The Apothecary

Chapter 35

The Frozen Sea



The helicopter ride was no more pleasant now that I was human and could see out the windows. The rickety machine swung wildly with every gust of wind, and creaked and groaned as if it were ready to fall apart. It was too noisy for anyone aboard to bother speaking, and Sakharov and the Scar stared grimly down at the sea.

To keep myself from feeling sick and terrified, I tried to fix my eyes on something that wasn’t moving, like I did when I was carsick. That’s when I saw, out the window, a stationary black cloud. It was perfectly round and seemed to hold itself apart and aloof from the others. I thought of Count Vili’s genii, and of the Dark Force that had drifted away from the jaival tree.

Then the helicopter lurched, and my stomach seemed to flip into my chest, and we started to descend. Nova Zembla was as barren and white as it had been before, but there was a great charred circle where the shed with the bomb had been. The Samoyed houses were tiny in the distance, and seemed undisturbed, and so did the island’s spindly pine trees to the north. The helicopter avoided the burned patch and landed on the frozen ground a little distance away. The others climbed down, and Danby dragged me out into the snow.

The men walked with a dreadful tension towards the test site, staring at the cratered, blackened earth. The snow was melted even beyond the burned area, but there was nothing like the damage a nuclear bomb should have left. Danby gripped my arm so I wouldn’t run, but where would I go? There was no sign of any of the others, and I tried to think that they had escaped, far away. The charred ground seemed a fitting place for the desolate hope that my friends had abandoned me for their own safety. My heart felt as flattened as the little shed.

The young helicopter pilot carried the grey metal Geiger counter to test the radiation. He shook his head, baffled. “Chisto,” he said.

Sakharov grabbed the earphones from him and held them to his ear, listening, then dropped the headset. It swung from the cord in the young pilot’s hand. The faint sweet smell of the Quintessence still hung in the air. Sakharov looked around the deserted point.

“How is this possible?” he demanded in English. “It is not possible!” His intelligent face was in torment. He had bent atoms to his will, and he wasn’t used to being confronted by things he didn’t understand.

“The girl knows,” Danby said.

“The girl!” Sakharov said. “Where did the girl come from?”

“She was the bird,” Danby said. “I told you we should have searched the island.”

“She was the bird?”

“And she knows what happened.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I wasn’t here!”

“You are going to rot in a Soviet prison, Miss Scott, if you make it that far,” Danby said. He shook me by the arm so hard that I bit my tongue and tasted the metallic tang of blood. “What did the apothecary do?”

“I don’t know!”

Sakharov said, “I think I am not understanding this word, apothecary.”

“He’s not an ordinary apothecary,” Danby said. “He’s—a kind of alchemist. Or a magician.”

“A magician?”

“No, he’s a scientist,” I said, because Sakharov seemed my only hope. “Just like you are. You’d like him. They wanted to meet you, and thought you’d understand what they’re doing.”

“They?” Sakharov said. “Who is they? And what is it they are doing, besides destroying my work and my reputation?”

Then we heard a cry that sounded not entirely human, and my heart froze. I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, except that it was above us. It cried out again in terror, the voice nearly carried off by the wind. I looked up, over the sea, and saw a boy falling from the sky.



“Benjamin!” I screamed. I watched, horrified, as he plummeted into the waves.

“How fitting,” Danby said. “The boy who flew too high.”

“That was a boy?” Sakharov said.

I tried to pull my arm free of Danby’s grip, but he dug his fingers in. “We have to go save him!” I cried.

“The fall will have killed him,” Danby said. “Or if not, he’ll drown instantly, in that cold.”

“No!” I pounded Danby’s chest with my free arm, and he grabbed that wrist, too. I felt helpless, faced with his total indifference. It wouldn’t matter to him that I loved Benjamin, that he was fearless and clever and loyal and brave, and that he’d been trying to come back for me. I had to find a reason for Danby to want to save Benjamin, and the seconds were ticking away. “He knows all the secrets!” I said. “He knows everything about his father’s work.”

