Waiting for Unicorns (13 page)

I stared down at the face of the girl in the picture, soaking her up. Memorizing my mom's younger face. Her short hair. Her fearless eyes.

“Thank you, Sura,” I said. “I think this might be the best birthday gift ever.”

I glanced at the clock that hung on the kitchen wall, shocked to see it was already ten fifteen. My birthday was almost over and I still hadn't heard from Dad. His usual call-in time was eight
P.M.
, but more than two hours had passed and the radio remained silent. It wasn't like him and we both knew it. Why hadn't he called? Had something happened? Had he forgotten?

Sura must have noticed the worried look on my face.

“I'm sure you'll hear from him soon, Talia,” she said. “Maybe he had a long day and just fell asleep.”

“Maybe,” I said. But I wasn't so sure. I was about to head to bed when Sura stopped me.

“There is one last thing.” Sura stood up, nodded toward the window. “Come outside with me,” she said.

“Why?”

“Just come.”

I pulled my coat from its hook and followed Sura out onto the porch. We were so far north—so far from the equator—that the closer we got to spring, the longer the daylight lasted. But the hours had ticked quietly by while we made dinner and sat at the table opening presents, and now darkness had drawn over everything like a heavy blanket.

Sura stood at the rail looking up into the night sky. At first I couldn't see anything because my eyes were used to the light of the kitchen. But after a minute they adjusted to the darkness and the sky came alive.

“It's like magic,” I whispered, and Sura smiled.

“Of course,” she said. “Churchill is magic. And it's putting on a show tonight. In honor of your birthday.”

It was spring and the perpetual darkness of winter was fading into the light. But even so, the aurora borealis, the northern lights, danced like pale ghost flames above us. Red and green and white, they shivered and sashayed over the night sky. They began in a straight line across the horizon and stretched upward toward the highest point in the sky—that point where a globe would have spun on its axis. I knew a little about them from my science classes back home. Something about sun storms and the earth's magnetism. I couldn't remember it all, but even if I did, no scientific explanation could have prepared me for the light display that night over Churchill, Manitoba.

I stood staring up at the twilight sky, watching the patterns shift and change, and I was so lost in the beauty of it that I jumped when Sura broke the silence.

“The Inuit say that a great abyss lies at the edge of the world,” she said. “A narrow way spans it, and those who have died are guided carefully across to a place of great rest.” She paused. “There's no pain or disease there. Spirits guard the way across the abyss, guiding souls to paradise and lighting the way with brilliant torches.” She smiled and looked up.

There was a quietness, a kind of deep-down stillness inside me as I watched the lights dance, backtracking, repeating themselves in indistinguishable patterns and shifting colors. They were so bright they actually cast a glow over the crusty, glazed snow.

As I stood there, I thought about Sura's story. Mom had said that people make up stories to help them explain things they can't believe, or to help them believe things they can't explain. To help them understand. And people dying is a pretty hard thing to understand. It made sense that the Inuit had their own story for this very thing.

An hour later, when Dad still hadn't called, I finally went to bed. I told myself that it was probably because he was on his way back. Why call when he would see me in just a few hours?

As I lay in bed, the aurora borealis dancing outside my window, I clutched the picture of my mom's young face against my chest, against the necklace Dad had given me. And I fell asleep like that, holding onto both of them for dear life.

EVERY DAY NEW PEOPLE WERE
arriving in Churchill, which was ironic because amid the dozens and dozens of new faces in town, the one face I kept looking for was still absent. I had hoped Dad would surprise me by returning early, even though it was unlikely, but he hadn't come home yet and he still hadn't called. Dad's absence was beginning to feel like a toothache—always there, always throbbing and making it difficult to think about anything else for very long. And I was beginning to get worried.

I tried to distract myself by spending time with Simon. When we weren't out bird-watching, we were people watching, and there was a lot to see. The tourists traveled by train or plane, and a few by boat. They came like they knew spring was only weeks away, eager to see the wildlife that would appear out of hiding as the snow melted. Eager for the promise of arctic adventure. They came to see the bears and to explore Churchill's history.

But mostly, people came for the whales. They came knowing of their absence. At least, some of them did. A few were surprised and disappointed, but no one was deterred. It was the talk of the town, Churchill's missing whales, and it created a contagious sense of mystery. Each morning people would line the shore along the bay's estuary and wait, searching the cloudy waters for white whales.

Simon thought the tourists were silly. They were so excited about the absence of the very thing they'd come to see. But I think I understood how they felt, how just the hope of something can pull at you. I felt sorry for them. And I felt sorry for myself, because I was waiting, too.

That morning, as I tore another paper loop from my chain, I realized there were only seventeen loops left. It was the twentieth of June. Dad had been gone for twenty-five days, and out on the bay, the ice was shifting from opaque white to steel gray. It was getting thin, tired of fighting against the growing warmth.

