Fire and Ice
Fire and Ice
The next scene opens quietly. Marsh is lying down, a pillow soft beneath her head, and her eyes are closed. She’s not really asleep, but she’s supposed to be, so she lets her lids stay heavy, savoring the peaceful moment.
This is just what she needed. A real adventure, as Talia said. She can always finish her season in Hong Kong, if she really wants to. But why not push for even more, before then?
The only thing that could be more perfect than perfect would be more of it.
At that, she lets her eyes flutter open. The curtains of her bedroom are thin and gauzy, and the light is filtering gently through. They’re an odd color—bright yellow. As the first rays of sun fall across her pillow, Marsh realizes why.
She isn’t in a room. She’s in a tent.
Is she camping? Another vacation?
She sits up to look around. Even though it’s first thing in the morning, her hair falls in loose curls, even fuller and lusher than before, and her skin has kept its warm tan from the Tahitian sun.
Marsh shrugs to herself, pleased.
Finally, she climbs out of her sleeping bag and stretches in the cozy tent. Another one just like it is to the left of hers, with Ren’s watch and belt curled up on top, and a third one on her other side, its pillowcase covered in rumpled sheet music.
Good. She smiles.
The tent rustles as a breeze rushes past outside, and the sound draws Marsh’s attention toward whatever lies beyond. She stuffs her feet into a pair of hiking boots and grabs a sweater—even inside her tent, the air is crisp enough that she can see faint white puffs when she exhales—and takes a deep, excited breath. Then she unzips the flap of the tent and steps out.
The landscape that unfurls before her is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
The overwhelming green. The vastness. The mountains, the black cliffs, the pristine blue-white ice. It’s like Marsh stepped out of her tent and into a fantastical, untouched Arctic wilderness! Everywhere she looks is a contrast. The dark soil and rocks glimmer like obsidian beneath a layer of mossy, emerald cover. The sea is brilliant blue, the looming peaks are covered in ice, the sky gleams like polished silver. And everywhere— everywhere —are millions of tiny purple wildflowers, like a delicate periwinkle blanket covering the land.
TopFan01: Holy. Mackerel.
Frónverji: Hún er á íslandi!!!!!!!!!!!
“The Nordics seemed so mysterious and remote,” Marsh remembers saying to Talia during the recap. “The farthest away place in the world from where I was.”
She puts a hand on her heart, overcome.
And now she’s made it. She’s in Iceland .
Marsh’s eyes are sparkling, and not just from the flood of exclamations as viewers from the Arctic island celebrate in the comments. She was right to push Talia for another path, she knows without a doubt now.
She’s living every single one of her dreams.
She stares at the landscape for a few more seconds, still starstruck, until her eyes blur. Then, in a flash, she whirls around and ducks back into her tent. Inside, she puts her hair into a bun and pulls on her windproof shell and scarf as fast as she can, eager to start soaking up every second of this amazing trip. As she rushes, the toe of her boot catches on a pebble beneath the tarp, and she bumps the small table at the foot of the sleeping bags, where a huge map is spread out.
At first, she thinks it must be for whatever article Ren is working on now, but then she realizes that all the writing on it is in her handwriting.
The map is a close-up of the southeast of Iceland, covering a swathe of seaside cliffs and icy foothills. Little towns and landmarks dot the region— H?fn, J?kulsárlón, Skaftafell, Kirkjub?jarklaustur —and a giant glacier of ice, Vatnaj?kull , looms over it all . And just to the south of Vatnaj?kull’s imposing, white-ridged border, right along the coast where she must be now, she’s circled one tiny, jutting cape in decisive red marker.
The word is small, but Marsh’s script is neat.
Ingólfsh?fei .
When she picks up the map to see what’s beneath, a surprised gasp escapes her.
Photographs, dozens of them, cover the table. Of the landscape, the roil ing sea, the menacing clouds, but mostly of the wildlife. There are leaping seals and cresting humpback whales, puffins soaring midflight, wild horses at a gallop.
They’re breathtaking.
And at the bottom right corner, where the photographer’s credit appears, they all say Marsh .
Hoskistrong: Marsh er dyralífsljósmyndari!
Frónverji: Til hamingju, Marsh!
The Icelandic viewers are right. Marsh can hardly believe this episode.
