An Island Between Two Shores (8 page)

The path they followed was well travelled and they passed other sleighs every couple of hours. Every twenty miles or so was a simple log roadhouse where they would rest and eat deep bowls of greasy stew made from moose or whatever the proprietors had been able to shoot that fall. Most days they were able to visit three roadhouses and travel sixty miles. They changed horses at each roadhouse, and Liana enjoyed the pace of sleigh travel more than the ships and trains she had experienced on this trip. They arrived at each roadhouse exhausted but content with the progress north.

The coachman warned them that soon the quicksilver would register fifty below or even colder. The cold already had a volume Liana felt she could taste, and she was curious about the deep cold. But as the sleigh pulled them up the
valley of the Yukon River toward Dawson City, Liana felt closer to her father than she had in months. The broad landscape with its distant mountains and vast river made her feel small and inconsequential.

Remembering her first impressions of the North and their journey to the Yukon comforted Liana. Since that first winter she had experienced minus-fifty temperatures before Christmas, and she knew it was possible this early in the
winter for the mercury to drop that low. Her father enjoyed the phenomenon of spitting in the air and watching pea-sized frozen granules bounce off the ground. She knew she wouldn’t last a night at that extreme. She had experienced the infamous mistral—the fierce winter wind that savaged Paris—but minus-fifty always felt surreal, like a brittle, somber dream. She never understood why her father was drawn to the North.

“Why did you choose this for us?” she sighed.

The looming trees were blasted with snow and frost. Branches creaked under the burden of the snow. Sometimes lingering sap froze in a trunk, and the sound rang out like a rifle shot. Most of the time, however, the forest was silent—dark and impassable as a high stone wall. During the day the trees along the bank were bathed in varying hues of blue. Light didn’t penetrate past the front row of trees. Liana studied those that bordered the river and wondered what lay beyond.

She often imagined that she was someplace else, somewhere far from the bleak island. Her wandering mind whisked her back to France. Her parents hugged her; their bodies were soft, their skin smooth as silk. She could have stayed in their embraces forever. She walked to the patisserie for éclairs and croissants, which she dipped into deep bowls of hot chocolate. She imagined she could feel the warmth from the oven and smell the scent of butter and sugar. She saw her dog Pitou and gave him a foamy bath in a basin outside in the courtyard amid delicious sunshine and the scent of flowers. Sometimes she thought about her days in Dawson City with her father. She knew that she wasn’t strong enough to think about the cabin and avoided drifting back upstream in her mind’s eye.

Liana knew that the North would never be home again. She no longer found beauty in the great boreal forest, the high crags, or the cold lakes. She vowed that if she got off the island, she would leave the region forever. Bitter thoughts filled her until she had to leave her lair to get a drink of water. She climbed out of her enclosure in the lee of the big log, and the reality and disappointment of still being on the little island made her heart sink to unimaginable lows. In the relative comfort of her nest, island life was a bad dream.

“Why didn’t I just drown?” she asked. “Just get it over with.” The ritual of leaving the cavern for even a few minutes was now horribly difficult.

Her biggest challenge was motivating herself to check the slow progress of the ice. Most mornings the ice appeared to make little if any gain, and Liana’s heart would become heavy and the day much colder. However, during the last week the ice had marched steadily and had almost entirely bridged the island to the mainland. The gap had become a narrow strip of river confined by a sharp, thick shelf of ice. The ice had thickened noticeably and Liana was feeling encouraged. The dark river wound a path between the island and the shore with a gap less than ten feet wide. Half this distance and Liana could have made an attempt to escape by jumping it.

This morning Liana drifted in and out of dreams especially easily. She worried momentarily if her end was near but then memories of warmth and food and family began to comfort her. She softly and slowly sang several verses from “On the Bridge of Avignon,” a song she sang at home and in the schoolyard.

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing in a circle.

The handsome men go like this.

And they go like that.

On the bridge of Avignon

The bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing in a circle.

The beautiful women go like this.

Then they go like that.

On the bridge of Avignon

On the bridge of Avignon

The bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing in a circle.

The gardeners go like this.

Then they go like that.

On the bridge of Avignon

The bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing in a circle.

The tailors go like this.

Then they go like that.

On the bridge of Avignon

The bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing in a circle.

The winegrower goes like this.

Then they go like that.

On the bridge of Avignon

The bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing

On the bridge of Avignon

Everyone is dancing in a circle.

The launderers go like this.

Then they go like that.

