The Skeleton Tree (16 page)

As I told Frank what had happened, he let the torch tilt in his hands until it came dangerously close to the old wooden table. I took it from him and built a real fire in the circle of stones, wanting to fill the cabin with light and heat. Kneeling by the ashes, I saw matches scattered across the floor. Their heads were black and burnt.

“Blame your raven for that,” said Frank, catching me looking at the matches. “I couldn't light the torch with him pecking at me. Lucky for him there's still one left.”

One left.
After the terror of the grizzly bear and my flight through the night, the loss of the matches was almost too much. To me, they looked like little fallen soldiers. They were the most important things in our world, the only defense against cold and hunger. I found the nearly empty cylinder under the table and closed it tightly.

“I feel so sick,” said Frank. “I feel just awful.” He turned toward the bed, and I saw his black glove lying on top of the mattress.

As though he'd forgotten that he wasn't wearing it, he snatched it up and put it on.

“Let me see your hand,” I said.

“No.”

Frank kept it hidden. In the firelight and shadows, I caught just a glimpse of purple, swollen fingers. Then he stretched out on the bed, his face toward the wall.

“Don't let the raven come in,” he said. “Please, Chris. Promise you'll keep it out.”

A glint of light shines from the water. Again, for a moment, I'm sure people have come to save us.

But it's only the tip of a wave catching the sun, a flash that's there, then gone.

Suddenly a loneliness fills me up from inside. I'm not sure if it comes from the empty sea or only from my memories. It makes me sad to remember that night, when Thursday flew from the cabin. Driven away by Frank, abandoned by me, he must have felt betrayed.

I should have gone looking for him. But I was too scared of the bear to go out in the forest. I couldn't forget the touch of its nose, the hot smell of its breath, the sound of its teeth snapping together. I didn't leave the fire all night.

I remember how I sat there, staring into the flames as I tried to sort out what had happened. I kept wondering why Thursday had left me at the
Reepicheep.
Just to fly to the cabin to attack Frank? That made no sense, although Frank had the cuts on his neck to prove it. But I thought there was another, better explanation. Maybe the raven had gone for help. What if he was only trying to make Frank get up from the bed, to follow him back to the
Reepicheep,
and no one would listen to him?

Poor Thursday. What I wouldn't give right now to hear the whistle of his flight, to see him gliding across the meadow toward me. I love the way his wings flare at their tips as he stops in midair. I want him to stand beside me and speak his funny little words again.

Beside me, Frank is holding out his hand impatiently. He snaps his fingers. “Come on,” he says, as though he's said it a hundred times already. “Give me the book. I'll read it aloud.”

I pass him
Kaetil the Raven Hunter.
His finger slips in beside mine as though he means to keep my place. But he takes only a glance at the page, then shuffles through the book to find the point where he had stopped reading.

Then he wriggles into his chair and begins.

Kaetil sat on a stone in the high meadow and sharpened the barbs his ravens wore. The final battle was coming soon. He could smell it in the air, like the scent of smoke from a fire he could not see.

Frank turns the page and keeps reading. His voice becomes a droning sound as my mind drifts back to the cabin.

That night when Frank was sick, I fell asleep thinking of grizzly bears. But I was woken by my father.

I heard his voice calling to me from very far away, and when I opened my eyes I could still hear a distant echo.

From shimmering coals in the fire circle, gray smoke twisted toward the ceiling. My father appeared inside it, like a shadow without a shape, as though I was seeing him through pebbled glass. He wore clothes as ragged as the scraps of cloth that hung from the skeleton tree.

It was not the same thing at all as the night his ghost had come to the house. To see him looming gray and gauzy in the smoke made me afraid. When he talked, his voice was like Thursday's, a sound not quite human.

“Christopher.”

The red glow of the coals lit him up in patches as the smoke gusted around him.

“Watch for a man,” he told me.

Frank was asleep on the bed, the dark hump of his body covered by cloth and plastic.

“A man,” said my father. A groan came from his ghost—his spirit—whatever it was. “A man will arrive.” He faded away, then slowly reappeared, holding his hand toward me. “Seven days later, you'll be saved.”

His body grew thin and transparent, wavering in the whorls of heat.

“Dad!” I got up from the floor, trying to take his hand in mine. But it became a plume of smoke that whirled away and disappeared.

And that was how I woke, standing by the fire with my hands held in the smoke. The window was utterly black; it wasn't even close to morning. Frank was staring at me from the bed.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I saw my dad,” I told him. “I saw him in the smoke. He was right here.”

Frank looked suddenly afraid, as though he was the one who had seen the ghost. He shook his head and told me, “You were dreaming. I saw you get up.”

“But it was so real.” I rubbed my arms; they were cold. “He told me to watch for a man. He said a man will arrive, and seven days later we'll be saved.”

“If a man arrives, we'll be saved right then,” said Frank. “Why wait seven days?”

I had no answer for that. I wondered if I really had been only dreaming.

“Smoke looks weird sometimes,” said Frank. “It kind of steals your mind.”

Uncle Jack had told me the same thing, and it was clear that Frank didn't want to talk anymore about ghosts. He just sat there staring, looking pale and small.

But I knew what I'd seen. I didn't understand it, but I believed that my father had actually come to the cabin in one form or another. It was an idea that scared me as much as it gave me hope.

“I'm cold,” said Frank. He asked me to build a big fire, and soon the cabin was sweltering hot. But he couldn't stop shivering. His teeth chattered in quick bursts, as loud as a woodpecker's tapping.

I spread my poncho on top of him, the space blanket too, and all the plastic sheets we had gathered from the beach. But still he shivered, his whole body shaking. I took a stone from the fire circle and tucked it against his body. Frank was hotter than the stone.

