experience later today.
Twilight on Kaley Glacier.
He had visited Great Glaciers National Park half a dozen times since coming to Alaska. So far, he had seen, heard, smelled nothing beyond the ordinary. The cold had a tight, biting scent. The few birds that flew quickly by overhead smelled comfortably warmer. The brine of the waters below was tangy, hinting of fish.
The frigid cold clutching the bareness of the toughened skin of his feet was almost unbearable. At least his thick pelt of fur kept the rest of him warm.
It was early nightfall, nearly, but not quite, dark. He would remain here, opening his senses further, waiting for anything to happen this evening. Another step in the decimation of Great Glaciers National Park?
Mounds of snow and crags of ice on this glacier provided little cover from the
whistling wind. He continued to patrol, watching, waiting.
And then—he inhaled deeply. The distant scent was suddenly hot. Fiery … here? Almost metallic, yet underlain with the ozone of melting ice.
The sound was odd, like the shrill, pulsing cries of orcas. Yet he scented no killer whales in the water below. Were some there nevertheless, trumpeting fear because they, too, smelled that odor? Knew what it meant? A sharp, abrupt explosive noise. And then—What was the low rumbling beneath the orcas’ calls? It grew louder. Sharp. Angry. A huge roar that made the ice tremble beneath his feet.
No! The surface wasn’t merely trembling. It was separating. The glacier was calving, right where he stood.
He pivoted, ran inland on all fours. Heard the cracking behind him. Felt the vibration of the surface below his paws. Would he be tossed into the frigid waters by separating ice?
An enormous splash resounded behind him. The movement lessened. He turned … and watched.
Most of the ice that was once behind him was gone. Warily, he approached the new craggy edge. He saw the separated mass slide beneath the gray-blue surface of the bay below, no longer part of the glacier but an ice floe.
He waited in wonder. This was what he was here to investigate, but he had no answers. If something beyond nature caused this, he still had no clue. Except, perhaps, what he had heard and smelled. But what did that mean?
He heard an engine. He looked into the sea beneath the reddening twilight sky and saw a boat approach. The new ice floe was invisible beneath the water, and would harm anything in its path as it surfaced. But though the boat was pitching, it did not appear to be in danger. Not that he could help them. He saw the new iceberg leap from the water, then settle back in the roiling bay.
Then he turned and paced the newly formed
edge of the glacier, a lone wolf prowling the ice.
And watching that boat.
In the orange glow reflected from the gleaming sunset, Mariah stared at the remainder of the glacier as the huge new iceberg erupted from the water and sank again. Quickly, she darted her eyes to her camera screen and back to the incredible sight.
With her other hand, she clutched the rail at the edge of the fishing boat’s deck. Never mind that the hood on her navy Windbreaker had blown off and left her hair flying in the rush of air caused by the boat’s heaving, her ears suddenly freezing. She had to watch. Record it all in movie mode. And keep from plunging overboard.
She’d thought, when she’d hired this fishing boat and its captain, that the craft was substantial enough to do well in all but the worst weather.
But the weather was fine. It was the water that heaved, tossing the boat as perilously as if it was a toy in a wading pool being slapped by a gleeful child.
No matter. Despite her shivering from uneasiness and cold, she had to record every moment. She’d be able to cull some still pictures when she was done, and upload them onto her computer. Use them for the article she was researching.
The ice floe settled into the water, calm now, as if it hadn’t just torn away from the mass above. Then, a few dead fish floated to the surface near the ice. Poor things, Mariah thought.
A short distance away, Mariah saw a pair of sea otters floating on top of the water, not in the path of the ice floe, fortunately. They didn’t appear particularly impressed by the calving as they swam slowly in circles. Mariah snapped some pictures for her article. The poor creatures appeared sluggish. Were they in shock? At least they were alive.
Mariah looked back at the jagged glacier surface—and thought she saw a movement at the top. An animal? Unlikely, but she aimed her camera in that direction.
Using the strongest telephoto setting, she saw clearly in the camera screen that it was a wolf, its deep gray coat silhouetted against the whiteness of the glacial surface. It was pacing uneasily. Majestic. Gorgeous. She filmed it despite knowing that the creature was too far away to obtain a really good photo. Was it looking at the boat? Her?
What an odd impression!
Maybe she would see the wolf again, closer, when she took her dogsled ride onto the glaciers with Patrick Worley.
Patrick. His face suddenly filled her mind, as if he were somewhere around here.
She almost laughed out loud at the ridiculous turns her imagination had taken.
“Getting what you need?” Nathan Kugan’s voice startled her.
The captain had come from the bridge of his boat to join her on deck. Half a foot taller than her five-two, he was a local, of Aleutian descent, and the crispness of the fall air whipping across the deck apparently didn’t bother him. He wore only a light sweater over his jeans and boots.
“I think so,” Mariah said, glad for the interruption to her absurd thoughts. She lowered her camera at his approach. “I’m recording what’s happening, at least. Now I need to look more into what’s causing it.”
“Did you get the whales?”
She frowned. “I haven’t seen any whales. The only living sea animals I glimpsed were those otters.” She pointed.
His turn to frown, deepening the creases in his weathered face. Mariah had guessed him to be mid-fifties, but he looked ageless and could have been a lot older. “I had my acoustical equipment turned on—sonar, and the microphones I use to listen for fish. Before the noise from the glacier calving, I heard what sounded like orca calls. You didn’t see any?”
Odd term, calving. She knew it, of course, since she had lived in Alaska for three years now, but she would have to explain it in her article for nonlocal readers. It described the tearing away of huge chunks of ice from the edges of glaciers nearest the water. As if the ice fields were happily producing bouncing, enormous babies which, if large enough, were icebergs.
“No. I wish I had.” She took her camera and panned the bay, still using her telephoto setting in case something appeared in the distance. The sun had slid beneath the horizon, and the remaining light of day was following in its wake. Even in the growing darkness, the black-and-white irregular stripes found on killer whales would still be visible, giving away their location.
But she saw no orcas anywhere. Nathan squinted and looked at the darkening water. “Strange. They sounded close. Should be surfacing by now to breathe.”
“Maybe they were heading out the mouth of the bay,” Mariah suggested.
“Could be. They’re smart animals. They might have sensed the calving would occur and warned one another to leave.”
Mariah knew enough about orcas, members of the dolphin family, to accept their intelligence. What Nathan suggested was within the realm of possibility.
“You saw