In this life, she isn’t just traveling Iceland. She’s working here—as a world-famous wildlife photographer!
Moms4Marsh: The second half of this season is even better than the first!
A stream of hundreds more repeat the same sentiment.
Marsh couldn’t agree more. She might not be a lawyer in this path, but this new career isn’t all that different, in a way. She’s still fighting to bring attention and justice to important issues, but from an ecological angle, this time. And what better mark to leave on the world than such beautiful, timeless photographs?
Her heart racing, Marsh sets the images down and launches herself outside again into the overcast morning. Thanks to Talia, she’s now in the most incredible place, and with an equally incredible dream job. This new life is even more amazing than she could have imagined herself!
She opens her arms and spins, desperate to drink every moment in. She can’t wait to see what beautiful, unique shot is waiting for her to capture at Ingólfsh?fei . It’s going to be something incredible.
No. It’s going to be perfect .
“ Svafstu vel? ” a voice says, and Marsh turns around to see Ren walking up to her from a much larger tent a stone’s throw away. There are several tents, she can see now, most of them the same size as hers, all clustered around the big one, from which a tendril of smoke is curling through a chimney sticking out of the top. This must be their base camp, where Marsh and her crew have set up to have easy access to their desired shoot location.
“Come again?” Marsh asks him when Ren reaches her.
“Means Did you sleep well? in Icelandic,” he answers with a smile. “Learned that from the cook this morning.”
He gives Marsh a kiss, and then takes in the landscape with a deep, appreciative sigh.
“God, the air is so clean here.” He whistles. He pops a dark berry into his mouth from the pile he has in one hand. “And these are delicious. Straight off the bush!”
Marsh, however, is studying Ren, rather than the view. If he was perhaps just a little too doting and domesticated in Tahiti, he’s much more rugged-looking now. His stubble is a little overgrown, there’s dirt on his hands, and he’s dressed in explorer’s gear, with tools and straps hanging from his belt and vest.
What kind of story is he writing now? she wonders.
He looks good, though. Marsh wouldn’t have expected it, but for a journalist, Ren is really pulling off the outdoorsy adventurer look.
Just then, a little keening wail pierces the silence, and Ren slips and falls comically to his knees as something whizzes past him, low to the ground.
“What! You little rascal, come here!” he shouts playfully as he gets to his feet and gives chase.
“That fluff ball is always such a goof in the mornings,” Harper says as she comes running across the grass, a dog leash looped through her hands, and Marsh laughs as they both duck around the back of the tent to follow Ren and Pickle.
Except it’s not Pickle, Marsh realizes as she stops dead in her tracks.
Or rather, maybe it is—but Pickle is not a black Lab.
He’s a white... fox ?
“Yeah, you are a goof, aren’t you, Súrkrás?” Ren says, trying to get Súrkrás to high-five him, a trick Pickle knows well, as he continues wriggling excitedly on the ground.
“Súr... krás?” Marsh finally asks.
“Yeah! I changed it after I got to lesson three in my Icelandic Basic Phrases book,” Harper answers. “After all, shouldn’t an Icelandic fox have an Icelandic name?”
Ah, Marsh realizes. “Súrkrás” must mean “Pickle” in Icelandic.
The comments are more hearts and exclamation points than words by now.
Monsterrific: Now I need a Súrkrás plush collectible, too!
MrLoki: Tae er ekki l?glegt ae eiga ref á íslandi !
Fortunata111: Who cares if a pet fox is legal or not, it’s ADORABLE!
“I think he’s really taking to it,” Marsh replies at last, and bends down to cuddle the fluffy white mass. She’ll get used to it, she knows. The most important thing is that they’re all together in this new, wonderful life.
“Want a bilberry, buddy?” Ren asks Súrkrás, showing him the enticing bundle.
Súrkrás dances with delight.
“Okay, wait,” he says as he holds one out, testing the fox. “Waaait...”
“C’mon!” Harper cries, giggling as Ren draws out the word.
“Boy, the two of you need to learn some patience!” he jokes as the bilberry eases excruciatingly forward. “Waaaaaait...”
“Gotcha!” Harper laughs—snatching it right out of his two fingers with her mouth.
“Hey!” Ren cries, pretending to be horrified. “That was for Súrkrás!”
“Too late!” She cackles as he wrestles her to the ground, demanding the berry back. Súrkrás jumps on top of them, squeaking with delight as they laugh their heads off together.
