The Still Point. Amy Sackville

‘And grease ice further out. Your nose told you true.’

      The sea they were sailing had turned glutinous; it rolled without breaking, its dark surface covered by the rough-silk sheen that was the first sign of freezing.

      ‘We’ll reach the first floes in days.’

      ‘It’s early in the year for that, Nordahl. But I believe you’re right. It seems it will be winter soon enough.’

       Mare Congelatum, it is called on ancient maps. The sea congealing.

      Julia holds the edge of her desk and feels her hands clench around imagined metal, feels the chill crystallize; as a child, she stood so on a ferry to France, at the back of the ship, which, she had learned, was called the stern; and with a suitably stern, resolute expression she imagined herself an adventurer.

       I would be brave and strong like Edward, I would sail through the floes, I would not die in the snow; the whip and cling of my skirt in the salt wind, the ice-white cliffs become a great frozen wall.

      Emily, almost home now, sees the English coast loom out of the grey dawn, and holds fast to the handrail to steady her mind. She gathers her skirts about her as she steps onto the gangplank and imagines that the next time she sets foot on a ship, it might be to meet her husband, home from the sea. She breathes the brackish air, the last of the sea-mist freshness mixed with the pungent, gritty odour of the shrimp hauled onto the docks; she wonders if she will ever sail again. She will not.

      Edward’s hands grip the rail, his black eyes bright. The Pole draws closer. He is returning to the frozen sea.