Page 42 of Meet Me Under the Northern Lights

THE ISLAND OF GRóTTA

The sky wasn’t just speckled with stars, it was full of them.

The near-black canopy was hanging like an unending dark curtain above the sea, the air fresh, the scent of salt water right the way through it, and Chloe had her back to the snow covered ground staring, seeing, but her mind empty of anything but the present.

‘What do you see?’ Gunnar whispered.

He was right next to her, lying alongside. She could feel the slight touch of his padded coat against hers but not the pressure of his body.

‘A sky full of bright sparkling jewels,’ Chloe told him, a contented sigh leaving her, on instinct, unconsidered, just there.

‘A picture, no?’ Gunnar said. ‘Made by the greatest artist.’

‘God?’

‘If you like. But, I prefer “nature”. A scientific fact, but open to interpretation.’

‘Well,’ Chloe said, shifting her body slightly closer to him until there was that actual connection. ‘I can see The Plough.’

‘Everyone can always see The Plough. Or as some call it, The Big Dipper or the kitchen ladle. A friend of mine calls it The Grandmother’s Spoon. She is crazy.’

‘So, what different ones can you see?’ Chloe asked.

‘Well, krúttio mitt , I do not look for the constellations. I look for patterns of my own. Connecting the stars, then disconnecting them and connecting them a different way. I find that it helps my mind be free, you know.’

Chloe turned her full attention back to the sky and honed in on one particularly bright star. Where did she look next? What picture could she make?

‘Right now I see a husky dog with very big ears,’ Gunnar stated.

Chloe laughed. ‘Now you’re teasing me. You can’t see a dog.’

‘How do you know this? You do not trust that I have been stargazing for a very long time. That I know my way around the changing sky?’

‘I believe you are a fantastic tour guide who knows his way around many Icelandic sites, but I don’t believe anyone can see a husky dog up there.’

‘Oh really,’ Gunnar said, his tone a touch combative as he got into a sitting position. ‘We need to fix this. Sit up.’

‘What?’

‘I cannot have you thinking that I am making this up. My reputation as a guide is at stake.’

She sat up and then suddenly his body moved. So swiftly, he shifted and moved right behind her until she was almost swallowed into the softness of his jacket and the firm, hard body that lay beneath.

‘We need to be close,’ he told her, voice soft yet edgily sensual. ‘For you to be in the same line of sight with me.’

‘OK,’ she breathed, already feeling all the closeness and imagining so much more.

‘So, follow the line of my finger, there.’ He pointed to the sky, leaning her back into him so she was sat inside his embrace. ‘You see this star?’

She concentrated, focussed on the tip of his finger, the star at its very end. ‘I see it.’

‘OK, so that is the start of the husky nose and then you go around here and up to its eyes, see?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Come on, you are not looking right.’

‘Maybe because I’m not you,’ Chloe suggested. ‘You said that it was open to interpretation. Perhaps I don’t see a husky dog but I see something else.’

‘What do you see?’ Gunnar asked her. ‘Tell me.’

Chloe looked at the stars, all supposedly very similar but some of them, whether it was a trick of the light or of the mind, standing out just a little brighter than others.

‘I see… the letter “v” like a string of beads making a necklace.’ She pointed. ‘There.’

‘I see,’ Gunnar said. ‘But are they beads? Or are they teardrops?’

‘Raindrops,’ Chloe answered, letting her imagination roam. ‘Or droplets from a waterfall. A necklace of nature.’

‘It could be better,’ Gunnar answered.

‘You mean you’re mad I don’t see a dog?’ Chloe said, with a laugh.

‘No,’ Gunnar said. ‘I am not mad. But, what if the beads were not droplets. What if they were something else?’

‘What do you think they are?’ Chloe asked, turning her head a little to look at him.

‘It does not matter what I think they are,’ he said. ‘Only what you think they are. Open to interpretation, remember?’

She looked back to the sky, her string of droplets. A strong, shining row of diamonds. What did they represent to her? And then, all at once it came to her.

‘Dreams,’ she whispered. ‘The beads are dreams.’

‘Very good, krúttio mitt . Very good.’

He drew her even closer towards him, wrapping an arm around her. She liked it. It made her feel special.

‘You know, the only other time I came here I was sad,’ Gunnar said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I knew my mother was dying.’ He took a breath that Chloe could almost feel inside herself. ‘I mean, I hardly remember a time when I did not think that she was dying because of how ill she always was but, when we came here, I knew it would not be long.’

‘Did she teach you how to tune in to the pictures in the sky?’

‘Many times,’ Gunnar said. ‘But when she brought me here, the way the sky is at this place, everything was more vivid – is that the word?’

‘Yes,’ Chloe answered. ‘That’s right.’

‘I very much think she wanted me to have comfort from the universe here. To believe there is something else, if only pictures we create in our own minds to manifest what we might like our future to be.’

‘I like that idea,’ Chloe said, nestling back against him and feeling so completely at ease with it.

‘So, tell me, what are the dreams on that necklace you see?’ Gunnar asked.

She tensed a little now the conversational spotlight was back on her. What were her dreams? All of them. Not just the career she had put all her focus into when things with Michael had ended so savagely. What did she want from life? What did she truly want? She took a breath.

‘To love and be loved. To feel that total balance with someone – both partners on the same page, trusting they are working towards the same goals.’

‘That does not sound like a dream, krúttio mitt ,’ he whispered. ‘It sounds like something everyone deserves.’

‘It’s not easy though, is it? Because as beautiful as life is, it can also be harsh. You know that, from losing your parents like I lost mine. From losing Kirstin, maybe?’

‘I do not know if I ever had Kirstin at all,’ he said with another sigh she could feel. ‘Or, rather, if we ever had each other.’

‘What do you mean?’ Chloe asked gently.

‘Well, like you say, it would be good if working towards the same goals allowed for the unexpected. Because life can throw in challenges and challenges should be faced together, no?’

Chloe thought about her and Michael. They had come up against a challenge, one of the biggest challenges, but instead of tackling that together, discussing, facing up to the reality of the issue of her infertility, they had both retreated.

Then, before she had had time to process, to accept, Michael had run away.

‘Maybe,’ Chloe began. ‘If two people cannot be completely honest with each other, about their thoughts and their innermost feelings, no matter how bad or sad that might get, they should not be together at all.’

As she contemplated on the sheer depth of what she had just said and wondered what Gunnar would make of it, he already had his answer.

‘I think I agree.’

‘You only think you agree?’ She tipped her head back, wanting to find his eyes.

‘I think,’ he began again, ‘that what holds people back from sharing that is pure and simple fear.’

‘But no one should feel afraid if the space they’ve created is safe.’

‘Ah,’ Gunnar said, looking into her eyes now. ‘I think that is a problem for the whole world, no?’

‘So, what does the world do?’ Chloe asked, transfixed with needing to know his answer.

‘Trust, krúttio mitt . We have to trust.’

Usually a zillion thoughts would be firing off in Chloe’s brain now but the only thing on her mind was him.

This handsome, intelligent Icelandic man who she wanted to find out so much more about.

It wasn’t the time for any more words, it was time for actions to lead the way.

She shifted herself in his arms, reached up, her fingers in his hair and drew his face towards hers.

This kiss was hers to take and theirs to share under this sky full of stars.