Marsh is laughing, too, overjoyed. If she’d been worried before about Harper and Ren’s relationship, this single moment convinces her that the show has outdone itself yet again.
“Okay, okay, you win!” Ren says once Harper and Súrkrás have released him, and gives her the rest of the berries to share with the fox. He brushes off his pants as he stands. “I have to head out. Got an interesting lead.”
“Oh?” Marsh asks. “For an article?”
Ren blinks. “Article? What article?”
Ren must not be a journalist anymore.
“I, never mind,” she tries to cover. “What’s the lead?”
Ren hefts a beat-up backpack onto his shoulders and adjusts the straps. “Magnús called. He said that the ice on Myrdalsj?kull is solid.” He looks excited. “It’s rocky, but if I can find just the right place to start the climb, I could set a new record!”
Ren is a professional mountain climber in this life? Marsh deduces, amazed, as she tries to pretend he’s always been this rough-and-tumble version of himself.
“It’s all right,” he says to her, teasing. “You can tell me it’s pretty sexy.”
LunaMágica: It is!
Several thousand comments agree as Marsh chuckles at him. The Bubble has done a good job in this episode.
“I mean, it is, right?” he asks—almost like he’s a little unsure now.
“ Very sexy,” Marsh says, wrapping her arms around him and giving him a peck on the lips. “I kind of wish I were going with you instead, so I could sneak a few shots of you bravely scaling that cliff face.”
YanYan242: Oh, sweet Ren! He’s so in love with her!
“Súrkrás, come back!” Harper yells, and chases after the fox as it darts off into some bushes. “See you guys later!”
“Love you!” Marsh calls after her.
“This is it, Marsh. Your big break.” Ren steals another kiss from her before heading toward a row of muddy jeeps parked at the edge of the campsite. “I know it!”
As Ren’s tires crunch on the gravel, there’s a rustle behind her, and a voice calls, “There you are! You want coffee?”
Marsh turns to see Talia ducking out of the main tent.
“Talia! I can’t believe you’re here!” she says, happy to see her.
“I can’t believe it, either!” Talia replies, and gives her an excited hug in return. “I mean, Iceland ! It’s beautiful!”
“So, what’s your cover this time?” Marsh asks as they both marvel at the breathtaking landscape.
“A documentary, of course!” Talia winks, and holds up a handheld microphone. Despite the rugged conditions, she looks like a model who just stepped out of an outdoorsy clothing photo shoot. “Women and nature.”
As Marsh lets out a snort of a laugh, the tent rustles again, and Jo pops her head out.
“Marsh,” she says, and holds up a beat-up tablet device. “Did you see these readings?”
“Jo!” Marsh exclaims, thrilled that her best friend is here, too, and apparently still her coworker. “I mean, not yet.” She takes the tablet from her.
“ ?r?faj?kull is showing signs of volcanic pre-eruption activity,” Jo explains, after giving her a funny look. “Our sensors picked it up last night, and the Icelandic Meteorological Office confirmed this morning.”
“But ?r?faj?kull ’s been coded green since 2018,” Talia helpfully replies, checking her notes in her fake documentary folder.
“I know,” Jo agrees. “But the monitors are showing that activity’s ticked up suddenly again.”
“What does this mean for us?” Marsh asks.
“It means we’re going to have to make a hard choice,” Victor answers her as he joins, holding his own half-empty mug of black coffee and another full one, which he hands to Marsh.
“Hard choice?” Talia prompts, leaning in with her mic like she’s interviewing for the documentary as Marsh downs the scalding liquid all at once, too impatient to sip it.
“I know today is our only chance before the snow hits and we lose our window, but the IMO has advised all research around ?r?faj?kull be halted immediately.” Victor turns and points at the massive white-capped mountain behind them. “ Ingólfsh?fei is within the danger zone.”
“What!” Marsh cries, dismayed.
How will she ever manage to capture the precious photograph she’s come here to take, if they can’t go to Ingólfsh?fei ? Just when things were showing so much promise, the weather has to change on her—literally!
“We’ve come so far,” she insists. “We can’t just give up now!”
“We have to,” Jo sighs. “The IMO ordered the shutdown.”
“An official estimate for anything is always conservative,” Marsh argues. “There’s always a buffer, for safety’s sake.”
