The Ice Palace (8 page)

‘Oh, he’s not very far away, I’ll warrant. Now listen to me, Siss. You’ve said you know something about Unn. You were with her yesterday evening, you said.’

‘Yes, I was. I was at her home for a while.’

‘What did Unn talk about?’

‘Oh –’

‘What is it you know about Unn?’

Three pairs of eyes watched her sternly in the lantern light. Normally they were friendly; now they were afraid and hard as stone.

She did not answer.

‘You must answer. It might save Unn’s life.’

Siss started. ‘No!’

‘You’ve said you know something about Unn, haven’t you?’

‘She didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything about this.’

‘What do you mean, this?’

‘That she wanted to go anywhere.’

‘Unn may have said something that could help us to look for her.’

‘No, it couldn’t.’

‘What did Unn tell you?’

‘Nothing,’

‘Do you understand that this is serious? We’re not asking you to plague you. We’re asking you in order to find Unn. You’ve said that –’

‘It was only something I said!’

‘I don’t think so. I can see you know something.
What did Unn say?’

‘I can’t tell you.’ ‘Why not?’

‘Because it wasn’t like that. She didn’t
say
it! And she didn’t say a word about hiding.’

‘Maybe not, but all the same –’

She began to scream, ‘Let me alone!’

They stopped abruptly. It sounded too risky when Siss screamed like that.

‘Go home then, Siss. You’re exhausted. I expect your mother’s there.’

‘I’m not tired. I’ve been given permission to stay. I must stay.’

‘Must you?’

‘Yes, I think I must.’

‘We can’t waste time on this. It’s a pity you won’t tell us anything. It might have helped us.’

No, she thought. They left her.

Her head felt empty and strange. There was an easy way home, but she had to stay all night. She wandered about as before, near the lanterns and then into the darkness that hid her once more. Again she was stopped, by a different man. He expressed no surprise at her presence; he was too preoccupied.

‘There you are, Siss. I want to ask you something. Do you think Unn might have wanted to go and look at the pile of ice in the waterfall?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Weren’t there plans for the whole school to go on such a trip?’

‘Yes, there were.’

‘She didn’t mention that she wanted to go there by herself? She’s in the habit of being by herself, you know.’ ‘She didn’t say so.’

This couldn’t have been so important; the man was exceedingly cautious, but for Siss it was the last straw. She stood howling, bitter and defiant, in the driving snow.

‘Oh Lord,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

‘Are
you going there?’ Siss managed to get out.

‘Yes, we must, and without any delay. Since there’s been talk of it recently at school. It’s
possible,’
he said, ‘that Unn has taken it into her head to go there and then lost her way. We shall go along the river from the point where it leaves the lake.’

‘But then –’

‘Thank you for helping us, Siss. Hadn’t you better go home now?’

‘No, I’m coming with you to the river!’

‘No fear! Well, you must talk to your father about that. I think I can see him over there.’

Yes, there was Father, energetic and stern, like the others.

‘I want to come, too. You said I could.’

‘Not any more.’

‘I’m just as good a walker as they are!’ she said loudly in the busy, tense crowd – and felt her own body tensing itself in readiness.

‘I bet she is,’ said someone who liked to see her standing there warm and eager.

Father dared not oppose her, the way Siss looked at that moment.

‘Well, well, it may be true that you can hold out. I shall have to go in somewhere and phone your mother. She’s sitting up, waiting for you.’

A large crowd set off in the darkness to the river, out along the edge of the lake towards the outlet. They fanned outwards as they walked but were careful to keep together. The snow was not falling so heavily now, but it sifted against the face incessantly and already lay so deep on the ground that it made walking difficult. Siss did not notice it; she was filled with fresh courage.

Nearly all of them had lanterns. They formed a huge, wavering patch of light that flickered and shone over hillocks and headlands on its way to the river. It was a strange sight. It was strange to be walking in the middle of it. Siss was filled with fresh courage.

The lake curved away into the night like a white snow-covered plain. The ice was as strong as granite, so nothing could have happened there. They could not imagine that Unn would have crossed that stark expanse of ice.

They floundered along. Siss kept close to her father now that she had been accepted.

They came to the outlet, and directed the light on to the open black water gliding gently from under the edge of the ice and on without a sound. The men studied the black water closely; it was horrid. They could not see the ice palace from here. The waterfall was much further down, out of earshot in all the confusion.

The current flowed deep and noiseless. The crowd divided and continued along each side.

The snow was falling more thickly again. It was a nuisance, sifting against the glass of the lanterns, where it melted, making their glow unreliable. There was a young boy who was over-excited and nervous about it all, and he snarled at the irritating snow, his teeth showing white at the corners of his mouth. ‘Stop it!’

At once it stopped. It stopped as if the sack had suddenly emptied. The boy started and, feeling embarrassed, looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed. No.

Now that the snow no longer filled the air – now the men saw for the first time what an enormous, silent night it was. Siss stood beside the noiseless current coming from under the edge of the ice. Anything could be hidden and sucked away down there. Don’t think about it.

They began to walk downwards along the banks of the river, along beaches and inland among the hillocks. The land sloped; the river found its voice.

Hurry! They rushed across sticks and stones. But they had to look carefully at the same time.

The turbulent, leaping procession of lanterns kept company across the river, twinkling in the hard ice tracery edging it. In between them the water was black. The glimmer from the lanterns did not reach very far. Out there was the deep unknown. Far below they could just hear the waterfall.

There was nothing to be seen along the river banks.

We expected that, but still – that’s how it is with searching.

A shout from the first to climb down. ‘Come and look!’