This simple folk song with the graceful movements of its accompanying dance reminded Liana of everything she had lost. Deep in her earliest memories, she heard her mother singing it at her bedside and she tried to sing along. When she used to stumble on the lyrics, she would ask her mother to sing more slowly. Her mother would smile patiently.

“Chantes plus lentement, Mama,” she requested in a child’s voice. She laughed as her mother reached the end of the song. “C’est bonne, Mama,” she exclaimed with delight, clapping her hands softly. Liana was comforted by the softness of her mother’s voice and smiled as she started to sing “On the Bridge of Avignon” again. Her voice trailed off as she squeezed under the log and lay on her back. Liana rested her head on her arm and rhythmically filled her chest with air. The confines of the lair were becoming familiar, and she knew that without the log, she would have been dead long ago.

T
he wolves had not returned for three days. Liana was still exhausted from their harassment and from the cold and the starvation and the loneliness and the million other things conspiring to drain her essence. She bristled at even the slightest whisper of wind and stayed holed up for all but the briefest escapes. The wolves’ haunting cries and avid panting drilled into her brain so completely that the sounds felt like a part of her.

The creatures even appeared in her dreams. Her mother cautioned her to take good care of her pal Pitou so the Bois de Bologne wolves didn’t eat him. The Gypsies cursed the wolves for stealing their fish. Liana’s dream-self just shrugged knowingly and repeated with her mother, “Beware of the wolves. Beware of the wolves.” In Paris, wolves seemed like creatures from a time gone by—like dinosaurs. “Did Mama mean wild dogs?” Liana wondered.

Liana softly hummed “On the Bridge of Avignon” and gradually awakened from her dream. Her swollen eyes blinked open, bloodshot and sore. The deceptive twilight of dreams was beginning to wear her down faster than the cold.

She wondered how the wolves could vanish so silently into the forest. “Only the raven knows where they are now. Perhaps they are still waiting” she thought.

The wolves had to be lurking somewhere. Their dark coats blended in so completely with the forest that she would never see them until it was too late. Liana began to hear their mournful howls again. The fierce, pulsating cries filled her cavern with an ever-rising pitch. Liana pulled her knees to her chest with her heart racing and held her hands over her ears defensively. But the howling was in her mind and could not be quelled.

“Am I still alive?” she wondered as she looked at her feet and arms and saw her breath hang in the air. “Of course I am,” she reassured herself. “I’m just stuck. But why can’t I feel the cold?” It was a vaguely worrisome thought. She had grown so accustomed to the depth of the pain from the cold that she had almost become immune to it. She was too exhausted and starved to feel the cold. Her ribs seemed to be emerging from her chest as the flesh around them shriveled. Her body was becoming a dry husk, an old pelt.

Liana thought about the largest wolf with its bent ear and unquestioned authority. As she remembered its thoughtful expression and questioning eyes, the howling became less intense and gradually faded.

“Perhaps that lead wolf will protect me from the other wolves,” she thought. “Maybe it will show me the way out of the forest.” She began to see the wolves differently. She saw them now not so much as a threat but as collaborators. For Liana it was easier to love than to hate.

The wolves energized Liana. She felt most alert when she thought of them, when she reacted to their threat. She dreamed of the wolves running across windswept lakes and through ragged mountain passes. They panted hard and their powerful legs propelled them tirelessly through crusty, windswept drifts. The pack bounded gracefully in organized, intuitive patterns like a school of fish changing direction in unison.

Sometimes Liana floated above them and encouraged them to keep up with her. They looked up at her and yipped. Liana laughed in delight with their frustration. The moonlight cast long shadows throughout the forest and bathed everything in a silvery glow. They crossed an open meadow and traversed the dense forest together, the largest wolf in the front. She yelled an encouraging “Allons-y” when they yipped and howled at one another. The powerful wolves filled Liana with excitement and she effortlessly passed them, flying over the snow like a long-legged moose, and then was passed in turn.

Now breaking trail again, the wolves lead her over a small ridge, and she saw the lights of Dawson City in the distance. Liana ran to the lead wolf and pinched its bent ear affectionately as she passed. The wolf stared intently in the bright moonlight; his gaze seemed tender. Liana continued to run into the town then turned to see the wolves at the edge of the forest. They howled and Liana waved goodbye. She was finally home.

