Harry Goodsir could feel himself changing. Not all at once, but gradually, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis or a snake shedding its skin.

He felt certain that no one back home would recognize him if he stood before them as he was now. Truth be told, he wasn't sure that even he would know his own reflection. The years up north had turned him gaunt and pale. His hair had grown long and stringy: try as he did to keep it under control with the help of his knife, it would not be fully tamed. He had not even attempted to address the matter of his beard. That he could at least justify with the small amount of warmth it offered. His spectacles had been lost somewhere amidst the final walk with Hickey's men. His frail English garb had been cast aside piece by piece, replaced with the warm furs that Silna had showed him how to assemble - that was one way of putting his surgeon's skills to good use once again. Sitting in front of the fire with his hood concealing his face, he supposed he blended in to the landscape rather well.

But he thought little of the changes on the outside. It was the changes inside that frightened and fascinated him.

In his mind, Tuunbaq still lived. By day, it followed in his footsteps and loomed over him like a storm cloud. He dreamed of meeting it on a frozen plain, of screaming, "What have you done to me? Why did you do it?" And each time, it would not answer.

Something must have driven it to claim him as it had, to take such a precious part of him and leave behind these...what were they? Blessings? Curses?

No, not curses. Not entirely. The ties which bound him to Silna were no curse. As for the loss of his voice and the strange visions which plagued his rest, he could not say the same.

You do not think quietly, Silna sent to him.

Goodsir felt his cheeks flush as he was drawn out of his thoughts. I'm sorry, he sent back, trying to clear his mind.

Silna observed him with narrowed eyes from the other side of the hole she had cut into the ice. She had roused him early that morning and practically dragged him off with her, saying it was time he learned how to hunt seal. He suspected that was not her only reason, but had decided not to offer any remark on the subject. She would bring it up before long. But she had not: by now, in fact, it was clear that she expected him to be the one to explain himself.

He had grown accustomed to confiding in her during the first winter. Attempting to make himself understood to Crozier and Fitzjames had been a frustrating chore, and he felt certain only she would understand the things he wanted to say. So, once they had settled down for the season, he had begun asking her the questions which had burned in his head since that fateful morning. Questions about her people, about Tuunbaq, whether there were tales from the past of these strange occurrences, what she had felt when giving up her own tongue.

Silna answered him with remembrances: a small village that moved with the seasons, following the game. They chased the caribou in summer, and they sat in wait for fish and seal in the winter. In return, he gave her stories of wandering through Edinburgh and walking along the river that cut through Anstruther. The mood inside their igloo grew warmer even as the winter grew harsher, and before long, things began to feel as they had in the precious time shared on Erebus.

The lessons in Inuktitut and English began once more. One started to meld with the other, forming a pidgin tongue that was ever-changing and a secret known only to the two of them. Harry noted, first with alarm and later with amusement, the many times when he could recall a word in Silna's language but not his own.

On late nights, when the captains went to sleep and left them with a small amount of privacy, she would tell him stories about her father. Angakkuq, the men like him were called. The keepers of balance and healers of the sick. He had never said much even before offering up his tongue: perhaps that was why Tuunbaq had accepted him. But he had been a good man, well versed in the maligait and piqujait and careful to see that she learned them. Most of his ways had been mysterious to her - she had never understood why he felt no fear of Tuunbaq, nor why he had ventured so far into its domain on the night he died - but she had loved him all the same. She blinked back tears as a shadow passed over her face.

Those were the moments when Goodsir's heart swelled with the bright, pounding emotion that he could not name, and when it ached until it broke over what had been done to her.

Had her father not been killed, she would not have been forced to take up his mantle before she was ready. Had Tuunbaq not encountered Hickey, it might still be alive, and Silna's people would not have cast her away. He might have saved them both had he poisoned Hickey when he had the chance.

But he would not have found her again had he taken that chance.

It was a dark and selfish thought, he immediately decided, as was his lingering grief for the dead monster. Grief for that which had slain so many of his fellows? It made no sense. None of this made any sense.

