The Great Death (6 page)

“Right side!” she screamed at Maura. “Paddle hard! Harder!”

Both girls paddled furiously, digging deep, making each stroke count. But the rocks came too fast. The canoe smashed into one of the boulders, which held the craft for only a few seconds, tucking it against stone while the river poured itself into the canoe, swamping it. The dogs jumped out as the supplies were lifted out of the boat to swirl around the boulder, the chests and the tarp and the dried bundles of salmon, all spinning together, held fast by the foaming eddy.

The screaming girls gripped the gunwales of the canoe. But when the gushing water had entirely filled it, the boat sank, taking Maura's small game rifle with it, and the girls and the dogs were swept downriver amid the flotsam of their provisions.

Unable to swim, Maura could only try to stay atop the current. As Blue swept by, she managed to grab hold of him. But the skinny sled dog was not buoyant enough to keep them both afloat. Dog and girl went under. Millie swam to her sister and grabbed her around the neck, holding her head above water, as the current tossed and twisted them remorselessly. She looked for a safe place toward which to swim.

Tundra was already standing on a gravel bar, shaking himself dry. Blue and Millie, hauling Maura, who continued to struggle, swam as hard as they could. The river's iciness was already taking effect, so piercing even their bones ached.

This far north and this late in the season, it didn't take long for the cold to steal every last ounce of body heat, stiffening muscles.

Finally, Blue and both girls managed to reach the shallows about a hundred yards downriver from where Tundra had landed. They waded ashore, drenched, holding on to each other, trembling. Blue clambered onto the beach, shaking the river from his fur, spraying a rain of droplets over the dry pebbles, turning them dark.

Tundra ran to greet them, dripping a long, thin, shining line in the sunlight.

The girls looked downstream just in time to see the two chests disappear around the bend. Perhaps they could salvage them. Though shivering and sopping wet, their clothes heavy as chains, Millie and Maura ran along the shore after the crates. The dogs followed. The running warmed them.

They caught sight of the steamer trunk as it vanished again far ahead of them at the next sharp curve. They did not see the other chest and assumed that it too was gone. The sisters stood on the wide shore, defeated. The oblivious dogs wandered through a thicket of leafless willows, snuffling the vague scent of rabbits or grouse.

Something downstream caught Maura's attention. She stepped closer to see what it was.

“Look! The other box!” she yelled, pointing.

Millie saw it, too. The long rectangular crate had not been carried away by the current but had been drawn into an eddy, wedged against a logjam. The sisters ran to it, plunged knee-deep into the icy water, and dragged the wooden box ashore. They opened the lid. Inside was the pile of folded blankets, their winter clothing, the cooking pot they had used to boil tea, the waterproof jar of matches, their father's rifle, a box of cartridges, a knife, a hatchet, and a coil of rope. Only a little water had seeped into the box.

As they stood celebrating their good fortune, the folded tarp floated by close to the riverbank. It must have been caught by a sweeper or back-eddy. Millie trudged into the water and grabbed the rope-tied bundle as it passed. It was waterlogged and heavy.

Maura helped her pull it out beside the open crate.

Shaking from the cold, the sisters untied the tarp, unfolded it, and draped it across a stand of willows to dry. They built a small fire beneath it, took off their wet clothes, and hung them on sticks close to the flames. They sat together on a weathered log, huddled under a blanket. When their clothes were dry, the girls collected enough firewood to last the night and picked handfuls of overripe berries for supper. There was nothing else to eat. The bundles of dried salmon were lost, returned to the river.

The sisters had survived again. They had lost the steamer trunk, which contained extra clothes, the frying pan, traps and snares, the candles, and other important equipment. They had even lost the long-handled ax and a shovel. But though they had no canoe and few provisions, they still had hope—the steadfast resolve of those who have nothing else.

That night, as green ribbons of northern lights arched across the sky, the girls and the dogs slept, exhausted, close to the fire, which snapped and popped and hissed in the darkness—the thieving river sliding beyond the yellow dim light.

