Midnight Sun Marathon – Part 1: Mile Twelve

In June, the sun in Reykjavik did not set. It slid along the horizon at midnight, pink and gold, then climbed again, and the whole city seemed to run on a strange, glowing energy. Dísa had signed up for the midnight-sun marathon in March, on a night when she was sure she could do anything.

It was now twenty-three degrees, ten in the evening, and she was gasping on the edge of the seafront path.

"Mile twelve," said a voice beside her. "You are doing brilliantly."

She turned, wheezing. A man was jogging in place a few metres away, tall and rangy in a faded orange vest, with a stopwatch round his neck and the easy smile of a person who enjoyed other people's suffering.

"I am dying," said Dísa.

"You are walking. It is not the same."

"Who are you?"

"Arnar. I am your pacer." He fell into step beside her. "The club assigned me. They said you needed someone to talk you out of stopping."

She laughed, and the stitch in her side eased. "Who told them I wanted to stop?"

"Everyone wants to stop at mile twelve. It is a law of nature, like gravity and fish soup."

They ran together along the shoreline, the sea silver on one side and the mountains purple on the other. Arnar talked without pause, about the volcano in the south, the bad poetry he wrote when he was nineteen, the ghost story about the lighthouse at Grótta. By mile fourteen she had stopped noticing the pain.

"You talk a lot," said Dísa.

"It is a technique. If you are listening, you are not suffering."

"That is a terrible technique."

"It is a very effective technique," said Arnar, grinning.

At the end of the run, they leaned on the railing and watched the midnight sun hang over the bay, enormous and orange.

"Can I ask you something?" said Arnar.

"Yes."

"Why are you running this? Most people do the half."

Dísa wiped her face on her sleeve. "Because my mother ran it, the year before she died," she said. "She did it in five hours and fifty minutes. I want to beat her."

Arnar was quiet. The light moved over his face, soft and gold.

"Then we will beat her," he said. "Together."

"You do not have to run all of it."

"I would like to," said Arnar. "If you will let me. Only if you want."

Dísa looked at him, and felt her chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with exercise.

"Yes," she said. "But you have to promise to stop talking at mile twenty."

"I promise nothing," said Arnar. "Green?"

"Green," said Dísa. "Very green. Same time tomorrow, Arnar. Bring the bad poetry."