Each new thought weighed him further down and forced his mind into silence.

Now here they were, out on the ice at winter's end, and she had made it clear in her own simple way that she would allow that silence no longer.

I'm afraid I don't know what to say, he began, hesitant.

You are frightened of yourself, she answered.

Goodsir looked up, taken aback. I never said that.

You think of little else. You fear that Tuunbaq made you into something not human. You think so little of yourself and what you are that you wish to die. Her gaze never moved up from the icy water below, which was starting to seem warmer than her demeanor. Am I wrong, Harry Goodsir?

No. He studied her face. The anger was something he had expected to see, but the pain came as a surprise. I do not think of you as something to be frightened of, he sent. I never could. I only meant myself.

And what makes you so different from me?

What happened was...I didn't know what would happen. And it wasn't meant to happen to me.

Silna didn't answer at first. But eventually she said, My father once told me Tuunbaq chose as many shamans as it wished. He said it knew who to accept because it could see all that was yet to come, just as you and I can.

That didn't help it much in the end, said Goodsir.

Maybe it knew something we cannot yet see. Silna looked up. Why do you want to die?

When she had said it to Crozier so long ago, her voice had been seething and full of disdain. Now it was soft, concerned, almost afraid. He felt the blood rush to his cheeks again, this time in shame.

The night before Tuunbaq died, he said, I'd planned to poison the man who killed him.

With what?

With myself. He was eating his own men. I thought that if I could poison my own flesh and trick him into eating it once I was dead, I could kill him and save the good men who still lived.

Silna recoiled and shuddered. You would waste your life to kill one man?

I didn't see it as wasting my life. I thought that...my life was no longer worth enough for anything else. I'd been made to cut up a man's body for food. I told myself it was the least I could do to make things right.

She reached across the ice and turned his face upward to meet hers. I am grateful you did not, she said.

But, but then Tuunbaq might have lived, and you might still be with your people, and…

And we would both be alone, she finished.

Goodsir felt himself smile for what must have been the first time in weeks. And then it came again, that swelling warmth in his heart which lacked a name - but only until that name flew into focus like a large rock aimed precisely at his head. He might have tumbled over as though truly struck had he not put down a hand to balance himself.

In his mind, he heard Silna laugh. We should be on our way, she said as she stood up and helped him do the same. Aglooka and his friend will expect us.

To an outsider, she might have looked no different. But her eyes were shining, and a shy smile played on her lips. He had given her some of what he felt, and she understood it because she felt the same.

What is your word for it, Silna? he asked as they walked back toward camp.

Nalligik,she said, taking his hand in hers. And yours, Harry?

Love.


Neither of the captains said anything to them when they returned. Fitzjames failed to notice anything out of the ordinary, but Crozier looked at them and seemed to realize the occurrence of something momentous.

That night, when they were the only two souls left awake, they lay down beside each other as they had for that single night in Terror Camp. She wrapped an arm around him, pulled him closer to her as he closed his eyes, and pressed her lips to his cheek. For the first time in countless nights, Goodsir's dreams were peaceful.

When the seasons changed, Silna went about gathering extra skins and wood. For another tent, she communicated to the men.

"Why two?" Fitzjames asked once he grasped her meaning.

She put a hand on Goodsir's shoulder and gestured to herself. Ours.

Fitzjames' eyes nearly popped out of his head, and Crozier had to stifle a chuckle at the sight. "Very well," the latter said. "Do as you wish."

They assembled their new home together. To anyone else, it must have looked like any other Netsilik dwelling. To Goodsir, the sight of it and the promises it held filled him with the same thoughts stirred up by his first view of the Arctic horizon: fear of the unknown, but wonder even stronger.

He paused at the entrance, about to follow Silna inside. This is it, he thought. All this time, he had felt himself changing: if he did this now, the change would be complete. The butterfly would emerge from the chrysalis, and the snake's new skin would shine in the sun.

So he smiled and stepped through, leaving all that he had been outside in the frozen air.