A delicate fringe of pale frost trimmed the edge of the water like a lace hem. It was brittle and paper thin, unlikely to survive even a few moments now that the morning light was arriving. But it was a telltale reminder that the temperatures the previous night had plummeted, bringing hours of relentless, unremitting cold that had chilled the men and driven their body temperatures steadily lower. Now, as they lay huddled inside their jackets, the wind blustered around them constantly, the cold air leaching the dampness from the men’s clothes and seeping it into their bones.
“I’ve stopped shivering, Damian.” Domenic’s speech was thick and slurry. “That’s not good, is it?”
“It’s okay. It’ll pass. Hang in there. Help’s on the way. I’m sure Roy is organizing another search.”
Both men were lying on their sides, looking out over the water. The island of vegetation beneath them was now so soggy and waterlogged, that even the slightest extra pressure brought liquid oozing up to fill the depressions. Standing was no longer possible; only by laying on their sides to spread their weight out could they keep the water away from the surface of the matted reeds.
Domenic looked at the dead spruce trees on the horizon, hovering like black spectres. There was something magnificent in the way the landscape had shrugged off any evidence of human presence. The Dene had been criss-crossing this land for centuries, but a person could travel for days and never see a single sign of their passing in this park. Humans left no scar on its rocks, no ripple on its waters.
Damian fished something out from between the reeds near his face. He laid it gently on his open palm and stirred it slightly with the tip of his forefinger. It was a small grey-flecked shard, hard and bright. He lifted himself up higher on his elbow and held the fragment of eggshell out for his brother to see.
“I wonder if this one made it,” he said. “One more crane towards the five hundred. I would have loved to have seen the day we got there. I’ll bet there’ll be champagne flowing all along the migration routes the day that bird hatches.”
Domenic watched as his brother placed the fragment of shell on the reeds again as gently as if it had been a precious gemstone. Five hundred. The magic number at which the Whooping Cranes would be considered to have sufficient numbers for a viable, sustainable wild population. Five hundred wild birds, from an original population of fifteen. It was going to be an astonishing achievement, one of the great conservation stories of all time. And they were almost there. But Damian had given up hope of ever seeing it. He was telling Domenic the time had come for them to stop lying to each other. They were going to die out here. There would be no search flight coming. No rescuers were miraculously going to happen upon them. This place could hide five-foot-tall white birds by the hundreds. A beaver dam nearly a kilometre long had existed undetected in the park for decades until it was accidentally spotted by a passing satellite. What chance then of the discovery of two humans on a floating raft of rotting vegetation in the centre of a vast floodplain?
Death. Domenic had known it for some time, but to hear it in his brother’s words, in the finality, the acceptance of his tone was still a shock. It ran through him like an electric current. The two brothers had been rock climbing once and misjudged the length of the rope. Domenic remembered the sensation as he felt the rope’s end pass through his feed hand. The fall had been no more than a few feet then; a short drop and a sharp, sickening jolt at the end. This time, there was no jolt, no end, just a sensation of spiralling downward that felt as if it would go on forever.
The cold was like a membrane now, coating every inch of the men’s skin. It seemed to seal their chilled cores within them, shutting out any warmth from their clothes or the low, watery sun that filtered through the cloud cover.
“Is there anything you wish you had done differently, Damian?”
His brother peered out over the dark water for so long, Domenic wondered if he had heard him. Or perhaps just decided not to answer. “It’s been a good ride,” said Damian eventually. “I wouldn’t have changed very much of what I did. I would have liked to see that eighth continent, though.”
“Zealandia?”
“Apart from the North and South Islands, it’s mostly underwater, but I would have liked to have been able to say I’d been there, that I’d set foot on all eight continents. I had chances to go. I should have done that.”
“Do you think there’ll ever be agreement about whether it really is another continent?”
“It would have been to me.” Damian pounded a weak fist into his chest. “What’s in here, Domenic. What you feel, what you believe, that’s what’s important. That’s all that matters.”
