The Blue (The Complete Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

snow’s barely on. And before we even get to the blue, it’ll stop. And then there’ll be nothing. For the first time in my life, nothing falling from the sky. Nothing but those beautiful rays of sunlight. As I’m thinking about the blue and the snowflakes I can hardly taste, Voley barks. My head swings back around to the tent. Voley’s outside again, his fur is up in a ridge, and he’s looking up at the cliff of the Resilience floe. My eyes follow the cliff up to the top and there he is: the seal. Just as big as he looked at night. But in the daylight I can see the shiny lines of ribs and his smooth and shiny gray coat. His face looks just like a dog’s. And slowly, I rise, point my gun, and walk toward the tent.
     
    The seal doesn’t move—and either he can’t make the gap to reach us or he doesn’t want to try, because all he does is follow Voley with his head as Voley barks and jumps side to side. And then, when I get closer, the seal turns to look at me. His dark eyes tracing my every step, watching. And I watch him, my gun trained on his chest. I start to wonder if I could make the shot. But I don’t want to try. Besides fuel and food, I don’t know how much ammo we have left, and we’re down to two guns. And I’m not a good shot. I have to get closer first.
     
    Once I’m alongside Voley, and then right up to the gap itself, I can see the thing in all the glow of the graylight that pours down through the smeared clouds. It’s to my shock that I realize that the creature is beautiful. No less beautiful for the fact that I know it’s a killer, and will stop at nothing to stalk us in the night and drag us down into the cold rain sea and devour us alive.
                It arcs its head back to watch me approach, and I see the spots on its neck and chest. A leopard. And then I watch his nose going—up and down in sniffs—just like Voley always does, like he’s trying to catch a scent of me on the wind. He must be satisfied because he finally starts to wiggle his way along, and I get the gun sighted again right on his chest. I think about how I’ll have something to tell Russell when he wakes up—that I took our stalker down all by myself. But then, something strange comes over me. Like this thing is no less beautiful than the whale or the dolphins or the fox or Voley. And I know I should kill it now, when I have the clear shot, that there’s no excuse, that this thing tried to drag me to my death just hours ago, and would have if not for my jacket, but I can’t shoot: When it moves, and I see the limp in it, where the scarred circle broke the bones inside his flipper, and it has barely any speed on land, I can’t pull the trigger anymore. I see the same limp as Russell, and Voley. And then, as I recognize the weakness settling in me, and how it will get away, and come back at night to kill us, and I can’t afford any mercy, I pull the trigger. The sound rolls loud and clear, waking Russell, and the seal jumps, somehow doubling its speed. And then, as fast as it came, it disappears back into the Resilience floe. When Russell comes out, half angry that he’s awake, but more concerned because I’m shooting the gun, I tell him what happened, and that I missed it. I tell him how it’s wounded, but that it can probably swim just as fast. And how skinny it looked.
                It’s starving, Russell said. Just like us. We’re probably its only hope. He tells me this with a strange ring of compassion in his voice. Then he says, It’s probably better you didn’t hit it. When he says this, I realize he must be weaker than me, because he’s crazy to suggest that it’s a good thing I didn’t kill the beast that’s been trying to murder us every night. But then he explains: We’d never get to him from down here. And I understand now—the same as the seal’s hunting us, its last hope for food, we’re hunting it. For its body. Because one of us is going to die, and that death