Myra gave a half smile. William, recognizing her slightly nervous smile, understood she was unsure of the route out of here. Sergei beamed. Sarah pointed at Sergei.
“Myra, when he smiles he looks like Thrower. He doesn’t have the ears, though.” Sarah crossed her eyes at Sergei.
Sergei nodded. “When I was a boy my father called me Dumbo, for Dumbo the elephant, from an old American story book. I hated that name. My ears were big, then.”
“He grew into them, though, didn’t he, Myra?”
“Maybe, Sarah.” Myra was a little red in the face.
They followed Myra as she led them down the trail. The smoke was with them, drifting in strands through the trees, bitter.
They came down the trail in the hazy smoke and crossed the small meadow, passing the stump where Sarah had drawn the bear. They entered the larger meadow with the shelter and stopped to grab some breakfast. Sergei and Sarah went to the river for water. Tom pulled out his stove.
William was sweating. This day was going to be hot. The sky was clear, or would have been but for the yellow streaks of smoke up high.
Myra had the map out. Sarah sketched in her book.
Sergei squatted by Sarah. “Sarah you say I smile like Thrower. Do I look like Thrower?”
“When you’re not smiling, you don’t look much like him. Thin Hair. When you don’t smile you look a little like Thin Hair.” Sarah turned to William. “Watcher could have been you, William, if he had your eye, and you were thinner.”
Sergei peered at Sarah’s sketch. She was drawing Tom. It was a good drawing, catching the flash of light off his glasses as he bent to a pot of boiling water.
Tom raised his head. “Sarah you should draw those people. The people you were with.” Sarah said nothing. “Do you miss Thrower? Watcher? Bright Eyes?”
Sarah stopped drawing and gazed at Tom with suspicion.“They were real.” Sarah spoke softly. “I mean, I know what you think. I miss them. I liked it back there. It was hard, but I liked it.”
Tom set the pot of oatmeal aside and sat next to Sarah. He reached out and adjusted Sarah’s hat, which had fallen to the side across her face. “You miss Thrower the most, don’t you?”
“He taught me to throw.” Sarah didn’t move away when Tom adjusted her hat.
“He taught you well,” Sergei said. “We all owe him a great debt of thanks.”
Myra folded the map. Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes. Sergei and Tom both reached for the pot of oatmeal and the bowls at the same time.
“Are we sure about this, Myra?” William asked. Somebody had to ask. They were surrounded by smoke, blocked from moving on trails, about to launch off on a killer climb to an uncertain route home. “Is this wise?”
“We can stay here, I guess.” Myra was uncertain.
Sergei waved his hands through the air. The smoke wasn’t thick enough to swirl, but it could be seen. “Isn’t the rule when you get lost, to stay in place? I know we’re not lost, but if we stayed here, wouldn’t rangers find us?”
“I think it’s a tough call.” Tom was looking at the map. “We stay here, we’re in smoke just waiting for those fires to come get us.”
“Or, the fires may go out,” William said, doubtful.
“You ready to count on that, dad?”
“Not really.”
Myra traced the route up the ridge. “I think it’s a coin toss.”
“Coin toss? What is that?”
“Sergei, that’s an expression. Tossing a coin to decide what to do.”
“I don’t want to be the one to decide, Myra.”
“None of us do, Sergei.”
They began eating their oatmeal. In the end they all were looking at Myra. She folded the map and pointed.
“If we go high, right there, that’s where we’d start.” She was pointing to the slope behind where Sarah had been practicing with the thrower. Sarah followed Myra’s arm as it swung up and to the left, indicating their path.
“That’s where the bear went, Myra.” Sarah squinted, pointing.
“What?” Sergei asked.
“The bear I saw, it went up that hill. It went right the way Myra pointed, exactly.” Then Sarah stood, oatmeal forgotten, excited. “Yes. It stopped three times, and peered back at me. It was as if it was trying to show me something, or get me to follow.” Sarah turned to face William. “William, it went exactly there. It was showing us. It was showing us what to do. The bear was telling us to climb to this Windfall Peak. I’m certain.” Sarah faced the slope as if watching an animal work its way uphill.
