Page 1 of Under Story

Part One

Laurel’s first memories of soil—though at the time, she would have called it dirt—came from weeding in her mother’s garden. She was five, or maybe six. Her mother pointed, and she tugged. Thistle, dandelion, chickweed: they trailed whole cities, tangled with life.

As the child of apple growers, she had known that roots existed, but not how far they roamed. One day, she crawled under a Golden Russet, which the family called octopus trees because they waved in all directions.

She looked at the base, which split into roots. “Where do they go?”

Her father was pruning nearby. Laurel liked to follow as he worked. He wriggled into her position, so that they were both worms.

“It depends,” he said. “Some go deep down. Others grow as wide as the branches.”

Recently, in school, Laurel had been told to draw a tree. Dutifully she had sketched trunk, branches, leaves. She realized now that she’d drawn only half of it. What she saw above ground was one part of the story. The second was below.

1

Terra Australis

The descent into Antarctica takes Laurel by surprise. There are no windows on the plane, so she can’t see the ice rise to meet her.

The aircraft, a C-17, is taller than any commercial vessel; ten feet above her head, the ceiling curves like a spaceship. People sit along the perimeter, most wearing headphones, some sleeping in the Big Red jackets they received at the Clothing Distribution Center in New Zealand. The newcomers keep their seat belts on. One of the old-timers—a man in Carhartts, sunglasses, and a short-sleeved shirt—unbuckles, ducks below chains, and lies down against a wooden cargo container, a novel tucked under his elbow.

Across from Laurel, a Black woman crosses her arms over her stomach, her short Afro behind a headband. A white man dozes into his scarf; little more than his brown curls are visible. He opens his eyes just before they touch down. During spring and summer—which take place, at the bottom of the world, from October to February—the Ross Sea is still eight feet thick, strong enough to serve as a runway.

Passengers shoulder into their jackets and begin to deplane: the old-timers sure-footed, the newcomers waddling in their government-issued boots. Cold sweeps over them in waves. The sky reminds Laurel less of Earth than of some gaseous planet, streams of indigo and violet and shocking pink, the setting sun layered between them. The mountain ranges glint behind a haze of blowing snow.

A giant red vehicle trundles toward them; “IVAN” THE TERRA BUS is painted on one side. Ivan’s driver, a cheerful man in a balaclava, tells them that the bus weighs seventy thousand pounds. Laurel takes a seat beside the woman who sat across from her on the plane. After fifteen minutes, the driver announces that they’ve crossed the transition point where ice gives way to solid rock, and Laurel’s hands unclench. Soon she sees the drab mid-century buildings that make up McMurdo Station.

The woman sitting next to Laurel snorts. “I didn’t think Antarctica would look like February in Wisconsin.”

Laurel smiles. “Crusty slush? Check. Giant Caterpillar machines?”

“Check.” The woman pushes her sunglasses on top of her head and holds out a hand. “Charlie Morrison, from Milwaukee.”

“Laurel Salter, from Madison.”

“We could have carpooled to O’Hare.”

“Should have. I’d have been a lot less nervous,” says Laurel. “Is it your first time, too?”

Charlie nods. She looks to be near Laurel’s age, thirty-six. Her eyes are perceptive, and her broad cheekbones taper to a delicate chin.

They walk together as the experts lead the newbies to the dorms. Laurel doesn’t ask what brought Charlie to McMurdo, and Charlie doesn’t ask her. Beyond the dirt roads of the base, the landscape is cratered, white, and endless. Pale yellow ribbons weave between clouds; mist swirls with the body of dust.

Laurel’s tendency is to observe. When foraging for fungi, she looks for aberration: fleshy folds against wood, roundness amid angles. Here, something interrupts the line of the horizon. A small dome of light appears to sit over the ocean. It reminds Laurel of a bubble cut in two: faintly pink and translucent, with an iridescent skin.

The sight pulls her. It looks not of this world. Even from miles away, it seems to make a sound: a crackle, low but generative, constant.

But when she blinks, it disappears.

“Did you see that?” Laurel asks, stopping. In its absence, the sky looks innocuous, like a theater after a play.

“See what?” asks Charlie.

Laurel shakes her head. “I haven’t slept well in forty-eight hours. I think I’m losing my mind.”

“You wouldn’t be the only one. Have you heard what they say around here? ‘When you shake the world,’ ” Charlie says, “ ‘the oddballs fall to the bottom.’ ”

It was Laurel’s mother, Clare, who told her about the job in Antarctica. In July, Laurel was describing her trouble at work—how she moved robotically through tasks; how even nature’s miracles were stripped, for her, of awe—when Clare put a hand on her wrist.