Janni Simner: Thief Eyes

Of course . The rain dripped down my hood and into my face. No happy endings here . No endings at all, just a polite letter from Iceland’s Logreglan —their police—concluding that there was no sign of where my mother went but no evidence of foul play, either. The story stopped there.

It stopped here . Mom had come to Iceland with Dad last summer, the first summer of Dad’s three-year research grant. They’d visited Thingvellir to do some sightseeing, and they’d gotten into a fight. Nothing strange about that—Mom and Dad did fight sometimes. Whose parents don’t? Well, okay, my boyfriend Jared’s, but that was beside the point. They were mostly stupid fights, anyway, about stuff like Dad spending too much time on campus, or Mom bringing home yet another stray cat to foster, or whose turn it was to cook or pay the bills.

As I stared out at the river, I could almost picture them here: Mom in her slacks and blouse, blond hair loose around her shoulders—she only pulled it back for work at her vet clinic; Dad in his rumpled T-shirt and jeans, his mad-scientist hair sticking out in all directions. Mom would do all the yelling, of course. Dad got really quiet when they fought. But then it would be over and life would go on. Except this time, Mom had been so mad that instead of making up with Dad like she was supposed to, she’d run away. Dad had waited for Mom to cool down and come back. She never did.

Dad had let me read the police report, but he wouldn’t tell me what he and Mom had fought about. So I gave up asking and started begging him to take me to Iceland with him instead. I’d figured once we were here he’d have to explain.

So much for that theory . I stared at the wet wooden slats beneath my feet. What could make Mom so angry she’d decide not to come home? How well could she hide in a country smaller than Arizona? How could she want to, when I was home waiting for her? Did she hate me as much as she hated Dad? Mom and I fought, too, also about stupid things, like whether I’d washed the dishes or could cut my hair or was old enough to date. Mom wouldn’t abandon me for any of that … would she?

The wind picked up again, cutting right through my fleece-lined jacket. What if something else had happened, like some creepy kidnapper or human trafficker had spirited Mom away? Was she even still alive? My stomach clenched at the thought, even as I told myself that of course Mom was okay. We’d know if something really awful had happened to her—wouldn’t we?

If Dad knew anything—anything at all—he had to tell me. I’d make him tell me. I turned from the railing and headed back to him.

At the end of the walkway I stopped short. Someone was staring at Dad, a woman in a long wool skirt and deep green jacket. Her hood was pulled back in spite of the rain, her flyaway hair barely tamed in a long red braid. Dad drew his arms around himself, as if he’d only just noticed the weather. “Katrin. We’re not meeting until tomorrow.”

Wait, that was Katrin Jonsdottir? Dad’s coauthor—they’d written a bunch of papers together about new ways to predict earthquakes and volcanoes.

“Umm, hi,” I said, then realized I’d spoken in English. “Godan daginn,” I tried instead, words from the Icelandic phrase book I’d read on the plane.

Katrin frowned. The wind blew damp strands into her face. “You must be Haley.” Her English was perfect, just the slightest trace of an accent. She gave Dad a look cold enough to freeze water, and I wondered how they even sat in the same room together, let alone wrote all those papers. “You shouldn’t have brought her here,” Katrin said.

“Excuse me?” Nice to meet you, too . Maybe Katrin was one of those people who hated all teenagers on general principle—but no, Dad had said she had a kid, too.

Dad shrugged uneasily. “Haley and I don’t mind the rain.”

“I’m not talking about the rain,” Katrin said. The look that passed between her and Dad should have turned that rain to jagged shards of ice.

“Haley, why don’t you go on ahead?” Dad said. “I’ll catch up.”

“Sure, Dad.” I didn’t want to watch him and Katrin stare at each other a moment more. If I did, I thought I might turn to ice, too. What was going on here? And why did the stomach-clenching feeling I had—the same feeling I got when Mom and Dad fought—tell me I didn’t want to know?

Before I could make a break for it, Katrin laid a hand on my shoulder. I was afraid she’d tell me to stay, but she said only, “Be careful, Haley,” before looking back to Dad.

“Umm, yeah. Okay.” I turned away from her and hurried down the path. After a few steps I broke into a jog, ignoring the way my sneakers squelched against the gravel. Running felt good after seventeen hours waiting in airports and being crammed into airplane seats meant for short people. For the first time since landing in Iceland, I almost felt warm.

The path led to a pond with an interpretive sign. I stopped to read it, stretching my calves and watching raindrops ripple the water’s surface. The sign explained that in the Middle Ages, women convicted of things like lying and adultery had been drowned here. Nice .

A bit of sun fought its way through the clouds, making the water seem red, like blood. I shivered and ran on, following a dirt trail that branched away from the main path, winding around the far side of the pond and then following a stream uphill.

The rain slowed to a few soggy drips. The path grew steeper and water roared in the distance. Be careful . I scowled, remembering Katrin’s warning. Careful of what? I kept climbing. A huge waterfall came into view.

Huge if you lived in southern Arizona, anyway. White spray leaped into the air. I left the path and clambered over slippery rocks, trying to get closer to the water. The roaring grew louder, the air colder. Too cold—I stopped and rubbed the sleeves of my wet jacket. What was I doing here, anyway? What made me think I could find Mom, when the people who actually lived here had failed?

Spray blew into my face. A few more threads of sun poked through the clouds, casting rainbow patterns onto the water. Beautiful , I thought, but I only felt colder. I wondered if Mom had seen this same waterfall. “Where is she?” I asked the rushing water. Of course it didn’t answer. I sighed, turned around, and clambered back down to the trail.

Something glinted in the dirt there. A small silver coin, not much bigger than my thumbnail, crisscrossed with a strange pattern of circles and lines. I knelt down, as somewhere a raven cried out, and picked the thing up.

The coin burned as my fingers closed around it. The ground shook as if a train were going by. The air blurred and a hot desert wind stroked my cheek. I should have been scared, but that heat felt so good after the chill rain. I clutched the coin harder and leaned into the wind. The roaring waterfall seemed very far away.

Somewhere a woman’s voice whispered, “Hvad heitir thu?”

I knew that from my phrase book, too. I frowned, trying to remember the right response. “Eg heiti Haley.”

Someone touched my shoulder. The air snapped back into focus, and rain spattered from the cold sky onto the trail. I turned around, looking for the woman who’d asked my name. No one stood there but Dad. “Ready to go?” He shouted to be heard over the water.

I shoved the coin into my pocket. It felt merely warm now, like it had been too long in the sun. Maybe I was just homesick and had imagined the desert wind. But why would I have imagined a woman’s voice to go with it?

I followed Dad back down the trail. “Did you feel the earthquake?” he asked, once the waterfall was far enough away that he didn’t have to shout.