Whyborne
Our journey took us upriver from the Yukon delta, using the frozen river as a road. The sun glowered from low in the south for a brief time, long after we’d set out. By the end of the first day, I found myself torn between misery and wonder, two sensations that only increased the farther we traveled.
When on smooth ice, the sled hissed across it without trouble, but any little bump or irregularity jolted me to the bone. The wind turned the cold from tolerable to brutal.
Fortunately, we had fur robes to spread over us. Griffin and I cocooned ourselves within them in order to share the heat of our bodies, so wrapped only our eyes showed. Jack’s long whip cracked past us on occasion, and he shouted commands at the dogs in one of the native tongues. Within an hour, the muscles of my legs ached, but the narrow sled gave me little room to move, especially with Griffin tucked in front of me.
But the astonishing beauty of the landscape almost made up for the discomfort. Forests of spruce stood tall beneath their winter burden of snow. Occasionally, a loud crack like a gunshot would sound from within the trees as frost shattered a limb. Eagles and ravens milled overhead, and white clad mountains reached ponderously toward the sky. Each twist and turn of the river revealed some new vista of startling majesty.
When we stopped to camp the first night, just after sunset, I found myself so stiff I could barely crawl out of the sled. Jack noticed and levered me to my feet with one of his cheerful grins. “What do you think of Alaska, Dr. Whyborne?”
“It’s beautiful,” I confessed. “Although I’d preferred to have visited in summer.”
“Don’t be certain.” The blaze of the campfire coming to life painted the side of his face in gold and gleamed from the pale fur lining his hood. “During the summer, the mosquitos are so bad your eyes will swell almost closed from the bites.”
“Surely not.” He must be having a joke at my expense.
“I swear it’s true. They can kill a caribou calf in particularly bad years.” His expression shifted into something more wistful. “This is a harsh land, and the hard men filling it are the least of its dangers. Grizzly bears, cold, starvation, scurvy, disease, a fall through the ice into freezing water...there are a thousand ways to die here.”
“So why come?” I asked.
He shrugged. “The same reason anyone else comes here. The promise of a better life.”
“By which you mean gold.”
“Of course.”
“But you stayed,” I pressed. “Griffin said you came here as part of the Klondike stampede in ‘98. You’ve had plenty of opportunity to leave since, if it isn’t to your liking.”
“But there are so many reasons to stay,” he said, his voice taking on a lighter air. “I’d miss the hospitable climate, the beautiful women, and the abundant supply of moose. I’m afraid I’ve quite grown fond of the taste, you see.”
I recognized his tactic only because it was one Griffin used, deflecting my questions with some foolish answer. But I could hardly demand answers from Jack as I could Griffin, so I only responded with a laugh and let the subject drop.
We gathered for dinner around the fire shortly thereafter. Like lunch, it consisted of bacon and beans, with some tinned tomatoes to prevent scurvy. Even if I hadn’t been ravenous, I would have made certain to clean my plate of my portion of the latter. I’d heard of the horrors of the disease, although I’d always associated it with long ship voyages, and had no wish to encounter them first hand.
As we ate, green light flashed across the sky. The flashes grew stronger, and soon a curtain of brilliant illumination waved above us, obscuring the stars.
“The Northern Lights,” Christine observed. The greenish light gave her skin a sickly tint.
“They are rather beautiful,” Iskander said.
“How are you adjusting to this cold climate, if I might ask?” I said.
His Egyptian features looked rather odd juxtaposed with the fur-lined hood, the heavy parka, and the thick mittens he’d pulled back on as soon as he set his fork aside. “It’s been a challenge,” he admitted. “But the scientific knowledge at stake gives me purpose.”
“Well said,” Christine agreed, giving him a fond look. No doubt she thought his declaration the height of romance. Jack looked somewhat taken aback, and Griffin hid his grin behind his coffee.
Due to the snowy ground, the fire had to be built on top of a platform of green logs. The heat gradually melted the snow beneath, causing the logs to sink. The flames began to hiss and die away. “We should get to bed,” Jack said. The guides had pitched tents, one for themselves, one for Christine, and a third for the rest of our party. “Make certain not to leave anything leather where the dogs can get to it. They’ll eat your coat, your boots, their own traces, and anything else they can get their teeth into.”
I stared at the milling dogs in alarm. They’d devoured their dinner of dried fish, and seemed to be settling in for the night, a process conducted with a great deal of snapping and snarling. I’d never interacted much with dogs—not to say I bore any dislike for them, only that they were so large and noisy, always jumping about and barking. I preferred the companionship of quieter creatures. “Will they? Why?”
He shrugged. “It’s in their nature. I’ve seen them ignore a lovely dinner of fish in favor of tearing apart an old rawhide coat some poor cheechako left in their reach.”
“Cheechako?”
“Tenderfeet. Newcomers.” Jack grinned at me. “Stay long enough, and you’ll transform into an old sourdough like me.”
“No thank you,” I said with a shudder. I’d no desire to linger in this place any longer than necessary. As I glanced away, I noticed the guides exchanging grins and rolling their eyes. At my expense, no doubt.
