Cold. So cold. Morning on the snow-covered Icelandic beach, dark as twilight. And, lately, that eye gazing at me through the gray waves. I have seen it three times now in the week I have been here on a winter “getaway” with my husband. If not for that eye, I would leave my boots by the fire and shore up the door jambs with rolled scarves. I’d boil water for black tea and sip it with whiskey on the side.
Instead, I have come down for a walk. All but my face is covered in wool, and I’ve tucked my graying hair behind my ears, snug under my hat. Stepping gingerly, I avoid the frozen, slick areas. Is it safer to seek out the fresher snow, or a cleared path of black sand? I could not previously have imagined snow on the beach. But here, snow and ice are everywhere, and the water throws itself upon the land as if to reclaim something stolen.
I understand that desire.
It’s a whale, isn’t it? The thing that watches me. What else would have an eye like that? Floating so serene in the roiling cauldron of ocean. What else would be sentient enough to watch like it means to learn something? The thing is elusive, though. I hold my breath for long intervals while I search for it—like the slightest movement or sound will nudge the creature out of existence—but I manage only to strain my eyes and make myself dizzy.
On the hill behind me, on the other side of cliffs of black rock, I have left my husband sleeping in the cottage we are renting. It is half past ten in the morning, but the sun has barely risen. Light is little more than an illusion in these long, dark days of winter.
Before this—long, long before this—I left our baby sleeping in a different bed, in a different place, and she did not awaken when I went to fetch her again.
In that moment, a veil fell over my eyes, the folds of which I have been peering out from ever since.
Whatever happened to me did not happen to my husband. The dimming of the lights of the world. The sensation that something had shaken loose inside me and was rattling around in my empty chest. But then, the baby wasn’t his.
I don’t mean he wasn’t her father. I mean she didn’t belong to him.
She belonged to me.
Down on the black beach, I taste the air like an animal—face lifted, mouth slightly open, nostrils expanding. The ocean in this spot has no scent. Not of salt nor seaweed. Is there a scent to the cold, to snow? I try to find it in the air, to think of it. I have been here in the summer when the hills around me glow emerald green, and the air drips with the fragrance of grass, and dirt, and sulfur, and flowers. When you can eat and breathe sunshine.
But in the winter, the earth freezes. The scents of sea and land recede, to be lost in the ice and wind.
My eyes search the stark coastline, my heart fluttering its usual beat of anxiety. No people, I pray. No other walkers.
Yesterday, it was a rider. On one of those miniature, stolid horses—all hair, and bulk, and steadfastness. A red horse with a blonde mane and tail. In the States, we call them ponies, but you would never get away with that here. If nature could package resilience, and staunchness, and courage into a single animal, it would be the Icelandic horse. As a lover of all animals—and horses, particularly—I was inclined to note this. They seem forged from the island itself, their heavy manes perfect replicas of the billowing surf that heaves in slow motion against the black beach. I can imagine the sea birthing these magnificent creatures, bearing them forward at a gallop onto the shoreline to roam and graze this desolate land of green and gray.
My guess is that the rider, an older woman, came from the nearby farm I saw down by the beach. She wore no hat and her black hair streamed behind her in thick ropes that reminded me of kelp. Holding the horse to a brisk, floating trot—a gait called the tölt—she passed me rapidly, her green eyes scowling a dark warning that froze the smile on my face. It happened so quickly, but I saw her thin lips peel back in something like a grimace, showing large, closed teeth. Horse’s teeth, I swear. I wondered if I had come too close to something I shouldn’t have, or ventured someplace I didn’t belong. Shaken and unsure of myself, I stood staring at her for many minutes as she rode away.
Today, though, I am pleased to find myself utterly alone, I look south along the beach and see the path I want to follow. A black jumble of rocks marks the spot where the ocean casts itself as far upon the land as possible, the spray freezing against the snow, and forming a glassy wall. Out beyond—out on the open sea—gray water stretches endlessly. Magic stirs beneath those waters.
I want to see it again. The whale.
No. I want to be seen by it.
I bend my steps toward the rocky outcropping about half a mile distant. Half a mile is not far to travel, but half a mile in bitter cold is another matter. The air around me freezes like operatic notes, and the skin on my hands aches beneath insulated gloves. I think of the road several miles to the north. A road I could escape on if I wanted to. Escape from this coastline and this obsession. Escape from the husband who doesn’t understand the hollow chamber that is my heart.
I have heard it said that the road is blessed, that in its entire history, as local lore has it, there has never been an accident. You would think drivers would proceed recklessly, trying to test the limits of this strange anomaly. They don’t. There’s already so much that could kill you in Iceland, why tempt fate?
What a strange land I walk upon. Forged by fire, yet frozen. Cursed in birth, yet ultimately blessed.
I think of my own curse. The curse of a mother losing a child.
Killing a child?
My husband leveled the accusation at me once, over-imagining my possessiveness. In time, he took back his words, and I forgave him. Grief is a many-tentacled beast.
