Free Call of the Whales by Siobhan Parkinson

gone, but then I stopped. It could take me ages to catch him. By then Henry might have floated off out of sight, and I’d never find him in the huge, heaving expanse of sea and float-ice.
    If I’d had time to think I’d never have done it, but I was in such a panic my body acted on its own. There were umiaqs everywhere about. I leapt into one, loosely tethered to a grappling iron driven into the ice. I undid the rope that held it, and pushed it away from the ice shore. It was only after I’d got it out on the water that I thought to look for oars. The boat was full of things – a small stove, a harpoon, a gun and, thank heavens, paddles.
    I’d never rowed even a little rowing boat, much less manned a boat of this size, heavy with equipment, across an expanse of arctic sea, bobbing with ice islands, but somehow I managed to get it moving roughly in the direction I wanted it to go. I kept my eyes fixed on Henry’s drifting ice floe. He was yelling to me. I could hear his cries floating on the icy air, but I couldn’t hear what he was trying to tell me. I knew I had to reach him. I had to. If I didn’t rescue him, he could go floating off and over the horizon and never be heard of again. It happens to arctic hunters all the time, one of the hazards of their way of life.
    ‘I’m coming!’ I yelled, but I knew he couldn’t possibly hear me. Still, it helped to shout it. It kept me going.
    I paddled and paddled, but I didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Was I going around in circles? I thought I must be, because I was only paddling on one side. I grabbed another paddle and tried to use them like oars, but the boat was too wide for me. I couldn’t reach across it to usetwo paddles at once.
    I stood up and paddled frantically from one side, then, unsteadily, I slithered to the other side of the boat and paddled a bit more on that side. Slowly, slowly, the boat moved in wide arcs. It wasn’t exactly going in circles, but it was zigzagging forward only very slowly. Most of the movement was sideways, in the sweep of the arcs. I could see this was a problem, but it was the only way I could make the umiaq move at all, so I kept paddling, wriggling from one side to the other and paddling, paddling, paddling furiously.
    Every now and then, I looked up to check if I could still see Henry. Every time I looked, he seemed further away, but I could hear his panic-stricken cries and I kept heading for him, though I was getting exhausted.
    At last – it seemed like hours – I started to get closer. Each time I looked up, he seemed a little larger, a little easier to make out. I came close enough to hear his voice, as distinct from just yells, to hear actual words. He was shouting directions. He stood on the edge of his ice floe, which was bobbing along with slow, almost dreamy movements on the swell of the sea, and yelled instructions at me. He understood boats better than I did, so I listened.
    ‘Paddle from the left,’ he was shouting. ‘Keep going. OK now, quickly, from the right. Quick, quick, she’s circling, stop her! Good, good, now a few more goes on the right. Now run to the other side …’
    Slowly, slowly, the boat swung closer and closer to Henry’s ice floe, but every time we were about to make contact, the ice floe drifted tantalisingly away again. It was like trying to catch an ice cube in a sink with wet fingers. Ican’t, I thought. I can’t do it. I’m too tired. It won’t do what I want.
    ‘Just keep coming,’ yelled Henry. ‘You are getting closer. You are. Just don’t lose your nerve, don’t panic and don’t tire.’
    My arms were taut as iron rods by now with the effort of paddling, and the constant evasive action of the ice floe was beginning to wear me down, but Henry’s shouts kept me concentrated on what I was doing.
    Eventually, I felt the umiaq make contact with the ice with a gentle bump. The mild impact propelled the boat back again, but with the next paddle we made contact again,