The Little Iceberg in Gull Harbour
Gull Harbour was small and round, like a cup somebody had set down at the edge of the sea. In summer the water in it was as warm as a bath. The boats were painted the colours of boiled sweets: lemon, raspberry, mint, and one that was a sort of orange nobody could agree on.
Nia was the harbourmaster’s daughter, and she counted them. She counted every boat out in the morning and every boat in at night. She would not go in for her supper until the two numbers matched, and she had never once got it wrong. Her dad said the harbour could run without him for a week, but not for one evening without Nia.
“Fourteen boats,” she would say from the harbour wall. Then she would go in and eat her supper, because everybody was home.
One warm evening in the middle of summer, she counted fourteen boats, and then she counted one more thing.
It was down by the slipway. It was white, with a blue middle like the inside of a shell, and it was about the size of a cow. It bobbed. It was very plainly an iceberg.
Now, you may think an iceberg the size of a cow is a big iceberg. For an iceberg, it is very small. For a harbour, it is plenty.
Nia went down the slipway steps to look. Cold came off it the way heat comes off an oven. Deep in the middle, frozen hard, was a single blue mitten. Nobody knew whose it was.
“Dad,” Nia called. “There’s an iceberg.”
Dad came out with his napkin still tucked into his collar. He looked at the iceberg for a long time.
“Well now,” he said.
Then the sun went down behind the point, and the iceberg sang.
It was one low note, long and sad, like a ship’s horn far out in fog. It went all the way round the round harbour and up the lanes and in at every open window. People came out on their doorsteps with their spoons still in their hands. Nobody in Gull Harbour had ever heard an iceberg sing before, but everybody knew what that note meant. It meant: I am a long way from home.
Nia could not bear anyone being a long way from home. It was the whole reason she counted.
“Fourteen boats,” she said that night, very firmly, “and one iceberg.”
In the morning the iceberg was still there. By the afternoon, when the harbour wall was too hot to sit on, it was dripping. Nia lay on her front on the slipway and looked in. The blue mitten was a little nearer the top than it had been.
“It’s melting,” she said.
“Well now,” said Dad. “It’s summer. Icebergs belong up north, where it’s cold.”
“Then it has to go north,” said Nia. “Before the mitten comes out.”
Dad looked at the boats. The biggest was the raspberry one, and the iceberg would have sunk it in a minute. He looked at the ropes. He did the sums in his head.
“No boat in this harbour can tow it,” he said. “Not in this heat. It would be half gone before we got past the point.”
So first, the village kept it cool.
Mrs. Penny from the fish market came down the hill pushing a pram. There was no baby in the pram. There was ice, all the ice from the fish market, tucked in under the pram blanket. She tipped it out round the iceberg, said “There you are, pet,” and went back up the hill for more. She did that four times a day, and with no ice left for the fish, the whole village ate a great many eggs that week, and nobody minded.
The sailmaker brought down every spare sail in the loft. The fishermen rigged them on poles over the slipway, so the iceberg sat in a big striped tent of shade. The children took turns fanning it with their hats.
And every evening, when the sun went down and the iceberg began its long low note, Nia sat on the harbour wall and sang back.
She could not sing anywhere near as low as an iceberg. The lowest note she could manage sounded like a cow with a cold. That seemed only fair, since the iceberg was the size of one. But when Nia sang, the iceberg’s note wobbled, and went quiet for a moment, as if it were listening. Then they sang together until the stars were out.
“Fourteen boats and one iceberg,” she said each night.
But each afternoon, the mitten came a little nearer the top.
On the fifth day, Old Ferris came to look.
Old Ferris ran the ferry across the bay and back, and was slow at everything. Slow to walk, slow to talk, slow to tie a knot, and slowest of all to say anything worth hearing. It took Old Ferris most of an afternoon to walk once round the iceberg.
“Doesn’t need towing,” Old Ferris said at last.
“Well now,” said Dad. “It can’t swim.”
“Doesn’t need towing,” said Old Ferris again, just as slowly. “Only steering. There’s a cold current runs past the point. Comes down from the north and goes back up again. Get it into that and it’ll find its own way home.”
“And how do you steer an iceberg?” said Dad.
Old Ferris did not answer. Old Ferris walked back along the quay to the ferry, very slowly, and leaned on the horn.
The ferry’s horn sounded one long low note across the harbour. And down by the slipway, under its striped tent, the iceberg sang the very same note back. It bumped against the bottom step, as if it wanted to come.
“Same note,” said Old Ferris. “Heard it the first night. It’ll follow.”
Nia thought it was the cleverest thing anyone in Gull Harbour had ever done. It had only taken Old Ferris five days.
On the sixth evening, Nia could see the mitten’s thumb. But it was the coolest night of the summer, with a breeze off the sea and a big round moon, and the water in the harbour was silver instead of warm. So they went.
Nia sat in the bow of the ferry in her thickest jumper. Old Ferris was at the wheel. Mrs. Penny tipped in one last pram of ice, for the road. The fishermen took the sails down. Dad untied the ropes and said “Well now” three times, and everyone in Gull Harbour stood along the wall to watch.
Old Ferris sounded the horn. The iceberg sang back, and came.
It came out from the slipway and across the round harbour, as slow as anything, which suited Old Ferris very well. It kept close by the bow, close enough for Nia to touch, the way two friends keep close walking home. Once it drifted toward the wall, and Old Ferris nudged it back with the ferry’s nose, gently, as you might steer a sleepy child down a hall. It went past the lemon boat and the mint boat and the boat nobody could agree on. All the way, Nia sang her cow-with-a-cold note, and the iceberg sang its low one back.
Out past the point, the sea changed. Nia felt it first on her cheeks. The air went cold, and the water went dark green and quick. The ferry slowed. The iceberg did not. The cold current took it.
“That’s the one,” said Old Ferris, and sounded the horn a last time.
The iceberg sang back. But it was a different note now. It was higher and rounder, and it went up at the end, the way your voice goes up when you see someone you have been waiting for. It was a glad note. Everybody on the harbour wall heard it, and some of them cheered.
Nia waved until the iceberg was a small white shape going north in the moonlight, and then until it was no shape at all. The blue mitten went with it, still deep inside, still nobody’s, going home too.
Then Old Ferris turned the ferry round, very slowly, and took Nia back.
She climbed up onto the harbour wall and counted. Lemon, raspberry, mint, the orange nobody could agree on, and all the rest, with the ferry last of all.
“Fourteen boats,” she said. And that was the right number.
Dad had kept her supper warm. He sat with her while she ate it, and then he tucked her in, and she was asleep before he got to the door.
Every winter after that, on the first frosty morning, there was one snowflake on Nia’s windowsill. Just one, perfect, with six neat points. It did not melt, not even when the sun came round the house, until Nia had come and looked at it properly.
She always did. She counted it, because she counted everything.
“One snowflake,” she would say.
The first time, Dad came and looked over her shoulder. Nia said, “It got home.” And Dad said, “Well now. So it did.” That was how she knew, every winter, that the little iceberg had not forgotten the girl who sang to it.