Page 40 of Polestar
From this ledge, they could only see in one direction.Maybe, just maybe, the open ocean wasn’t all Aksel had access to here.
She stood, stretching out her stiffening joints, and flexed her hands against the cold.
Ana tried to find a place to climb.There weren’t many footholds on the face of the ice.Most of it was too slick for her to grip.
“Aksel.Can you help me get to the top of your iceberg?”
He turned his head, looking up to its snowy peak beyond the black veins creeping up from the ocean.Now that she watched them for a few moments, she noticed they continued to creep upward—consuming.
A wave of sudden dizziness overwhelmed her, causing her to stumble as she tried to step onto a more solid spot.
The black, oozing water pooled around her feet, impeding her ability to ascend.
Aksel’s fur was covered in the stuff.Did it weigh him down too?
“We have to try, Aksel.I need you to help meseemore.”
If there is anything more to see.
They both thought it.
But he looked down at his paws.The water encroached on him too.He stood and staggered forward.
The water seemed to reach for him, to drag him back.
He looked down at it, then seemed to notice how it coated his fur.He engaged in a full body shake to dislodge the blackened water from his body.
It flew off in a cloudy spray, splattering the iceberg and open water beyond.
Some of it gathered itself, pooling and oozing back toward Aksel’s paws.
He climbed.
Ana struggled to climb alongside him but couldn’t get a grip.
On.
“Climbyou?”
He huffed and repositioned his rear leg and dug the claws into the ice so that she could use it.
“Okay, if you insist,” she said with a last glance at the black puddles that seemed to try to find them through the dips and valleys in the ice.
Once she was on, she gripped his fur in her fists and tried not to put her knees and feet in awkward places to impede his ability to reach the summit.
The higher they went, the heavier the pressure on her mind.
Aksel felt it too.
She felt it in the way he struggled to move ever upward, his sides laboring with the effort.
But finally, finally, they crested the iced peak and Aksel dug his claws in so as not to slide back down to where he’d worked so hard to climb from.
“Oh, my god.”Ana breathed.
Beyond them, the sea was filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of other icebergs of all shapes and sizes and in various states of being consumed by the black water, turning the ice and snow to varying shades of white, gray and black.
There were a few more polar bears occupying other icebergs.There were also humans—many of them.A few other creatures occupied the floating surfaces.
