We climb down into the zodiac for our landing at Neko Harbour and Salma runs us ashore. On the way, between the ship and the beach, we pass an iceberg as tall as a twenty-storey building. 'Wow!' exclaims Vivienne. 'Can we go any closer?'
Salma shakes her head. 'Sorry. What you're seeing is probably one - tenth of what's beneath the surface. If I go any closer, I'd risk hitting it underwater.'
The iceberg is the most impressive sculpture I've ever seen. And as it dawns on me that one day this will melt and become a part of the sea, I realise that loss and beauty are bound together inextricably.
'Icebergs wear their stories on their skin,' says Salma. 'Those ridges on its side would tell us when that side was underwater, maybe even for how long.'
Brooke pokes me. 'And that's only what's above the surface. Imagine what other stories lie beneath!'
I hold her hand, imagining that we too are icebergs. All of us. Women. Rising to the surface. That is what you see us by. But beneath the surface, we are spreading. We are powerfully demanding of space.
***
Neko Harbour is a gentle curve from a headland covered with penguins to a mountain that stands so tall it blocks out the sun and dwarfs our ship.
I walk up to the ridge above the beach, turn and look out over the ancient ice. Brooke comes running up beside me. 'Doesn't that make you feel big?' she says, beaming.
'Big?'
'Yeah, big. I feel huge!' she says. 'I come down here with men all the time, and they always tell me how they feel reduced here. I think it rattles them, this place. Broadly speaking, they have an urge to conquer, maybe stick their dick in it.'
I crack up.
'I'm serious!' Brooke says. 'Because they're so used to being the big thing. And we've spent our whole lives being small. Oli—' she is standing behind me now, grabbing my arms and stretching them out wide like wings '—this is your chance to expand!'
I feel my chest open. I stand on my tiptoes. Stretch out my fingers. I become huge.
'Beware,' Brooke whispers in my ear, 'for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.'
'Beware,' I repeat, shouting it, 'for I am fearless, and therefore powerful!'
Cath and the others are at the edge of the glacier. They hear me shouting, and look up.
'Fuck yeah, you are!' Cath yells.
Together, Brooke and I sing out: 'Beware! For I am fearless! And therefore powerful!'
We collapse back into the snow, both laughing hysterically. The weight in me, shedding like skin.
***
That night, a bunch of us plan to sleep on the continent. Not in tents, but in sleeping bags. We land on a rocky beach fringed by compacted snow, and hike up to a plateau above the beach.
In fading light, we dig our beds with shovels, then lay camping mats and our waterproof sleeping bags in them.
The cloud cover is thick, so as the light fades, the sky becomes a black vault. Inky darkness. All around us.
We wriggle into our sleeping bags.
Slowly, the earth becomes still. Until silence is so thick, so palpable, and so real, I could reach out and cut it.
I remember a night sleeping on deck, in the iris of the sea.
Silence, which I had imagined to be beautiful and romantic, is strangely terrifying.
And then, in the early hours of the morning, I'm woken by a clap of thunder that ricochets through the bay. A glacier. The vocal organ of the mountain is beginning to calve. It cracks and folds in on itself, explodes and grinds. I sit up in my sleeping bag.
Across the water, chunks of ancient ice break off, dissolve into the sea. It's heavenly disastrous. This scream. As world stories, embedded in the ice, fall into the grey. Become part of something else. Stories swirling together in a great pool. Returning home. Into the darkness from which we all came. The darkness that we will all return to.
Between. The sea is teal glass. Broken in the middle by a humpback whale, surfacing to breathe.
I smile. 'Morning, Maggie. I knew you'd find me here.'
***
At dinner, Holly, sitting next to me, asks if I'm still dating that guy I introduced her to at the exhibition opening in London.
I feel myself contract, shrinking away. I shake my head. 'We broke up,' I say. 'Two months ago.'
'Oh, I'm sorry,' she says. 'Are you okay?'
'Yeah. I am. I think.'
She reaches across and finds my hand, holding it tight.
'He was perfect,' I say, 'but that didn't make it right.'
She squeezes my hand and says, 'Well, we're all here for you.'
'Thank you,' I say. 'I guess there were things I needed to figure out. And I felt like I needed to be alone to do it.'
Brooke, on my other side, takes my free hand. 'Leaving someone you love is painful,' she says. 'You're very brave.'
All around the table, the women link hands. And I feel a current circulating. Like a tide. Pulsing. An ocean made up of many moving parts. Pushing and pulling, beneath the surface of one skin.
'It's the deepest red,' I mumble to myself.
Brooke looks at me quizzically. 'What did you say?'
'Deep red … it's the deepest red.'
Holly squeezes my hand. 'What is, Oli? What's red?'
'Rape,' I say. The word lands heavy on the table. Out of me. 'I was raped at sea.' Letting go of this secret, I feel faint. Floating in the faraway nearby. 'I've never told anyone that before.'
And I wait for words to puncture skin. But these women say nothing.
They just hold my truth.
We stay like this. Hand in hand, for all kinds of stories. Each one breaking off a body and dissolving into the pool between us, like ice calving off a cliff face. One woman talks about her marriage, how it survived the death of a child. Another woman describes raising her daughter alone, how once they'd had nothing but now her daughter's studying for a PhD in physics. Another woman shares a harrowing story about leaving her abusive partner. And we hold hands a little tighter. Another woman tells us how she's just gone into remission.
