Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
“What kind of bad news?” I ask, but somehow I already know. Before he even says it, I know that hope has let me down again.
“It’s Tammara,” he says hoarsely, sorrow etched into the lines of his distinguished features. “They found her.”
CHAPTER 27
MAXIM
I’ll never take the sun for granted again. We spent four months cloaked in darkness. Every day without the sun, it’s harder to lift your spirits. Depression, seasonal affective disorder, vitamin C deficiency—whatever you want to blame for it or call it, it’s real. We ate the dark like nightshade, and it was poisonous. Melancholy with every meal. The weight of the endless night can suffocate you if you’re not careful. I know now why men have gone mad in the Antarctic. I understand the rigorous psychological testing for those who winter over. We aren’t built to live this way.
Just as I’m sure I’ll lose my mind, one day, the faintest glow illuminates the horizon, and we at least don’t need head torches to see and move around.
“I’m counting the days to the peninsula,” Grim says over a hand of poker one night in September. “After all this snow, I’ll take the water for a few months.”
“Not sure how open the waters will be,” Peggy says, chewing on a cigar she never actually smokes. “We’ll be contending with ice floes and another set of challenges.”
“I need another set of challenges.” I fold my hand. “I’m kind of ready to go home.”
“Tulip girl’s waiting for you?” Grim asks, his eyes briefly flashing the humor his mouth doesn’t allow.
“Shut up, man.” I shake my head and slide my seat back, not in the mood to be teased about Lennix.
“I’ve seen you looking at the pictures of her in the tulip garden,” he says, his voice serious. “She’s pretty.”
“Pretty is the least of what she is, but she is that, too.”
I miss my mother, my brother. Hell, as strained as our relationship is, I even miss my father. But what I’m missing with Nix is more somehow. Even after only having a week with her, it’s more. For every time Grim has caught me looking at that photo on my phone, there’s a dozen times I’ve pulled it out he hasn’t seen.
I’ll never regret this trip. It’s been good experience, and our research is valuable, but even with the part I’m most excited about still ahead, getting outside this summer and exploring the peninsula, I’m ready to go home. The quiet and the scope of this place change your perspective on life. And if there’s one thing I know about my life after this trip, it’s that I want Lennix Moon Hunter, however I can get her, in it.
___________
Being on the water breathes new life into my passion for this Antarctic voyage. Living confined and in the dark with limited human contact for so long felt like my hope was packed under ice as tightly and surely as the prehistoric snow we collect.
We worked ashore the past few days, which took an enormous amount of preparation. Bureaucratically, because the area is so closely guarded and managed that it takes a machete to cut through all the red tape. We received our approval to gather data mere days before reaching shore. Now that we’re off the peninsula and our ship The Chrysalis is floating alongside an armada of glaciers, I feel as buoyant as the ice floes bobbing around us.
“The landscape looks different every day,” David says from beside me, his forearms leaned on the ship’s railing.
“That’s part of what makes it so unpredictable,” Grim adds. “Glad we got some good work in before conditions changed.”
“The birds were my favorite part,” Peggy inserts with a laugh, chewing on her ever-present unlit cigar.
She worked with our seabird specialist to get population counts for various species, which will be compared with previous data, helping identify any potentially endangered populations. They’ve been able to perform a thorough penguin census and collect blubber from the seals in the area. We also gathered several mud samples that will be analyzed and hopefully give us information on how carbon may be trapped under ice.
“I think Larnyard may wish he’d listened to you,” Grim says, hitching his chin toward the sky. “Look at those clouds.”
I recommended we make camp on shore for a few days and spend some extra time collecting much-needed data since it had taken so much time and effort to even access the area. Dr. Larnyard had disagreed and wanted to get back on the water for the next leg of our expedition.
Sailing through ice is a treacherous, exhilarating prospect. The Chrysalis is ice-capable, but no vessel guarantees safety if you clip a ’berg the wrong way or get trapped out on the water in one of the Antarctic’s volatile storms. The clouds looming over our ship promise storms. We’re hundreds of miles from shore, thousands of miles from civilization, and a hairbreadth from catastrophe.