Northern Lights

jacket off the hook herself. "We've got a clear day for it."
    He took one of the two-ways. "An hour."
    She smiled. "We'll start with that."
    When he spotted her plane at the dock, he stopped dead. "You didn't say this head-clearing time involved flying."
    "It's the best method. Guaranteed."
    "Couldn't we just take a drive, have sex in the backseat of the car? I find that's a really good method."
    "Trust me." She kept his hand firmly in hers and used her other to brush the cut under his eye. "How's that feeling?"
    "Now that you mention it, I probably shouldn't fly with a wound like this."
    She cupped his face, leaned in and kissed him, long, slow and deep. "Come with me, Nate. I have something I want to share with you."
    "Well, when you put it that way."
    He got in the plane, strapped in. "You know, I've never taken off from the water. Not when the water was . . . wet. There's still some ice. It wouldn't be good to run into the ice, right?"
    "A man who faces down an armed mental patient shouldn't be so jittery about flying." She kissed her fingers, tapped them on Buddy Holly's lips and began to glide over the water.
    "Sort of like water skiing, but not," Nate managed, then held his breath as she gained speed, kept holding it as the plane lifted off the water.
    "I thought you were working today," he said when he decided it was safe to breathe again.
    "I passed it to Jerk. He'll be dropping off supplies later. We've got parade stuff coming in, including a whole case of bug dope."
    "You and Jerk run drugs for insects."
    She slid her eyes in his direction. "Insect repellant, cutie. You survived your first Alaska winter. Now we'll see how you fare in the summer. With mosquitoes as big as B52s. You won't want to walk three feet out of the house without your bug dope."
    "Roger on the bug dope, but I'm not eating Eskimo ice cream. Jesse says it's made from whipped seals."
    "Oil," she said on a laugh. "Seal oil or moose tallow. And it's not bad if you mix in some berries and sugar."
    "I'll take your word because I'm not eating moose tallow. I don't even know what the hell it is."
    She smiled again because his shoulders had relaxed, and he was actually looking down. "Pretty from here, isn't it, with the river, the ice, and the town all lined up behind it?"
    "It looks quiet and simple."
    "But it's not. It's not really either of those. The bush looks quiet, too, from the air. Peaceful and serene. A harsh kind of beauty. But it's not serene. Nature will kill you without a minute's thought, and in nastier ways than a crazy guy with a gun. It doesn't make her any less beautiful. I couldn't live anywhere else. I couldn't be anywhere else."
    She soared over river and lake, and he could see the progress of breakup, the steady march of spring. Patches of green spread as the sun worked on the snow. A waterfall rushed down a cliff side with the sparkle of ice gleaming out of deep shadows.
    Below them, a small herd of moose lumbered across a field. Above, the sky curved like a wild, blue ribbon.
    "Jacob was here that February." Meg glanced at him. "I wanted to get that out of the way—maybe off both our minds. He came to see me a lot when my father was gone. I don't know if my father asked him to, or if it was just Jacob's way. There might've been a couple days here and there I didn't see him. But not as much as a week at a stretch, not a long enough time for him to have climbed with my father. I wanted you to know that, for certain, in case you needed to ask him to help you."
    "It was a long time ago."
    "Yeah, and I was a kid. But I remember that. Once I thought back on
    it, I remembered. I saw more of him than I did of Charlene in those first few weeks after my father left. He took me ice fishing and hunting, and when we had a storm come in, I stayed at his place for a couple of days. I'm telling you that you can trust him, that's all."
    "All right."
    "Now, look to starboard."
    He glanced right and watched them fly off the edge of the world, over a channel of blue water that seemed entirely too close for comfort. Before he could object, he saw an enormous chunk of that blue-white world crack off and tumble into the water.
    "My God."
    "This is an active tidewater glacier. And what you're watching is called calving," she said as other boulders of ice broke and fell. "I guess because in the cycle, it's more a kind of birth than death."
    "It's beautiful." He was all but plastered against the windscreen now. "It's amazing. Jesus, some of