The Sun That Won't Set

On her last night, Polly waited for the dark, and the dark never came. This far north, in the middle of summer, the sun does not really set. It rolls slowly down toward the sea, hangs there glowing red and gold along the horizon, and then simply climbs back up again. The whole island lay bathed in soft golden light at an hour that should have been midnight. Polly's red head and round black-rim glasses shone in it, and she decided that tonight she would not sleep at all.

There is a plain reason for the magic. This island sits so close to the top of the world that in summer the sun barely dips below the edge, and the bright nights stretch on and on. The price comes in winter, when the same tilt of the planet hides the sun almost completely, and the days shrink to a few grey hours. The island swings between endless light and long darkness, and the people here have learned to live fully in both.

She flew up high one last time, and from there the whole week lay spread beneath her in the golden glow. The valley where two continents pull apart. The geysers breathing steam. The black scar of new lava, still faintly warm. The white shoulder of the great glacier. The crowded cliffs above the sea. Fire underneath and ice on top, all of it part of one young, restless island that is not finished and may never be.

Then Polly tipped her wings and turned out over the water, toward wherever she would go next. Behind her, Iceland stayed exactly as she had found it, steaming and freezing at the same time, splitting gently down the middle, glowing in a sun that refused to set. Still burning. Still cooling. Still being born.