Amalik hadn’t left the house in four days. The ice storm had started on the stroke of noon five days before and Mother Winter had shown no sign of relenting since. Just hours before the snow fell, Amalik had managed to lock the dogs in the sled barn which was sheltered from the worst of the wind between two finger-like granite protrusions at the western limit of the village. He knew they’d be safe for another couple of days; they’d lived through worse and he’d left enough clean straw and food to last a week.   

            His own provisions were running low, but he wasn’t desperate, not yet. The storm had come in quick and taken the whole town by surprise. The villagers had been waiting expectantly for the supply vessel’s biyearly visit so they could line their larders in preparation for the months of cold darkness ahead. It was too early for heavy snows and he’d expected the weather to move on just as quickly as it had arrived. But for now it seemed like it was here to stay. Amalik wasn’t too concerned, though: he still had reserves of seal meat and mattak in the freezer which, with the rest of the soy sauce, would see him through the days ahead.

            It had been seven months since he’d spent more than 24 hours inside his small, timber-clad house and, on that particular occasion, he’d been running a fever of over 104 and his mind hadn’t been concerned with a lack of occupation and space. Now, the house and each of its three rooms felt like an extension of his very being; he knew the dimensions of the living room like length of his own arm, the red of the table lamp like the pale blue of his own eyes. He’d spent hours considering his reflection in the bathroom mirror and had counted freckles and eye lashes just to pass the time. He’d also discovered a talent for distorting his already uneven features into grotesque creations and had made a mental note to amuse his nieces with some choice examples next time he saw them.

             Amalik wore a totem around his neck, polar bear incisor threaded on a piece of twisted cord. The tooth was passed to him by his grandfather, a great Inuit hunter, as a symbol of strength and endurance. Under normal circumstances, he never took it off, but on the third day of his confinement he removed the tooth from its chain and began threading it between his fingers, absentmindedly. After tiring with the game, he rose to look out of the window and placed the tooth on the sill. Seeing no change in the weather, he went to the kitchen and made a pot of black tea. When he returned to collect the tooth it had vanished from its spot on the windowsill. He searched the floor beneath the sill, even running his fingers along the narrow gap between the coarse carpet and the wall. When he couldn’t find it there, Amalik looked under each and every piece of furniture in the small room, but after an exhaustive search there was no sign of the incisor.

            Dejected and hot from his efforts, Amalik stumbled to the bathroom and threw some cool water on his red face. He ran his wet hands around to the base of his neck and there his fingers alighted on the familiar texture of the cord. Amalik looked into the mirror as his fingers traced the thread round to his collar bone and then pulled out from beneath his sweater the polar bear incisor hanging where it had always been. 

The peninsula was bone-shaped with a flat, low-lying central plain and tipped with a bulbous outcrop which thrust out into the bay. It was spring then, the time of ice, when the Uummannaq fjord surrounding the land froze solid, hard enough to hold the weight of husky-drawn sleds and the plodding paws of wandering polar bear. The sun had just returned after an absence of over three months, its weak light gently casting welcome shadows and breathing bright life into the surface of the frozen pond. The time of darkness, winter, had been almost unendurable, its end seeming never in sight, but now gone, best forgotten.

The ice sheet was broken here and there by ship-wrecked icebergs whose heavy wanderings had been temporarily suspended by a stronger force of nature. They’d be released come the thaw, free to tumble in the waters once more; their scale incomprehensible in that place, with white planes the size of runways. Guillemots gathered on top of one large specimen, their tiny black forms sprinkled like sesame seeds. Otherwise the ice was a desert; vast, flat and empty.

On the peninsula, there was a small settlement, no more than ten houses. They were positioned close together on the short, narrow diaphysis. They were squat, none higher than two stories, wooden and painted in primary colours with black or white window frames. The place could be mistaken for a toy town sprung from a child’s imagination if it were not for the brutality of the surroundings. Each house appeared frozen to the very earth with ice grasping their corners, holding them down, no escape. By the steps of one house lay the body of a dog, long dead, muddy ice tangled in its grey-white hair. Outside another, skin was stretched over a dark wooden frame; the fur mottled brown and creamy white round the edges. The creature’s hide was secured to each corner of the mount with pale blue cord and its antlers lay on the floor below. A narwhal skull was mounted above the entrance to the blue house next door, not one, but two, twisting tusks. Fishing boats lay docked on the land sheltering beneath tarpaulin, waiting with their nets.

