Howlett’s Island lay as one of a number, jumbled together like disjointed jigsaw pieces inside the Arctic Circle. No more than ten miles in width and length, it was a forbidding place. Grim cliffs rose up precipitously from the shore, veiled in sinister cloud. The island was dominated by the smoking Mt. Cerebus sending a trail of sulphurous smoke up into the leaden sky.
For most of the year Howlett’s Island lay uninhabited. Only in the hunting season did a small group of Inuit venture by kayak from Sulivan’s Islands along the Davis Strait to make camp at Upernavik Bay. But there were places that were taboo: Utakenviq Vyken (Land of the Black Polar Bear), a desolate peninsular of jagged, windswept hills, which shamans warned was home to the legendary black polar bear. Another was Kolyma’s Gullet, a bottomless hole into which the Russian explorer Admiral Alexandrovich Kolyma had fallen in l84l during a descent. Rumour has it that if you knelt down by that ghastly, bottomless pit, you could still hear the unearthly echo of the unfortunate Admiral’s dying scream and you would never ever countenance sleep again. But Howlett’s island sat like a gorgon’s head on a field of treasure, for beneath this benighted terrain lay oil, oil, oil in such measure to make a Texan wince!
I loved it, Peter! I enjoyed your usual imaginative names and descriptions and I feel like I've been to the island already.
ReplyDeleteFantastic Peter, I was there.
ReplyDeleteLike Julie, I really like the names, and puting the map was a bonus!
Names are so important, aren’t they? And your writing really feels at home with these names, from Inuit to Russian to European. Good use of imagery, ‘like disjointed jigsaw pieces’ being the best – ‘like a gorgon’s head’ perhaps not quite as successful, since the turning-to-stone properties are what I immediately think of. Also if you are confronted with something beyond your wildest expectations do you wince? Or do you blanch, or perhaps does your jaw hang slack?
ReplyDeleteThe map adds a great deal – many writers have of course included maps and they can be an important part of the enjoyment of a book.
Very nice evocation of place.
You really are a true story teller Peter. I can even imagine you reading it in a story-telling festival somewhere like Clare Island off Skibbereen in Eire, with the wind and rain whipping around the wooden hut and the lanterns swinging outside!
ReplyDelete