December 21st, 1851

My dearest,

            We departed St. Petersburg and make now for Archangel, our last port before the true journey begins. I write these letters not knowing if they will ever reach you, but I leave them like Hansel’s breadcrumbs in my wake. Though, despite what the more superstitious of my crew say, I cannot believe there is a hungry witch at the end of this path.

            I know the northern pole is said to be a fearful land of ice and desolation, but as we near it, I can only marvel at the glittering expanses of snow, untouched by soot and smog. The sun lingers long past its usual farewell, and I am told it is eternal in the summer here. What a heavenly sight that must be, and so different from our eternal clouds!

            Perhaps, when I return, I will endeavor to capture this place for you in oils, so that we may always gaze upon the wild north, tamely framed in our parlor. For I will return; I feel in my heart a swell of good fortune, like the cheerful swells of the sea. 

Yours,

[A painfully mundane name, not worth recording. Whichever name you imagine, it is that one.]

***

March 2nd, 1852

My dearest,

            The winter has finally broken, and the ice of the harbor with it. We departed Archangel and make now for—well, none other than the pole and the Passage! I left this letter with a messenger who I am sure has seen off many men like me; there was an old sorrow in his voice as he gave me a rote farewell, a little speech he has probably rehearsed. I think he was quite startled when I clapped him on the shoulder merrily and told him I would see him before the next spring.

            Then he did a peculiar thing. He stared me in the eye very hard and told me not to look down. 

            The fellow certainly has left me puzzled, but perhaps this is a routine of his, too: to leave every departing Arctic explorer with a bit of cryptic wisdom. Or perhaps it is a saying around here, a Russian or Sámi mistranslation? 

            I know you are fond of playing detective with etymological mysteries, so I leave this one with you. In any event, I doubt I will be looking down, when the horizon ahead is all I have longed for!

            I will continue to write you letters, though they may not be sent for many months more. Give the boys my love, and the little carvings enclosed. I am told they are of “polar bears.”

Yours,

[Hm. This isn’t the name you imagined the first time, is it? Oh, well. The ink is smeared, anyway.]

***

March 4th, 1852

My dearest,

            We sail through an expanse of sea not unlike the doldrums in its stillness, but without the balmy air and with the slow encroachment of the ice sheet. The sun is like a great burning eye above us, ever watching. My faith tells me it is God, but my crew mutter fouler things. 

            Their unease annoys me. Where is their excitement? Their eagerness for glory, for fantastic tales to bring home? Did they think this would be like a traipse through the Alps, with many overlooks for us to laze about and wax poetic, like Byron and his ilk? The age of those men has passed, I tell them: now it is our age, in which we wonder not at the world’s mysteries but seek them out, and follow them to their hiding places.

            I suppose the messenger back in Archangel may have been a poet. When he told me not to look down, was it a slight? A mockery of what he perceived to be the dangerously lofty heights of my ambition? Well! It is a rather excellent view from an icebreaker’s prow. And when I glance sidelong and see myself reflecting in those dark shining waters, I imagine myself a figurehead, guiding us onward to the last passage that will bridge the world.

Yours,

[A name half-written, left unfinished, as if its bearer was distracted by grander thoughts.]

***

April 16th, 1852

My dear,

            Gone are the dark waters. We sail through the ice now, and at night I sit on the deck and listen to its strange music as it comes apart and together again. Such a sound you have never heard nor imagined. At times, I swear there are shapes with meanings to be found in the deep creaks and groans beneath us. When I lay in my hammock and press my hand to the hull, I feel the chill seeping in. How many ships has this ice devoured? 

            I find myself wondering at its power. It smothers the sea, and in the glaciers it crushes the very earth into designs of its making. It creeps ever closer to us, night after night: we awaken to the ship nearly encased, and must break her free with pickaxes daily. But always, it returns, harder to break from than before. Someday it will not let us go.

