I knit another row and try to find the right questions. I already know that he's from Edinborough, that he joined the band when he was sixteen, after his mother died. So many of us have death in our histories.

I know that Alex worked with Stian Halvorsen, sweeping the old man's shop and then learning how to carve from him—a long apprenticeship. I know that even in Kirkenes, where he has steady work, Alex likes to travel—to Hammerfest and Vardø.

I know he's a couple years older than I am, and his voice could charm me like a snake.

I start to unwind a little. Does he have any trips to the mainland planned? Has he heard from his brother in London?

In this way, we fly through the hours.

When you're 22 years old it can seem easy to dissolve your life, to reinvent yourself, to up and move away.

I had almost everything I owned in my suitcases, and it wasn't much—except for my books. I hadn't figured out how to bring them yet. Shipping to the end of the world gets expensive.

My books—all the books—waiting on their shelves.

I can sense Alex looking at me from across the aisle. My cheek feels a little red, and I pay closer attention to the wool between my fingers and the needles, careful not to drop stitches, .

Alex and I went out a couple of times this summer, hiking and coffee. Easy things. But nothing for the last couple weeks. I thought I must have bored him, but last night he kept hanging around the edge of my vision—and now here he is looking at me.

"You don't like the turning," he ventures.

"I'm a bad nomad." He already knows this. But I appreciate his efforts at conversation. I appreciate his smile, faded by the fakey airplane lighting, but still the brightest thing I've seen in hours.

I know it's my turn.

"What are you going to be doing this south?" My needles click and click. Didn't we talk about this before? I don't know what else to say.

Alex stretches out, hands behind his head.

"Anything I can—maybe a little guiding, maybe for birders, maybe try to get a guide job on one of the science teams, or I'll do some crabbing, or spend some time on Isla Grande with the sheep."

He grins.

"Mostly all of the above."

He is a good nomad, a wood carver, a sculptor up in Kirkenes—but a man of all trades on Navarino. I can feel my heartbeat picking up, and I don't want it to.

And why not?

Chief Lundgren was not scary.

He was not scary, but he was fierce.

And old. And very tall.

The door seemed to swallow my knock before it swung open, and I saw the Chief.

"Hello—excuse me," I stammered, hoping my heartbeat wasn't as loud as it felt. "Lydia sent me."

He relaxed a little.

"How can I help you?"

I glanced around. The street was quiet, washed by a damp sunlight.

"I'd like to join your group."

The Chief looked at me for what felt like an hour.

"What do you know about our group?"

"This. Here, and that you go south the other half of the year."

He almost smiled.

"You need some more information."

He nodded for me to follow him inside.

"We have much to discuss," he stated as he took another coffee cup out of the cupboard.

"Starting with some introductions."

She looks at me more closely. I feel like a bug under a magnifying glass. A streak of sunlight paints the table.

"My name is Lydia," she says. "I can give you the address of the chief. That's the guy you need to talk to."

I have so many questions—does this happen a lot, people wandering in and asking this? Is the chief nice? Is there a test?

I hope there isn't a test. How do you pass such a thing? A barometer for miserable? A measure of depression? The shadows under my eyes all winter?

She scribbles an address on a scrap of paper, and comes around the counter with it. I shake her hand, and she takes my plate as I stare at this magical writing.

"Go to the end of the road and take a left."

The bell jingles on the door, and a woman looks up from behind the pastry case. Her blue eyes look like ice. Good morning.

"En kaffe og…" I stutter and trail off, looking at all the choices. Can you order a cheese Danish in Norway?

"Welcome to Kirkenes," she says. I blush. So clearly I am American.

"I'll have one of those," and I point to the sign that says skillingsbolle. It looks like a cinnamon roll—a safe bet.

"For here?" she asks, and that’s when I notice the little tables by the windows—so many windows, as if the owner of this shop knew me.

"Yes. Please."

The coffee is stand-up-a-fork strong, and the pastry flakes in my fingers. It is sweet. It is buttery sugary goodness. It is almost too much.

No one else has come in, so I start to sweep up my courage.

"Do you know of a people…"

"A people?"

"A group who follows the sun, from here to the south?"

She is wiping the counter, and her rag slows down.

"Yes."

All I have is the overheard name of a town, Kirkenes. I learn what I can—and it isn't much. But I purchase the tickets to get me there. It's a small place, and I figure someone will know something.

When I arrive at my hotel, I collapse. It's light out—it is gloriously light out—and I sleep anyway, through to the morning.

At cruising altitude

Cruising altitude shows a carpet of clouds and then a large nothing. A blank page. I need to write a letter to my mother, ask again whether she'll visit me at Christmas. She'll say—again—that it's too far and she doesn't know Spanish. The amount of Spanish I've learned could fit in one empty water glass. My mother does not want to leave her home, even for a couple of weeks.

I'm not being fair. She did come to Oslo for a week. I met her there, and we toured the city museums and ate a lot.

In this living, I miss her—and my sister, my happy sister, who stayed just down the road and now has three sons who swirl around her, their circles ever-widening until one day they may escape that orbit entirely. I try not to feel guilty about leaving them. Sometimes it works.

I travel back the years to South Bend, Oyster Capital of the World—or one of them.

I grew up in along the Willapa River, with the wide light and the salt air and the long summer days. A smaller town safely away from any kind of a city. But I shivered through winter, a long sadness that got worse when I left home for college. Caught under the fluorescent lights in the dorms and classrooms, I shrank from the dark afternoons.

At this point in the flight, I remember where I first heard. This is my ritual:

I am in the library, and I am trying to focus on Euripides, but whispering from the next table pulls at my ears. My ears follow, pick up little scraps—a village in Norway, a people who travel to Chile, a tribe that follows the light.


Now, I am buzzing—surely the way you must buzz when you've been underwater much too long and you take that first electrifying gasp of air, the way your whole body tingles when you walk in from a cold evening.