The sun twisted high in the sky when Liana first looked outside. It was bright for the first time in more than a week. There wasn’t a cloud in the pale blue sky and the air was sharp as grit in Liana’s throat. The snowstorm had left the forest under an even deeper layer of white, and the tree branches groaned and strained under the snow’s weight. The drifts had already filled the wolves’ tracks and the winding path up and down the shore was now hidden as well. There was no evidence that the pack had ever run along on the riverbank.

“Were they ever even here?” she wondered. The thought circled her mind like a buzzard, until suddenly it swooped away to target something on the ground: Perhaps the wolves were trying to help her escape the island. Liana propped herself up on one arm and considered this. The lead wolf’s intelligent face with its grey muzzle filled her mind’s eye. She could see its thoughtful expressions and compassionate eyes.

“Maybe he was trying to wake me up,” Liana thought in the dank shadows of the log. “Maybe he hates the raven as well!” Liana felt encouraged as she lay back on the gravel, her heart racing. She imagined the leader’s face stared intently at her. Its deep grey eyes studied her every motion patiently. The words “It’s time to go” slipped from the wolf’s mouth, though his muzzle did not move. Liana nodded in agreement. She again saw the wolves line the riverbank. She saw them run through thick forest and meadows, past frozen swamps and ponds and wooded mountain ridges. They wove and ducked and jumped over downed trees in a tapestry of movement. Liana heard their howls but no longer felt threatened by them. The wolves were not bloodthirsty; their cries encouraged her to fight the cold and escape the old log before it became her tomb. The endless cycle of running with the wolves swirled in her mind tirelessly, effortlessly. She ran with the wolves the rest of the night.

At first light Liana awakened to the miserable cry of the raven. She winced at its sharp cackles and croaks and stretched out in the darkened gloom of the log. She stared upward with her eyes wide open. It was the first sound the raven had made since the wolves vanished into the forest. The raven’s songs were as mysterious as anything in the great forest. He sent forth a deep, guttural rebuke to Liana’s will. The raven once more reminded Liana that it would wait to let cold and hunger do their work. The cold was inevitable, and the raven knew it wouldn’t have to wait much longer. It held its solitary vigil, preening its shadowy feathers, waiting for Liana either to make a fatal mistake or simply succumb to starvation and exposure.

Liana felt alert and sat up. She placed her feet against the stone wall, braced her back to the log, and thrashed her feet. Her kicks had little strength behind them, but the wall collapsed one rock at a time. Liana kicked and kicked repeatedly. She didn’t stop until almost all the rocks had tumbled into the snow and sun pierced the gloom. There was no turning back.

Liana squinted in the sunshine and inhaled the morning’s calm, thin air. She looked upriver and could see that the ice had closed in on the hole at the bottom of the canyon. Soon the hole, like everything else, would be frozen into silence. Its maelstrom would be quieted to a muffled gurgle until spring, when the roaring tiger would be unleashed once again. Liana felt encouraged by its diminished threat.

“How long have I been here?” she wondered. She should have kept a record with notches in the log. It was too late now. Time had become an abstract thought that she rarely considered.

The raven screamed again and Liana instantly lost her calm. She felt rage course through her veins. Her ears burned with his insistent laugh. Her lips cracked and her body became more clumsy and uncoordinated. She climbed out from under the log and struggled to her feet. Furious, and without looking down, she stumbled on the remnants of the stone pony wall. Her body was stiff from being underground, but the morning sky invigorated her. Liana took a deep breath and waited for her eyes to adjust to the brilliant sunlight. She covered them until she could view the sparkling island without wincing.

She turned and trudged though the calf-deep snow. The drifts made it much more difficult to reach the river. As she had suspected, the ice shelf had not only almost closed the gap, but had also thickened and no longer cracked under her weight. Liana marveled at the sight of the almost continuous ice shelf between the island and the forest.

She bent down at the edge of the ice and reached her hand into the clear river; the current pulled weakly around her open hand. The water purled around her fingers and she smiled broadly. Liana studied the twinkling water moving between her fingers. She cupped a slurp of water and let it trickle over her chapped lips and thought about the Gypsy fish tickler. She felt the stab of cold water drop into her empty stomach. Winter had settled into her soul. Liana didn’t fight the cold any longer; it was too complete and absolute on the little island. Cold was just a fact of life, like breathing. On this day, cold didn’t even seem to exist.

Liana stood, shook water drops from her hands, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She took a good look at the river and the progress the ice had made and thought wistfully about her mother’s hot chocolate. When Liana was a little girl, she would sit eagerly on a red wooden chair in their small kitchenette. Her mother stirred a pot with her back to Liana, humming a familiar song, and then dropped a large piece of chocolate into the saucier with a great splash. The sound made them both laugh. Young Liana eagerly waited for the frothy mixture but was just happy to be in the kitchen with her mom.

