Dan Simmons - The Terror

But she has no tongue , he reminds himself.

She passes the liquid water from her mouth to the seal’s mouth.

Crozier knows that if the seal’s living soul, not quite departed from this body, is pleased with the beauty and workmanship of the harpoon and barbed ivory spearhead that killed it, is pleased with Silence’s stealth and patience and her other hunting methods, and especially if it enjoys the water from her mouth, it will go tell the other seal-souls that they should come to this hunter for the chance to drink such fresh, clear water.

Crozier does not know how he knows this – Silence has never signed it to him with strings or suggested as much through any other gestures – but he knows it is true. It’s as if the knowledge comes from the headaches that plague him every morning.

The ritual over, Silence gets to her feet, brushes the snow from her pants and parka, gathers up her precious instruments and harpoon, and together they drag the dead seal the two hundred yards or so to their snow-house.

They eat all evening. It seems that Crozier can never get his fill of fat and blubber. Their faces are both as greasy as a greased pig’s arse by the end of the evening, and he points to his face, points to Silence’s equally greasy face, and bursts into laughter.

Silence never laughs, of course, but Crozier thinks he sees the slightest hint of a smile before she scrambles down the entrance passage and returns – naked except for her caribou shorts – with fresh handfuls of snow for them to wipe their faces with before wiping them again with soft caribou skins.

They drink icy water, heat and eat more seal, drink again, go outside to separate places to relieve themselves, drape their damp clothing over the drying rack above the low-burning blubber flame, wash their hands and faces again, brush their teeth with fingers and string-wrapped twigs, and crawl naked under the sleeping robes.

Crozier has just dozed off when he awakens to the feel of Silence’s small hand on his thigh and private parts.

He reacts immediately, stiffening and rising. He has not forgotten his previous physical pain and scruples about having relations with the Esquimaux girl: these details simply are not in his mind as her small but urgent fingers close around his penis.

They are both breathing hard. She flings her leg over his thigh and rubs up and down. He cups her breasts – so warm – and reaches down behind her to fiercely grab her round behind and pulls her crotch tighter against his leg. His cock is almost absurdly hard and pulsating, its swollen tip vibrating like the seal-indicator feathers at every fleeting contact with her warm skin. His body is like the curious seal, rising quickly toward the surface of sensations in spite of its wiser instincts.

Silence throws aside the top sleeping robe and straddles him, reaching down in a motion as quick as her harpoon-throwing movement to seize him, position him, and slide him inside her.

“Ah, Jesus…,” he gasps as they begin to become one person. He feels the resistance against his straining cock, feels it surrender to their motion, and knows – with deep shock – that he is bedding a virgin. Or that a virgin is bedding him. “Oh, God,” he manages as they start moving more wildly.

He pulls her shoulders down and tries to kiss her, but she turns her face away, setting it against his cheek, against his neck. Crozier has forgotten that Esquimaux women do not know how to kiss… the first thing any English arctic explorer is told by the old veterans.

It does not matter.

He explodes within her in a minute or less. It has been so long.

Silence lies still on him for a while, her small breasts flattened and sweaty against his equally sweaty chest. He can feel her rapid heartbeat and knows she can feel his.

When he can think, he wonders if there is blood. He does not want to soil the beautiful white sleeping robes.

But Silence is moving her hips again. She sits straight up now, still straddling him, her dark gaze holding his. Her dark nipples seem to be another pair of unblinking eyes watching him. He is still hard inside her, and her motions, impossibly – this has never happened in Francis Crozier’s encounters with doxies in England, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and elsewhere – are making him come alive again, grow harder, begin to move his own hips in response to her slow grinding against him.

She throws her head back and sets her strong hand against his chest.

They make love like this for hours. Once, she leaves the sleeping shelf, but only long enough to return with water for them to drink – snowmelt from the small Goldner’s tin they leave suspended over the clothes-drying flame – and she matter-of-factly cleans the small smears of blood from her thighs when they’ve finished drinking.

Then she lies on her back, opens her legs, and pulls him over her with her hand strong on his shoulder.

There is no sunrise, so Crozier will never know if they have made love all that long arctic night – perhaps it has been entire days and nights without sleeping or stopping (it feels this way to him by the time they sleep) – but sleep they eventually do. Moisture from their sweat and breathing drips from the exposed parts of the snow-house walls and it is so warm in their home that for the first half hour or so after they fall off into sleep, they leave the top sleeping robe off.

After he made land,

when the world was still dark,

Tulunigraq, Raven, heard the Two Men dream about light.

›But there was no light.

Everything was dark, as it had always been.

No sun. No moon. No stars. No fires.

Raven flew inland until he found a snow-house

where an old man lived with a daughter.

He knew they were hiding light,

hoarding a bit of light,

so he entered.

He crawled up through the passage.

He looked up through the katak .

Two skin-bags were hanging there,

one holding darkness,

and the other holding light.

The man’s daughter sat there awake

while her father slept.

She was blind.

Tulunigraq used his thought-sending

to make the daughter want to play.

“Let me play with the ball!” the daughter cried,

waking the old man.

The man awoke and took down the bag that held

the daylight.

The light was wrapped in caribou skin which was

made warm by the daylight inside

wanting to get out.

Raven used his thought-sending to make

The girl push the daylight-ball toward the katak .

“No!” cried the father.

Too late.

The ball went down the katak , bounced down

the passage.

Tulunigraq was waiting.

He caught the ball.

He ran out the passage,

ran with the daylight ball.

Raven used his bill.

He tore the skin-ball.

Tore at daylight.

The man from the snow-house was

chasing him through willows

and ice, but the daylight-man was no man.

The man was a falcon.

“ Pitqiktuak !” screamed Peregrine, “I will

kill you, Trickster!”

He flew down on Raven,

but not before Raven tore the skin-ball open.

Dawn rose.

Light spilled everywhere.

Quagaa Sila ! Dawn rose!

“Uunukpuaq! Uunukpuagmun! Darkness!”

shrieked the Falcon.

“ Quagaa ! Light everywhere!”

cried Raven.

“Night!”

“Daylight!”

“Darkness!”

“Daylight!”

“Night!”

“Light!”

They went on shouting.

Raven cried -

“Daylight for the earth!”

“Daylight for the Real People!”

It will be no good

if we have one but not the other.