Northern Penguins

The girl was sitting on the bed reading a book she had brought with her. It was Road Dahl’s The Witches. She was almost finished with the book and she only had a few left. On the first days of the trip, she had read seven of her thirteen books and she would not be able to get more of them until they returned to Juneau.

The girl missed her home in Arizona. She was not used to this kind of cold. She was not used to miles of water, broken only by more frozen water. She was not used to being on a fishing boat, or any boat. When her grandma told her she would be moving to Washington, the girl was not aware that meant she would be going on a boat in Alaska. She did not particularly like water the way her father must have. In all honesty, she didn’t know what her father liked or what he did, or where he had been until the first week of fourth grade. That was the week her mom had passed away. It happened while she was at school. The girl had asked her grandmother many questions. All she knew, though, was that her mother had ‘had an accident.’ The girl must have cried for her mother for days without any break.

A few days after the funeral her father appeared. She had never met him. She had spoken on the phone with him on her birthday two years prior and received a card on Christmas the year before. Her mother told her that her dad was out on an adventure. He had a boat and was fighting pirates and saving princesses in faraway lands, and that is why he could not be there with her, but he would come home if she was ever in trouble. The girl always asked how he would know if she was in trouble. Her mother would just answer ‘I promise you, he will.’

Therefore, she was not shocked to see him. If there had ever been a time she was in real trouble, this was it. She was, however, shocked to see what he looked like. In her mind, she always pictured him to be tall and handsome with a sword in one hand and a treasure chest in the other. After all, he had spent her whole life gathering treasure to bring back to her. Instead, she saw a man with thinning hair, short stubby legs, and a large belly. His face was covered in a beard but not like her grandfathers or Principal Steindlans at her school. It looked like he had forgotten to dry it when he got out of the shower. When he drew near, it smelled like he must have forgotten to use soap. And toothpaste.

Her grandmother who had cared for her every day after school had been taking care of her, and the girl on that day could tell she was upset. His sudden appearance had at this point, made her grandmother take the hand of the young girl and pull her close. Unfortunately for the girl and everyone who had grown to know and adore her witty little self, she was forced to go with her father. It was not that night that he had taken her, or even that week, but eventually, she found herself in the very boat where she was now escaping to a world full of witches that hated children. That giant and dangerous place was a preferable world to this one, which was thirty feet long and ten feet wide.

The girl continued reading but tried to go slower and slower as she was nearing the end of her daily page number she had allotted herself. She had figured, considering the scarcity of books, she would have to pace herself from this point forward. She had counted how many pages she had left in total. That number was one thousand twenty-three. She had divided that by thirteen which was the number of days she had left on the boat with her father. Having not learned how to divide the big numbers in school yet, she decided to use the calculator her father had on his desk. Normally she would prefer to do something like that on her own and it annoyed her that she couldn’t but the mission of having enough pages to read each day was more important. The number she had gotten looked really big so she asked her father what it said on the calculator.

“Seventy-eight point six nine two.” He answered. She did not know what the ‘point’ part meant yet, either. Hopefully, when they returned to Juneau he would take her to school. She was getting frustrated by the things she did not know.

“What does the part after the ‘point’ mean?” She asked, hoping he could maybe get that lesson out of the way before school, and also provide an answer for her reading mission.

“Oh. Well…” He paused for a moment. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a tinier number you don’t have to pay attention to. No one does, really.” This answer did not satisfy the girl because she wasn’t quite sure how many pages that meant. She stared at him for a few more seconds with a blank face, hoping he would give her a different answer. “Look, Pumpkin, just go with seventy-eight and I am sure you will be fine.”

She nodded her head and walked away back into the cabin and was careful to avoid the dirty clothes on the floor inside the cabin, in order not to move his mess. He had gotten real mad when she had knocked over one of his cans a few days earlier. He had gotten red as a cherry, but not loud. He never got loud it seemed. Once safely to her bed she sat down and started The Witches.

The girl read for another twenty minutes or so, after she had slowed her pace, and had reached page seventy-eight. Her reading time was over. She closed her book and was hoping to fall asleep fast. Some nights she fell asleep in a matter of minutes. Other nights, it would take hours. She did not like being here. On a boat. She didn’t think her grandmother would have liked it either. Maybe when she was back in Juneau she would be allowed to call her. Tell her to come and pick her up and take her back to Arizona. The girl was pretty sure it was more than four hours to Juneau in her grandmother’s station wagon, which was way longer than that one time they went to Tempe, but she was sure her grandma would make an exception. Maybe she would get to go back to her school and tell her friends all about Alaska, even though most of what she knew was that it was cold.

Suddenly she heard footsteps coming towards the cabin. The door opened, and there her father's tired face peered in.

“Pumpkin put on your jacket and come out here. I want to show you something. Quick.” He turned away and closed the door behind him. She didn’t want to go out there right now, or until the trip had ended, but she begrudgingly put on her jacket and boots and followed him out.

As she stepped out the door she felt the cold ocean air nip at her cheeks and forehead and neck and nose all at once. She turned and walked towards her father but stopped as the sky caught her eye. The sky was dancing with pink and purple and green. The pink and purple had enthralled her at first, but the green was vibrant and unexpected. The girl had seen pink and purple sunsets, but never a green sky. It was bright and thick and the rays seemed to have a life of their own.

“Is that the Northern Lights?” she asked.

“Yes, pumpkin. It’s called an aurora. This one is called the Aurora Borealis. And do you remember where I told you the Penguins live?” Her father sounded different. His tone was lighter than it had ever been with her.

“Antarctica!” She blurted it out. She kept thinking about how if they had just gone there she would have gotten to tell her classmates about the penguins she had seen.

“Smart girl.” His response made her blush. “That is where the Aurora Australis happens. The Southern Lights.”

“Do they look the same?” She blurted out.

He stopped for a second to think about it. “None of them look the same. The next time people see these they will look different.”

“Does that mean you and me, and everybody else near here are the only ones to see one like this?” The thought excited the girl.

“I guess so.” He replied. “Some will be similar but never again exactly like this.” It dawned on him that this was true of clouds and storms and most things, but the wonder in her eyes kept that thought silent. This is hers. He thought to himself.

They watched the lights continue for a few more minutes and then they faded into the night sky. She returned to bed, and he accompanied her to the cabin. The next morning he would change course and return to Juneau. It was time she went home. He knew she did not belong there in Alaska, and she did not belong with him. That day forced his hand stronger than direct revelation from God would have. He could give her the green dancing lights, but that was all he could give her.

When she returned to school she told her friends about the boat, and Juneau, and the Aurora Borealis, and her sea captain father. She may have even told them she saw Penguins, although that part was not true.

Her father had returned back to Alaska but promised he would call her, and that he would be there for Christmas that year. She didn’t believe it until Christmas morning when, right before opening her presents, she heard a knock, and there he was waiting to hug her.