Myra thrust the map in her pocket, lips tight. William believed Myra was uneasy about the choice to climb the ridge. He was uneasy, too. “Are you sure, Sarah?”
“Why else would it have stopped, William?” Sarah kept looking up the slope.
“It’s just as good a sign as any, Myra,” William said.
“You’re enjoying this, dad.” Myra was irritated. William said nothing. Sarah grinned.
They filled every container with water. The sun, now rising over the ridge, beat on the brown meadow. The smoke drifted, across the grass, through the trees.
They shouldered their packs. William steeled his heart for the ordeal to come.
“Sarah,” Myra said, “you lead off, but don’t get ahead of us, all right? You start, you show us. Follow where your bear went, exactly.”
“It was showing us, Myra.”
Sarah led off. Sergei and Tom fell in. They all went across the meadow, passing the tree where Sarah had thrown darts.
Myra took her father’s arm. “Dad, take it easy. This is going to be tough. Slow and steady. We’ve got all day and we’ll take all day. I’ll stay with you, bring up the rear. Sergei can keep Sarah in sight, call her back if she goes ahead.” William adjusted his pack. Myra tightened her grip. “Dad, remember last spring, after Sarah saw the bear, you reminded me I had told Sarah this was a place of magic, history and legend?”
“I remember.”
“And then what did you say?”
William thought back. “I said, ‘Are we taking Sarah on this trip or is she taking us?’”
“Well, she’s taking us, dad. Hell, she’s been taking us since she appeared at Tom’s door in May.” Myra always scrunched her brow when she was thinking hard. “Know what else, dad? It seems Sergei, maybe even Tom, believe Sarah more than I do, and I’m the local, here.”
“Myra, I think Sarah would say they’re of the people, too.”
They crossed the meadow and started up the steep slope past hemlocks, spruces, firs, and the occasional cedar. They were slow. The air was smoky. Sarah seemed least affected of any of them. She forged ahead, tall pack lurching. The line she followed angled north and east, rising toward the prow of the ridge. Beyond this ridgeline, the ground fell steeply to the outlet stream from the unnamed lake. It would be a difficult walk down a steep slope to get water, and a harder walk coming back, but William knew they would soon use up the water they had. Already they all were sweating.
Myra called to Sarah and told her to keep going as she was until she reached the gentle crest of this prow. She should then turn right and start directly up the crest. Studying the map, it seemed a straight hike all the way on this crest to the unnamed lake.
What the map did not show were the three-foot high ledges scattered everywhere, or the steeper sections where they had to place their feet carefully to avoid slipping back. They climbed slowly. Within minutes the sound of the river, below, disappeared. Now it was silent but for the calls of thrushes and jays and the sound of dragonflies hovering over devil’s club.
They came upon a large section of fallen trees, piled on top of each other, the 150-foot trunks in chaotic positions. They tried to work up through the first fall they came to and were nearly lost under trees and limbs. It was almost impossible to move wit
h the packs on and it was even harder to remove them and try to pass them hand-to-hand over the big logs.
Sarah delivered judgment. “Gross.”
It took an hour to get through the fallen trees. When they did, William estimated they had climbed only 400 vertical feet, yet half the morning was gone. He was scratched, running with sweat, and becoming pissed off because his hips hurt and his feet hurt and they were going to hurt more. Myra stayed by William and helped when she could, but everyone was fully engaged with their own gear, just getting beyond the fallen trees.
William noticed that Tom’s left knee had begun to bother him. Tom had been all right coming down the trail from Bear Valley, but working uphill was hard. He slowed, now walking back with William while Sarah and Sergei led the way. Myra moved back and forth, directing Sarah, looking at the map, sometimes waiting for Tom and William.