I didn't hear the raven come to the window. I looked up and there he was, his head and shoulders poking through the plastic, the rest of him still outside. He kept turning his head, watching me as I picked up another stone and put it in place. For a long time he peered at Frank, so intently that it scared me.

Somehow, Frank sensed the raven was there. He turned his head toward the window, then raised his hands in fright. They tangled in the plastic blankets, as though his arms had become wings. “No,” he cried. “No!”

Frank made me pile the fire so high and hot that it scorched the salmon hung above it. He kept his jacket on and wrapped himself up in the foam mattress. But still he shivered.

Thursday woke me in the night. I heard his shout and saw his head thrust through the plastic window. He looked down at me, across at Frank, but would not come inside. I didn't even
try
to tempt him. Drenched with sweat, I could hardly breathe from the heat. The fire roared and sparks flew everywhere. They had melted holes in the plastic roof. They had made deep craters in the foam mattress.

Frank lay sprawled across the bed, and an awful smell filled the cabin. I thought the fish had gone rotten again. It was that same sort of stink, of maggots and dead flesh. I got up to look.

Frank was asleep, and he looked awful. The firelight on his pale face gave him the same unnaturally rosy glow that I'd seen painted on the face of my dead father. He had taken off the black glove. It lay on his chest like a severed hand, still holding its shape.

Thursday watched me from the window, only his head inside the cabin. I kicked the fire apart to make it smaller, then broke off a few pieces of salmon. They were dry and hard, as red as lipstick. There was nothing wrong with the fish. I gave a chunk to Thursday, who gobbled it down on the windowsill.

Frank moaned. He rolled over, his arms flopping, and I saw his injured hand. I nearly screamed.

It was puffy, like an old mushroom. Streaks of red ran up his wrist and along his arm, and the torn flesh around the raven's wounds was black like old meat. Frank's hand was rotting.

I stood over him for a moment and watched him sleep. His eyelids twitched, and I could see the white slits of his eyeballs. As my mother would have done for me, I reached down to feel his forehead.

He came awake. Startled to see me looming above him, he flinched, and the black glove tumbled from his chest. That awful, rotten hand swung up to push me away. We looked at each other, and then Frank tried frantically to hide that hand inside his jacket.

But he knew I'd seen it, and now he brought it out again and held it up. His face, always so much like a mask, showed his fear and disgust.

“Oh, Chris, I'm scared,” he said.

Well, of course he was scared. But I could hardly imagine the courage it took Frank to
say
he was scared. It was probably the first time in his life he had told anyone that. I felt that I had seen inside him.

“It hurts so bad.” He sat up on the edge of the bed, that awful thing lying on his lap. “It's like being stabbed with a hot knife. But it never stops.”

I sat beside him. I put my arm around his shoulder.

I thought he might push me away—I was ready for that—but he didn't. He leaned against me, not quite crying, but very close.

“I'm so cold,” he said.

Thursday shrieked. His wings drummed on the plastic as I held Frank tighter. The bird made a terrible racket. “He's jealous,” I said. Then Frank pulled away, and we both were a bit embarrassed. But the raven fell quiet. He looked at Frank in a curious way, with his round eyes fluttering.
Death and ravens go together.
I remembered Frank telling me that, and I wondered if it was true. A moment later, Thursday slipped out through the window and flew away.

I brought water for Frank. I took stones from the fire circle and tucked them around him. His skin felt hotter than the stones, but he still shivered and talked of the cold. Greasy with sweat, he twisted and turned. Around dawn, he fell asleep so suddenly that I thought he had died. I couldn't see him breathing. I had to press my hand on his chest to feel his heart—a fluttery thing as quick as the raven's.

His eyes were half open. I was surprised by their color, as brown as the deepest water in the fishing pool. My father's eyes had been like that, so dark they were nearly black. As I stared, Frank turned his head a little, and I felt a shock as our eyes met. It seemed that we linked together, that I could see right through his eyes and into his thoughts, and that he could do the same with me. I felt his fear, his loneliness, and pulled myself away.

Through the plastic blankets, Frank's hot fingers squeezed my wrist. He tried to draw me down toward him, but I couldn't bear to look into his eyes again. “I'll get you water,” I said, standing up.

His hand flopped back onto the mattress.

I held a bottle to his lips. But the water only spilled away. I tore a piece of foam from the corner of the mattress and soaked it like a sponge. When I dabbed it at his lips, Frank sucked like a child, his lips curling greedily over the foam.

All morning I sat with him, nearly faint from the heat as the fire raged. Remembering how my mother and father had looked after me when
I
was sick, I dabbed water on Frank's face and neck. I brushed his hair from his eyes.

He's going to die.
I didn't want to think about that, but I couldn't stop. What would I do if that happened? I imagined Frank lying stiff and cold, just a
shell
that used to be a boy. I pictured myself dragging him down the trail to the skeleton tree in the darkness, trying to lift him somehow into the branches. And there he would lie, day after day, month after month….

I was not afraid for myself. I just didn't want his life to end. That was why I started crying, why I lay down beside him. He was dying, and there was nothing I could do to save him.

What a mess I'd made of things, I thought. If I had been more of a help we might have made a raft and sailed away. We might have made a signal that an airplane could have seen. If I hadn't tamed the raven, Frank would not have been wounded and infected. And I couldn't even feed him. There was still sedge and seaweed and barnacles. But I could spend all day gathering that sort of thing, and it would barely keep us alive. I had gone for fish and come back with nothing. With
less
than nothing. The gaff and the knife now lay in the wreck of the
Reepicheep,
abandoned in my fear.

I knew I had to go back and get them, even if the bear was waiting for me. But there was something else I had to do for Frank, something even worse than that. I had to climb the mountain.