Łk
'
edenc
'
i

(Eight)

Then, in the spring, Raven flew away to look for someone else to deceive. He was hungry again. He saw a woman with three young boys walking along a woodland trail. She was poor and hungry and filthy. Her children were sick and starving.

A
WET, SLUSHY SNOW
was falling the next morning, turning the hills and trees in the valley silvery-white below a steel-gray sky. Although it was a wet snow, which would not outlast the morning, the girls were dry beneath the tarp draped over the low willows.

Far off in the hills, a lonesome wolf howled.

The howling awakened Millie, who slowly opened her eyes, resentful that she had been stirred from a dream. She crawled out from the tarp's shelter and stood up, the heavy red blanket hanging from her hunched shoulders like a shawl. Her muscles were stiff from sleeping on the hard ground, her ears and nose cold. As she looked at the cool, gray ghost of the fire, she suddenly realized that the spot across from her, where her sister had fallen asleep, was vacant. Maura's blanket was lying across the weathered log. The dogs were also gone.

The faraway wolf howled again.

Millie felt the grip of a nauseating fear. She wondered if wolves had taken her sister. She had failed to keep her promise to watch over Maura. The white snow was settling lightly onto Millie's bright red blanket and her long black hair.

“Maura,” she said, so softly that even
she
couldn't hear the word above the din of the river.

She turned slowly, looking in every direction for her sister, for a sign.

“Maura!” she screamed.

The loud river didn't answer. The silent hills didn't answer. And the spruce trees only swayed in the slight breeze blowing the snow sideways.

Millie shouted her sister's name again and waited. Nothing. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted yet again. She heard a sound approaching from upriver. But the sound was not Maura, only a low-flying duck. Its beating wings propelled it to the distant bend, and it was gone.

Millie ran downriver, still clutching the blanket under her chin for warmth. She did not see her sister or the dogs. The notion crept into her mind that she might face the rest of the journey alone, might face the rest of her life alone. She felt her heartbeat quicken, a fluttering like a flock of small birds.

She turned and walked briskly back toward the makeshift camp, shivering, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.

“M-a-u-r-a!” she yelled, her voice breaking as she began to cry. “Maura!”

When she reached camp, she crawled beneath the tarp and built a small fire. She sat beside it staring into it as if the flames were meaningful, as if they held her future. The flickering fire and the curling smoke reminded her of the burned bodies back in the village. She wondered if she might be the very last person in the world.

Lost in her grieving, Millie did not hear Tundra approach, did not immediately sense his presence. And then, startled, she snapped her head to see Tundra sitting beside her. She looked up and there was Maura emerging from the woods, Blue following happily at her side.

Millie crawled out from beneath the tarp and jumped to her feet.

“Maura! Where have you been? I … I…”

But her words were hushed by the sound of the river.

Maura did not hear her until she was standing alongside the tarp.

“Where have you been?” asked Millie, inconspicuously wiping away a tear, trying to hide that she had been crying.

“I woke up early,” Maura replied. “I was hungry, so I went and picked berries.” She showed Millie a pocket full of assorted berries.

Millie straightened her dress with her hands. She cleared her throat before she spoke. “I thought the wolves got you,” she said sternly. “Next time tell me before you do something like that.”

Maura sat down on the log and pulled handfuls of berries from her pockets.

“I'm sorry. I didn't want to wake you up. You looked so peaceful in your blanket. Want some?” she asked, holding out a cupped hand.

For the next hour the girls sat quietly beneath the tarp beside the campfire eating, occasionally petting a dog whenever one came near. Maura had fed them palmfuls of berries in the woods. They wanted more. As they sat Millie and Maura thought about the people in their village and about the long, uncertain journey ahead. They both worried, yet neither said a word, trying to be strong for the other.

Little by little, the snowfall slowed and turned into a rainy drizzle, and the whiteness was washed from the land.

Before long, the rain stopped, the sky cleared somewhat, and while the midday sun warmed the northern world, the sisters readied themselves for their trek downriver. They had no idea how far they would eventually have to walk to find other people, but they understood that without the canoe the rest of their travels would be on foot.

They planned.

