And Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years’ Time?
by Laura Hall

Small strips of his yellow kayak washed up on the rocks for days after the storm. The bright slivers shone out like banana skins, just as shocking, just as foreign, in the clear Greenland Sea. He picked them out and piled them up one by one beyond the high tide line like a miniature beacon in the grey landscape. But one day he came back and found them scattered by the wind, floating back in the water like miniature kayaks themselves, and that put paid to that idea. Now it was just him and the horizon. 

He had only meant to climb into his sleeping bag and shut his eyes for a few hours. He had needed, beyond anything else, to take his hands out of his wet gloves and give them some air. He pulled his kayak out of the water and scanned the flat grey island ahead of him. Four houses stood, abandoned and in various states of decay, looking out to sea through their empty windows. Two of them were leaning and one of them was almost completely burnt black on the inside. He picked the closest of the four and laid out his gloves to dry on a rotten windowsill in the sun, hoping they would dry a little but not harden completely. 

The house smelt of mould and old animal skins. He found a dry spot, out of the wind and under a half-collapsed roof and curled up in the corner with his head on his pack. The floor was littered with debris from the roof and discarded items: green fishing twine, frayed and knotted, spent bullet casings, old Danish newspapers, yellowed with age, with a recognisable ø in their blunt black headlines. He needed to rest like he had done so many times before on this lengthy coastal adventure, a short dark window of dead black sleep. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the white-on-blue cut outs of the icebergs he’d passed on the way there. 

A great wind woke him. It whistled through the empty windows and whipped around the settlement rattling the rotten housing panels. The wall beside him moved in and out steadily like it was breathing. His instant thought was for the kayak. He ran for the beach only to see it sailing out of reach, a yellow dart disappearing in the direction of the great iceberg he’d passed the previous morning. His instinct was to throw himself in after it, but the waves were high and the current was strong and it was moving away faster than he could swim. He watched it pitch and roll in the sea and vanish out of view. He sank to his knees on the stony beach and yelled into the wind. Five years of planning to kayak the coast of Greenland. A moment of bad luck and it was over. 

Later, much later, he put half a sachet of dried tomato soup into the bowl, poured in water from his drinking bottle and stirred. He turned the plastic ignition of the tiny heater beneath it. It clicked and a flame flickered around the curved edges. He stared into it, looking at the transparent blue and orange colours as they licked at the metal. He didn’t notice the soup boiling until its bubbles had nearly reached the top. He turned it off and blew it, waiting until it was nearly cold to drink it. 

A lack of kayak did not mean the mission was over, he was sure in his heart of that. The seagoing part of it, he had to admit, was. Even if he could fashion a raft from the rotten timbers of the abandoned houses, there was no sail and no way to survive in the frigid seas. He would have to wait for a boat to appear. He scanned the horizon, looking for signs of life like a whaler searching for a breath on the wind. 

He bundled himself up against the wind, pulling on the hardened gloves, snagging his down jacket on a rusty nail in the process, and walked with purpose to get the lay of the land. Something silver-ish skittered from view at the back of the furthest house, running up the hills and beyond. He followed it, lumbering over rocks and low-lying bushes to a ridge from where he saw it properly, the small dog-like figure of an arctic fox, disappearing into the distance. From the ridge, he could see almost to the other side of the island, over flat grey scrubland dotted with boulders. Small, elongated berries hid in the spiky scrub, the colour of the dark bruise at the base of his thumbnail. He picked one and bit it in two: it was bitter, but he could stomach it, just. He put a small handful of them in his pocket. 

A small cairn stood at the top of the ridge, and something silver and navy blue flapped at its base. He pulled it, finding half a packet of Prince Polo biscuits, soft and fringed with green mould. In Inuit times, his guide had said, people used to leave food under cairns as an offering for the spirits. They’d pour out a drink too, sometimes, a little water or a little coffee. It was a way of asking for protection. Everyone undertaking an expedition in Greenland had to take a course like that, one that taught you about what to look for in the landscape, how to spot a cliff that was about to collapse and an iceberg about to calve. It told you a little of local customs and cultures, too, of what to be afraid of. 