Liana inhaled the rich warmth of chocolate easing slowly into milk. The scent was tinged with something new—something she could not identify in the small kitchenette. As she considered the source, Liana was suddenly brought back to the island. “Fire!” a man’s voice called through the stillness. “Fire!” echoed through the forest. Liana scanned the beach for the source of the alarm. She looked on both sides of the river. Again the call came, only softer. “Fire!” Liana hung on this word and scoured the beach. The muted hush of the wind drifted through the trees and filled her heart. Liana smiled gently at the familiarity of the games the forest played. She didn’t trust the sounds any longer and didn’t yell a response.

Liana studied the forest. The willow trees along the edge of the river bent under the heft of the snow and many branches were pinned to the ground. The coarse bark of the pine and spruce trees were dusted in snow and frost. Snow had been blasted into every crevice in the forest and it looked as finely detailed as marble sculpture, even from a distance. There was little colour in the forest aside from the dark evergreens. Liana squinted at the unfolding landscape. “It’s time,” she thought.

Liana turned again to the log and examined the stones freshly scattered around it. The hollow in the gravel and sand suddenly looked like a grave. Liana turned away from the log and stumbled through the snow, searching for the narrowest part of the gap in the ice. Near the bottom end of the island, the gap appeared narrowest. “It must be less than five feet,” she thought. “Can I jump that?” Her legs were already tired from walking through the snow. “How can I walk anywhere if I am so weak?” she thought glumly. And then she felt the presence of the wolves and thought about them effortlessly cruising the vast forest. Just then, the raven broke its silence and brayed at Liana menacingly. Liana glared at the raven, perched twenty feet from her on the uppermost root of the log. The sun was behind him and Liana had to hold a cupped hand over her eyebrows in order to see the silhouette of the black bird. The raven called a single rebuke and Liana smiled knowingly at the bird.

Liana closed her eyes momentarily and cleared her mind. With a deep breath she drew her knife from the leather sheath on her waist. She unfolded her father’s Laguiole and held the thin handle securely in her palm. The blade glinted in the sunlight and seemed to animate the raven, which craned its neck to see what Liana was doing. With her other hand she lifted her jacket and pulled up her shirts and turned her good hip toward the daylight. Her skin felt the draught and her awareness piqued with anticipation. She took a deep breath and dug her heels into the frozen sand of the beach. In a quick motion she sliced a slit in her skin. She looked numbly at the cut and the dark blood that filled the wound. She then placed the knife a short distance away from the first incision and pressed on the blade as she took a second slice. This time she didn’t hesitate and the two parallel cuts separated a chunk of flesh. Her hand carefully removed this bit of her self. Strangely, the wound didn’t hurt and Liana’s eyes didn’t well with tears. She held a woolen sock against her hip and placed the bait on the log and looked into the distance beyond the short gap in the river and the forest that stretched up the mountain ridges and out of sight.

Liana leaned her hip against the log with the sock bunched against it. This freed both her hands and she took the bloody bait and threaded it carefully onto the fishhook. She took a deep breath and squinted in the sun as she stood up. She looked at the attentive raven that was perched high above the log. She took a couple of slow steps through the fresh snow, trying not to scare it away or bleed excessively. The bird was still fifteen feet above her, with a vantage point of the entire island. The raven looked surprised by Liana’s approach but didn’t fly away. It felt unthreatened on its perch, where it bore witness to Liana’s slow decline. It knew that her eyes would soon be its feast. This dance had gone on long enough for both of them.

Liana’s gaze met the raven’s and in an uncomfortable moment Liana felt remorse for the soulless bird. The raven shifted its weight from foot to foot and shook its head. Liana pulled her arm back and lobbed the baited hook toward it. The bait landed in a tempting, bloody spurt on the top of the log. The raven tilted its head to one side with curiosity. Instinctively, it jumped from the root and drifted with its wings outstretched toward the bait. The raven landed about fifteen feet away from Liana on the top of the log. It stood over the flesh and stabbed its beak at the bait. The raven lifted its head and in single gulp, swallowed Liana’s flesh and the small metal hook. The sharp barb dropped into the raven’s throat and snagged the soft tissue of its esophagus. Liana gasped as she saw the surprise in the raven’s fearsome, shadowy eyes.