Exhausted as I was, the thought of sharing a tiny tent with four other men barely troubled me. Before I could stumble in its direction, however, Griffin said, “I wish to observe the aurora a bit longer. Walk with me, Whyborne?”
“You’ll see it plenty,” Jack said from the entrance to the tent. “Soon enough you’ll barely even notice it anymore.”
“Then I should appreciate it while the phenomenon is still of interest,” Griffin replied with a smile. “Don’t worry—we won’t go far.”
Griffin led the way from the dying fire. The dogs had settled in the snow, tails tucked over their noses. As we passed, one of them raised her head and let out a soft whine.
“Shh.” Griffin scratched her behind the ears. Her tail thumped once, before she settled in again.
We pushed through the heavy snow for a short distance, until Griffin stopped at the edge of the frozen expanse of the river. I shivered in my parka, missing the fire and our fur robes already.
Still...perhaps I might do something about the cold. “Hold up a moment,” I said, and crouched down. I dug through the snow awkwardly with my mittened hands, until I came to the frozen ground. An old flood had left a number of smooth, round river rocks exposed on the bank.
“What on earth are you doing?” Griffin asked in amusement. “Or has the snow already left you desperate to see bare earth?”
“Not quite. I’m going to try to warm us up a bit.” I stripped off my mittens and winced at the instant bite of freezing air against skin. Laying my hands against the iron-hard ground was even worse, but I ignored the pain. Focusing my will, I whispered the secret name of fire.
A moment later, I snatched my hands back with a startled curse. “Ah! I think I burned myself.”
Griffin caught my hand and inspected my palm. “No. It just seemed like it from the difference in temperature.” He reached down and pulled a stone free from the now-thawed earth. “Brilliant!” He handed it to me. This time it only felt wonderfully warm against my skin.
We tucked the heated stones inside our coats, alongside the canteens our bodies kept from freezing. “We’ll have to find some way of comfortably wearing them in our boots,” Griffin said with a grin. “A shame we can’t share them with the rest of the company.”
“Indeed.” And finding a private moment to heat them again would likely prove difficult. Still, at the moment I felt warmer than I had all day.
Griffin leaned against me, his head tilted back to stare at the aurora. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I looked down at him. The ethereal light reflected in his eyes, green on green. “Yes.”
His lips curved in a smile that told me he knew I hadn’t referred to the aurora. I leaned down and kissed him gently, his mouth hot as a brand after the cold air.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” he whispered against my lips. “Being in such close proximity, unable to touch or hold you...”
“A good reason to get this business wrapped up as quickly as possible,” I agreed as I drew back.
“Indeed.” He regarded me carefully. “How are you feeling?”
“I miss the sea already,” I confessed.
“And your sensation of weakness?”
I tilted my head back. The aurora flickered and danced madly, hints of red and white creeping into the green. I didn’t want to admit it—hadn’t wanted to admit it to begin with—but I owed him my honesty. “Still there. As though I’m on the verge of coming down with some mild illness. But I think I’m adapting—it’s not as noticeable as before.”
Griffin caught my mittened hand in his. “I’m sorry, my dear.”
“It isn’t your fault. If the accursed Endicotts hadn’t forced me to touch the maelstrom...but they did, and there’s no complaining about it now.” I leaned against him. “May I ask...how have your nightmares been as of late?”
He’d waked me once or twice on our voyage, but no more than usual. Still, I couldn’t help but worry for him. Given the shame he seemed to feel over his fits, I feared he wouldn’t confess even this lesser form of disturbance if I didn’t ask about it directly.
“Unchanged,” he said with a shrug. “Hopefully I won’t wake anyone in the tent with my thrashing about.”
And with Jack in the tent with us, I wouldn’t be able to hold Griffin and calm him, should some worse fit strike. “I’m sure you won’t,” I said firmly. “Did you manage to tell Iskander about the attack on me?”
“I whispered the details and our suspicions in his ear while we unpacked the tinned tomatoes,” he said. “He’ll tell Christine tomorrow. With any luck, we’ll have no further trouble, but...”
“When have we ever had luck?” I finished wryly. “But for now, there’s no point worrying. I think we’re as safe as it’s possible to be, out here in the wilderness.”
Griffin turned back the way we’d come, then paused. “May I ask what you think of Jack?”
“I haven’t spoken with him much, but he seems kind. A bit rough around the edges, but less so than our guides, certainly.” I related the scene I’d witnessed on the docks, when Jack had prevented the swindler from taking advantage of the young prospector. When I finished, Griffin stood in silence for a moment.
“Yes,” he said slowly. He looked up at me, and his smile returned. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome. It seemed very much like something you would have done, in his place. Perhaps you have more in common than looks.”
Griffin’s smile turned sly. “Oh? Do you mean to say you find him handsome?”
Thank heavens the hood hid the reddening tips of my ears from him. “No, of course not.”
His snort turned to ice in the air. “You’re a terrible liar, my dear.” He stepped away from me, the snow groaning beneath his weight. “We should return to camp. Tomorrow will be another long day, and more to come after, until we reach Hoarfrost.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered, and followed him to our tent.