Giants of the Frost Read Online Free

He crouched beside me and handed me a small, flat rock.
    "I'm no good at this," I said, proving it by plopping the rock directly in the water. Gunnar aimed and sent a rock skipping across the surface of the lake: one, two, three.
    "Show-off," I said.
    "I practice a lot. Not much else to do on Othinsey." He skimmed another, and another, and they skidded and fell until his hands were empty and I was sick of estimating trajectories and calculating averages. He sat next to me and the lake grew still. The water was dark green and murky.
    "So why are you obsessed with the weather?" Gunnar asked.
    "My friends back in London say it's because I'm so bossy. 'Vicky wants to control the elements.'"
    "Is it?"
    "No. Ever since I was a little girl, I've always sensed that there's something wonderful about weather. It's so commonplace and yet so mysterious."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Every year it leaves a trail of carnage behind it. People freeze to death, or die of heatstroke. Houses are flattened in storms, or pulled to pieces in tornadoes. As a species we can do almost anything, but we can't control the weather. We certainly can't guarantee accurate forecasts. We study it, we look for trends, we pretend to understand it and predict it. It's a force so much greater than us that we've had to learn to live with, kind of like living with a temperamental monster." He smiled. "I've never thought about it much. I just listen to the weather forecast to see if I need to take a sweater."
    "That's the mundane aspect of it." I cast my eyes back toward the station. "As I'm finding out. Forecasting is very monotonous work. It all seems a bit pointless."
    "The shipping companies need us."
    "I know."
    "Why did you apply for this job?"
    "I need the money, and it's a step in the right direction. I'd like to work in climatology or geophysics research one day." I sighed, stretching out my legs in front of me. "It's hard, isn't it? Being a grown-up. Getting a job. Realizing, once and for all, that your suspicion you were formed for greatness was misguided."
    "You never know what's just around the corner. Your mother could win the lottery." I smiled at him. "She could, I suppose." I indicated the tranquil lake. "Does anyone ever go swimming here? In the warmer months?"
    "It's a bit treacherous. Hidden depths, lots of weed. Somebody drowned here once, back in the eighties. Besides, it never really gets that warm."
    Behind us, in the trees, something thudded to the ground, then scrabbled in the undergrowth. I must have looked startled because Gunnar said, "Don't worry. Just one of the ghosts."
    "Not funny. Really, what do you think it was? Are there animals on the island?"
    "Sure. Weasels, squirrels, petrels, owls." He stood and helped me to my feet. "Come on, let's see the beach."
    On the far side of the island, without the cliffs to protect us, the winds were cold and biting. The grey sand stretched away in both directions, waves pounding it mercilessly. I pulled up my hood. Gunnar's hair tangled and whipped around his face.
    "See, this is why I don't believe Magnus's theory about thieves," he said, raising his voice to be heard above the waves. "Imagine trying to land a boat here."
    "I expect there's a logical explanation. There always is."
    "Do you want to know something else weird? You'll appreciate this. I discovered when I was committing some of the old logbooks to a database that items were often reported missing from the station after the aurora borealis was seen. In fact, since 1968, sixty percent of the items went missing within a week of an aurora storm."
    I shrugged. "That's not enough to draw a conclusion from. Maybe the thief just takes advantage of everybody being preoccupied with the pretty lights. What's your theory?"
    "I don't have a theory. ljust find it interesting. Mysterious."
    "Mysteries are just scientific facts that haven't been documented yet." I was already outlining a hypothesis about solar winds, transcranial magnetic stimulation and