States of Hydrogen

In the town where Joanne was born, she was told never to go in the water. Her home sat on the tip of one of Nova Scotia’s craggy folds, with the cold blue of the Atlantic crashing on the rocky shores below. In the morning the fish piled on the rocks, their plentiful bodies unmarred by any signs of violence. The men who filed their taxes as fisherman scrambled down to the beach, nervously looked out to the waves, and stuffed their nets full of catch.

Joanne’s parents sometimes said the water was full of pollution. Sometimes it was dangerous tides, the undertow that would wrap its chill hand around your ankles and drag you into the ocean. They told her to use the indoor pool at the YWCA instead. She loved to swim, did it whenever she could, but the chlorine stung her eyes. Worse, she hated those panicked minutes between the pool and the shower, where she scampered across the cold orange tile floor sure everyone was looking at the flab of her thighs.

On the morning of her fifteenth birthday, Joanne sneaks out of the house when the dawn is still pink in the sky. She avoids the rocks haunted by the fishermen, and instead picks somewhere further down the beach. She can see their dark forms moving below the water, not so much bigger than her own shadow. Joanne rolls her socks up into balls and stuffs them into her shoes before she steps into the surf. At first, it is just the seaweed she feels lashing around her heels. But then she feels their webbed touch on her legs, ready to take her out with the undertow.

— —

The sea breeze coming in off the Pacific made for good flying. Jonas liked to do it in the middle of the night, wearing the backs from his day as theatre crew. Occasionally he would see someone else out there above the dark green canopy. He always kept his distance, and they did too. That was how flying was: everyone did it, but you had to keep it a secret regardless. Nobody asked why he was so tired at work the next morning, and he didn’t tell them.

That was what he thought, until he sees the whole group of them. It’s a foggy night, and Jonas has gone barefoot to let the cloudstuff run through his toes. They’re just kids — the oldest can’t have be more than seventeen. They’re sitting right on the outskirts of Victoria, hovering in a circle, chatting and laughing. Jonas feels a flash of rage. This is supposed to be a private matter, not something you do just to hang out. How can they be so disrespectful?

Perhaps nobody had told them the rules. Jonas goes over and politely tells them what etiquette demands. They laugh at him, flick their cigarette ashes on the wind. They call him old, although he is still young. He begins to get angry, and lose his concentration. He plummets through the clouds, in fits and starts, and cannot get back into the right frame of mind. The children’s peals of laughter tanning his cheeks red, Jonas stumbles into a landing behind a convenience store.

— —

Diane lives beneath the ice. Long ago she walked above, in those hard-bitten Northern cities that always seemed stained with an ineffable yellowing. She had wrapped herself in leather and hunched over as she rushed from inside to inside, ignoring the arctic sky’s purple glow. She had listened to her grandmothers and aunts, the embarrassing ones with the embarrassing names, talk about the women who lived under the ice and kidnapped disobedient children. She resented the old Inuit tales, a reminder of the dead hand of tragedy that always seemed clasped around her ankles.

The boy with the guitar had been so sweet. Diane didn’t blame him when he vanished into air: she had always assumed he would. Her father called the boy a dog who had somehow learned to walk like a man. He demanded that she, or him, or somebody, take responsibility, a euphemism as heavy as a peal of thunder. So she had been responsible, and dug herself into the ice.

It isn’t cold. Over time, Diane has in fact come to realize how warm it is down here, closer to the centre of the earth. Her pups, fur as white as the ice sheet, bring her food. She has learned to love the taste of raw meat. Diane has learned to speak to the fish and the seals, and more importantly to the others who come out on the ice lost and sick. She leads them to their pups, who surround the lost souls, keeping them warm through the night.