Time echoes

by Finn Astle

The shape of a man struggles through the blizzard. Across

mountains and mountains of snow. He lost the tribe in the confusion;
he couldnt see any other humans across the tundra. His footsteps
leave a trail that is slowly erased by the wind. Down he moves,
looking for shelter. The only sound heard is a howl, like the sound of
the air leaving his mouth. His beard and body hair is slowly coated
in ice. His body, wrapped in bear fur, shook with cold and was
propelled by wind. His vision all white.
At post 37 in sector 4 of the Antarctic there is a tiny
polyurethane insulated cabin. Facing Erebus, the largest volcano in
the Antarctic. A volcano that had formed around 5BCE, due to a
crack in the layer of ice deep underground that covered the magma
underneath. During its lack of activity she often tried to imagine
what or who had broken the ice. Its movements today, its Geiger
readings, had begun somewhere. Sometimes she dreamt there was
a tribe frozen under the ice that had worshipped Erebus. But then
she awoke and remembered she was a scientist. She sits at the
window staring over the cliff monitoring the magma movements.
She chews her pencil getting lead on her lips; the volcano has not
moved for a few days, she had not had any activity to monitor. She
missed him.
Pushing against the blizzard his body was numb. His fur
wrapped feet and body were wet. He could not feel them but his
body was getting heavier with the ice and water. As he stumbled
faster down the incline his frozen toes lost their grip and he tripped.
He didnt realize what had happened, but his senses were knocked
back as he fell through the snow. His dark shape disappeared. He
fell through the white. The blue ice shone for a moment. He cut his

limbs on the ice. The sun. Narrow rock on both sides passed him.
Then he hit the ground. His head landing on a rock. Blackness filled
his vision.
She moved to the kitchenette to make a cup of tea. The kettle
boiled and steam fogged the freezing walls. While it boiled she put
on her gloves, her thermos-coat, her facemask, goggles, and her
boots. The huge red shape moved slowly to the small door, then
opened and stepped out into the white. Before checking gas and
power supplies she went to the radio antenna to check for damage,
before coming back inside she checked the camera recording the
volcano. Again no movement had been recorded for a week. Her
mind wandered thinking about all the footage a camera could have
gotten when the volcano first erupted. How amazing she thought,
the wind blew and she shivered, and shuffled back inside. All boxes
were ticked and her update on the final day of her stay at post 37
was filled in.
As he came back into consciousness his vision did not return.
His breathing increased; there was a sound of wind echoing. He put
his hands out and around him flinching. Trying to find the wall so he
could find the place where the wind was coming from. There must
be an opening somewhere deep in the ground. Above him he could
see the crack of light where he had fell. His hand touching the rock
he stepped carefully at first, wary of stalagmites, the rock
eventually evened out so he continued, quicker, his heart pumping.
The winter solstice back home was different to here. Here it
was a long and indefinite night, a pitch black that covered this
portion of the world for six whole months. She had never been one
for the dark, she needed to see, to observe. The thought of the
blackness frightened her, it was a kind of uncertainty she was
unaccustomed too. She lit the candle beside her bunk as the night

finally came.
His ears were pricked, his hair was on edge, listening for the
wind. He was convinced it could not be far away; it was getting
clearer and clearer. He remembered when he had first ventured into
the caves below the ice. His elder then had told him following wind
would lead to the outside, he remembered what it had felt to be in
the darkness for the first time. Surrounded by rock, no light, he had
never wanted to be in a cavern again. Then he realized he could see
some light. He must be near an opening. The daylight was still
outside. As he stepped further down he was surprised. The light was
not like the white of day, it was an eerie orange, one he had never
seen before, maybe he had found another day light in a different
part of the mountains. It lay under the ice glowing. He stepped
towards it.
She flicked through her data entries over the past six months,
there were spikes and lows. His way of communicating. She couldnt
sleep, she would miss this post; her world, her spot in the middle of
nowhere. Being back on a plane toward the normal world felt like a
betrayal. How could she forget her volcano would be here? A
constant glowing red beacon amongst all this cold, its beauty
unrecorded and unseen in the dark. Who would give him existence,
who would hear him, and who would care?
His movements in the orange glow were shaky. Hoping the
opening lay under the ice, an underground tunnel to the outside. He
knew he did not have long, the sun was falling it would soon be dark
on the ice outside and he would be lost in here to freeze to death.
Steadily he moved to the layer of ice. He got to his knees, picked up
a rock and started to slowly chip away.

It was early in the morning and although it would normally be

sunrise the night stayed on. The windows of her cabin were black.
She would be radioed at 0700 by base to arrange an ATV to bring
her back. She wouldnt sleep before then and thought despite the
dark she wanted to spend her final hours here with her volcano. She
put her protective gear on again and shuffled to the door, stepping
out into the black. Her silhouette moved across the edge of the
volcano, approaching the edge. She would often sit and watch his
movements. The way his magma bubbled or his steam rose. How
beautiful his light was in the growing dark that surrounded his
edges. Her eyes glowed behind the goggles, and her smile was
concealed by her facemask.
The ice began to crack beneath him. A tiny crack was blown
out by some kind of heat that began to push through the ice. His
eyes widened and his body tried to go back to the rock, his arms
flailed. But the ice had totally disappeared, the awakened magma
underneath consumed everything. His foot was swallowed, then his
leg. He roared in pain and his hair, flesh and bone melted with the
rising magma. His body was swallowed by the molten rock. The rock
continued to rise higher and higher, filling the chasm. It had sat in
silence for so many years waiting to be heard. His screams were the
last thing heard in the chasm before the stone gave birth to a
volcano.
She reached the edge of her volcano. Peering down into the
crater. A sea of magma danced around the edges, changing from
white to red. It bubbled, the bubbles rising to the top then popping
as they reached the oxygen in the air. Hisses of steam and gurgles
came from deep inside.
The volcano began to shake, the pressure had built for so long
under the ice it now needed somewhere to release. As the rock

began to shake, rock fell from the chasm; the magma pushed
upwards, gaining speed. It hit the top layer of rock and punched
through. She fell back as it erupted. Cascades of lava danced and
curled in the air like fireworks. Smoke covered the black sky. She
laughed. He had known these were the final hours they would share,
and he was putting on a finale. Inside the volcano the iceman burnt.
His body was erased by the magma that surrounded him. He drowns
deep in the lava. The oxygen in his blood rose to the top of the
erupting volcano. The particles wound there way to the opening at
the top. One last glimpse of the light they thought. They too shot
out the crater. As they hit the air they evaporated becoming steam.
They curled and danced in the air, winding around one another
before dissipating higher into the sky. She watched, as the eruption
seemed to slow. Activity came to a lull; the magma seeped back into
the crater. There was only steam now. She watched the trails of
steam curling and dancing. Wondered where they had come from.
What the steam movements were saying, how could she plot this on
a graph? She watched them curl into the sky. Curling around each
other, rising higher and higher until eventually it all disappeared.
She called out to them in the night, the crisp air caught her shout
and carried it away, her voice echoing across the Antarctic.