Chapter 175
Grandmother Vinter's vast white back has broken the surface like an island, ice sliding off her flanks. Her song still rolls out across Stilla, so low the floes shiver. Isa's mother on the hill holds her harmony. And on the whale's back, Tövind, coat streaming, two brass clock-hands in his old fist.
scrambling onto the whale's flank from the broken floes: Vigolas first, then Kompis, Rougeina, Öde, Smurjan. Isa last, barefoot on the frosted whale-skin, white-faced.
standing over the great eye, very calm.
sighing, and laying his old palm, not quite touching, an inch above the whale's vast frosted skin.
frozen, not by any power. Just horror.
beside her, sharp.
finishing it, her hand closed white round the disc at her throat.
eyes gold, looking at Tövind's threads: one, very thin and very old, running from his heart down into the pocket-watch on his chain, the one with no glass and spinning hands.
and for the first time the serenity cracks. He takes out the glassless pocket-watch, its hands spinning loose and useless.
quietly, recognising something.
sleeve fallen back: the old skin is past his collarbone now, creeping up his neck. Liver spots at his throat.
stepping forward between Tövind and Isa, rolling his shoulders, green lightning crawling down his arms.
Vigolas against Tövind on the whale's frosted back.
An Emerald Knuckle to the jaw. Tövind touches his own face as it lands, thawing the bruise before it forms, and staggers anyway.
Tövind touches the frost on the whale's skin under Vigolas's boots, and it melts to slush in a second; Vigolas skids, catches himself, laughing.
Tövind slaps a frozen chunk of ice out of the air at him, and it rots into a spray of warm water in his face.
Vigolas, dripping, grinning, punches through the spray.
Behind them, the Thaw-Brothers swarm up the whale's flanks with ropes and hooks, and the crew meets them: Smurjan, the Triple Pulse; Rougeina, eight silver-rose blades flashing; Öde, Scythe-Sweep, grass spreading over the whale's frost; Kompis, Tyst's silent shots cutting the hook-ropes.
Isa plants her feet on the whale's back and holds, …ba—, and the Thaw-Brothers on the flanks freeze. Tövind doesn't: tick, he thaws himself. Vigolas, in her sight-line, slows to syrup.
realising, releasing instantly, —DUM, staggering in the Backlog.
On the vast white back of an ancient whale rising from a shattered lake, under a sky full of hanging snow, two men collide at full speed: Vigolas, midnight-green coat flying, both fists blazing emerald, and Tövind, coat streaming, old hands out, the age-line crawling up his young throat. Where Tövind's palm meets Vigolas's chest, light flares, thaw-light, white-gold, and nothing happens. There's nothing in Vigolas that's late.
Around them the crew fights the Thaw-Brothers up and down the whale's flanks. Below, the great pale eye, open, watching. On the hill, a woman in white, singing.
his palm flat on Vigolas's chest, staring.
Tövind reels back across the whale's spine. Vigolas follows, fists cocked. And Tövind, staggering, lays his palm on the whale.
The whole whale shudders. One square yard of white skin under his hand goes grey, wrinkled, old.
And Grandmother Vinter's song cracks: one long, low note of pain rolling across the lake.
screaming.
frozen mid-charge. Not by any hold. By the look on Isa's face.
hand still on the whale, the grey patch spreading slowly beneath it, his voice very gentle.
looking at the whale, at the grey spreading on her skin, at her mother on the hill, at the crew. Her hand on the disc at her throat. One beat late, as always. Then one beat later than that.
low, to her.
slowly, so slowly, lifting the cord from round her neck.
And Tövind doesn't wait. He lunges and rips the disc from her fingers, the cord snapping, the ice clock-face flashing in the low sun.
stumbling back, her hand clutching at her bare throat where the face hung for ten years.
on the whale's back, the ice clock-face in one old palm, the two brass hands in the other, lifting them together. His face is rapt. Snow hangs round him in the air. The age-line has reached his jaw.
The tip of the brass hour hand, an inch from the centre of the ice clock-face. The tiny socket waiting.