by Ray Hudson
“What do you think, Gregorii?”
The man shook his head and smiled and said, “I don’t know. Could be.” He looked again. “Probably isn’t.”
“What was that about?” I asked after the guy had left.
“Gregorii’s uncle is training him. He’s learning all those healing secrets and things, all those really old-time things. He agrees with Old Man Rostokovich. He thinks it’s an amulet, a magic charm.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Maybe you weren’t listening.”
That afternoon Vasilii returned to church to help prepare for yet another service. Booker and I walked south of the village, crossing low rolling mounds of grass and heather, until we reached a wide sandy beach. From there the sea stretched toward Asia and the south. The Islands of Four Mountains had vanished in a bank of clouds.
“I need to find Peter’s sister,” I said. “Can you show me where she lives?”
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll have to get past her daughter. She’s a terror. Fevronia is probably busy chewing on birds.”
I ignored that last statement. I rubbed my hand. Rubbing it had become almost automatic.
“That mark going away?”
“If anything,” I said opening my palm, “it’s getting bigger.”
After vespers, people crowded into the home of the second chief for a delicious dinner of fish pie—salmon layered with rice and onions, spiced with fresh petruski, a kind of wild parsley, all of it inside a flaky brown crust. There were fresh berries and the hot palms of alaadika. One of the men remarked that the A.C. Company schooner Bertha was expected in three or four days to collect furs from the sea otter hunters.
“Father,” Vasilii asked as he glanced toward Booker and me, “would it be possible for us to remain and take the ship home when it arrives?”
“Why would you want to do that?” his father asked. “Yes, thank you, Helena.” He held out his plate. “Excellent fish pie.”
“We’ve been talking with an older woman here, Fevronia Rostokovich,” Vasilii continued.
“Yes, I know her,” his father said. “Her married name is Ermeloff, but everyone still calls her Rostokovich.”
“Some families are touchy like that,” said the second-chief’s wife.
“She wants to meet Anna,” Vasilii nodded at me. I hoped his father wouldn’t ask why I wanted to meet her. “Besides, it would be a good opportunity for me to practice that long-ago language.”
“I suppose it would,” the priest agreed. He spoke with the chief, confirmed the Bertha’s expected arrival and departure dates, and arranged for Booker and me to stay a bit longer with the chief’s aunt and for Vasilii to continue at the second chief’s.
“You may stay,” he concluded, “but be good! The Bertha should get you home in a week. Help out while you’re here. Don’t just be lazy.”
Services the next morning were finished early to give the priest time to go from house to house, blessing them and consulting one final time with his parishioners. Then he and his companions climbed into their sleek baidarkas. One of the men who had come in a two-man baidarka took Vasilii’s boat. Every available Nikolski man would accompany them north along the island’s shore until they headed across the pass to Unalaska Island. Vasilii, Booker, and I stood with the women, children, and old men on the beach. We watched them set off. Within minutes, the kayaks were rippling among the waves. The high tips of the double-bladed oars briefly caught the light, but soon all I could see were the waves themselves.
It took a day and a half of navigating around barriers before I finally saw Fevronia without her daughter being present. Vasilii and Booker didn’t understand my insistence that Galena not be present when I showed her mother the ivory fox. Finally, the chief’s aunt was persuaded to invite Galena for tea, while commenting something about “that old grump.”
Fevronia herself came to the door and invited us in. The moment I placed the carving on the table, she snatched it up and carried it to the window where she turned it from side to side. She gauged its weight by bouncing it slightly on her palm. She stared into its minuscule black eyes. She studied the circles on its back and, with unexpected gentleness, she stroked it three times with her forefinger. Not once did she close her hand over it before she brought it back to the table and dropped it unceremoniously, where it landed upright and, I could have sworn, glanced up indignantly.
“You’ve made up your minds?” she asked while looking at Vasilii.
Made up our minds to do what? I felt like I had been left out of an important part of the conversation.
