The Aurora Borealis Keeps Its Lament novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Edge of Her
The sun was due in nine days, and the sky seemed to know it.
For three nights the aurora had been the strongest of the whole winter.
On the third night, Iker took my hand after supper and said, "Come out with me."
"It's minus thirty-one."
"I know. Wear your mother's scarf."
We went out past the generator hut and the mast, over the packed snow, to the flat where we had stood the first night.
Nobody else was there.
The stars were thick, and the green was already moving overhead.
I stopped, and he stopped beside me.
"I've never told you why I wanted to be here," he said. "On the application. It's the one thing I could say aloud."
"The aurora."
"I wanted the last good part of my sight to have something to look at that was bigger than my own fear." He tipped his face up. "It's the right size for it."
"Is it still there? The corner?"
"Always. It's the only part of me that works." He smiled, and it was crooked and boyish. "Alba. Will you stand where I tell you?"
"Anywhere."
"Three steps to my left. Face the sky."
I went.
The snow squeaked.
I turned toward the north, with my back to him, and the green came down and lit the whole ice.
"Now turn your head," he said softly. "Not to me. To the light. And hold still."
I turned my face toward the glow, and the light fell full across my cheek.
I heard him breathe in.
He did not look at me.
He looked at a point far to the right of where I stood, with his chin lifted and his eyes wide.
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