In summer, the fjord would lap again at the shoreline on both sides of the village, a time for hunting, of renewal, to prepare once again for the darkness ahead. But for now, the waves must bide their time, churning unseen under the calm concrete exterior, waiting for the seasons to turn.

Jun completed her check of the temperature gauges in the ZaiCorp greenhouse ahead of schedule and by 8:15 was back at her desk in the small office annxed to one of the larger research laboratories. She wouldn’t be joined by any of her colleagues for at least another thirty minutes as they were undertaking their daily dose of orientation at the hands of one of the corporation’s many productivity instructors. Due to her seniority, Jun was exempt from this morning ritual, although she was still required to attend training at least once a week. Any failure to attend would be noted.

Coffee in hand, Jun began reading a paper which had been recommended by Yoshi, one of the junior assistants on the programme. After less than five minutes she was interrupted by the telephone. She sighed and, after placing her cup of cooling coffee onto the desk, answered the ring.

“Jun Matsuoka speaking.”

“Ms Matsuoka, this is Executive Yotashi, from Resourcing and Personnel. We haven’t met, but I am aware of the important work which you do for the Corporation. Can you spare a couple of minutes?”

Yotashi’s tone was odd, almost robotic. Jun had, thankfully, very little experience of dealing with ZaiCorp’s R&P department. As well as being responsible for human resource matters it was rumoured that R&P kept close watch on the digital activities of all ZaiCorp’s employees and Jun was aware that Executive Yotashi headed ZaiCorp’s R&P operation across all of Atarashii OSA. This was big. What did she want?

“Of course, Executive Yotashi. What can I assist you with?”

“Ms Matsuoka, it has come to our attention that you have recently been accessing material on the ZaiCorp database that bears no clear relevance to the scope of your research. Now, I am not suggesting that you have exceeded your access…”

“I hope not. My access rights are unfettered throughout the ZaiCorp database. That is the agreement which I reached with the Director of Research. My team and I cannot work under any other circumstances.”

Jun was nervous. What had they picked up on? It could only be one thing: the fertility data. But she thought she’d deleted her access history. Clearly their data mining tracking capability was more sophisticated than she had thought.

“As I was about to say, Ms Matsuoka, there is no suggestion that you have exceeded your access permission. However, we are concerned that, how do I put this: the Corporation is concerned that those with privileged levels of access should not abuse the trust which has been placed in them. I have spoken with the Director of Research and he informs me that the Corporation’s enhanced fertility scheme, which you were a beneficiary of, has nothing to do with the research which you are currently undertaking.”

Jun sat rigid in her seat. What had she touched on here? She hadn’t found anything of note during her search. What were they hiding?

Yotashi continued. “It is recommended that you limit your mining of the database strictly to those areas which directly relate to the matter of your research, Ms Matsuoko. Is that clear? We will not issue this warning again”

Jun breathed deeply, hoping to keep her voice steady, before replying, “Abundantly clear, Yotashi-san, although please let it be known that I resent the implication of any wrongdoing. My work here is complex and multi-faceted. Science cannot be neatly divided into boxes and it is in the interests of the success of the project that my research and mind flows freely across the information which ZaiCorp holds. Nevertheless, your warning is noted and I will make sure that my team is informed. Goodbye.”

The dial tone returned and Jun slumped in her chair. A film of cool sweat had risen during the short conversation. They wanted her to know she was being watched. But why?

The grass is different when the summer sun is out softer more inviting want to take off my brown brogues and let my toes breathe can’t remember the last time absurd really but time is consumed back home if not working then what helping mother with the rest of them feeding cleaning washing repeat cycle she needs my help although she never complains at least not to me and I don’t expect my father would listen to it there’s a freedom in this action in feeling the blades between my toes a small escape a simple act flex bend stretch relax muscles taut then relaxed legs pale tinged with pink not long out not used to the exposure black hairs shifting in the breeze park filling up slowly as the sun rises different groups strewn across the expanse of lawn broken here and there by flowering bushes rhododendron fuchsiathe odd vertical a tree a post by the croquet lawn a couple with child wearing a red hat to guard a picnic set out on a stretched square of white cotton the assumed father seemingly uninterested his eyes tuned elsewhere does he take it all for granted four girls young women students sit circled a punnet of strawberries between them fingers dart in and out the fruit hulled at first serious  what subject then laughing one louder than the rest their attention fixed on her back straight legs tucked underneath a cigarette lit then softly fumes a world apart his mother’s cousin an out of sight relative went to Newcastle became a doctor a useless beacon of hope last time I saw a classroom five or six years now no point then no point now a breeze stirs the pages of the diary in my hand nothing written today maybe later too hot to write not much to record that’ll change before long tales of adventure ha perhaps but what else mind can’t fix on what may come to pass injury my own or worse the sight of others mud sweat water drunk from a tin canteen grass to be trudged over not lounged upon cool air drifts from the river a thirst for it another sits close by a man white linen his skin used to the sun his hands dark a book bound in green leather embossed gold can’t make out the title he reads and flicks a brightness sudden then gone a flash of light not from the turning pages but somewhere else where to my left towards the river no one there just a trick a breath a buzzing the fly lands and walks observed twitch then gone there it is again the river a glint from the surface no something there what a discarded bottle a child’s toy something more moving quickly now over the grass my steps light in bare foot the bank a skirt blue an unbuttoned blouse is she her eyes mouth closed hair wet arms limp she looks….

