Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

“Can you play me something,” he said, “on the pianoforte?”

Eleanor sighed and smiled. “What would you like to hear?”

He gently drew the blanket away from her shoulders, the heat from her fevered body welling up from beneath the wool.

“You choose.”

“I am fond of the traditional songs. I can play you ‘Barbara Allen,’ if you like.”

“I would like that very much,” he said, slipping the chemise from her shoulder. She shivered in the breeze from the open window. He bent his head above her.

Eleanor's fingers twitched, as if they were caressing a keyboard, and under her ragged breath she hummed the opening bars of the song.

Although her skin was still hot to the touch, gooseflesh had already begun to form. He placed his hand above her breast to protect her from the night air. Even then, beneath the scent of camphor and wool, she smelled as sweet to him as a meadow on a summer morn. And when his lips grazed her skin, she tasted like milk fresh from the pail.

She was singing, very softly, “Oh mother, mother, make my bed…”

What he was about to do, he feared could never be undone.

“O make it saft and narrow…”

But what choice was there?

“My love has died for me today…”

By daybreak she would be gone. He put his arms around her, the breath choking in his own throat.

“I'll die for him to-morrow…”

And when he bestowed it-his mouth closing on her skin, her blood mingling with his own corrupted spittle-she flinched, as if from the sting of a bee, and her singing abruptly stopped. Her body became rigid.

Moments later, when he lifted his head again, his lips wet from the dreadful embrace, her limbs relaxed and she looked at him dreamily, saying, “But that is such a sad song.” She stroked his tear-stained cheek with her fingertips. “Shall I play you something gay now?”

December 18, 9 a.m.

Just as Michael showed up at the infirmary, stomping the snow off his boots, Charlotte came out the door with a finger to her lips. She put her arm through his and guided him back toward the outer door. “Not now.”

“She okay?”

She tilted one hand back and forth while pulling on her gloves. “She's still having a rough time and running a low fever. I've got her on some sedatives and a glucose drip. Best to let her rest.”

Michael found he was even more disappointed than he'd have imagined. Ever since rescuing Eleanor from the whaling station, he'd been haunted by her face, the sound of her voice, the chance to uncover the rest of her story.

“And Murphy stopped by to remind me to keep quiet about her being here.”

“Yeah, I got that memo, too,” Michael said.

“Come on,” Charlotte added, throwing the hood over her head. “What I need right now is a mug of Uncle Barney's industrial-strength coffee.”

Holding on to each other in the gusting wind, they inched their way down the ramp and over to the commons. A fake Christmas tree, strung with tinsel and a few battered ornaments, had been set up overnight and stood forlornly in a corner of the room.

Darryl was already in possession of a table in back, where he was plowing through a plate piled high with fried tofu (Uncle Barney said he'd radio for more on the next supply flight) and mixed veggies. Charlotte slid onto the bench next to him, and Michael sat down with his tray on the other side. With her braids all pulled together onto the top of her head, she looked like she was wearing a pineapple.

The first thing she did was to pour a lot of sugar into her coffee mug, and take a good long drink.

“Just getting up?” Darryl asked. “ ‘Cause if you don't mind my saying so, you look like you should have stayed in bed.”

“Thanks for the kind words,” she said, putting her mug down. “How does your wife not shoot you?”

Darryl shrugged. “Our marriage is built on honesty,” he said, and Michael had to laugh.

“The weird thing is,” she said, “when I was in Chicago, and I had car alarms going off in the middle of the night, and neighbors having parties till four in the morning, I slept like a baby. Here, where the place is as silent as a grave and the nearest car is parked about a thousand miles away, I'm awake half the night.”

“You pulling your bed curtains closed?” Darryl asked.

“Not on your life,” she said, dipping some dry toast in a runny egg. “Too much like a coffin.”

“How about the blackout curtains on the window?”

She paused, chewing slowly. “Yeah, I got up to fiddle with those last night.”

“The idea,” Darryl admonished her, “is to close them before you get in bed.”

“I did, but I could have sworn…” She stopped, then went on. “I could have sworn I heard something outside, in the storm.”

Michael waited. Something in her voice told him what was coming.

“Heard what?” Darryl asked.

“A voice. Shouting.”

“Maybe it was the banshee,” Darryl said, burrowing into his plate.

“What was it shouting?” Michael asked, as casually as he could.

“Best I could make out-and the wind was pretty high-it was something like ‘Give it back.’ “ She shook her head and went back to her toast and eggs. “I'm starting to miss those car alarms.”

Michael could barely swallow his food, but he decided to keep his own counsel for a while.

“Which reminds me,” she said, fishing in the pocket of her overcoat and removing a blood sample in a plastic vial. “I need a full blood assay done on this.”

Darryl didn't look thrilled. “Why am I so honored?”

“Because you've got all that fancy equipment in your lab.”

“Whose is it?” he asked.

“Just one of the grunts,” she said, offhandedly. “No big deal.”

“Well,” he said, dabbing at his mouth with the napkin, “as it so happens, I do have some big news of my own.”

Michael wasn't sure if he was kidding or not.

“You are sitting, my friends, in the company of greatness. In that last set of traps, I captured a heretofore undiscovered species of fish.”

Both Michael and Charlotte suddenly gave him their full attention.

“This is for real?” Michael asked.

Darryl nodded, grinning. “Although it is closely related to the Cryothenia amphitreta, which remained undiscovered until 2006, this specimen is as yet unrecorded.”

“How can you be sure?” Charlotte asked.

“I've consulted the definitive sourcebook, a little tome called Fishes of the Southern Ocean, and it's not there. Its head morphology alone is like nothing I've ever seen. It's got a bifurcated ridge above its eyes, and a purple crest.”

“That's fantastic,” Michael said. “What are you going to call it?”

“For the time being, I'm calling it Cryothenia — which means, ‘from the cold’- hirschii.”

“That's modest,” Charlotte said with a laugh.

“What?” Darryl replied. “Scientists name things after themselves all the time-and it will truly piss off a guy named Dr. Edgar Montgomery back at Woods Hole.”

“Then I say go for it,” Michael said.

“Now, what I'd really like to do,” Darryl said, “is catch a few more of them fast; there might be a whole school in the vicinity. The one I've got I'll need to dissect, but it'd be great to have a few spares that I could keep intact.”