The Raven's Gift (36 page)

W
hen he awoke, Rayna was gone. He sat up and strained his ears to hear her outside the tent. He could hear nothing but the soft whistle of air streaming in and out of the old woman’s nostrils. The tent had become unbearably hot during the night and he had kicked off his bag and stripped down to just his underwear.

He felt for the pistol near his pants he’d used for his pillow the night before. It was gone. The girl’s parka, clothing, and boots sitting at the entrance to the tent made his mouth suddenly dry, and his pulse quickened. Far off he could hear the whine of an approaching motor.

He gave the old woman’s shoulder a rough shake. She was sleeping with her parka pulled over her. “Wake up,” he said, “he’s coming.”

When she opened her eyes, he pointed to the girl’s boots. She sat up, coughed out a mouthful of phlegm, and wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“How long she been gone? Where’s my caribou hide?” the old woman asked.

He shrugged and tried to listen for her, hoping she was just outside. The machine drew closer. Closer.

“She took my pistol, too,” he whispered.

“What you done to her?”

“Nothing. I would never hurt her.”

“Maybe she thinks you don’t need her no more. You’ll leave her.”

“No. She knows I do. I won’t leave her.”

“Go, then. See where her tracks take you. I’ll wait for that man.”

He pulled his down parka over his naked back and reached for the rifle leaning against the wall of the tent. He slid his boots onto his feet, not taking the time to put on his pants or socks. The sound of the zipper angered him. He stuck his head out and took a deep breath of the cool air. He couldn’t believe he had slept so deeply and he hadn’t heard the girl open and close the tent door.

As he zipped the door of the tent all the way open the old woman opened the breech of her shotgun, checked the shells, and spoke again. “When you find her, maybe he’ll have found me and maybe not.
Piuraa
, John.”

“
Quyana
,” he replied and stepped out into the pale dawn light. The air burned cold and a sick sinking feeling spread through his gut. The snow machine wasn’t far now. To the east, the sky glowed pink, the arctic sunrise minutes away. Her tracks, small, soft prints of bare soles, headed away from the river, through the birch and black spruce.

He followed them quietly, with quick, sharp strides, watching each track, noticing their deliberate pace, the distance between each step, and how she allowed the whole bottom of her foot to sink into the snow, as if that solid connection with the earth would allow her safe passage through the woods.

In places he could see where she had bumped a branch, knocking the snow free. The motor drew closer. Closer.

At one point, he found where she stopped, long enough to pick up a stick to help guide her. He knew this from the small, round black holes spaced evenly between each barefoot track.

He wanted to call out her name again, but the sound of the snow-machine motor racing closer and his heart drumming against his chest was already too much.

   41   

T
he trees thinned and turned to willows. The remaining spruce were black and leaning. The distance between her footsteps had increased and she had abandoned the stick she had used for walking. He picked it up and wished it was still warm where she had held it. In his mind he imagined her running now with the pistol, through the willows, the thin branches whipping against her face.

The motor had died and he suspected the hunter was making his stalk on their camp. He hoped he would spare the old woman.

Where was the girl going? Why was she running? What was she running from? Did she know he was coming? Did she know the hunter had found them?

He pushed his way through the willows until they opened up to a steep tundra bluff that rose above a long, frozen oxbow slough. Her tracks made a straight line across the ice, up the fifty-foot slope, and out of sight.

He squatted down and put his bare fingers to a footprint. He touched each toe impression, the ball of her foot, traced the arch, and then stopped at her heel. The track had a small spot of blood. The ice beneath the snow was beginning to cut her feet. If she was still alive when he found her, he would tend to her feet and tell her everything. They would make a stand and he would protect her.

   42   

H
e swore that he would keep track. He would record each day forward from the day she died. Never forgetting. Never losing count. That day was the day he awoke with Anna cold in his arms. The day he could not stop trying to imagine being a father. Of Anna finally a mother. He just couldn’t do it. He had no images in his mind of what that son or daughter might have looked like. Would he or she have his grandmother’s eyes? The eyes he never looked into?

But worse, it would be the day he would have to start trying to keep his word to Anna.

And on that day, he knew in his heart, he couldn’t keep it. She had whispered into his ear and asked him to do the unthinkable. And he said he would. He would have told her anything she needed to hear. And he did.

Anna whispered her dying wish in his ear, “Promise me you will love again, John. Promise me.”

“Promise,” he replied.

Asking him to promise he would keep on living would have been too much in and of itself, but to love again?

Impossible.

   43   

H
e crested the bluff just as the sun broke from the snow-covered mountains on the distant horizon. Streaks of orange and red sunshine shot out from the sky and swept across the blinding white span of land before him.

Somewhere in the light was the girl lying on her stomach. Covered only by the old woman’s caribou hide, and beyond her, a herd of caribou stretched east and west along the edge of the mountains and out across the tundra plain as far as his eyes could see.

Rayna sat up and waved for him to join her.

Relief swept through him.

The pistol sat in the snow at her side. He crouched low, worried the caribou closest might spot him, and he half ran, half crawled to her. The snow crystals cut against his bare knees. When he reached her, he held her two frozen feet in his hands. Spread out beneath her naked body was a wide, tightly woven grass mat.

“What are you doing? I was worried. You’re going to freeze to death,” he whispered as he ran his fingers over the grass braids.

“I heard the wolves howling in my sleep. I thought it was a dream. Then I heard them, the caribou. The tendons above their hooves, clicking. Lie down here. Listen. You hear them? You hear that clicking? Like the tundra’s heart. A spirit drum. Close your eyes and just listen,” she whispered.

“But the hunter,” he whispered, “he’s coming.”

“Shh …”

He looked back in the direction of their camp beneath the bluff. Caribou were beginning to move around them. He lifted the caribou hide, took off his parka, and wrapped it around her body. He slipped beneath the hide and stretched out beside her and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and held himself still.

Then he heard them. At first just a faint sound, like fingers snapping together. Click. Click. Click. The sound of a pistol firing on an empty chamber. The tap of a stick against the rim of a drum. The clicks grew louder and louder.

CLICK.

CLICK.

CLICK.

She pulled the caribou hide over their heads and eased herself closer to him, opening the parka, and pressing her warm naked body against his. She took his hand and held it against the frozen moss in front of them.

The soft clicking of the caribou hooves filled the world around the two of them. Above. Beneath.

“He’s going to kill us,” he whispered.

“You feel them?” Rayna asked, holding her hand over his, and pressing his palm down into the frozen moss and snow. “These are the tundra spirits,” she said.

“I feel them,” he said, “I can feel them through the ground. They are everywhere.”

“Maybe this is how we became Yup’ik, how we became the Real People. We could feel the earth’s heart beating and we would transform.” As she said this she lifted one hand from the cool earth and pressed it against her breast and the other on the grass mat she’d woven.

“And here,” she whispered. “I made this for us.”