When they broke through the fallen trees, they stopped. Sarah threw off her pack and sat, drinking water. She was sweaty and mopping her neck. Sergei had found a log on the ground against which he dropped his pack, then leaned against it, sitting, comfortable. Myra was on the ground, her feet down in a root ball hole, the fallen tree stretching away into the forest. Tom dropped his pack, collapsed, and William collapsed with him.
“I can see why there’s no trail up here. Jesus.” Tom pushed back his thinning hair. “We’ll need all the daylight, this day, if this keeps on.”
Looking ahead, up the slope, it appeared more open. There were rhododendrons everywhere. West, through the trees, Dodger Point ridge rose. Well up on the ridge they could see smoke and fire. It was still above, and distant.
“We’ll rest 10 minutes.” Myra was holding her watch.
Sergei leaned against his log. His shirt was black with sweat. “I have been thinking.” He spoke with his eyes closed, head back, resting.
“What? We can all rest here and you’re going to carry all our gear and go get help?” Sarah sounded hopeful. Sergei cocked one eye open. He shook his head.
“No. I have been thinking, and I am hoping my new friends William and Tom, both sailors most familiar with Northern Pacific waters, will help.”
“It’s been years since I’ve been at sea, Sergei.” Tom was now on his back, hat over his eyes.
Sergei sat up. “If we assume the people who lived near the mountains that smoke lived in the same land, Kamchatka, that we Koryaks eventually came to occupy, which has several active volcanoes, that appears a reasonable starting point for Sarah’s journey.”
Nobody said anything. Myra eyed Sergei. Sergei waited. Tom cleared his throat.
“Could they start by May?” Tom asked. “Remember, she said they needed to be at the headland by the longest day moon, right Sarah? That’s late June. Be pretty sketchy, starting a boat journey in early May that far north. Hell, the ice is hardly gone by then.” Tom spoke without moving his hat.
Sergei scratched his chin. “But, Tom, at that time there was land north of Kamchatka where the Bering Sea is now. It was the land bridge. The sea ice would have been north of the land bridge. They would have been following the southern coast, against the Pacific. I think they could have left that early easily. Didn’t you say, Sarah, you were taken when there was ice still on the sea of grass?”
Sarah, watching Sergei and Tom talk, blinked, swallowing. Myra began to shake her head. William reached over, placed his hand on her wrist. He thought he understood what Sergei was doing. Sergei had seen that Sarah doubted her own sanity because nobody around her had even tried to verify what she had said.
“So these people went in this skin boat from Kamchatka and reached St. Paul Island, except then it was a headland, by the summer solstice,” Sergei said. “When the sun rose between the twin peaks. Could they travel that distance in a month, William?”
William had been picturing the route his ship had taken from Petropavlosk to St. Paul. “They’d have to travel over 900 miles. Doable, I think. Averaging 30-40 miles a day? Those skin boats could be paddled four, five miles an hour all day, I’m thinking.”
“Carrying wives and bone tools. Something these people tried every five years,” Tom said.
“Yes, Tom. Possibly the same bone that became the atlatl we have now lost.” Sergei nodded as he spoke.
“What are you doing, Sergei?” Myra was becoming angry.
“It’s data, Myra.” Sergei brushed off his shirt. “Perhaps, a legend? Didn’t you accuse me of ignoring legends?” Myra said nothing. “Then the new people and their one log canoe, which had travelled three months to reach St. Paul, went back, east and south, to a place where they said people once were. They stopped there, and then travelled again. When they arrived it was almost the equinox moon, late September. Three months. People can travel a long way in that period of time. Round trip, six months.”
“Where do you think they went, Sergei? Haida Gwaii? One of the Alaskan islands?” Tom was on his back, talking to the sky.
“William, could they have travelled all the way to here, in that time?”
“Here? You mean, the Olympic Peninsula, here?” Myra twisted around to face Sergei. “What?”
Sergei put the stick aside and began to unroll his fingers, one at a time, as he talked. “They sailed south, then west for a time, then made a turn and sailed east, even north of east. Then after several days they came to this Place People Once Were, a refuge among the ice. William? Tom?”
