Book

I went out with Danny to help feed the dogs when the children were asleep. Dressed in the usual multilayers, looking like two Michelin men, we pulled on our boots, adjusted our head torches and pushed the tub of stinking walrus meat out the door, sliding it across the snow and down through the slippery tide crack where the dogs were staked out. A full moon beamed high in the sky and the tide was low, tilting the jumble of ice slabs to a steeper angle. Beyond, out on the fiord, the flat sea ice glistened, and behind me the hills at the back of the house stood out in silhouette in a monochromatic but clearly visible world. ‘If only we could always have a full moon, the darkness would be so easy.’ I said, holding the tub as Danny manoeuvred it up and over the ice chunks. Living on this dark side of the earth, I imagined, at times, we had been abandoned by the rest of the world, as if we were the only people on a dark planet way out in space where the moon circled overhead every twenty-four hours without setting and the sun would never brighten the sky again.