“Yes,” he nodded at me. “She wants to return it.”
I did. That was true. But Vasilii and I both knew that nobody lived on the Islands of Four Mountains.
The old woman looked at Booker. “Will you remember me to my relative?”
Now what she was asking?
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Will you remember me to my uncle no matter what happens?” she repeated.
He shifted in his seat.
“I promise. Yes,” he said.
“Are you saying you can help us get to Kagamil?” I asked. “That there’s somebody there I can return the fox to?”
Once again she ignored me. She simply shrugged her shoulders, slipped on a heavy shawl, and walked outside. I rapidly returned the carving to its pouch, strung it around my neck, and rushed to catch up. The old woman hobbled along with surprising speed. We followed her through the village, making sharp corners and staying away from the window where Galena might have been sitting, drinking tea and complaining. Once outside the village, we walked along the beach until a gap in the thick bordering grass opened to the pebbled shoreline. A breeze blew off the land, and when she pointed due west, her outer cape rippled across her shoulders.
“It’s thirty miles to Kagamil,” she said.
“But I thought you said we should go to Chuginadak,” Vasilii said.
“Start with Kagamil,” Fevronia insisted. “Kagamil is closer. From there you’ll see your way to Chuginadak.”
“Thirty miles?” Booker asked. “That’s a long ways.”
Fevronia ignored him.
“You get what you need,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”
I pumped Vasilii and Booker as we headed back to the village. “So we’re going to Kagamil?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Vasilii said. “But it’s what you wanted, right?”
It sounded more than crazy, but it was what I wanted. The chief’s aunt was laughing when Booker and I walked into her barabara to collect our few belongings. She actually seemed to be enjoying Galena’s company.
“You seen my old lady?” Fevronia’s daughter asked, and we knew we had been caught.
“We did,” I admitted.
“Ah, I thought you would,” Galena said and turned to the chief’s aunt. “They are wanting to go out to those Four Mountain Islands.”
“Is that true?” The chief’s aunt held her teacup a couple of inches above its saucer.
“We need to try,” I said.
She lowered the cup. “You have to be careful.”
“That’s what I told them,” Galena said, proof of what a liar she was.
When we stood at the door with Booker’s backpack holding our few things, the chief’s aunt said simply, “I’ll expect you back.”
For three hours we took turns rowing the wooden skiff across the calm water, through the quiet air, and under an overcast sky. Fevronia had led us farther along the beach to where a skiff was tied above high water. It was a simple affair, much like the one Vasilii had taken berry picking. There was ample room, but I could tell Booker was nervous, even after he was firmly seated at the bow. Vasilii manned the oars in the middle, and I was at the stern. I looked back at the old woman, who stood as though it didn’t matter whether or not we ever returned. I watched until she and the village and the coastline had blurred away and all I could see were the high slopes of the mountains.
“It’s getting hazy,” Booker said. That was an understatement. All the greens and blues and whites were now shades of gray. We never got any closer to Kagamil.
“We’re getting there,” Vasilii said. I had to look again. “You can pick out more details along the shore.”
I could see a rough volcanic shoulder and burnt cliffs that dropped directly into the sea, but nothing else. This was not the first time Vasilii had been able to discern objects in the distance long before we had made them out. I had read where old-time Unanga attributed their good eyesight to a moderate use of salt. So much for pretzels and popcorn.
Booker leaned forward and rested his chin on his crossed arms at the bow. I closed my eyes and listened as the skiff sliced through the mild waves with a steady rhythm. But we never get any closer, I complained again to myself as a soft clatter of wings erupted. I opened my eyes to a flock of small birds peppering the air like tiny electric fans. They struck the water, and half of them disappeared beneath the surface after food.
