❄︎ The Camp of the Survivors ❄︎
For three days the wind never stopped.
It came howling off the icefields with a voice like grief — a long, endless keening that filled the ears and hollowed the heart. The men built their camp from what little they had salvaged: the broken ribs of a lifeboat, half-frozen tarpaulins, and the corpses of dreams they could no longer name.
They found driftwood and burned it sparingly, its smoke rising pale against the gray sky. The cold was a creature among them, an invisible beast that bit their fingers and gnawed at their spirits.
Christopher moved among them, doing what he could to keep their minds fixed on survival.
“Rations, Brann,” he said. “Count what’s left.”
“Not much to count,” Brann muttered, holding up a frost-stiff sack. “A few barrels of salted pork, half a cask of fresh water — and the rest’s frozen solid.”
“Then we thaw it,” said Christopher.
“With what fire, Captain? We’ll run out of wood before the week’s gone.”
Christopher looked out toward the sea. The wreck of the Gannet was visible still, encased in ice, its mast a black finger pointing toward a blind heaven. “We’ll take what we can from her,” he said. “Tomorrow, we go back.”
The men exchanged uneasy glances. The ice between camp and ship was not solid — it groaned and flexed beneath their boots, whispering of the depths below.
That night, they huddled close to the fire. Frost crept in like smoke from every side.
One of the younger sailors, a boy from Trondheim, whispered, “Captain… have you heard them?”
Christopher turned. “Heard who?”
“The voices. Out on the ice.” The boy’s eyes were wide, reflecting the firelight. “Like singing, but far away.”
Brann laughed, though the sound was thin. “That’s the ice itself. It sings when it shifts.”
But the boy shook his head. “No, sir. The ice sings back.”
No one spoke after that.
When morning came, the sun was a pale smudge in the mist — no warmth, no light, only the cruel clarity of the cold.
They crossed the ice toward the wreck. Each step echoed like a drumbeat. The Gannet loomed ahead, frozen into the sea like a tomb. They tore away planks and ropes, filled sacks with what they could carry: food, timber, a few barrels of pitch.
As they worked, Christopher caught something in the corner of his eye — a movement far off, at the edge of the white horizon.
Shapes.
Too large for men, too smooth for rock.
He squinted, but the fog closed in. When he looked again, they were gone.
“Captain?” Brann’s voice cut through the silence. “We’ve got what we came for.”
“Good,” Christopher said softly, still watching the horizon. “Then let’s go before the ice decides it’s hungry.”
They turned back toward camp, their boots crunching the brittle frost.
Behind them, unseen, something moved beneath the ice — following.
That night, the campfire was a fragile heartbeat against the void.
They sat close, too close, the flames painting their faces in trembling orange. Frost rimed the beards and lashes of every man. The wind had quieted at last, but its absence was worse — silence so complete it pressed against the ears.
Christopher gnawed on a strip of frozen pork, the salt burning his cracked lips. “Tomorrow we start west,” he said. “We’ll follow the coast until we find a break in the cliffs, or a river we can cross inland.”
Brann stared into the fire. “You think anyone’s ever mapped this place?”
“No.”
“Then how do we know it leads anywhere at all?”
Christopher’s eyes met his, calm but distant. “Everywhere leads somewhere, Brann. It’s the places that lead nowhere we have to fear.”
The younger sailors exchanged glances. One of them — a man named Harlo, thin as a whip — muttered, “We’re already there, Captain. Nowhere. There’s nothing out here but ghosts and ice.”
“Ghosts don’t eat,” Brann said sharply.
Harlo shivered. “Didn’t say they had to.”
They fell silent again. The fire cracked. The shadows around them seemed to shift with a rhythm that wasn’t the wind.
Later, as the others drifted into uneasy sleep, Christopher walked to the edge of camp. The sea had frozen solid now — a gray plain stretching as far as he could see. He thought of the boy’s words the night before. The ice sings back.
He listened.
At first, only the faint groaning of the ice. Then, a low tone — harmonic, deep, almost musical. It pulsed through the air like the sound of a great organ played beneath the sea.
He felt it in his chest. In his bones.
Then another note joined it — higher, trembling, almost like a human voice.
Christopher’s heart began to pound. The sound was not random. It was arranged. Measured. Deliberate.
Singing.
He turned back to camp — and stopped.
At the far edge of the firelight stood a figure.
It was tall — impossibly tall — but wrong in shape, its limbs too long, its posture too still. For a moment he thought it might be a trick of shadow. But then it tilted its head, the motion slow, curious, listening.
Christopher blinked — and it was gone.
He stood there for a long time, the silence pressing down again.
When he returned to the fire, Brann was awake, watching him.
“See something?” Brann asked.
Christopher hesitated. “No.”
Brann grunted. “Good. Then it’s not just me.”
