Quest Amidst the Long Shadows
The Eskimo narrowed his eyes. Well, narrowed them even more. His ochre face bore the lines of countless dark winters on the tundra. It looked as if someone had screwed up a sheet of ancient parchment, then smoothed it over the bones of his head.
He took his stubby seal-bone pipe from his mouth and exhaled a coil of thin blue smoke. It hovered in the igloo's humid air for a moment, before becoming lost amid the fumes from the cooking fire.
"They say you seek the Snow Bee, yes?" His voice was dry as the North wind.
I straightened my back a little, trying to meet his inscrutable gaze. "I do."
"Many white men go north to seek the Snow Bee. Few return."
"I've heard the stories. I was told you knew more than stories."
The eskimo's mouth broke open as he cackled, showing gums half-filled with lopsided teeth. "Ha! A smart one! Well, go then. Find the Snow Bee. They live north of here where the white bear roams, and where the Wendigo screams at night upon the wind. Go north, to the Sawtooth Mountains. Amongst the mountains, find the White Cliff. Scale the White Cliff and you'll find the Crystal Forest. Look amongst it's frozen boughs, if you wish the find the Sea Bee."
I set out the next morning, driving north along a road that wound further into emptiness. The wind howled outsides, tossing zephyrs of snow that danced across the road like albino dust devils.
It grew colder as I drove, and the wind blew harder. A crusting of frost began to form around the truck, and I knew what was coming even before the engine finally wheezed itself into silence.
The truck was going now further, that much was clear. I surveyed the horizon, trying to get my bearings. It was then I saw them, serrating the line of the horizon like the spine of the world.
The Sawtooth Mountains. I let a smile crease my lips. Fortunately, I had brought an alternative means of transportation.
The snowmachine ate up the distance between me and the forbidding mountains; the drone of its engine echoing across the empty tundra. I slipped into their foothills like a thief, searching for the landmarks the wizened eskimo had described. For hours, I saw nothing, just the blank faces of the mountains staring back at me, as if they mocked my quest. But then, I turned a corner. My hand slipped from the throttle as I saw it, and I stumbled from the machine in awe.
It could be nothing else. The White Cliff
It's sheer face was daunting, but I had come a long way. I wasn't about to turn back now. I quickly strapped on my climbing gear and began the ascent.
The Cliff was treacherous. The picks slipped from the ice, or else tore away huge chunks when their purchase appeared solid. My crampons skittered on the frozen surface as I kicked in, trying to secure a foothold. Muscles bunched in my shoulders as I edged by way up the White Cliff. It seemed that hours had passed before I hauled myself over the top. I sank down onto the ice, and had to pause for a moment before I could look up, but when I did, my eyes fell upon an eerie vision.
The Crystal Forest. I lurched to my feet and stumbled towards it. At the treeline I hesitated. How many others had come this way before me? Why was it that so few had returned?
A sound stirred among the frozen branches. A buzzing. I glimpsed a movement within the forest's gleaming interior.
My hesitation forgotten, I plunged in, stumbling through the frosted trees, careless of my safety.
The clearing appeared without warning, and I ran into it heedlessly, before freezing, as rooted the spot as the icy woods that surrounded me. Hovering in the centre of the clearing, regarding me with it's jewelled eyes, it's spectral antennae wafting in the still air, was a Snow Bee. Time seemed to slow. How long we remained there, I cannot recall. A man and a myth gazing at each other in breathless silence. An eternity passed in the space of a moment.
I lowered my hand to open my camera case, but as soon as I moved, it was gone. The insect wraith of the crystal forest darting away until it was lost from sight amid the glittering bowers. I breathed out. It occurred to me that I had no idea how long I had held that breath; one breath in which all I had known and believed and turned upon it's head.
I lowered my face, uncertain whether I felt elated or dejected, and it was only then that my gaze fell upon the patch of snow over which the bee had been hovering.
The Snow Bee had left me a message. Something which I could take back to share with the rest of the world. A univeral truth that could unite all humainty. I stared at the message and laughed. The sound boomed out, reflecting from the frozen forest, from the mountains, from the empty tundra; so that it seemed at the moment, as if the whole world were laughing with me.
I stared at the message once more, and knew it to be true.