The haze thickened into a heavy mist. Vasilii rested the oars, but the skiff drifted steadily on. The water around us was as flat as a map. We passed through sheets of mist, like pale walls completely obscuring Kagamil. When I looked toward the bow, Booker was little more than a shadow. I took in a long breath and let it out. The fog drew back from the skiff, the way circles radiate from a stone dropped into calm water. Then it rose over us like a soft gray shell. For a moment it was like being inside a tent on a sunny afternoon. And then it broke apart and fell gently into the water. Dampness tickled the back of my neck. I saw Booker’s hands grip the top edge of the skiff as it bumped against something solid that angled us in a different direction. Vasilii was about to lower the oars when the boat coasted on its own up a gentle swell. It paused, and we passed into a thick bank of clouds.
“Like osmosis,” I heard Booker whisper as the air became almost as solid as water.
The skiff stalled at the top of a small wave. It was balanced there. Just for a moment. Like when the tide changes. Then the air relaxed, and we coasted down the other side. The breeze returned and with it more visibility. Vasilii dipped the oars into the water, and Booker gasped.
“Anna!” he shouted. “It’s happened again.”
He held out his arms. His wool jacket was now opaque gut. My jacket had also changed, as had Vasilii’s. All three of us were dressed in kamleikas, the gut raincoats of ancient Unanga. I had a moment of panic when I thought I was stark naked under what felt like a raincoat made from rows of clouded plastic. But only the outer layer had changed. I gripped the top edge of the skiff. It was rounder and softer. I stared in wonder: the skiff had become a skin-covered craft, as wide as before but built with a frame of lashed and fitted poles. Baidar was the Russian word, but I have no idea what we used to call it.
Booker started to take off his cap and his fingers touched wood. He removed a plain wooden visor, gawked at it, and placed it back on.
I thought Vasilii would freak out. He was totally amazed. He held out his arms to look at the fine workmanship on his kamleika. He caught my eye and shook his head.
“I can explain!” I shouted. Like I could explain anything.
He lowered the oars deep into the water and drew back with all his strength. “Now we’re getting someplace!” he laughed.
I looked at the gut raincoat I was wearing. Had we slipped even further into the past?
Strong currents and Vasilii’s vigorous rowing carried us away from Kagamil and toward Chuginadak. Before long, the shore was shadowed with cliffs and rocky outcroppings. Above this there were green and gentle hills, rising up like the gentlest of waves.
Vasilii paused the oars and pointed up where a high ragged peak broke across the summit. “I’ve heard that old-timers call that The Beginning of the World,” he said.
I saw openings along the shore where we could have landed, but Vasilii kept the skiff running west until a massive symmetrical cone thrust up in front of us.
“Chuginadak Volcano,” he said and nodded upward.
I had seen photographs of the volcano, renamed Mount Cleveland after a future U.S. president, but here it was in person.
“There’s supposed to be a small bay between the volcano and this end of the island. From there, a pass leads over to the Pacific side.”
A line of white ripples hinted at submerged rocks.
“We’ll have to be careful going in,” he said.
He took us past a protruding point that plunged into the sea like a stone arm. We crossed the dark mouth that I guessed opened into a sea cave. Stone pinnacles, crusted with grass, jutted just off shore. Cascades of reddish-gray rock were frozen in their slow-motion tumble to the beach. The wide headland before us was a single smooth wave of dense heather that continued up into the higher hillsides. I had the odd feeling that this island was something that was, well, if not actually alive, then at least waiting for us. Waiting for me.
The surface of the water became clearer the closer we got to shore, but its depths remained clouded. I glimpsed a sheet of light, a blink, as though a pack of cards had fanned out and instantly closed. Fish, I thought. Booker and I had traded places, and I was at the bow when Vasilii said, “Lean over and keep an eye out for rocks as we come in.”
“Good thing it’s calm,” I said as I positioned myself.
“Calm?” Booker’s voice rose a bit when he saw a necklace of breakers washing onto the distant beach.