“Marsh...” Victor says warningly.
She ignores him—something she never would have dared doing just a few episodes ago.
“How much time does the IMO think there really is, before an eruption?”
Jo shakes her head. “You can’t be serious, Marsh. This is life and death.”
“Exactly!” Marsh replies. “Life—our life’s work! To capture the world before it disappears! When could that be more important, if not this very moment?”
Is this what it’s like, to feel a speech coming on? she wonders. She’s not thinking now, just speaking, every word the perfect one, all of them in the perfect order, with no planning. Every sentence is urgent, gripping, destined.
Everyone in the camp is staring at her as she speaks, captivated by her passion. She feels even more exposed than she did giving her first talk as a lawyer at Mendoza-Montalvo and Hall, but somehow, even more confident this time. This time, so many eyes on her isn’t withering, but emboldening. Energizing. She can feel their energy as they listen to her.
And it’s good .
“This is why we came,” she proclaims, gesturing to the looming volcano. “To take chances. To leave our mark !”
Marsh clenches her hands into determined fists.
“Oh no,” Victor says. “I know that look.”
“You can either come with me or not,” Marsh declares, as Talia nearly dances with proud glee beside her. “But you can’t stop me.”
Moms4Marsh: That’s our girl!
For just an instant, Marsh falters. She waits nervously as her words sink in, afraid the camp is going to laugh at her.
But this is the new Marsh, and a new life. This is All This and More .
Like magic, the crowd goes from completely silent to a tornado of activity.
“All right, people! She’s going full marshmallow again,” Victor cries over the whirlwind. “I want our jeep loaded and on the way up the foothills in ten minutes, and the rest of the camp cleared and on the road down to the IMO safety line in thirty. We have no time to waste!”
Everyone is moving now, full of purpose and excitement. Someone rushes to put the camera bags Marsh will need into the back of one of the jeeps, another makes sure she’s got double backup walkie-talkies, and Jo is synching the eruption countdown timers in the vehicle to the camp’s clocks. Amid the chaos, Marsh barely has time to appreciate that in this new life, marshmallow isn’t a comment on her sugary pushover sweetness, but rather her propensity to burst into adventurous flames at the slightest opportunity.
“Harper!” she calls as Harper runs to her. “You stay with the camp and take care of Pick—Súrkrás. I have to do this, but I’ll be back. I promise.”
“I know,” Harper says, as Marsh hugs her. “You always say that.”
Marsh doesn’t know what it is—excitement, terror, pride that courage is now her default—but all she can do is cling fiercely to her daughter, unable to speak, as the comments flood her vision with hearts.
“Now get going!” Harper says, and pushes her gently toward the jeep. “Súrkrás and I will be waiting.”
“I love you!” Marsh shouts, three times. Harper can’t hear her over the din, but she can see her mouth moving, and waves back in response.
Marsh watches the churning camp until she’s sure that Harper and Súrkrás are safely in an evacuating jeep, along with all of their gear. She’s so full of adrenaline, she can’t feel her feet. Finally, she clambers into the driver’s seat of her jeep as Jo and Victor hustle themselves into the back.
“You ready for this?” Victor asks her.
“She’s always ready,” Jo says.
Marsh catches a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror—even in rough clothes, no makeup, and her hair scraped back into a functional bun, she has to admit, she’s positively glowing.
Just as she turns the key and the engine roars to life, the passenger door opens, and Talia leaps into the seat.
“No way I’m missing this!” Talia says as she slams her door closed. “What can I do to help?”
Marsh grins.
“Hang on,” she replies.
“What?” Talia blinks.
And Marsh slams the gas pedal to the floor.
The jeep peels out of camp in a spray of black gravel that elicits a cheer from the remaining crew.
“Okay,” Talia finally continues as they begin the precarious climb up the icy trail. She finds her microphone rolling around the floor bed, and assumes the air of a serious documentarian. “So, what do you hope to accomplish on this shoot?”
“Well,” Marsh begins, as she puts the jeep into a lower gear as if she’s been off-roading her whole life. “For the last few years, our team has focused intensely on Arctic and sub-Arctic conservation. We’re trying to use wildlife photography to draw attention to the melting ice caps and the loss of habitats for several endangered species.”
