Page 2 of Polar Destiny
The noises behind me have stopped, but I drag on. I’ve lost all feeling in my face, and my eyelids are threatening to freeze shut. Frozen tears stick to my cheeks. I'm not sure how much longer I canwalk.
The sky is getting brighter. Is that just the fog lifting or is daylight finally arriving? My legs are continuing to walk, while my mind is drifting. If I die now, will the sea swallow me once the ice melts? Will I sink to the ocean floor and slowly decompose? Will fish eat myflesh?
The fog is clearing. There's something in the distance.Land.
There are cracks in the ice, shaped like lightning. They are everywhere. I look down and they are getting bigger. Water is pouring through them, melting the snow covering the ice. There's something beneath the ice. I bend forward, blinking to get the ice from my lashes. A face... I stare at my own drowning self. The ice cracks and I'm falling, falling into the depths, and - there is no water. I'm kneeling on the ice. No cracks. I must be goingcrazy.
I'm crawling. Not muchfurther.
Land.
Somehow in my stupor, I know that I can't lie down in the snow. I find a fallen tree. Bed. I collapse on it and surrender to the whiteness ofwinter.
Two
I'm no longer cold.In fact, I'm nice and toasty. A little sore, but I’malive.
Something soft is wrapped around me and heat is warming my face. I blink my eyes open. Orange and red burst through my vision. A fire is sitting in the middle of - where am I? I try to sit up, only to notice that I can't move. Trapped! I panic. In my muddled state of mind, it takes me a minute to think of looking down at myself. I sigh in relief. I'm wrapped in furs, lots of them. I really rock the caterpillar look. I try and squeeze one arm out of the fur burrito, then the other, until I can finally sit up. I'm lying in the middle of a wooden room - wooden ceilings, wooden walls, a wooden floor, wooden shelves and furniture. It even smells of wood. Everything is brown and rustic, in a charming way. In the middle of the room is a fire pit. A little dangerous to have an open fire in a house made from wood, if you ask me. But it's warm, so I don't care. After last night, all I care about is no longer beingcold.
I extract myself from the rest of the furs - and notice I'm in my underwear.Nothing butmy underwear. Whoever put me in this cabin must have undressed me. I hope it was a girl. Really, really hope. No man has ever seen me naked. It's not proper. I frantically look around the cabin for something to cover myself in - something that isn't furs. As warm as they are, I'm already getting sweaty from the heat. Behind the fireplace is a large window (with a wooden frame, of course), looking out into a snowy landscape. The house seems to be at the edge of a forest. There aren’t many forested islands; I’ve never seen that many trees in oneplace.
Icicles hang outside the glass, beautiful and deadly. I once treated a patient who was hit on the head by an icicle, and have had a healthy respect for them ever since. To my left is a table and matching chairs, seemingly made from hand. And there, on the table, are my clothes, neatly folded. I've never been so happy in all my life to see clothes. They're nothing special, but theycover.
After I've put them on, I continue my exploration. There are two doors opposite each other. One of them must lead outside, judging from the mud splatters on the floor in front of it. I have no desire to go out into the cold again, so I decide to investigate the rest of the house. The other door leads to a small kitchen - if you can call a camping stove, a wobbly cupboard and a few plates stacked on the floor a kitchen. Let's call it a cooking room. Muchbetter.
There's a ladder leading up through a hole in the ceiling. Is that anattic?
Ascreetch signalsthe opening of the frontdoor.
"Hello?" a male voice calls. "Shit,where–"
A guy comes into the room. Oh my. He's gorgeous. His blond hair falls down to the thick lashes circling his pale blue eyes, his jaw has just the right angles, and his beautiful, full lips are saying - "There you are! I was worried you may have gone outside. It's cold out there, and you could have easily got lost. I almost got lost when we first got here, no paths, yousee?"
I stare at him. Is he forreal?
"Sorry, I'm not used to strangers, and I'm babbling. Sorry. I'll stop now." He pauses, then grins and bursts out: "How are youfeeling?"
"I'm...eh...who areyou?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Finn. Finnean, really, but everybody calls me Finn." He does a short bow, which makes me stare at him even more. "And who do I have the pleasure of talkingto?"
"Isla, my name is Isla. Do you livehere?"
He looks around himself as if he's not quite sure about something. Then he nods. "Yes, me and my friends. They're outside now, but should be back soon..." He still looksdistracted.
"Was it you who found me on thebeach?"
"What? No, that was Torben, the... my friend. He was out for a walk when he spotted you lying in the snow. You looked pretty blue. I mean blue. And pretty. Aargh. Sorry, I haven't talked to a girl in a while." He grins at me, sheepishly. He motions for me to follow him back into the living room. The fire is calling to me, and I sit down on the furs next to him. The light of the fire makes his hair look almost golden. He's beautiful in a fine, angelic kind of way. An angel with quite a bit of muscle - stop it, Isla. He could be anyone. I mean, who lives on an island with just friends? How do theysurvive?
He clears his throat. Adorable. "So, what brought you to thisisland?"
"Well, I kind of had to leave my home, and the sea was frozen, so I just started to walk - and eventually ended up here. I didn't really think it through. It was probably a mistake, but... I couldn't staythere."
"Why?" he asks softly, his eyes meetingmine.
"I was supposed to do something that I didn't want to do." I pause and laugh humourlessly. Ok, that sounded like I was a child who didn't want to do her chores. “Actually, my uncle wanted me to marry a guy from our community. And I didn't want that. That man... he scares me. I couldn'tstay."
He's still looking straight into my eyes, and somehow I've got the feeling that they've told him a lot more about what brought me here than mywords.