As I studied the water, an image of Fevronia flowed into my mind. She had seemed totally indifferent to our journey, but now she started to glow in my mind like a distant lighthouse. I pictured her on Nikolski’s shore holding her arms out with her palms turned toward the water. She moved them back and forth, parallel to the sea, slowly stirring the air and sending a gentle breeze that quieted the sea like an expanding ripple. My mind drifted off, and I forgot all about looking for rocks. I felt totally relaxed and safe. She lifted her arms above her head, held them there briefly, and dropped them to her side. A gull cried out. I felt a drum roll of gravel under the skiff as we coasted in to shore.
13. Booker
I would have liked to have had time to think about what was happening, to put things in order. But we had landed. Land is always better than water, even under a boat. Anna extended a hand, and I jumped to the beach, skidding on fist-sized gray stones. Vasilii followed, and while Anna and I held the skiff, he located a log jammed among boulders that weren’t going anywhere. We pulled the skiff over and Vasilii secured it. The three of us stood and listened to the tug of the sea on gravel while a slight breeze shuffled through the grass that towered on the bank above us. The wide dark-green blades separated out of stalks as thick as fingers. When Anna pulled on one, it stayed put, as though it had grown there for centuries.
Which it probably has, I said to myself.
With Vasilii leading, we pushed through the grass to higher ground. A quick fistful of grass usually kept me upright. I scrambled on my hands and knees up a final expanse of gravel to a patch of shorter grass and stood up. And there was the volcano right in front of me. It was like amazing. I mean it was like a perfect volcano. The bottom third was covered with green grass. The symmetrical slopes then angled upward more steeply as the grass gradually gave way to rock. A few ravines were marked with lacy tatters of snow.
“The Nikolski people,” Vasilii said, “tell how a woman used this volcano for breathing.”
A plume of smoke feathered from the peak in confirmation. I was getting so I believed everything I was told.
“It’s a composite volcano,” I said, groping for something that made sense. “Shield volcanoes are flatter.” I could tell Anna was about to comment inappropriately when Vasilii resumed walking. We climbed a gravel bar and skidded down the other side, where there was a small creek too swift and deep for us to cross. We followed it back toward the beach, where it spread out across the sand and gravel. Vasilii said, “We can cross here.”
“I hate wet feet
,” Anna volunteered. “And backtracking.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Vasilii said. And sure enough, our boots were gloriously waterproof. I don’t know what they were made from, but they were very comfortable and, despite the wet rocks and the running water, I didn’t slip once.
“Sea lion flippers,” Vasilii said as he tapped one of his soles.
Oddly shaped pebbles were scattered across a patch of fine sand. I slipped two into a pocket. When Anna caught my eye, I said, “One for me and one for the Elder Cousin. He likes souvenirs.”
He must be wondering, I thought, despite what he had said about time, just where I had gone. And when, I said to myself, I might be getting back.
We followed the creek back to where the beach ended and the heavy grass began. Vasilii stopped and turned to Anna. “Before we go on,” he said, “I think you should tell me.”
I looked from him to her.
“I suppose so,” she said as she dropped a stone she had picked up.
“I can tell that you don’t know half the stuff about living here that an ordinary person would know,” he said.
“Half?” she said. “I hardly know anything at all.”
“It’s like almost everything is new to you,” he said.
“It’s me,” I said. “I thought I was going to Ireland.”
I started to explain about the bookmark, but Anna interrupted and told about Captain Hennig—not the one Vasilii knew, but the other Hennig—how he had looted things from Kagamil. How one thing had led to another.
All the while, Vasilii just stared at the creek as though he were considering following it back to the beach and back to the skiff and home.
“And you got here, how?” he asked me.
“With this,” I said, and took out the bookmark. “It’s what I showed your mother.”
“How does it work?”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“I thought she kept it.”
“I can’t get rid of it,” I said, not that I really wanted to, not that I could explain.
“And that’s how we got here?” he gestured around us. “With that, whatever it is.”