You have been missing for almost two days. I feel sick at the thought of what might have happened to you, but such emotion is an undesirable distraction: I need to think, I need to think damn clearly, if I have any chance of finding you here, in this lost place.

It must be around 5 am, as dawn has broken, although it’s sometimes hard to tell now as no bird song greets the arrival of the new day. Even the birds stifle their voices in this place. Like the rest of us, they’ve learned the necessity of silence, the value of keeping your head down. The last bird I saw was threaded on a skewer, roasting slowly over the fire which burns perpetually outside the shaman’s container. Pigeon, I reckon, although you would have known for sure. The smell of its meagre flesh cooking made my mouth water; I could almost taste its charred oily skin. It silenced the entire yard; all eyes turned on the shaman’s fire, all ears listened to the sounds of fat spitting in the flames. The shaman didn’t even have the decency to eat his prize inside his container. Instead he sat on an upturned bucket by the fire, in view of everyone, and picked clean the bones of the bird. No one else would have dared to act that way, anyone else would have been torn to pieces for such a display, but his position in the yard is now almost unrivalled. I’ve even contemplated asking for his help to find you, but I cannot abase myself, or us, like that, not yet.

This is the only time of day that I can bear, when everyone is locked away inside their containers, dreaming that the next shift will take them away from this place. Of course no one knows how it works; people have their theories, but it hasn’t been figured it out. I know it’s possible that you could have been bundled into a container and mugged for the change in your pocket or shoes on your feet and then your small part of the world shifted, taking you away, but I don’t feel that you’re far from me. You’re here, in the yard, I just know it. I cannot believe that you’re anything other than missing. You wouldn’t have left me here, alone.

I only half remember the last time I saw you striding with purpose away from our camp. We’d run out of water and it was your turn to take the 5 mile round trip to the nearest tap. In our previous life you would have been back in a couple of hours, laden with filled bottles, but everything takes longer now. There’s one tap per sector and as thousands of people call each sector home, the queues are long and hostile: everyone resents waiting in line for water, but it’s a fact of life now.

I was anxious when you didn’t show up after three hours. By the time five hours had passed, I knew something had happened, so I set out for the tap. I thought maybe there had been a food drop or a fight had broken out in the queue. Maybe the tap hadn’t been working so you’d continued to the next sector, hoping to have better luck there. When I neared the tap and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, I panicked. I searched the area, trying not to draw attention, before asking a woman whether the tap had been working all day. She eyed me with natural suspicion and then nodded: no problems today.

Assault, theft, rape, murder: all part of daily life now. But we’re so careful to avoid any trouble and I know that you wouldn’t have taken any stupid risks, no short cut back to our container was worth it, and there was really nowhere else that you could be. I asked what few friends we have whether they’d seen you and, apart from Old E who saw you on your way to the tap, no one could help me. I walked the few miles to the tap in the next sector, although it felt useless, but I didn’t know what else to do. Everywhere is the same now, but walking through the adjoining sector felt like entering a different world. The same thin, filthy faces, the same ragged clothes, everyone in the same position, all living each day in fear, but I was scared, more scared than I’ve been in months. I spoke with a couple of men there, broaching the safe topics of food and water, but all they could talk about were the rumours of plague which were spreading from the other sectors. The children told stories of a shift bringing into our world a giant rat which left death in its wake. They didn’t speak of monsters, but the adults were also preparing to face a nameless foe and the shifts were being spoken about for the first time as bringing pain and suffering, rather than ultimately alleviating it.

