Free Dark Matter by Michelle Paver Page A

that’s the theory; I’d never tried it till now. Half lifting Isaak in what I hoped was the approved manner, I hauled him through the front door, grabbed a bottle of disinfectant from the shelf in the hall, and hauled him out again. By the time I’d got him safely tied to his stake, I was sweating. Huskies aren’t huge, but by God, they’re strong.
    Muttering, ‘Good boy, there’s a good husky,’ I sloshed on the disinfectant. He didn’t even growl. I think he was too surprised. When it was over, I was so relieved that I gave him another tin of pemmican as a reward.
    Gus and Algie came back and I told them what had happened. Algie huffed and said I oughtn’t to favour one dog in front of the others. Gus just grinned. I saidthere’s nothing to grin about, that’s the stupidest dog I’ve ever seen, imagine getting your head stuck in a tin
twice.
    Gus burst out laughing. ‘Stupid? Jack, he got two tins of pemmican out of you!’
    Since then, Isaak’s been on the lookout for me. If I happen to glance his way, he lashes his tail and makes croaky ror-ror-ror noises. And this afternoon when I was smoking a cigarette, he came and leaned against my leg.

15th September
     
    The birds are leaving and the nights are getting longer.
    It’s dark when we wake up and dark when we eat supper. When I’m out on the boardwalk looking in, the windows glow a welcoming orange, and the main room is lit up like a theatre. But when I’m at the Stevenson screen, the mountains loom, and I get the sense of the dark waiting to reclaim the land. Then I’m keen to get back inside and draw the curtains and shut out the night. Only I can’t, as we haven’t got any.
    In one of my periodicals, there’s a paper by someone who’s worked out that what we know of the universe is only a tiny percentage of what actually exists. He says what’s left can’t be seen or detected, but it’s there; hecalls it ‘dark matter’. Of course, no one believes him; but I find the idea unsettling. Or rather, not the idea itself, that’s merely an odd notion about outer space. What I don’t like is the feeling I sometimes get that other things might exist around us, of which we know nothing.
    In a month, on the 16th of October, we’ll see the sun for the last time. According to the books, there’ll still be
some
light for a few weeks after that, because at noon, the sun won’t be all that far below the horizon. They call it the ‘midday dawn’. After that, nothing.
    But my God, the colours we’re seeing now! If it’s clear, dawn turns the sky an amazing pinkish gold. The snow glitters like diamonds. The whale ribs on the shore are dazzling. The roof of the cabin is blanketed in white, its walls crusted with frost. After a few hours, the light turns, and the bay becomes a sheet of bronze. The day dies in a blaze of astonishing colour: crimson, magenta, violet.
    So much light.
    And now this.
    It was after supper, and I was reading and smoking at the table. Algie was playing patience and drumming a tattoo with his fingers, and Gus was outside checking on the dogs. Suddenly he burst in. ‘Chaps! Outside, quick!’
    As it was minus ten, ‘quick’ meant a feverishdragging on of boots, jumpers, waterproofs, mufflers, mittens and hats.
    It was worth it.
    ‘The dogs’ fur was crackling with static,’ murmured Gus. ‘That’s how I knew.’
    We stood craning our necks at the Northern Lights.
    Photographs don’t do them justice. It’s the movement which impresses you most. The way those luminous pale-green waves roll and break and ripple across the sky – and vanish, and appear again somewhere else – and all in eerie silence. A sea of light. I know that for some people they’re a religious experience, but I found them intimidating. Those great, shimmering waves . . . so vast, so distant. Utterly indifferent to what lies beneath. And in a strange way, that extraordinary light seems only to emphasise the darkness beyond.
    Algie broke the spell