“I never even got to see the seventh continent,” said Domenic quietly.
“Antarctica? Oh, it’s magnificent. The space, the silence. It’s so, so …” Damian choked back his emotion. “The world is filled with wonderful places and I’ve been so blessed to have seen as many of them as I have.” He recovered himself slightly and lifted up onto an elbow again. “How about you, Domino? Anything you’d like back?”
“Lindy,” said Domenic. “I should have told her what I was doing.” His head rocked sideways a little as he shook it weakly, as if he was in danger of losing control of the action. “I shouldn’t have lied to her, no matter the reason.”
“What I said, the other day, I was wrong. It was a good thing you did. Not just what you gave, but what it cost you.”
Perhaps the true measure of how much you loved something was how much of yourself you were willing to sacrifice for it. The thought had come to him once before, but he couldn’t remember where. He fought to dredge it up from the depths of his memory, but his thoughts were floating, disconnected. He was having trouble concentrating and the effort wearied him. He drifted off to sleep.
The ice-blue sky of the afternoon brought no warmth, and as the sunset painted its first pink brushstrokes on the horizon, the temperature dropped still further. All around them, nature lay in silence. The reeds were still, undisturbed by even a breath of wind. The water was as smooth as soft grey satin. There were no good places to die, but there could be few more peaceful.
“What will it be like?” Domenic’s voice sounded thick, and his speech was slurry again, as if he was having trouble forming his mouth around the words.
Damian looked at his brother. “We’ll just go to sleep. We won’t know anything about it. It’ll be okay.”
“I should leave a note. I want Lindy to know why I left. If she doesn’t know the truth, she’ll never be able to move on. She needs to understand that I did it for her.” Domenic paused and breathed deeply, gathering his resources for the effort of producing more words. “Do you think that chip would mark leather? Maybe I could scrape some words into my boot.”
It was a futile idea. This place consumed human histories. It obliterated them, swallowing them up into its vast, gaping maw and covering them over forever. No one would ever find any trace of the Jejeune brothers out here. No one would ever read Domenic’s etched words to Lindy. But Damian would let his brother hold on to whatever he wanted to now. It made no difference anymore.
“Sure, we can try. But she’ll know anyway, Domenic. Danny Maik will set her straight. He’s a good man. He’ll take care of it.”
“Yes.” Domenic nodded weakly, slurring the word. “A good man.”
Damian withdrew the plastic bag and flipped it across to Domenic. “Here, tomorrow you can write to Lindy, okay?”
Domenic nodded. “Tomorrow. Okay. Lindy.” He tried to think of the words to “Hallelujah” once more. Lindy’s song; his connection to her now that there was nothing else. But the words wouldn’t come; lyrics he’d heard a thousand times floated on the edge of his memory, out of his reach. The fourth, the fifth. What next? The major key, something about falling?
“Thanks.” Damian’s voice dragged Domenic back to the present. “I probably forgot to say it. I usually do.”
For coming, he meant, for undertaking this trip into the heart of the Canadian wilderness to find his brother. “I’m sorry for getting you into all this,” said Damian sincerely. “Seems like you’ve spent your whole life getting me out of one sort of trouble or another. My luck was bound to run out one day. Either you wouldn’t show up at all, or you’d get dragged down with me.”
Domenic raised his head as much as he could to peer over the clump of reeds between them. He wanted to make eye contact with his brother. He needed him to see the truth his mumbled words might not have been able to convey. “I came because I wanted to, Damian. It was my choice.”
“It’s all good, Dom.” Damian drew a shallow breath. “Lay back down now. Tomorrow we’ll write that note, okay?”
“Tomorrow,” agreed Domenic sluggishly. “Not now. We’ll just rest. Is it okay if we just rest for a while, Damian?”
“Sure it is. We’ll just rest for a while.”
Domenic closed his eyes. Lindy was waiting for him. Lindy, smiling, with arms open wide to greet him, ready to gather him in. He moved towards her, as happy as he had ever been to see her; untroubled, content, warm.