I saw a flicker of interest cross Danby’s face. I turned to Sakharov.

“That was the apothecary’s son who fell,” I said, trying to make my voice steady. “His apprentice, his closest ally. He can explain what happened to the bomb—how it was contained, and why there’s no radiation. You have to interrogate him! Don’t you want to know?”

I knew that if they took Benjamin alive, they would force him to give up what he could of his father’s secrets, or give up his father himself. That would be awful, but the alternative was worse. It was unthinkable that he might die right then, in that cold water. Danby and Sakharov looked at me. The pilot waited.

Finally Sakharov said, “Start the helicopter.”

We all ran for the horrible machine. It took off shakily into the wind, and flew low towards the place where Benjamin had fallen.

“There he is!” I yelled, over the noise of the rotors. I could just see Benjamin’s sandy hair, soaking wet, and his arm coming out of the water in a weakened crawl stroke, before a wave obscured him completely. My stomach felt as if it had been tied in a series of painful knots, and I willed Benjamin to stay afloat until we could get there.

The helicopter lowered a rope ladder, and the Scar climbed down it. The ladder whipped in the wind when he was halfway down, and he ducked his head and hung on. I never thought I’d be rooting for the Scar, but I desperately wanted him to keep going. He reached the bottom of the ladder, but he was still ten feet above Benjamin. Sakharov shouted something over his shoulder to the pilot. The helicopter dipped lower.

I’d lost sight of Benjamin in the flat light, with the surging waves and the ladder swinging below. I thought I saw him swimming away, as if he didn’t want to be rescued.

“Benjamin!” I screamed. “Come back!”

The helicopter lurched, and the ladder was over him again, but Benjamin was fighting against being taken. The Scar struck Benjamin across the face, then nearly tumbled off the ladder as it swung. I held my breath, hoping Benjamin would give in and the Scar would stay strong.

“Just get him!” Danby shouted impatiently, but his voice was carried off in the wind.

Then the Scar was lifting something heavy under one arm. He swung Benjamin like a rolled-up rug over his shoulder and pulled himself up one rung of the ladder, then another. Benjamin’s body was dead weight, and awkward, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch the climb, not with Benjamin looking so still and lifeless, and the Scar looking like he might drop him.

I thought about the apothecary, and wondered if he had some kind of healing power that could bring Benjamin back to life. I thought about the sweet smell of the Quintessence, how it smelled like life itself, and I wondered if there was still enough of it lingering in the air to do Benjamin any good.

The Scar reached the top of the ladder, and Danby and Sakharov helped drag Benjamin, in his heavy, waterlogged clothes, into the helicopter. Sakharov felt his neck for a pulse, and listened to see if he was breathing. Then he rolled him on his side and pressed his fists under Benjamin’s sternum until seawater came up. Benjamin coughed, and threw up more water, and inhaled hoarsely, but his lips were purple with cold and he didn’t seem to be awake.

The Scar, too, was freezing and gasping for breath, and the helicopter pilot swung us back towards the destroyer.

“We need vodka and blankets,” Sakharov said.

I was pretty sure that vodka was not what Benjamin needed, and I knew there was nothing for us on the destroyer but pain and death. They had saved Benjamin so they could interrogate him, but now I couldn’t let them hurt him, or force his father’s secrets out of him.

In a pouch hanging on the back of a seat were the tools the pilot had taken out of his toolbox, including the heavy wrench Sakharov had used to tighten the trigger mechanism on the bomb. The Scar was exhausted, and Danby and Sakharov were distracted with trying to revive Benjamin. I slipped the wrench from the pouch, and no one noticed. Sakharov put his jacket over Benjamin, who was shivering uncontrollably. I didn’t know what my next plan was, but if I could get rid of Danby, maybe I could persuade the pilot to land on Nova Zembla . . .

That was as far as I got before Danby turned to me. I saw suspicion cross his face, and I swung the wrench and hit his head with a sickening thud. He cried out in pain and surprise, and I caught his collar with my free hand. I tried to swing him towards the door, but he was heavy and immovable. He wrested the wrench away and held it furiously like a warrior with a club. His forehead was bleeding. I scrambled back and covered my head with my arm, waiting for the blow.

