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they’re still here in their blue-eyed descendants.”
    Christian looked intrigued, gazing into Pippa’s light eyes. He smiled warmly and nodded, then the two of them wandered off.
    “Is that true?” Kelly asked. “Are there no other blue-eyed people in your family?”
    “Nobody knows of any as far back as anyone remembers, so the blue-eyed gene has to go way back, back before the modern Danes arrived.”
    “How do you know there’s been no mixing with the Danes?”
    Pippa shrugged. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but my family comes from a village where no white people ever lived. My grandmother says she never even saw a white man until she was nineteen. There are a lot of them in Nuuk, but not so many in the rest of the country, and definitely not then.”
    “But why the Vikings?”
    “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. There had to be a bunch of people with blue eyes who got it started. And the most likely place, the only place we know of, to find a pool of blue-eyed people was in the Viking colonies.”
    Pippa looked satisfied, her smooth, golden-hued face creating the perfect canvas for her richly sculpted lips and those incredible eyes.
    “Why do you like that idea?” Kelly asked.
    She shrugged. “Otherwise it’s just so sad. Those poor people and their totally crappy lives—barely surviving for centuries and then just gone. All for nothing. We don’t even know most of their names. They were born and suffered and died and there’s no evidence they ever existed.”
    Kelly nodded sympathetically. Pippa was right. It was a sad idea, and her romantic young imagination wanted to turn it into a happy ending.
    “If I could do anything at all with my life,” she said sincerely, “I’d want to study genetics and unravel the mystery of my blue eyes.”
    “Do you think that’s possible?”
    Pippa nodded. “Oh, sure! Everything we’ve ever been is coded in our DNA. If we could understand it all, we would know the story of life on earth. Not just how humans evolved, but the evolutionary history of everything that lives or ever has lived on this planet.”
    Pippa had clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the mystery of her blue eyes.
    Kelly raised her camera and focused on Pippa’s face. She thrust out a hip and smiled coquettishly as her photo was snapped, then darted off to help Mr. Stewart who had lifted off from the safety of his bench again.
    The old woman, Nivi, emerged from the cabin and approached the Coopers, producing a pair of butter yellow boots that she held out for their inspection. The boots were decorated with tan fur.
    “Kamik,” she announced proudly.
    “This is very soft,” Mrs. Cooper said, feeling the leather. “Did you make these?”
    Nivi smiled, but said nothing.
    “Let’s get the guide to translate,” suggested Mr. Cooper.
    They called Pippa, who took one look at the boots and became visibly alarmed. She addressed Nivi in Greenlandic and sent her away. The only word Kelly recognized was “American.”
    “What’s wrong?” Mr. Cooper asked.
    “She can’t sell you those,” Pippa explained. “They’re made of seal skin.”
    Mrs. Cooper’s eyes widened. Mr. Cooper nodded his understanding. “It’s illegal,” he said.
    “It’s illegal to import any marine mammal product into the US.” Pippa clarified. “It’s not illegal here. Or in Denmark, so I sent her to the Danes.”
    “Did she make those?” Mrs. Cooper asked.
    “Yes.”
    “From a seal?”
    “It’s how she makes money,” Pippa explained. “She sells most of her pelts to a tannery. But she makes a few traditional pieces like the kamik to sell to tourists.”
    “So she kills seals,” Mrs. Cooper persisted. “With a club?”
    “With a rifle. Like you would shoot a deer.” Pippa smiled cheerfully, unfazed by Mrs. Cooper’s distress. “Seal hunting is a way of life here.”
    Mr. Cooper put his hand over his wife’s. Kelly took that as a silent request not to make a scene. She