Tom scratched his head. “Jesus. They followed the 50-meter line from St. Paul south to the Aleutian chain, then west for a bit to where the deeper water came. They turned, just before Dutch, and started back along the edge toward Kodiak. That’s east, even east by north. Maybe the refuge was there. Kodiak.”
“Maybe a little farther, maybe Prince of Wales Island,” William pictured the chart of the Gulf of Alaska that hung in the ship’s mess. “That large island lies east and south of Prince William Sound, which would have been a long crossing of open water after the islands west of the sound.”
Sergei kept unrolling fingers. “Then they started south, passing islands, passing the Queen Charlottes, passing Vancouver Island. Along the coast, with the lower sea level, they would have encountered lots of barrier islands, which they used. Remember, there was once a large glacier against the west side of Vancouver Island and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. That could have been the snout of the ice bear.” Sergei pointed west, toward Dodger Point and Mount Olympus beyond. “The two-eared mountain they saw coming south? Could it have been Mount Olympus here on this peninsula? I have read that there is evidence the western slope of this peninsula was a refuge during maximum ice times. The green slopes and open land protected by the mountains, was it the west side of this peninsula? Was this the refuge among the ice?”
Tom sat up. “The smoking mountain Sarah saw at the end of her journey? It could have been Mount Baker, when it was still active. It’s exactly west of the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.”
Myra examined Sergei. “You’re the strangest scientist I ever met.”
Sarah now stood. She faced down the slope toward the Elwha, silent below them. “The river we came to, where I saw the salmon in the water, where I hit my head, was it that river down there?” She pointed.
“That’s a long damn way to ride a canoe.” Tom was shaking his head. “It’s 3,000 miles, that headland to here, following the coast.”
Minutes passed. Sergei sat up.
“Myra, you actually confirmed everything for me back on the meadow where Sarah saw the bear. Remember? You said the Asian mammoths were North American animals that had crossed the land bridge more than 60 thousand years ago, east to west, replacing the Siberian mammoths.” Myra nodded cautiously. “I tried to tell you then, but you didn’t want to hear what I had to say. Then when I tried to bring it up a second time, we were attacked. Maybe it was for the best, because now we have heard Sarah’s entire story.” Sergei wore th
e strangest expression. “As I told you, we could not date that sliver. But I did do a DNA test. The results seemed impossible. They made no sense. Now, after hearing Sarah’s story, maybe they do.”
“What do you mean?” asked Myra.
“The sliver tested as bone from a Siberian mammoth. Not a North American mammoth or the Russian mammoth derived from the North American mammoth. It was the original Siberian mammoth, extinct since at least 60 thousand years ago. That means the atlatl we lost was carved and brought here from Siberia at least that long ago. At least 60 thousand years. To here.” Nobody said anything. Sergei was watching them. He stood and stretched. “It could have been a glacial refuge here, right here, on the Olympic Peninsula, in the dark time after the Toba eruption, 75 thousand years ago, when ancient people, not yet modern, came together to create us. Right here. That is, if Sarah’s story is true.”
Sarah gazed toward the river, then north. Tom whistled.
Myra shouldered her pack. “We’ve got a long damn way still to climb. We better get going.” She faced Sergei. “Sarah’s story is not the kind of data you can use in a paper, Sergei.”
“But Tom’s atlatl would have been, had we saved it.”
“We don’t have it. We have nothing. Nothing. “
“I saw and held that bone thrower, Myra. So did we all. That is data.”
“It’s gone, Sergei. This theory will never be tested.”
“But think about it, Myra.” Sergei’s teeth flashed. “The data we all did see, and touch, doesn’t it prove your legends might be true? I would give anything to prove such a theory. Anything. Right now the data argues against this, but we all had something in our hands that might have changed things. We all saw it. Held it. Maybe there is more data to be found.”
“It would have to be an uncontestable, datable, perfect find, Sergei.” William noticed that Myra was looking at Sergei with affection for the first time. “I don’t need data to know our legends are true, Sergei, but thank you. Of course we have always been here. As I have said.”
Strong Heart Page 22