The crate they had salvaged from the river was too heavy to carry by hand, even with the two of them, along the narrow, brush-covered, and often vanishing trail. So they decided to share the burden in what seemed a more efficient way, dividing the supplies. Millie carried more weight since she was older and stronger.

Maura cut a length of rope and tied it around her waist as a kind of belt, hanging the hatchet on one side and the leather-sheathed hunting knife on the other. When Millie turned around and saw her sister garbed in her blanket-shawl, cinched at the waist with her rope belt and its attached hardware, she was a little shocked. Maura looked quite fierce. She had also rolled up the blankets with the parkas and mukluks in the middle, tied the bundles securely, and fashioned a kind of rope harness, which she slung over her shoulders. The burden was bulky but relatively light.

Millie draped the coiled rope over one shoulder and folded the heavy canvas tarp with the pot and jar of matches tucked safely inside. She was able to wear the tarp like a rucksack, holding the loops of the rope with both hands. The girls divided the remaining bullets, placing them into pockets, lessening the chance of losing all of them at once.

The brass cartridges clinked as they walked about.

When they were packed, Millie grabbed the rifle from where it was leaning against the weathered log and set out resolutely down the trail, with Maura close behind her. The dogs wandered ahead, exploring every scent along the way. Sunlight danced on the ground through spruce boughs, and low clouds tangled in the hilltops, bending to the blue-gray curve of the sky.

For the most part, the forest trail, faintly blazed by hatchet marks on tree trunks, followed the river only a few steps from the bank. But every now and then, it opened onto long gravel bars and the girls would see bear tracks in the sand and mud, some very large. At such times, Millie would hold the loaded rifle a little more firmly, concerned that they might come upon a startled, unwary bear.

At least they had the dogs. Their keen noses would smell bears from a long way off. Twice the dogs began barking and bolted into the forest, only to emerge later with their tails wagging. Perhaps, the girls thought, they had merely smelled a grouse or a rabbit or a moose.

In the late afternoon, the dogs raced down the trail and began barking madly. Millie nervously checked the rifle chamber, certain that they were tangling with a bear. They walked slowly, Maura staying behind her sister. Millie held her breath as she approached the ruckus, her hands trembling, the shaking rifle aimed toward the noise. But it was only a porcupine, standing still with its rump turned to the dogs. Blue's snout was full of quills, which served only to increase his ferocity toward the motionless creature.

It was the way of all dogs, a kind of innate, endearing stupidity. Millie had seen her father and uncles pull quills from dogs only to watch them rush right back for more.

The girls knew how to kill and clean porcupine. They had helped their father and their uncles. They liked its dark meat, especially boiled into its own soup. There was no need to waste a bullet. Aside from the sharp quills, which porcupines do not throw or shoot at attackers, despite the myths, the creature was defenseless. A simple clubbing would kill it almost instantly. It had no protection against the club.

Millie found a stout stick, and while Maura pulled the two barking dogs away, Millie clubbed its head. It took three tries, but she killed it. There are no quills on a porcupine's feet, so she rolled it over with the stick and pulled it by a leg. She dragged it down to the river's edge. The dogs cautiously sniffed at it and growled before joining the sisters as they gathered kindling and firewood. Most of the wood on the ground was soaked from the morning's wet snow and drizzle, but they were able to gather great armfuls of dry twigs and branches from the undergrowth of spruce trees. The upper boughs had concealed them from even a hard rain. They built a large fire, and when it was ready, Millie rolled the porcupine onto the flames, turning it with a stick until all the quills had burned away. With the quills gone, it is as easy to quarter a porcupine as it is to quarter a rabbit or beaver.

While Millie cut up supper, Maura carefully pulled quills from Blue's swollen snout. It was a difficult task. The dog flinched and whimpered and tried to wriggle free, but he understood what the girl was doing and did not bite. No doubt he had encountered porcupines before. He tried to be brave. Tundra lay near the fire, watching the commotion. Using a trick learned from her father, Maura used two flat skipping stones to grip each dark brown-and-white needlelike quill, pulling fast and hard until all the quills were gone.