Then the pilot shouted something in Russian, and Danby turned.

I saw, out the windscreen, the dark cloud I had seen before, coming towards us. It was alone in the sky, and seemed to shift in the air, as if readying for something. Then it floated darkly around the windscreen, blotting out the light, and came through the open door. I felt a misty chill that wasn’t like the blunt Arctic cold but more insidious, as if damp fingers of fog were clutching at my heart. The dark vapour enveloped the helicopter. It wanted to envelop us. It was attacking.

The pilot, blinded by the vapour over the windscreen, shouted something in Russian. Danby dropped the wrench as the helicopter pitched suddenly to one side, and we all grabbed for something to hold on to. I caught a seat belt in one hand and Benjamin in the other, with my arm across his cold chest and under his arm. The helicopter was heading fast towards the water.

The others were in chaos, shouting commands at each other. Benjamin started to slip from my arm, and I was going to lose him. He was too heavy, and the helicopter was tilting too sharply towards the waves below. Finally I had to make a choice: the seat belt or Benjamin. I let go and grabbed his other shoulder, and we slid towards the open door.

There was a sickening plunge, and then we hit the water and sank below the surface. It was like being immersed in icy slush. I kicked to the surface, my arms still tight around Benjamin’s chest. When I got my head above water, I tried to breathe, but the muscles in my throat seemed to have seized up in the cold. I tried not to panic.

The swells were so big that I couldn’t see where the helicopter had crashed in the water, and I couldn’t see the shore. I held Benjamin’s head up and started to kick in the direction I thought the shore might be. I tried to remember how far from land we had been—a hundred yards? Two hundred? I had no idea. My throat relaxed enough to let a little air through, but my legs were so cold that they barely responded to my brain’s commands. In junior lifesaving, back in Los Angeles, they had taught us to take off our heavy, wet clothes in a rescue, but that was in warm California, in summer—I didn’t dare do it here. I’d need the clothes if we ever got to shore.

I kicked and pulled and sank, and fought my way up to the surface, where I caught a glimpse of the island, but it didn’t seem to be drawing any closer.

Another wave came over both of us, dark and salty and freezing, and I kicked to the surface again. I heard Benjamin cough and sputter, regaining consciousness.

“So cold,” he whispered.

“I know,” I cried. “Kick! Help me!”

He seemed to grasp the situation, looking around at the waves as I struggled to tow him. “I can’t,” he said. “Let me go.”

“No! Kick!”

“Let me go, Janie,” he said. “Save yourself.”

“Kick!” I screamed, drowning him out. But I knew he was right. I was going to have to make a decision. My hands and feet were completely numb. I might still be able to save myself, but if I kept trying to save him, we were both going to die. The most important thing is not to become a victim yourself—the lifeguards had taught us that, on those giggling, sunny days at the beach, when the very idea seemed impossible.

“Please, Janie,” Benjamin said, and then another wave came over the top of us.

It tumbled us down, filling my mouth with salt water, and we sank. The water was so dark and cold. I tried to kick towards the surface, but the surface didn’t seem to be there. I felt myself drifting, still holding on to Benjamin’s chest, feeling oddly calm. At least we would die together.

And then something caught me by the hair and pulled me up, and my face was above the surface again. I gasped, choking, as I was dragged backward across something hard. I tried to hold tight to Benjamin, but he was being dragged up, too—I didn’t have his whole weight in my frozen arm anymore.

We were in a boat. It was narrow, and a man with a fur hood around his face had pulled us into it. He had a coat made of skins and a double-bladed paddle, and when he had stashed us both in the bow, he started to paddle hard towards the shore. My wet eyelashes froze in the wind, and I couldn’t see clearly, so I closed my eyes, just for a second, to melt the ice.

Then I sank into a darkness far deeper than the cold ocean, and everything was gone.