Author Sahara Foley

In the morning, Arkady tucks his flint, steel, and tinderbox into the pocket of his coat, which now he wears continuously, fully buttoned, day and night. He packs up the rest of his camp and ponders the mossy indentation that represents his earthly form.

Truly, it is better to fast than to starve. What else can we humans do but exert our puny will and, by the contours of our effort, see the framework upon which the universe is draped? What else can we do? My earthly husk is hungry, though my spirit still feeds.

The clouds have retreated to the sky’s upper reaches, and an elongated sunrise stretches a pale arm across the horizon. This triggers a strange glow over the tundra plain: a variegated chorus of green and stone.

Arkady moves on. He crosses a subtle point of land that ebbs into a narrow beach. Here, the stones reveal the outflow of a stream, whose course has eroded a rift in the mountain. Far above, Arkady hears but cannot see a waterfall. He drinks from the stream.

Foxes follow ice bears. That is their way. Foxes can hunt on their own, of course, but here on Spitsbergen mostly they follow bears out onto the ice. Arkady cannot say that foxes have faith, though his grandfather might have said so. But foxes operate on the promise of left-behind blood and entrails. Foxes follow ice bears. But this one follows Arkady.

As he drinks he watches the fox pick a delicate way across the wet ground.

“The animals live by rules unknown to us. Mysterious rules, little one. Rules we could learn from. If you are going to be wise about things, which I know you shall, you will keep your mind open to the very different rules of the four- and two-legged creatures of the earth. Do you hear?” His grandfather’s voice is so close.

Arkady walks for some time, then turns on his heel and kneels with one arm outstretched. He extends one quarter of one dried fish (a full eighth of his last remaining food) southward and waits. The fox edges up, sniffs the savory tidbit, bares his fangs, and plucks the torn fish from where Arkady has set it on the stones. The animal growls and retreats with the morsel.

From behind a driftwood log, the girl-saint Vasilissa frowns, confused by the human’s kindness. Each night when the fox comes to her to sleep with its tail curled luxuriously at her neck, she feels its ribs poking a little closer to the surface of its body. All night she hugs the animal tightly and watches flat, gray clouds drift overhead. With the animal close to her, she is part of this immense place; she creeps, hides, and persists just like the delicate purple saxifrage blossoms she saw when she first arrived on the island. With the animal near her, she is stronger. By loving it, she is somehow more able to consider helping the human, although for now, she does not.

The tundra plain extends its wide palm along the coast, and Arkady trudges in a daze of hunger through the afternoon. His prayers only skim the surface of things, and he can’t shake the feeling that his grandfather is walking just behind his right shoulder. Instead of a comfort, though, the presence unhinges Arkady’s composure so that, for two hours, he can’t keep from looking over his shoulder every few minutes.

Once, when he turns, the fox is following closely behind him, and, using some of his small store of willpower, Arkady tears off a second chunk of dried fish. This time the fox takes it directly from his hand. Walking on, Arkady sucks his fingers for the salty residue. Then, he unwraps his prayer rope from around his wrist and slips it into his pocket.

The third time he offers the fox a piece of fish, Arkady trembles with hunger. Vasilissa watches from the slope just above them. The fox will not go completely hungry today, and she is glad. She decides she will flag down the next patron saint. The human deserves a kindness in return for this one. Below her, by the curve of a stream, the fox plucks the last of the fish from Arkady’s outstretched left hand, and, quick as he can, Arkady grabs the animal by the throat with his other, gloved hand and holds on. He’s decided he can bear the animal’s claws but probably not its teeth.

Arkady will never forget the way the fox fought for its life. It drew both its hind legs close to its body and thrust them at Arkady again and again, faster than he thought possible, with its claws outstretched. It used these powerful tools to shred the wool in one section of Arkady’s coat and to gash the skin of his right hand and wrist, and once even his face, as he fought to secure those legs. The fox writhed and used its front claws as shield and sword both, but a man’s arms are longer than a fox’s reach, and when a creature is gripped by the throat, it is difficult to persevere. After he secures the hind legs, Arkady shuffles on his knees to the bank of the stream and plunges the fox into the icy water. Unfortunately for the fox, the water is just deep enough, and Arkady’s hunger just strong enough, for the man to succeed.

Vasilissa watches Arkady struggling with the fox and gradually understands she is watching a battle to the death. Her sight periscopes back and upward until she is a cloud observing a tiny diorama far below. But when the human finally raises the fox’s limp and dripping form, the whole scene collapses in on itself, and she goes blind with rage. Then, inevitably, the pain unto death blooms into something else: She is no longer a little girl. She is a figment, a force, and a bright, small terror adrift in time. This knowledge fills her mind and heart, and her rage fades as suddenly as it arose, and she is back in a stark northern land, kneeling on a cushion of intricate moss filaments, clenching her fists.

Vasilissa rises and turns from the human world, because she can. She glides over the ground. She continues up the scree slope, away from Arkady and his pathetic travails.  Vasilissa will be folded into the mysteries of Spitsbergen, comforted by the crags, and nourished by endless plains of ice and stone. In some future form, she will emerge from this sanctuary, but for now, she disappears.

STACY CARLSON is a novelist, naturalist, and educator. Publishers Weekly called her debut novel, Among the Wonderful, “Intelligent, engrossing, and utterly unique.” Stacy’s essays and fiction have appeared in Tin House, Post Road, Inkwell, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships and residencies from the Mesa Refuge, The Arctic Circle, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Signal Fire. Her background includes work as a historical ecologist, fish cannery worker, hot springs caretaker, and hiking guide in Big Sur. She grew up between mountains and sea in the Pacific Northwest and has lived in New England, New York, Northern California, and the Upper Midwest.

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