I returned to our container, hoping, without any real conviction, that you’d be there waiting for me, with a smile and ready with a joke about wandering off. You weren’t there. I couldn’t face being in the container alone, so I made up the fire and sat watching the flames until it was time to lock myself in for the night. There was a shift last night. It came just after 1 am. Two of the containers in the row in front of our own shifted and their new inhabitants fell noisily onto the ground. Spanish, I think; a family with three children (two boys and a girl) and a group of men in their twenties and early thirties. I couldn’t sleep, so I listened to them talking. They’ll learn not to speak at night before long, but everyone receives one night’s grace. Eventually they quietened and the night’s silence restored.

I’ll find you. I promise. Just keep strong. I know you will. I’ll search every inch of the yard and the yard beyond. I must. I cannot go on without you.

I’m a big fan of labels, but I like to get there first. If caught in one of my rare, gentler moods, I’d say I’m a bit of a black sheep, the odd one out; perhaps, if I was feeling particularly kind, a gifted free spirit. But otherwise, and to most, I’m a curse, a weirdo, an aberration, a freak. Actually, that last label was lovingly applied by my stepfather. Freak. Of course, I remember well the first time that it happened. I was eight years old and playing in the yard at the back of our house. My mother had brought us three baby rabbits, one each for me and my sisters, as an early Easter treat. They each had mottled brown fur and could only be told apart by the thumbprint sized white spots which appeared at random on their tiny, warm bodies. I christened mine Lucy, as I had spent the weeks before the event absorbed nightly in the adventures of the Pevensie children, and Lucy’s spot fell on her right flank, somewhere between her fragile hind leg and spine. I don’t remember the names of the others as we never spoke about them again after that afternoon. We were excited, but the rabbits were, with hindsight, petrified and kept running away from the grasping hands of my sisters and me. We were impatient for their attention, for them to do as they were told, but they wouldn’t obey our childish directions. My youngest sister, Susie, was quick to frustrate and had started to cry, so I willed them to stop moving. And they did. Just like that. There they were: lifeless on the just-cut grass. Susie’s tears turned quickly into a torrent which drew my stepfather out into the yard to discover what was disturbing his afternoon in front of the TV. I was in shock, I hadn’t meant it to go that far, and that first time had taken a lot out of me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying for the ringing in my ears, but my sisters told it as it happened, and then it came: I was a freak.

They’ve all moved on now, the rest of my kin. Grown up and gone, or dead. Makes no difference. Just me and Harper left around here and he ain’t much of a conversationalist, being a dog and all. I’ve sat on this porch every night for almost sixty years. Six. Zero. Count them on your fingers, all the way from one to sixty. That’s time for you, easy to count, but hard to define, that’s what I reckon. I’ll sit here now, like I always do, and watch the sun dip behind the house across the street; then I’ll smoke and watch the comings and goings until my eyes close and my head droops to my dusty chest. Then I’ll sleep. Maybe I’ll dream, maybe I won’t, but I never remember them when I wake anyhow. It wasn’t always this way: I dreamt strong when I was a young buck, but the dreams of the young are stronger than the old, no matter if they’re waking or sleeping, and that’s a fact right there.

Our goodbye at the station would have appeared perfunctory to the unbiased observer: a light kiss on the cheek before we both turned and walked in opposite directions, him to board the train, me back up the platform and onto the main concourse, immediately lost amongst the seething rush-hour crowd. We both knew there was no need for an overblown outpouring of affection in public as we’d said goodbye countless times in the weeks before. It had always been there, a ghostly bell hanging on a delicate chain between us which peeled at the slightest disturbance, the merest hint of our parting. I went directly home from the station and took out my writing set from the desk by the window in the room which I shared with a girl from the office and started writing the first of my unopened letters to him, even though it felt silly as he’d only just left, but I didn’t know what else to do. I imagined how the letter would find him, what he’d be wearing, where he’d be sitting as he read my words. I pictured him in his uniform, pressed, but dirty from the red sand; his face flushed from the desert heat, a few strands of his dark hair stuck to his forehead with perspiration. I watched him mouth the words as I signed off with love, as always, Eloise.

The opening was announced in the local paper, a small advert framed with a heavy black border and written in a bold gothic font: ‘WANTED: Photographer’s Assistant – not for the squeamish; interest in the occult preferred; applications in writing to Roland Delacroix Esq.’ I hadn’t been out of work for long, just a couple of weeks, when I stumbled upon the advert (I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not this was merely a fortuitous coincidence). I was half-reading the job pages over a cup of thin coffee in a Turkish café close to where I was staying, trying to fill time and shake off a hangover. A couple of bar jobs, a receptionist position at the new gym, volunteers needed to help old dears with their weekly shop: a wealth of opportunity.

