I dragged myself through the snow, my leg throbbing with pain, until I saw them clearly.
There were two of them, both men, both tall and skeletal with broad shoulders and long white hair that tangled to their chests. They wore cotton pants and leather vests that exposed their arms to the cold. Their eyes were large and blue below heavy brows, but most startling of all was the luminous, almost phosphorescent quality of their skin. Standing in the pocket of the east lawn, they seemed to glow.
I should have felt afraid, but instead an overwhelming sensation of relief flooded over me. Here was the monster Justine had followed in the mountains. The archaic hominid of Dr. Feist. The beast of Nonna Sophia. The missing link of James Pringle. I remembered Joseph’s drawings, the word “Simi” written in childish blue script. Here, before me, stood the Icemen.
Vita was with them in the hollow of the trees. She gave one of the men the leather pack. He opened it, checking the contents, then closed it again.
“Come closer, Alberta,” Vita said, turning to me. “It is time for you to meet them.”
A wave of dizziness sent me off-balance. I stepped back, away from Vita, and leaned against the trunk of a spruce tree.
Vita walked to me and put her hand on my shoulder, as if to steady me. “Don’t be afraid,” she said.
“What are they?” I whispered.
“They are our elders,” she said. “The native people of these mountains. They were here before any of us.”
I glanced over at the men. They stared at me, their eyes glistening in the moonlight.
Vita smiled. “You will understand them better soon. For now, trust me.”
She took me by the arm and led me to them. She told me their names: Jabi, with his heavy brow and thick white beard, and Aki, taller than Jabi, thin, beardless, the skin of his cheeks smooth and white. The light was dim, and it was hard to see him fully, but his features were strangely beautiful, rough-hewn. He seemed younger than Jabi, perhaps twenty-five or so. The men’s clothes and leather boots were all store-bought.
Jabi spoke first, expressing himself with a series of sounds that I would one day, after I came to know the speech of his tribe, understand to mean: “Who is this foreigner?”
Vita spoke to him in his language, answering his question. Then she opened the leather sack and showed me the contents—boxes of bandages, bottles of pills, tubes of ointment, a pack of antibiotics. “They came for these,” she said, closing the sack and giving it to Jabi, and he turned to go.
The man called Aki didn’t leave, however. He stared at me in wonder, unblinking, his pale blue eyes filled with curiosity. Then, without warning, he leaned over and touched my cheek.
The gesture startled me. I pulled away, afraid. His cold hand against my cheek sent a rush of feeling through me—fear, yes, but also something else, something familiar yet painful, like the feeling of walking barefoot on ice with my grandfather.
“Simi,” Aki said.
“Don’t be afraid,” Vita said. “That is his way of greeting you.”
Stepping to him, I took his large, cold, rough hand in mine and shook it.
“Tell him it is my way of greeting him,” I said.
He watched me with astonishment but didn’t pull away. He glanced at Vita, as if she could explain my odd behavior. She said something to him in his language, and he looked back at me and smiled.
Jabi glowered at me from the shadows, his expression both curious and disdainful. Finally, he hoisted the leather sack over his shoulder and, with a nod in Vita’s direction, climbed back into the trees. As Aki turned to follow, I felt a strange urge to call him back, to bring his hand into mine again, if only to hold fast to the sensation of ice on my skin.
Twenty-Five
The encounter with the Icemen had set something going inside of me, a gravity relentless in its forward momentum. For days, I could think of nothing but Aki and Jabi standing in the shadows of the evergreens, their pale white skin, their enormous height, their large rough hands. I felt the strange sensation of Aki’s hand in mine. I had never experienced such intensely opposite emotions, curiosity and terror all mixed up together.
I was so turned around by the experience, so unsure of just what it all meant, that the only reaction I could manage was to stay in my rooms and think. I spent