The Last Dance - my entry to Firewords, 2016

As with Emilie van Damm's entry, there are parts of my story that only make sense if you see the original prompt painting, not the truncated versions shown in the "here are the winners" blog.

The Last Dance

In the eerie half-light of a summer night, Jutse Bryndisardóttir stood and gazed at the glacier. Of course, this far north, a summer night was only two hours long, so she didn’t have long to wait until dawn. Shortly after dawn, she and a team of eight others were going to set off to traverse the glacier: for Jutse just another crossing of many… but also a first. This glacier, the Mælkevejen, was something of an old friend to her. An old rival, an enemy, a totem. And – of course – an obsession. She had been born into the icy fingers of the winds that blew off of it, she had grown up at its foot. And though she had travelled extensively – living for years in the southern tropics and continuing southward, beyond the Antarctic Circle – the Mælkevejen always called to her in her dreams.

In this play of half-light and shadow, she stared into the eye (actually a huge cave in the ice face) of the feathered serpent that stared sideways back at her. With luck and the combined skill of the team, they would bivouac in that cave for the following night (and several hours more, though only the coming day would reveal whether the daylight hours of sleep would precede the night, follow it, or straddle it.

Jutse Bryndisardóttir had made a name for herself on this glacier. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that its name and hers were inextricably linked. She had been the first woman to traverse it (at age fifteen and as a member of a team led by her father). She had been the first person, male or female, to cross it solo. Years later, the first person to do so in the middle of winter. (Which meant, of course, that the sun showed itself – low on the horizon – for only two hours in every twenty-four.)

Who in Greenland could forget the rescue operation of four years ago, when three out of four members of a team had fallen into a deep crevasse? Helicopters were sent (and a television crew)… but helicopters couldn’t fly down into the gaping split in the ice. Jutse had been lowered on a cable, had sent the three hypothermic ice-wanderers up ahead of her, and then had emerged from the crevasse herself, once again a national hero in two countries: Denmark (as a Greenlander, hers and her father’s nationality) and her mother’s (Bryndis’) native Iceland . Two of the team had named daughters after her, as had dozens of others who had never ventured into the frozen wild.

And then, just the next year, it had been Jutse who had needed rescuing. Once again a solo crossing, once again a treacherous crevasse. And although both of her arms had been shattered in breaking the fall, although she had lost consciousness because of the pain, she had been able to tear her rucksack open and pull out her mobile phone with her teeth and press the emergency calls button with her nose before passing out again.

It is Jutse’ firm conviction that it was the Mælkevejen which had whispered to her to wake up for those necessary seconds: that it was the Mælkevejen which had called to her once again in her dreams. And even though both arms had had to be amputated, what was that compared to losing a life? The glacier was her friend, had always played fair with her. For many years now, she had returned the favour – in her opinion in the smallest of ways – by becoming a vocal activist against global warming. Her fame had lent weight to her message… in two countries at least. But are the Danes and Icelanders going to be able to halt an international indifference to what was (is) happening?

And tomorrow morning the final dance of two old friends would begin. Gone forever were the days of the intimacy of the two of them alone. And this really had to be the last time, alone or accompanied. It was time to get sensible and look for another obsession.

Jutse didn’t relish the idea of being a burden on others. But the other team members didn’t see it that way. They had been unanimous in naming her team leader. And maybe this time she’d make international headlines. Just maybe the Mælkevejen would somehow understand what she was trying to do and be especially kind. Just maybe a spot on global news programs would alert people from other countries to give a bit of thought to the part that they were playing in melting the polar caps, the glaciers, the Himalayan snows.

Jutse Bryndisardóttir was about to attempt a well-advertised undertaking: the first traversal of the Mælkevejen by a person with no arms. With a little [lots of] help from nine friends – eight of them human and the ninth friend one of her very oldest – she just might make it.

She winked at the feathered serpent. But, of course, it didn’t wink back. With a serpent’s unlidded stare, it watched her turn and head back home for a few minutes’ rest before the last dance.