At once they all saw it. At once Siss saw it. None of the men had had time for a walk to the falls that had been talked about so much this autumn, and the ice palace had grown so much only recently. Throughout the period of frost the water had gradually acquired a larger surface on which to build. The men raised their lanterns towards the sculptured waterfall, thunderstruck by what they saw.

Siss looked at them, at the palace, the darkness and the lanterns-she would never forget this expedition.

The crowd descended the slope on both sides of the waterfall, crawling out on to the uneven ice, shining their lanterns into all the crannies they could find.

The palace was twice as big in this uncertain light. The falls were high, and the water had built up from the ground to the very top. The men shone their lanterns on to the sheer, glistening sides. They were hard and closed; the snow had found no foothold but was piled up at the bottom. Up on top, however, the snow lay and provided a covering for the clefts between the pinnacles and domes. The lantern light wavered only a short way up the sides; further up, the ice walls were grey in the darkness. Deep inside, like a menacing beast, the self-enclosed river roared.

But the palace was dark and dead; no light came from within. The men could not see how it looked inside the rooms; their lights did not reach far enough. All the same, the searchers were bewitched.

The water roared within the palace, dashed itself into froth
against the rock beneath and emerged again as froth and spray, from under towers and walls, reassembled and was the same mighty current as before, hurrying on. In this densely packed midnight it seemed impossible to guess how far.

Nothing to be seen except the palace and the river and immensity.

The palace was closed.

Siss looked to see whether the men were disappointed. No. They showed nothing. And, after all, it depended on what each of them expected to find. Everything depended on precisely that.

But the men just stood.

How has this actually been made?

Nobody was bothering about Siss now. They left her to accompany her father, and brought her no questions. They simply went on with the search. Nobody could have penetrated further into the mass of ice than they did. They converged from both sides in the snow on top of the domes and shouted advice to each other against the roar of the falls.

A shout came. ‘There’s an opening here after all!’

They hurried to the spot. It was an entry almost hidden between green walls. Two of the smallest forced their way in, holding a lantern high.

Nothing there either. Only an icy breath, much colder than it was outside, that chilled them to the marrow. Outside it was mild now. An ice chamber, and no more openings to be found. Behind it churned the blind eternal roar.

They shouted to each other in the roaring chamber that there was nothing there! Then they shone the light around it once more, and found a fissure smaller than a hand’s breadth and with water gurgling at the edges.

Nothing.

They squeezed out again to the others. ‘Nothing,’ they reported.

‘Might have expected it.’

The men looked helplessly at the construction of ice rising rampant into the air. Their faces were grave that night. The one who had assumed the leadership said, ‘We shan’t be through with this in a hurry.’

They could not guess the extent of his meaning. They must have sensed the enigma here, each one of them. Siss looked at her father. He had not attempted to lead them. He was simply one of the rest.

But someone in the crowd unexpectedly went over to Siss. She was a little tired, yes, very tired really, but so tense that she had forgotten about it. She looked in fear at the man: there would be more questions.

‘Did Unn say anything about coming here?’

‘No.’

Her father came up and said sharply, ‘That’s enough now! Siss is not to be pressed any more.’

The leader came, too, and said quickly and decisively to the questioner, ‘Siss has told us what she knows.’

‘I think so, too,’ said her father.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the questioner, retreating. ‘I meant no harm.’

Siss gave the two stern men a grateful look. The leader said, ‘We’ll go over it all once more. There are so many chasms she could have fallen into – if she came here, and decided to climb.’

Nobody denied it. They set to work. The unfamiliar ice palace exerted a tremendous fascination, and
they
were the right ones to be open to it and to allow themselves to be bound by it, in their state of mind.

Over it again.

Once more Siss stood at the foot and watched the ice palace coming alive. The men approached it from all sides again. The lanterns spun around in the disordered crannies, up between the pinnacles and through the tracery. It was not just a palace; it resembled a palace illumined for a feast, even though the lights were on the outside.

Siss drank in the night scene, in a state of exaltation, because she had been allowed to come, in a state of shock because it was on account of Unn. She cried a little, but nobody saw. She could not help herself.

She was going to hold out whatever happened, she thought. They were not going home again from here. From the palace they would follow the river to the place where it was swallowed up by another frozen lake. It was not so very far. The waterfall lay almost exactly between the two big lakes.

The men continued to search. They had life and light on their side. They were visiting an unknown fortress, and it looked like the fortress of death. If one of them struck the wall with his stick it proved to be as hard as rock. The blow recoiled and vibrated in his arm, Nothing opened up. They struck all the same.

They are not leaving. They are waiting. They cannot free themselves.

The ice construction rises above them, enigmatic, powerful, its pinnacles disappearing into the darkness and the winter cloud drift. It seems prepared to stand eternally – but time is misleadingly brief, it will fall one day when the floods begin.

Tonight it holds the men fast. They are staying longer than they ought, considering their errand. Perhaps they are unaware of it. They are tired out but cannot make an end of it, with no will to choose whether they are to finish or not. The closed ice palace has life in it.

They themselves have lent it life; light and life to the dead block of ice, and to the silent time that follows midnight. Before they came the waterfall had been roaring, despondent and unconcerned, and the colossus of ice had been merely death, completed and mute. They did not know what they had brought with them before they were ensnared by the play between what has been and what is to come.

But it’s not that either.

There is something secret here. They bring out what sorrows they may have and transfer them to this midnight play of light and suspicion of death. It makes things better, and through it they fool themselves into enchantment. They are dispersed in the angles of ice, the lanterns shoot transverse gleams, meeting the lights from other cracks and prisms – quite new beams are illuminated and just as quickly
extinguished again for good. They recognize it so well that they tremble. It is unsafe, but they wish to do it, they have to take part in it. If there is an opening it is only because there appears to be one.

The men are forced to leave, but they do so reluctantly.