we’re isolated on the small cakes of ice. I keep my eyes on him, only glancing away every few seconds to see if Russell’s moving, or if Voley is drifting closer again. But both of them seem to be drifting farther out from me. Too far to swim to with Spots watching me. But then I realize, Spots will just go after either one of them, and then that’d be the same thing. So I have to risk myself and swim. Because it doesn’t make a difference now, one way or the other. But as much as I know I should, it starts to set in—don’t get in that water. It’s suicide.