Protection was needed because of what lurked out there in the wilderness. By the flickering flames of seal fat lights during long dark nights in the past, hunters shared stories of the monsters they’d seen: the nanurluk, a giant and fearsome polar bear that lived in the mountains, and the qivittoq, the most chilling of all. Exiled by society or shunning society by its own choice, the qivittoq was originally a man, but through time and experience had become something else, a fearsome spirit of the wild that killed with no remorse. It had a certain smell, they said: the smell of old skins. 

The thing that chilled them most about the qivittoq was how close he was to them. As people who felt alive only when they were hunting or in nature themselves, they knew the feeling of wanting to live away from other people. But stay too long and you would never come back. Stay too long in the deadly wild and you become it. At the end of the night, every man quietly left a morsel of his own scant food at the closest cairn as he passed. 

But that was generations ago. He wondered what the hiker had wanted protection from, or if he had just been giving thanks for a beautiful day. He left the mouldy biscuits for the birds at the top of the ridge, and walked back down, spying a small creek that ran to the back of the settlement and from there, to the rocky beach and out to sea. Icebergs broke the long line of the horizon and a flock of Arctic tern darted along the water. He had food yet for several more days, longer if he was smart. Water, too. There was no choice but to wait. 

************

The flame in the tiny stove sputtered and went out. He tried again, holding the match close to the vents as he turned the ignition. He dropped it when it burned his fingertips and reached for another, but stopped himself. He shook the canister first. There was no sound at all: no liquid sloshing, not even the tiniest drop. He let out a slow exhale. He had always known this day would come. He had only got one packet of soup left and half a pack of noodles. There was still a good number of the matches left in the plastic box. He was thankful at least for that. 

After a lunch of cold soup, he pulled his down jacket around him, noticing a new rip in it and a little puff of white escaping. He tried to poke it back in with his finger but it wouldn’t stay. He walked to the top of the ridge, scanning the ground for berries as he went. He looked under the cairn again. The faint rush of a whale’s blow carried on the wind. He turned, sighting it as it passed. Bowhead, he thought, from the shape. Not for the first time, he wondered what it would be like to be inside one. Sometimes he heard them calling each other from the deep, the mournful sounds travelling through the water and reverberating deep into the rocks on the beach. It was a change from the whistling of the wind and the shrieks of the seabirds, but somehow it made him feel lonelier. Clouds bloomed on the horizon. 

He clambered lightly down the hill to the inlet where the fraying fishing line ran taut into the water. He plucked it gently with his hands, feeling for movement, a kick against the strong current. Nothing this time. He thought about the fat redfish he’d caught last week, how ugly it had been, its bulging eyes popping as he dragged it from the deep crevice into the light. He had roasted it on a fire of driftwood and old newspapers and sucked every bone clean. As he lay the line back down flat against the rock, he noticed how hairy his hands were now, and how wrinkled the skin looked. He made a mental note to drink more water. 

He’d also noticed that when he squatted to pick up the fishing line, his trousers had gaped around his waist. He needed more twine and resolved to check again in the burned-out house, in case there was something he’d missed. Maybe it would come on the tide tomorrow. You never know. He’d found all sorts of things in the last few weeks: old scrap metal, lobster pots, pieces of driftwood, dark and hairy seeds from far off lands. He nibbled, absent-mindedly, at his cuff as he thought about what might wash up next. Fishing hooks, that would be good. A whole crate full of crisps. A beacon he could use to call a helicopter. Now that really would be a dream come true. 

************

Days, or weeks, or months later, the delight at the sight of new colour on the horizon was tempered by what it brought with it. The red kayak was pulling dark clouds behind it, so dark that they made the pale blue waves deepen and rise, their wash reaching higher up on the beach. He was watching through the windowless holes in the burnt-out house when he saw it. The surprise made him step back involuntarily into the shadows. He gathered his things, quickly packing them away out of view, then kept an eye on its progress from out of the man’s line of sight. 