Then I saw it. At first I thought it was a joke, some gimmicky piece of advertising dreamed up by a local amdram group; then I focused on the name and something stirred. Roland Delacroix… I let the syllables play on my tongue and lips while I drank a second cup of coffee which I’d been shamed into buying by the owner’s wife’s constant attention. I had an uncle called Roland, a great uncle on my mother’s side if we’re going to get technical, but his last name was Jones: a big, bald man with a nervous stammer. Sold used cars. Wouldn’t know a lens from a tripod.

And then I remembered where I’d seen it.

Now, if your high-street is anything like mine, or any small town high-street across the country, it will be filled with familiar brands, your banks and your burger chains, but it may also contain a few curiosities, such as the ladies’ dress shop which displays proudly the same drab fashions year after year seemingly without any patronage, or maybe a shop which sells trophies, just trophies, you know the type, the ones handed out to school kids on sports day or to the winners of the local bowling league (lawn, of course, not ten pin).

Delacroix’s was one of those places. The shop was double-fronted and located at the quiet end of the street, with faded green signage and burnt gold lettering which was now, many years after its application, barely legible. The window display only hinted at the business within: a small selection of non-fiction books with no obviously discernible connection to each other, their covers dulled and obscured by a layer of dust; an antique ivory-coloured phrenology bust; and, several framed black and white or sepia tinted photographs of subjects with their eyes closed. I didn’t know it at the time, but these were Victorian death photographs, pictures taken of the recently deceased to be treasured by those who went on living. Memento mori. I’d never seen anyone enter or leave the shop. Delacroix’s had nothing to hold the interest of your everyday high-street window-shopper and, as a result, went unheeded by the town’s inhabitants.  

I was surprised to learn that a photographer worked behind Delacroix’s faded façade and I was intrigued by the job. As for the vague requirements set out in the advert, I’d never been the squeamish type; while other girls at school threw their hands up in disgust at the prospect of dissecting frogs or fainted at the sight of the nurse and her needle, I was resilient. My father’s daughter. And hardened by the experience of growing up with three older brothers. And, I confess, I had a rather naive interest in the occult. I once spent an entire school summer holiday devouring the occult section of my local library. Poltergeists, spontaneous human combustion, telekinesis: I was a little obsessed. My father was, understandably, concerned, but, hey, it was only a phase. Harmless, really. Any reading’s good reading. However, any cursory interest that I may have had in the supernatural when I was fourteen does not excuse what followed, that I had by continuing down this path I somehow waived my human right to say ‘whatthefuckgetmeoutofhere’. No excuse; no waiver.

Don’t get me wrong, the prospect of being a “Photographer’s Assistant” was interesting, but I had no long-term interest in being anyone’s sidekick, I was no man’s Debbie McGee. I was ambitious: I wanted my own studio, to make my own name. But I needed the experience. So I applied. There was no postal address for applications, so I put my covering letter and a bundle of prints into a brown envelope marked for the attention of R Delacroix Esq. and posted it through the letterbox of the shop door. The door was locked, but I stood outside for a while, hoping that someone would part the heavy drapes and retrieve my package. After ten minutes I gave up and went home.

A couple of weeks past and I’d almost forgotten about the job when I received a letter in the post. The envelope was delicate, like folded parchment, and my name and address were hand-written in a neat, cursive script. Inside was Delacroix’s reply:

“Dear Ms. Chamberlain,

I’d like to thank you for your interest in the role of my assistant. I hadn’t anticipated that anyone so young or, for that matter, female would apply for the position, but your prints show some promise (albeit immature) and, on that basis, I’m prepared to grant you an interview. Please attend the emporium promptly at the hour of 8:00 a.m. on Saturday 8th June. Light refreshment will be provided.

Yours faithfully,

Roland Delacroix Esq.”

Let’s just say that my response was animated. But the sad fact was that this interview was the best opportunity that I’d had in a long time, so I decided to go. 

The door stutters, slowly then open.

‘Tickets from Dore and Totley…’

Headphones on, two bag barricade; a tap on the shoulder, ‘Your ticket, please, sir?’

Trolley rolls, a girl stumbles, crockery rattling in its cage.

‘How do you take it, sir?’

Jug poised; a hand practised, steady.

‘White, but only a splash, ta.’

‘Madam?’

Absorbed, unaware, staring, field after field, a pile of books at her fingertips, and then, surprised.

‘Oh! Just two sugars for me, thanks, love.’

Smiles all round, maybe a word or two, then down to their distractions.

Inspired by a train journey from Sheffield to St Pancras.