            My first mate says this is nonsense; spring is coming and the ice will recede. But I see no sign of this. The horizon is white, nothing but white. The sun turns the world to pale fire, and night never comes. Instead, I swear the sun multiplies, spreading ever outwards in cold halos.

            Tell me, dear, of the stars. Tell me the sun still sets in London.

Yours,

[Instead of a name there is a drawing, a hasty sketch of a ship, sailing a sea of jagged shards.]

***

April 25th, 1852

My dear,

            Spring is slow in coming. We are stuck, and I have taken to walking across the ice. I will go mad in the dark bowels of that ship, listening to the ice crush her slowly and smelling the stink of frightened men. Much better out here, in the fresh air, where the only fear is my own. The cold awakens me, and it is so energizing that I often feel as if I could walk to the Passage. 

            I do not attempt it, of course. But I do walk a ways. I search for quiet places, away from my crew and their concerns. They torment me with useless questions about our canned food and water supply and the boilers and I want to shake them all until they look out at the ice and see it as I do. What does the supply of canned carrots matter when we drift on an alien plain, lovely and terrible, which croons endless lullabies with words just out of reach?

            Today I found a melt pond, which looks like a break in the ice but is really just a shallow hollow atop it. Someday, I suppose it will melt all the way through to the sea below, but until then it is a body of water all its own, of a soft robin’s egg blue that reminds me terribly of that gown of yours, the one you always wear to Vauxhall. 

            And I know you will think this a fleeting fancy, but I swear to you that when I gazed into that pool, at the reflection of a man surely too gaunt and old to be myself, for a moment my sullen mirror self became young and laughing, and Vauxhall’s lights and flowers swirled in the shallow blue, and you stood beside me, hand in mine.

            Truly, even when I blinked and the vision dissipated, I felt the echo of your palm pressing my own. You were here. Or—I was there, with you. I cannot say, only—if every man has an anchor, then mine seems adrift, or—asunder. You understand?

Yours,

[There is a name, but it is in an illegible scrawl, in a thicker hand than the rest—a hand you don’t recognize.]

***

June 5th, 1852

My dear,

            Spring should have come by now. The melt ponds have changed color. They darken, as the sea seeps in. But the ice keeps us in its grasp, and the hull has begun to leak and groan, to join that rumbling song. 

            Some of my crew refer to the ice as her and she, as we do to our ship. This seems to me an error. The ship is built of men, a thing devised and known and made to be beautiful and useful. The ice is not of us, and though it may comfort the men to summon spirits of wicked women to explain its malice, the truth is that it feels nothing for us, and unlike a spirit it cannot be banished. We are the ghosts haunting it, and we are unseen to it as surely so many beings are to us. We are simply in its way. 

            I know you would not like me to dwell upon ghosts, but my anchor still abandons me. And when I return to the melt pond and look for us in its depths, I see another man, sailing home, or else already in your arms.

            As I write these letters, a palimpsest seems to flicker across the page: words I have never written, but bear my hand. My eyes are going. And yet, there is never any shortage of light.

Yours,

[There is a name, but it is written over itself, backwards and forwards, until nothing remains.]

***

June 21st, 1852

Dearest,

            Spring has arrived, and the Passage with it! You cannot imagine the blue of the sea when the ice parted before us, and the foamy fragments trailed in our wake like a bride’s veil as we sailed at last towards our object. 

            The ship is only a bit battered, and morale has not been so high since our voyage began. The only shadow upon our celebration was the unfortunate case of the body in the melt pool a few weeks past, but by the time the lookout saw him, the fellow had sunk too deep to fish out. All of the crew are accounted for, and though the lookout swears he wore a Navy uniform, this is clearly impossible.

            The likelier case is that this journey has taken its toll on us all. I expect that with a warm meal in his belly, a glass of brandy, and a reminder of the triumph we have achieved together, the lookout will agree he saw nothing of the sort. In fact, I am quite certain it was no more than a seal.

Ever yours,

[There is a smudge where a name should be. An errant thumb, perhaps.]