Back in Woods Hole it was summer. Here in Churchill, spring was still on its way, but it was coming so fast I was afraid I might actually miss it. In the north, spring is already right on top of you once the ice breaks apart, running massive chunks aground as the tide goes out. But just before the ice begins breaking up, fierce warm winds come rushing out of the south. It was a sure sign of change, that wind, and it would blow warm and fast, eating up the snow and ice.

The spring winds arrived just after my birthday, and the morning they came, I knew something was different even before I got out of bed. I could hear the wind racing around the blue house, rattling the windows and skittering over the shingles. And when an especially fierce gust buffeted against the house, the staircase would let out a funny kind of groan, like it was protesting all the exuberance outside. Everything felt all stirred up and it made me anxious, like I needed to dance around, and I'm not normally the twirling type.

When I was little, Dad used to hold tight to my wrists and spin me around until my feet flew off the ground. I'd get dizzy and all twirled up, inside and out. All I could see was my dad's laughing face and the world spinning away in a kind of breathless blur.

That's what it was like today as I sat with Simon. A happy, breathless blur.

It had been a week since I kissed him and neither of us had said anything about it. The more time that passed, the more I was afraid I'd ruined something. Maybe Simon hadn't wanted me to kiss him. He might even be mad about it.

I hadn't done it on purpose, exactly. It was just that he was so great, and there on the shore after he wished for unicorns for me, my mouth just took over and did the kissing before the rest of me had a chance to decide whether it was a good idea or not. So I thought I should apologize. Plus I felt a little nervous and shy about the whole thing.

“I'm sorry I kissed you,” I told him.

“You're sorry?” He looked so disappointed I realized maybe he wasn't mad. Maybe I hadn't ruined anything after all.

“Well,” I hesitated, “I guess I'm only sorry if you are.”

Simon grinned, running a hand through his hair until it stuck up on just one side, the way I liked it.

“I'm not sorry,” he said, still grinning. “You can kiss me anytime you like.” And he looked like he might burst into song.

I felt so relieved, I sat down next to Simon, feet dangling off the edge of the porch. Beside me, Simon strummed his guitar, singing softly under his breath. I closed my eyes and leaned back, hands folded behind my head.

“This is nice,” I said to no one in particular. It had been a long time since I felt this comfortable with someone. The only thing keeping it all from being completely great, keeping me from feeling completely at ease, was Dad. Every time I walked past the radio, I stopped and stared at it. At first I thought that maybe something was wrong with it. Maybe the battery had died or it was broken. Sura even asked someone from the CNSC to take a look at it. Just to be sure. But the radio was fine.

So I decided that Dad had probably just lost track of time. It had happened before. And it was probably hard to keep track of your days, pocket calendar or not, out on the open water. Or maybe Dad had finally found his little white whales, and in all the excitement he'd forgotten to call me. And because that was a much better alternative than any of the hundred terrible scenarios I'd imagined while lying awake at night, it seemed like a good idea to hang on to that one. Dad had found his whales. He'd forgotten to call. He'd be in off the ice in about two and a half weeks. Maybe less. And as long as I focused on that, and kept hanging out with Simon, things were okay. Easier.

Simon stopped playing and I opened my eyes, squinting up at him. He was staring at me kinda funny, and I pulled myself up on one elbow.

“What? What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Simon smiled and started strumming his guitar again. “I just thought you were sleeping and you looked pretty.”

“You think I look pretty?”

“Sure.” He kept strumming.

I stretched back out and smiled up at the sky, my insides swooping.

The screen door slammed behind us, caught by a gust of wind as Sura came out on the porch. She leaned over the rail beside Simon and me and stood there for several long minutes, smiling and taking in all of that warm spring wind. None of us said anything, we just looked out across the bay, quiet and windswept.

After a time, Sura spoke. “I love this weather.” She sighed. “And this wind. It's like music. Different than winter wind. Softer. Have you heard of Inuit throat singing, Talia?” she asked, turning to me.

Her question seemed totally unrelated to the weather. I looked up at her, confused by the suddenness of it.

Simon quit playing his guitar and leaned back against the side of the house, his face expectant. “It's really cool,” he said.

I watched Sura as she closed her eyes. She looked like she was listening for something. Maybe she was waiting for just the right moment—like Mom used to before she told a story.

After a few seconds of silence, Sura took a deep breath and broke into a low, eerie wailing sort of song. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard. Wild and rushing, like the wind. Part cry, part chant, she almost seemed to echo herself, repeating a single note and then instantly dropping to harmonize with herself. And with such fluidity that if I didn't know better, I'd think there were two women singing instead of just one. When she stopped, she took one look at my face and burst out laughing.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked.

“My mother taught me,” she said. “And her mother taught her, whose mother taught her, and on and on until at the very beginning, it was taught to us by the wind itself.” Sura smiled. “It's a story of course, but it's beautiful, don't you think?”

It
was
a beautiful idea—that the wind could teach someone to sing. And if any wind could do it, it would be this warm, twirled-up wind. Spring was coming. It really was.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Joy and relief. But I was afraid, too, because that meant the ice could come off the Bay at anytime. And no matter what excuses I made up for him, if the ice went out before Dad came back, nothing I told myself could protect him from danger.