Borealis Read Online Free

up—a blanket of tar whose surface glittered with jewels—and the Borealis chugged around the perimeter of the floe.
    Charlie looked down. The port side of the trawler was cutting through a crust of ice. Any closer to the ice floe would put the boat at risk. He glanced up at the pilothouse, a triptych of paneled glass illuminated from within by smeary, tallow light. Mike’s slender silhouette was clearly visible through the glass. Charlie held up one hand and Mike prodded the air horn— maaaawh— in acknowledgement.
    The rest of the crew began filing out onto the deck. Joe hurried over to Charlie, still clinging to a half-eaten ham sandwich. “What in the name of holy hell are you two doin’ out here?”
    The trawler passed beneath the lee of a great conical of ice. The moon was wiped out, dousing the ship into darkness greater than a thousand midnights.
    â€œThere’s someone out here,” Charlie said. For whatever reason, he was still whispering. “There’s someone out on the ice.”
    â€œWhat?” Joe cawed, incredulous. He perched himself along the rail and peered through the darkness at the looming iceberg. “Are you insane? And we’re too close to this thing.” Joe turned around and started waving his arms at the pilothouse. “Asshole’s gonna pull a Titanic!”
    â€œWe’re fine, we’re fine,” Charlie said, his breath coming in excited gasps now. He was staring through the dark, his eyes cutting through the undulating depths of the mountain of ice. The shadows appeared to be alive. If he looked at any particular place for too long, the landscape appeared to shift. He blinked and pressed the heels of his rubber gloves into his eye sockets.
    Billy McEwan materialized beside Charlie. One of McEwan’s large white hands closed around Charlie’s left wrist. “The hell’s going on, Charlie?”
    â€œI saw someone on the ice. A woman.”
    â€œWe can’t be cutting this close to the ice, man. You know that.” McEwan still had his wrist.
    â€œMike knows what he’s doing.” He yanked his wrist free and locked McEwan in a heavy stare. Billy McEwan stared back, his too-white face framed in a black, rubberized hood, the loose threads of his knitted cap spiraling down over his forehead. McEwan had spent a good chunk of his career as a pilot with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service out of Alaska until he got caught doing overflights for poachers in his private Cessna. As a deckhand, McEwan was a strong and silent worker…but Charlie always got the feeling that the man resented his current lot in life and thought of the rest of the crew as no better than a mob of uneducated roughnecks.
    McEwan’s eyes pulled away, cutting out across the flank of ice. Charlie let his gaze linger just a bit longer, nothing more than a childish exercise in superiority of course, until he watched McEwan’s eyes widen and his lips purse. A waft of cloudy vapor rose from between McEwan’s lips and vaporized in the freezing air. Charlie swung back around and stared over the ice just as McEwan mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.
    The figure reappeared down the opposite side of the ridge—just a black blur among a density of deep shadows.
    â€œThere’s someone out there,” Billy McEwan breathed.
    â€œThere!” Charlie yelled, waving again at Mike inside the pilothouse. He began pointing vigorously at the ridge. “There! There!”
    The rest of the crew, including Dynamo Joe Darling, turned and stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
    Just then the trawler cleared the shadow of the icy spire and the three-quarter moon reappeared in the sky. Moonlight washed down the frozen slopes of the iceberg and spilled down to the frozen shores. The figure was illuminated coming down the ridge—white, glistening skin, athletic build, undeniably female. Smallish breasts capped in