The Quality of Silence (28 page)

‘The sun hurls solar wind at us. It travels at millions of miles an hour towards us. Sometimes it throws a coronal mass ejection towards us. And it’s about ten billion tons of plasma, which is the same as a hundred thousand battleships and it can be as wide as thirty million miles. And these ejections mean solar wind comes at us at supersonic speed.’

Ruby nodded. Yasmin saw that she was watching the lights now.

‘The Earth has a magnetic shield all the way around it. An invisible bubble. It’s called the magnetosphere. The solar wind hits the shield. And that’s what we’re watching now. Those lights are the shield protecting our planet.’

As Ruby looked at the sky, Yasmin thought about the metal at the core of the Earth creating a magnetic field as the Earth turned, which travelled for thousands of miles into space and protected them.

For the first time the darkness around them was alive with colours.

The emailed photos of animals and birds, despite their menace, had allowed Yasmin to trust Matt, and Ruby’s blog had given her some understanding of why he’d want to be in Alaska, but when she had seen the unparalleled beauty of the night sky here, when she’d seen Polaris and known that she was on the axis of the Earth, when she saw the aurora borealis playing out a cosmic battle in the heavens above her, she shared Matt’s passion for this place. She’d come to the other side of the world for this in winter too and her trust in him went deeper.

Then the lights stopped and they were back in darkness.

She saw two small blue moons in her mirror. She thought it was an optical trick, because surely this couldn’t be true. He couldn’t be coming after them.

The blue headlights were vividly clear behind them.

Why would he risk being found so close to them? Surely he’d listened to the CB, heard the police say they would get her and Ruby after the storm. For crying out loud, the man had gone on the CB earlier and talked to the police himself. She remembered his lies, the stranger’s voice that was familiar, saying that he was going south, not north; that he’d passed her thirty miles back and there was no one behind her. He’d even given a precise sham location, MP 174. At the time she hadn’t thought about how specific he’d been. But now it felt wrong. She was afraid that scrutiny would bring forth something frightening, but had no choice but to think this through.

So he’d given his location, MP 174. That hadn’t seemed particularly important; just a false detail in a larger lie. And then he said he’d passed her thirty miles back. Doing the maths – which surely the police would have done – her position at thirty miles further north of him would put her at MP 204.

She paused for no more than ten seconds, to look at Adeeb’s map. MP 204

was at least forty miles south of where they had actually been. He hadn’t just been falsifying his own location, he’d been falsifying theirs.

But surely to God she’d told the police where they were. Surely they’d asked for her location. No, because they thought they already knew it from the helpful tanker driver. And she’d been too preoccupied and frightened to think clearly.

She remembered the building wind and snow, the outriders of the storm, as he’d lied to the police; an hour later it had hit at full force. The police would assume that she’d have driven ten miles at most in those conditions. They’d never think that they’d crossed the Atigun Pass.

The police were looking for her and Ruby south of the Brooks mountains. No one was looking for them out here on the northern tundra.

The tanker man is behind us again. But the police will get to us soon and they will find him and put him in jail, but first Mum’ll make them take us to get Dad.

It feels even darker because the aurora borealis was in the sky and now it’s gone it’s left a shadow of itself, like another layer of dark.

The river-road is getting narrower and narrower and I think this is a little bit what growing up is like. You can’t turn around and go back, even if you’re frightened and really want to. You can never be a little Reception child again.

It’s getting colder outside. Mr Azizi’s thermometer says it’s nearly minus thirty.

Yasmin had to keep Ruby away from the tanker driver. But the faster she drove away from him, the nearer they came to the man who’d sent the emails.

She and Ruby weren’t wearing seat belts. If the truck did go through the ice, she didn’t know how long they would have to get out. She did know, from Adeeb, that once you went in the water you died of hypothermia long before you had time to drown.

Under threat from behind and in front and underneath she looked up at the stars, but they could no longer comfort her or make her brave. Instead, she felt her cowardice. It was her lack of courage that meant Ruby was in such danger.

Ever since the policeman in Fairbanks told her that Matt was dead, she hadn’t dared to stop moving, but had gone forwards, ignoring everyone, risking Ruby’s safety, going forwards to find him because she was too afraid to stand still and look at their facts. It wasn’t just that Matt needed her to rescue him, but that she desperately needed him and wasn’t brave enough to face a life without him.

In the storm, she’d believed that Matt was safe in an aputiak. But where was the proof? All she’d had, all she’d ever had, was faith, which by its very nature meant no evidence to support it. Faith was made up of love and hope and trust, nothing else.

When she’d received those horrifying photos, she’d chosen to believe it was because Matt was alive and this man didn’t want her to find him. But now she wondered where the logic had been in that.

Mum’s made me put on all my arctic clothes. She’s driving while she puts on her outdoor things so I’m helping her. I put on my face mask and goggles, but Mum doesn’t put hers on yet because she won’t be able to see clearly to drive.

The truck abruptly stopped. Yasmin pushed her foot hard down on the accelerator pedal but nothing happened. She felt something dragging them backwards. She looked out of her window. She heard groaning and the cab was tilting. Their load had broken through the ice and was sinking.

I’m taking the torch like Mum said I should, but I’ve also got my laptop. I tuck it inside my parka then I jump down onto the ice. Mum is throwing our food in a bag down onto the ice and she’s clambering down too and she’s holding the flare and Mr Azizi’s sleeping bag.

The house is tipping down and making a big hole in the ice; our bag of food goes through and now our house is going through too, a bit at a time, like it’s in slow motion. My bracelet is vibrating so our truck must be making a loud noise as it sinks. The headlights tilt upwards into the sky, like they’re search beams. And then they go into the water too.