The kayaker was a large, hearty man dressed in shiny bright clothes that strained over the muscles beneath them. Sunglasses hid his eyes. His footprints made heavy divots in the shale on the beach, knocked the stones together loudly as he walked up to the houses. 

He thought he would perhaps let the kayaker settle in first, let him get acquainted with the place. Let him keep hold of the feeling that he is the first explorer to set foot on this island since the inhabitants were evacuated. Something strange kept him from running up to him and asking for help. Something kept him standing in the corner, in the shadows, waiting for the right time to show himself. 

The man pulled his red kayak one-handed up the beach and stood with his hands on his hips, sizing up the houses. He picked one and strode towards it. He pulled out an army green tarpaulin from his pack to cover a hole in the roof, tacking it up efficiently. He rolled out a sleeping mat on to the uneven floor and unlaced his boots, leaving them open to the air. He rummaged around in his bag a little and then pulled out a brightly packaged protein bar, which he proceeded to push into his mouth in two bites, chewing loudly. He squirmed into a sleeping bag, turned his face to the wall, and started snoring. 

All the while the other man watched from the corner, quietly. The storm grew, far out at sea, and then closer, closer. 

Certain the kayaker was asleep, he picked his way across the littered and collapsing floor towards his pack. He had been careless with it, provisions spilling out from it, open to the air. He silently snatched up another of the brightly coloured protein bars, opening it quietly and savouring it in tiny bites to start with, then larger ones, so large that a slick of liquid escaped his mouth at the corner and left a trail down his chin. He would say sorry later, he thought, and ask for forgiveness. The wind was up but not as bad as it had been. The man stirred in his sleep, mumbled something about Tara, about home. Not wanting to be seen, the other man slipped back into the half shadows and walked quietly down to the beach. 

The red kayak lay in the middle of the rocks, level with the high tide line, untethered. It was a one-person kayak, the same brand as his own had been, criss-crossed with black deck lines and elastics with a black hatch in the front and the back. The seat looked comfortable. He thought about climbing in and testing it. The paddle lay wedged in the seat. He imagined how it would feel to sit in it and stroke away through the waves, keel cutting through the water, back twisting to pull the paddle through it. In any case, the dark clouds and rising waves rendered the plan impossible. 

He thought about letting it loose, seeing it sail off into the distance like a scar in the deep blue sea. He thought about fighting the man for it in a bare-chested fist fight on the beach, landing blows on his sunglasses, causing them to fall and shatter on the rocks. Winner takes all, he thought, raising his arms like Rocky in mock celebration. In the end, it took all his strength and both his arms to pull it up to the highest point on the beach, a good couple of kayak’s lengths from its initial berth. 

The effort had him doubled over, panting deeply. A tiny spew of bile jerked out of his thin stomach. He spat at the rocks and walked back up slowly to the house, pausing every now and then to get his breathing under control. Through the corner of his eye, he saw the arctic fox slink past and start lapping at the vomit. 

Overnight it rained and rained. The wind threw the raindrops against the creaking sides of the houses and ripped the man’s makeshift tarpaulin off the roof, sending it flying towards the mountains like a giant khaki raven. 

When day broke, the sky was clear and cloudless. The sun shone on the icebergs in the bay, making them look like they were made of glass. The man and the kayak were gone. Far out to sea, as far as he could see, there was a slash of red on the water. His hand closed around the sharp edges of the tiny survival mirror in his pocket. When he pulled it out, he saw a man with a face tanned dark by the wind, with wild hair, a wilder beard, and a dark jacket sprigged in places with dirty white fluff where the lining had been pierced and the down had found its way out. He dropped it in shock. Then he picked it up, holding it up to the light to catch it and send it reflecting across the bay to the disappearing kayaker. 

It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that the man looked back, and started paddling away faster than before, a frenetic, fearful paddling like someone who had seen a ghost, or a monster.