She can almost feel the knowledge filtering into her as she reaches for it. Talia explained that the longer she stays in a given path, new memories and experiences will start to backfill, until it’s like she was here all along, but to feel it happening so quickly now is a bit like magic. It’s like the pleasant warmth from an early summer sun. Or slight radiation from a quantum bubble.
“Fascinating!” Talia crows. “Iceland is the perfect place for such a noble mission.”
“In more ways than one,” Victor chimes in from behind. “There was a famous Norse Viking named Naddodd, who discovered Iceland by accident in the ninth century. He was trying to sail to the Faroe Islands, but he and his crew got lost at sea, and ended up finally coming aground at Reyearfjall . It’s about two hundred miles east along the coast from where we are now, where modern-day Reyearfj?reur is.”
“Vikings!” Talia nearly drops the mic as they hit a bump. Volcanic gravel crunches beneath their tires, sharp and hollow. “But what do Vikings have to do with wildlife conservation?”
“Everything, actually. All of our work here in Iceland has been leading up to this very moment,” Jo says.
She leans forward to Talia, dramatic.
“Our pursuit of the first-ever shot of the legendary ísv?ngur .”
ísv?ngur ?
Marsh lingers on the word, intrigued. She’s never heard it before. What could she and her team be after?
TopFan01: Can someone translate?
Frónverji: Já! It means “Ice Wing” in English!
Hoskistrong: ?Ala de hielo!
The Icelandic viewers happily oblige, translating into every language requested.
Marsh is trying to imagine what those two words could mean—a predatory bird? A huge fish of some kind? A dragon, even?—but Victor is still lecturing, his artistic voice just as sonorous as his courtroom one.
“The skaldic songs from Naddodd’s era sing of the first time he saw the ísv?ngur , and he’s credited as the person who discovered it, but it’s only rumored to actually exist. Every few years, a hiker will claim to have spotted one, but no one has ever been able to capture it on film, so it can’t be proven. The things are as rare as unicorns.”
Talia turns to Marsh, whose heart is thudding excitedly in her chest. “Until now,” she says, grinning back.
“Marsh has been working tirelessly to follow Naddodd’s historic trail, and we have good evidence that the Ingólfsh?fei cape may be the fabled place of the songs where Naddodd first spotted the ísv?ngur ,” Jo agrees.
Marsh concentrates on the rocky path, trying not to blush as she listens.
“If she’s right, this will be the first confirmed photograph of an ísv?ngur in the world.”
“Amazing!” Talia says. “That would really be a mark to leave, for sure.”
Marsh can’t help but glance at her host, and they share a private, exhilarated wink.
This new path is almost too perfect to believe. If she and her team can succeed in finding this mystical ísv?ngur , and capture the first-ever photograph of it, they’d go down in history forever! Decades from now, when Marsh is old and gray, and Harper is somewhere far away, living a hopefully equally fulfilling life, and even long after, she’ll always be able to look at her mother’s photos and remember this time they had together in Iceland, and the legacy she’s left behind.
She can’t wait to see what this “Ice Wing” is.
As the jeep rounds the corner, it passes through a menacing cloud of steam from a crack between two obsidian boulders. It billows and curls, a thick white column buffeted by the breeze. It looks like there’s a dragon living beneath, its molten breath smoldering as it slumbers.
“Uh, is that normal?” Talia asks warily.
“Totally normal,” Victor replies. “You’ll see these steam pockets everywhere.”
Jo grits her teeth as they bounce over a rock. “Iceland sits on the Ring of Fire, and right on a couple of seismic fault lines, and the constant pressure from the moving plates and the heat from the Earth’s mantle forces its way out through these fissures. The whole island is basically a cauldron of geothermal power!”
“That’s... comforting,” Talia says, not entirely convincingly. “So long as it doesn’t mean the volcanic eruption is going to happen right now.”
Marsh suddenly turns the wheel hard, and the jeep bounces off the trail and onto a little rock landing.
“Let’s hope,” she says, and cuts the engine. “Because the rest is on foot.”
Marsh pops open her door and steps out onto the dark sand. Just beyond the headlights is crisp, endless air, then a dizzying drop back to the earth.
TopFan01: Yipes!
An army of laughing face emojis agree.
And in the other direction, there’s a little trail cutting through the wind-beaten grass—and a treacherous, gravelly climb.
ísv?ngur, here we come.