The constant bluish dimness made it hard to guess the time. Luce looked out on an inky sky and thrashing waves as she ate mussels and braced herself for the onward journey. The pack ice was thinner down here at least, and there was no nilas clinging to the shoreline. Her muscles were so sore that she was reluctant to face another long night of swimming, but this beach obviously wasn’t a good place to stay for long. It was too open. If she hadn’t been so exhausted she never would have stopped here at all.

The wind yowled and battered the stunted trees behind her. Luce pulled herself together and swam on, forcing herself to keep a steady pace for hours through the growing twist and push of the water. At first she tried to hug the shore, but as she went on the increasingly powerful currents threatened to overwhelm her. One towering wave caught her off-guard, swinging her high up through a blur of gray mist and then hurling her against the stone beach. For a few seconds she rolled, battered and confused, with her tail exposed and blasted by the stinging wind. She was only bruised, and she slipped back to sea on the next breaker that rolled in, but she couldn’t escape the realization that she could easily be stranded beyond the reach of the water next time.

Luce drove herself through the heavy currents, heading into deeper waters. She didn’t want to accept the possibility that a severe storm was gathering, but by the time the Alaskan Peninsula began to break into distinct, sharply peaked islands with huge slablike breakers rolling between them, it was becoming unmistakable. The only islands she could see had low, flat shores buffeted by the violent waves; there were no crags or caves where she could wait out the storm in safety.

She looked around hopelessly. At the bottom of each swell she could see nothing but sculpted walls of black water and whorls of bright foam. It was only as each wave lifted her that she could even glimpse those unwelcoming islands and the dark vacancy between them that might offer a way through to the other side. A few ice floes darted and pitched around her, and she had to dive abruptly to keep from being brained.