Free The Still Point by Amy Sackville

been ship’s mate on many a whaling vessel, recruited in Trondheim (with the bulk of the crew) for his experience and the respect he commanded, and he thought of this explorer’s expedition as a well-paid whim. He was liked by the men, powerful, broad, with a mass of copper hair, and Edward had to struggle against the awe of the child within himself who had dreamed of Vikings.

    ‘We’re nearing the ice, Nordahl.’
    The Norwegian, gazing north, did not turn. Edward joined him at the rail and saw it was not insolence that kept him silent; it was the same taut thrill that had gripped his own dreams.
    ‘I felt it in my nose when I woke this morning.’
    Lars turned his large head and looked down, impressed, at his captain for a moment, before turning his gaze back to the sea. In the quiet morning, this jocular, expansive man was subdued. In the pit of him, a depth of calm like the fjord he was raised beside lay placid, and his spirit was stilled by the palemisted dawn.
    ‘Frazil, Captain,’ he said, with a nod to the water. ‘And grease ice further out. Your nose told you true.’
    The sea they were sailing had turned glutinous; it rolled without breaking, its dark surface covered by the rough-silk sheen that was the first sign of freezing.
    ‘We’ll reach the first floes in days.’
    ‘It’s early in the year for that, Nordahl. But I believe you’re right. It seems it will be winter soon enough.’
     
    Mare Congelatum, it is called on ancient maps. The sea congealing.
     
    Julia holds the edge of her desk and feels her hands clench around imagined metal, feels the chill crystallize; as a child, she stood so on a ferry to France, at the back of the ship, which, she had learned, was called the stern; and with a suitably stern, resolute expression she imagined herself an adventurer.

     
    I would be brave and strong like Edward, I would sail through the floes, I would not die in the snow; the whip and cling of my skirt in the salt wind, the ice-white cliffs become a great frozen wall.
     
    Emily, almost home now, sees the English coast loom out of the grey dawn, and holds fast to the handrail to steady her mind. She gathers her skirts about her as she steps onto the gangplank and imagines that the next time she sets foot on a ship, it might be to meet her husband, home from the sea. She breathes the brackish air, the last of the sea-mist freshness mixed with the pungent, gritty odour of the shrimp hauled onto the docks; she wonders if she will ever sail again. She will not.
     
    Edward’s hands grip the rail, his black eyes bright. The Pole draws closer. He is returning to the frozen sea.

Nightfall
    They sailed on; the sea thickened and slicked into an undulating, elastic transparency before greying and turning to rubble; true to Nordahl’s word, the first of the solid fragments were soon upon them. It was bright still in the sunshine, and warm, and the holiday atmosphere prevailed, but as the evenings drew in faster the nights grew cold. They were snug below decks, swaddled in layers of insulation and heated by the galley at the centre. Out in the night air, they could feel the frost all through their gloved fingers. Edward breathed it in and took joy in every breath.
    The floes grew thicker, more persistent, packing close, the smaller chunks crunched effortlessly under Persephone ’s wide keel. The stuff of Simon’s nightmare, and those of the whalers who in years before had risked these waters — chasms narrowing, closing in. But Persephone had reached the home she was made for and no longer rolled with the ocean; the open water had all but vanished, filled and frozen with ice. They smashed a way through or found gullies between, until they gave up on negotiating routes and allowed the ice to grip and release her at will, knowing she could stand it. At dawn and dusk, a daily cycle, it rolled and piled in extraordinary forms all about them; the men on deck saw mountains, monsters and beasts rise and topple,