Excerpt from time:
“Be patient, Dani. It will come . . .”
Dani scowled up at the sky.
Give me a chance, Jade wanted to say aloud to her.
Then they heard it—the most unique, eerie sound of nature, equally mysterious and unnerving. It came from beneath them, very deep within the ice, like an echo. As the sound lengthened, it became louder and more intriguing, yet impossible to accurately describe. Was it like the muted underwater sound of a whale calling out to its pod? Not quite—less distinctive than that. Or was it similar to the wobbly sound effect used in old horror movies by wiggling a thin sheet of metal—no, not quite. It had an ethereal echo and played to their sensitive inner ears. It was as if the long, fluctuating sound came from deep within the earth but somehow also right beneath them.
“What is that sound?” Dani whispered.
Jade closed her eyes and her lips curved up in a satisfied grin. “It is the sound of ice cracking,” she said in a reverent tone of voice.
Dani propped herself on her elbows, and Jade could see that her curiosity had finally piqued. “You mean the ice underneath us . . . is cracking?”
“Yes, the ice is constantly moving and changing beneath us in its solid form. Like glaciers. What you hear are fissures occurring deep within the ice, and the sound of it echoes up to us on the surface. But I don’t like to think of it that way . . .”
“How do you like to think of it?”
“Like the earth is speaking to me . . . sharing her knowledge through fluctuating waves of primeval music. Feels like I’m absorbing her wisdom.”