Mum and me are running because the ice is cracking all around us and we jump over the cracks. Now everything is blue.

I look behind us and see it’s the tanker’s headlights that are making everything blue. The river must be really deep because you can’t even see our house or our cab any more.

The blue light is fading because the tanker’s headlights are shrinking. He must be reversing. I think he’s afraid that the ice will crack more and he’ll go through and then it will be one jumbo hole, with him in it as well.

Mum’s holding my hand and we’re running away from the tanker and over the ice. I’ve got a stitch and Mum must know because we just walk for a bit, still holding hands, and then we run again and then walk again.

When they’d jumped out of the sinking cab, Yasmin had heard a shot but Ruby didn’t know the tanker driver had fired at them. She hurried Ruby away over the creaking cracking ice. When she thought they’d gone about half a mile, she stopped. They were surely out of range of his bullets now and the ice around them was stable.

She knelt down on the ice and tried to unwrap Adeeb’s emergency flare, Ruby shining the torch so she could see. But her gloved fingers couldn’t tear off the flimsy wrapping, so she took off the gloves off and worked wearing liners. She panicked that she didn’t have matches, but found that the lid of the container could be used to strike the end of the flare. It took six strikes before it caught. The flare went into the sky, crimson red, a trail of light behind it. She hurriedly replaced her gloves.

She and Ruby watched the red flare as it stayed in the night sky, as if it had joined the stars. Maybe the police had widened their search and would spot it or perhaps other planes were flying again and one of them would see it. The flare fizzled out and it was just stars above them again.

She guessed that the man who’d sent the emails was only about half a mile away and he would have seen the flare. But she’d had to try to get help. With no shelter or way of keeping warm, Ruby wouldn’t survive for long. They had Ruby’s laptop, but without a satellite terminal it was useless to them.

Crouched on the ice, Ruby took off her gloves and opened her laptop. Wearing her silk glove liners, she typed:

Shall I tell you the story about the raven? The one Inupiat people believe in?

I’d love to hear the story. Why don’t you try typing with the special gloves Dad got us?

I can’t type in gloves. Liners will be fine for a bit, Mum. When my fingers get cold I’ll put on my gloves.

At the beginning of time, Raven made the world with the beating of his wings. There’s a long bit about a sparrow but I’ll skip that bit because it isn’t the best bit.

Ok.

Raven loved all the people and animals he’d made and wanted to know more about them. One day when Raven was out paddling in his kayak he saw a whale and when the whale yawned he paddled inside.

The whale closed his mouth and it was very dark. Raven kept on paddling till he came to the white ribs of the whale rising up all around him. Dad said the white ribs were like ivory columns. And in the middle there was a beautiful girl who was dancing.

I need to put on my gloves now.

Ruby put on her gloves and they walked in large circles, swinging their arms. Yasmin flashed on Adeeb’s torch to see where they were going, then hurriedly turned it off. They needed to conserve the torch battery. She should have thought of bringing something to start a fire, for light as much as warmth. She put her hand on Ruby to slow her down. They had to keep their circulation going but not sweat, because sweat would evaporate off their skin, draining their bodies of heat, hastening hypothermia. She’d feared sweating when she and Ruby had run away from the tanker driver and the cracking ice, and so had made them walk as well as run.

She kept looking at the sky, hoping to see small moving lights of a plane or a helicopter that had spotted their flare, but there was nothing.

Ruby was crouching on the ice again, typing on the laptop in her glove liners.

Why aren’t the police here?

I’m sure they will be soon. Someone will have seen our flare. It’s a lovely story. Can you tell me the rest of it in sign?

But we’d have to use the torch for you to see my hands and we’d be using up the battery.

Raven saw that there were strings attached to the dancing girl’s feet and hands. The strings were also attached to the whale’s heart.

Raven fell in love with the girl and he took off his beak and showed her his human face.

Raven wanted to take the beautiful coolio girl out of the whale and marry her. But the girl said she couldn’t leave the whale because she was the whale’s heart and soul.

My fingers are too cold.

Ruby stopped typing and put on her gloves over her liners. She closed the laptop. With the laptop shut it was completely dark.

Yasmin heard Ruby’s voice in the darkness.

‘The beautiful girl danced inside the whale. Raven saw that when she danced fast the whale swam fast and when she danced slowly the whale swam slowly.’

Ruby’s oral voice was quiet and hesitant but clear. Yasmin thought that she’d been waiting for this moment for years, but Ruby had been using her voice since she first learned to sign, only Yasmin hadn’t been listening.

‘Raven forgot the girl couldn’t leave the whale and he picked her up and flew her outside.’

I don’t like doing this at all; making my mouth into shapes and doing special teeny movements with my tongue and teeth and lips and hoping the right noises are coming out as words. But it’s the only way of talking in the dark. Mum is holding my hand tightly and that’s one good thing about mouth-talking, we can hold hands at the same time. But I can’t hear anything Mum says back to me, maybe that’s why she’s holding my hand.

I’ve been practising with Voice Magic and Dragon Dictate. I say something and I look at what gets typed and then I keep on trying. I use a mirror too, like my speech therapist tells me to, and put my hand on my throat to feel the vibrations and in front of my mouth to feel the little puffs of air. Some days my typed words stay gobbledygook. But some days it gets better. It was nice and private and I could do it when I wanted to and no one else was there to hear me make mistakes. Or to hear me do well. I want my mouth-voice to just be something I choose to do. I hope Mum can understand the story.