The cold air digs its bony fingers into my scalp, but I have persisted in my trek. And now I stand on a distant beach, the horse farm behind me, the house where my husband still sleeps, now only a tiny speck in my figurative rear-view mirror. Before me, the sea laps at my feet with its hungry tongue—spitting, and clawing, and cavorting.
I watch, and watch, and watch, and watch. The curve of every wave. The foam on every break. The sun drifting low on the horizon, struggling helplessly to rise, feigning brilliance as the fog claps a hand over its light. I watch until the watching becomes a drug, and I am no longer able to stop.
See me.
And at last, it comes. Momentarily breaking through the gray. Its shadowy outline darting, beelining above and below the chaotic surface of the North Atlantic. Its smooth sides slipping past like the hull of a mighty ship.
Breaking. Breathing. Beholding.
See me.
I am utterly focused, transfixed by the sight before me, and hear nothing around me until it is too late. The sound—not of pounding waves, but of pounding hooves. And the horse is upon me.
The rider, with her kelp-like hair and her squared-off teeth, is screaming at me. She is blowing on me with her seaweed breath, but her aim is faulty, and her timing is off.
The horse hits me. The red horse with the blonde mane and the shock of white forelock. It throws off its rider as I am lifted like a wave and flung from the shore to the ocean.
The drug has not worn off, though, and I watch the water as I fall.
I watch and I watch.
See me.
Slow down. Wait. What does a whale look like beneath the heavy waters? How can we comprehend its size?
Let me try to explain.
Picture the snow. A mile—a hundred miles—behind you, all the way to edge of the ocean. And then the spray of the water rasping its cold breath upon the volcanic land. Now…go all the way out. Out across the gray, gray water. Deeper than you can imagine, and deeper still. Deeper than drowning, and singing, and dreaming, and resurrecting. Deeper than caves, and mines, and abyssal plains. Deeper than black holes.
Now. Put a beast in those depths. Put a leviathan. A behemoth. Put a universe inverted on itself.
Make that universe look at you.
That is the eye of a whale.
So, when it sees me, believe me, it doesn’t need my acquiescence. And it doesn’t need the kelp-haired woman—that jealous hag—to pull her shaggy mount away from me by the bridle and fling herself into the water like a sacrifice.
And yet, she does.
Because the whale has risen out of the water beside us, its great mouth is gaping like a maw, and I think the old crone is praying and crying. It sounds like a supplication.
Not to be spared…but something else. The horse runs off, up a slope, where it stands with its face to the wind, possessed by no one. The rider is left struggling in hip-deep water, unaware that she is stranded and freezing. She calls out to the whale, her voice rising into a scream. It is the sound of a mother calling to a drowning child.
I understand now. The whale is wounded, its gigantic mouth appearing to unhinge; its bright blood staining the gray water, and if a heart can explode, then my heart has. Oh, how I know this feeling!
The whale does not see me.
I can look at the sun, floating too close to the horizon, and I wonder if it was birthed in the same way. From grief and agony.
I look and I look.
And then I close my eyes.
Am I in the water? I hear the hiss of bubbles and foam as something giant surges through the waves. I am not floating. It is just the tide, reaching under my prone body, soaking through my heavy clothes so that the cold bites my flesh and digs into me with frigid claws. The thought comes to me—I should have taken the road, driven inside a warm car, to the island’s edge where volcanoes busy themselves adding land to this country. I would have been safe. The road is always safe.
But my choices have led me here. My need has led me here. And the woman, too. She is thrashing in the water, and I lift my frozen body just enough to watch her. The kelp-like hair has formed a forest around her, and she screams as the whale heaves and rolls. Blood is everywhere. I find myself wondering if the blood is warm enough to defrost my limbs and fire up my brain. It must be. There is so much of it. I wonder if the hag feels how I felt when I lifted a small body, made lighter by the absence of life, and a veil suddenly and forevermore obscured my vision. If so, then I hurt for her.
I don’t know how long it goes on. Less than a minute, really, in those freezing waters, but it feels so long. Like an hour…or an eternity. In time, the chaos subsides, and I observe myself floating in a sea of red. How bright it looks against the colorless landscape! I am not alone. The whale is there but weakening and barely alive. I know because I can see a pulse of red. The massive heart beating out its life force. I do not see the hag.
With the greatest tenderness—a lifetime of thwarted tenderness—I search for the mangled beast’s eye, my hands running along the silky skin as if my touch alone will stave off the inevitable. I cannot tell bow from stern, fluke from baleen, mouth from blowhole. My touch becomes frantic; the beat of my heart turns to an agonized ache.
When I find the eye, I realize it has been there all along, right in front of me. The sight of it catches me like a hook, and I cry out. Its light is dimming, and it’s not a universe anymore. Just an eye. A baby’s eye. Blue, and sweet, and sad.
See me.
When it finally does—when everything sacred distills to this moment in time—I pass my hand reverently over that beautiful eye and close it forever.