And I realise, it's not just me. All of our bodies are scarred. But a scar is the way the body becomes whole again. It's evidence that we survived.
'A man did this to me,' Brooke says, smiling so that we can see the scar stretching from her lip to the corner of her eye. 'And you know what's funny?' she says. 'It's how often women say to me, Don't worry, you're still beautiful, as if that's what I'm aiming for. You know, the whole "It doesn't matter what you look like, you are beautiful" thing …' Brooke laughs. 'I mean, what the fuck? Who cares! Why do I even have to think of that? I want someone to tell me I'm a weapon, or that I'm fun, or challenging, or hilarious. Why is beautiful a thing? Why is it the thing? Beautiful for who? Tell me I'm a heroine. Tell me I'm inventive. Actually, tell me I'm a fucking hurricane. Yeah, that's what I want to be—a hurricane.'
She breathes in deep, blows a lungful of air into the circle. And then breathes in deep again, only this time we all join. Inhaling together. Exhaling as one. In a single gust of wind. Magnificent. Triumphant.
We choose to breathe, don't we?
***
We have Baileys on glacier ice for dessert, clinking glasses with each other at the bar. Yassmin, the poet on board, steps onto the table at the front of the bar, Brooke beside her ringing a bell on the counter to silence everyone.
Yassmin unfolds a piece of paper, clears her throat, and begins to read. 'A poem for Edgar Allan Poe. He wrote: the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.'
There are murmurs around the room.
'Well,' Yassmin says, 'to that, I say this: Basalt curl. And Black pearl. Silky Yellow Oyster Shell. "The death of a beautiful woman …" Her basalt curl. Her black pearl. Is "unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world."'
Yassmin shakes her head, her entire body.
'Becoming earth. A coffin laced with vines. Blue poppy embroidery. "Bereaved lips," are best to write. The Lovely strings. Of her blue kites … Unquestionably? How I beg to differ. How I beg to disagree. You are so wrong, Edgar. You are wrong indeed.'
There are cheers from the audience. Yassmin raises her voice. It's full-bodied. So powerful it gives me goosebumps.
'For becoming earth is not HER Poem. Becoming Earth. Is. Just. One verse.'
Someone shouts, 'Hear, hear!'
'A woman is a constellation. More words than you could Ever dream. She is basalt curl and black pearl. Smooth pink oyster shell. Dark red tides and star anise. Infinitely deep is this Chalice. Woman is waxing. She is waning. Two lips touching. Arc of spine and curve of thigh. Author. Poet. Artist. The only one to pen the flight. Of her blue kite.' She takes a deep breath, stamps her foot down on the table. 'So!' she shouts. 'Edgar Poe, I have to say. When you assert the beauty of her death. You miss the sublimity of her every breath. How sad for you. For you miss to see. How ocean exhales cloud. A pink river in the sky.'
Yassmin raises her arms up and receives a standing ovation. I cheer with all of me.
***
I'm lying on my bed facing the window when we pass through the narrow water corridor into the heart of Deception Island, a strip of land shaped like a horseshoe. Volcanic black.
In the quarantine room, I find Brooke and the others changing into their expedition boots. I pull on mine, do up the laces.
'Ready?' says Brooke.
I tuck my scarf into my parka. 'Ready!'
We load into the zodiac and motor to shore across water like green silk.
There's a glacier bordering the beach. A wall of marbled black and white.
Volcanic ash layered among the ancient ice. A story woven in time.
When we climb ashore, a thick fog has descended on the island. The soil is dense black. Like Hugo's eyes. Like AJ's hair. I shudder.
Heading away from the group, I round the bottom of the glacier and walk out onto a ridge, far enough away now that the others' voices are muffled, as if I'm under water, until I'm so deep I can't hear anyone at all.
There is a pulsing. Like waves lapping against the shore. I follow the sound, walking, wandering. Until I realise the sound is within me. Blood pulsing in my temples.
A voice whispers, Come lay down on my shadow. I sit down, lie back on the blackened earth. In the shadow of everything before. Feel the weight of my body sinking into itself. I take a deep breath. Feel the sky rush down into me. And I'm okay. I'm here. I take off my gloves. Dig them into the earth. It's warm beneath the surface. Like ash retaining heat long after the fire has gone out. I retain heat.
You set me on fire, I think. And I survived.
Brooke climbs up onto the ridge and lies down beside me. She closes her eyes.
'Brooke?' I whisper.
She opens one eye. 'Yeah?'
'This place is so strange. But I feel so at home here.'
She smiles. 'Deserts and ice aren't foreign to women. We've been here for millennia.'
I think of Maggie. Wild violets in the tundra.
Brooke takes a deep breath. 'Okay,' she says, sitting up and grabbing my hand. 'Come on … we're all going to jump off the boat.'
'Into the water?'
'Yep!'
'In what?'
'Your birthday suit?' She laughs. 'After all, it is your birthday tomorrow …'
'You're insane,' I say.
'Trust me,' she says, helping me to my feet. 'The water will change you, Oli. Into something else.'