“We better hurry; she doesn’t have much time,” Jock said. “Looks like hypothermia.”
Ben pushed the boat harder, dangerously negotiating the log-jammed path. They sped past the dock at Weasel Tail’s cabin and on to the inlet at Ben’s place.
Ben cut the engine, jumped from the boat and secured it to the dock. He peered at Emma and shook his head. “I’ll take her by plane to the hospital in Eltan. It’s the fastest way.”
Amarok’s heart fell like a stone into a bottomless canyon. He knew it was selfish, he knew it was wrong, but he didn’t want Ben to take her from him. To someplace he couldn’t go. He never wanted to leave her side again and now, as a man, he had no choice but to let her go.
They hurried up the well-worn path leading to Ben’s cabin. “Go inside and stoke the fire,” Ben said. “I’ll get the plane ready.”
Amarok rushed inside and set Emma on the couch by the hearth. He stacked wood in the fireplace, feeding the fading embers. Covering Emma with a thick layer of wool blankets, he stoked the fire high. He sat beside her, his body aching, his heart heavy. He peered out the window, watching Ben and Jock uncover the plane. Ben climbed inside, checking the instrument panel, while Jock unhooked the tie downs. Ben fired up the plane and Jock waved his hands at the window, signaling Amarok to bring Emma.
Amarok hesitated, staring down at the girl he’d protected and come to love. Was this the last time he’d ever see her? His vision blurred, his throat tight with emotion. He wrapped her in the wool blankets, picked her up again and hurried outside.
She looked much paler than when they’d left the cursed lands. Ben held the door open and Amarok’s heart sank. How could he let her go alone? He wanted to be at her side to make sure they took good care of her, but the forest still held him prisoner, even as a man. He gazed at her face, memorizing every feature.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t let her go. He didn’t want Ben to take her from him, but he couldn’t stand to watch her die, either.
Jock gripped his shoulder. “You have to let her go, son. It’s the only way.”
Amarok set her gently in the seat of the plane and buckled her in. A tear splashed onto her cheek as he pressed his lips to hers and kissed her goodbye. He shut the heavy door and stepped back, feeling as if he’d just swallowed a knife. The plane taxied, snow swirling in the air, and took off in a twisting mass of blinding snow.
The nose of the aircraft pulled up, flying higher and higher into the sky. Amarok followed it until it was nothing more than a speck. He clenched his fists until his fingers ached, listening to the lonesome drone growing fainter and fainter, until it disappeared entirely. After everything he’d gone through to hold onto her, he stood helpless, watching her fly miles beyond his reach. He’d wanted so badly to protect her, and now he had to face the one thing he couldn’t protect her from—death. Surely, she must be able to feel his love, even across the vast distance separating them. Something so huge, so overpowering couldn’t possibly be chained to this single piece of wilderness.
Amarok closed his eyes and focused on sending his loving spirit with her. He visualized it crossing mountains, rivers and over the windy tundra, flowing from him in a brilliant display of energy that would shame the aurora borealis themselves. He fell to his knees, praying to the spirits of his ancestors to spare her.
Amarok sang his songs of mourning and of loss until his throat ached.
He trudged to the cabin, clutching the strap of the backpack. Inside, he pictured the scatter of totems, each one representing a life cut short, a pitiful existence of servitude and misery. He’d find all of their owners and reunite them with their totems; he owed her that much. It seemed a hollow victory without Emma at his side.
Amarok didn’t understand the shaman’s powers as well as he’d have liked, but he prayed that with the shaman’s demise, someday the land would be free. Then maybe, just maybe, the invisible chains holding him captive might finally be broken and he could be with Emma again.
Tears came to his eyes as he recalled the first time he’d felt her hand on his ragged coat, the day he’d made her smile, the feather he’d given her, and the moment he’d protected her from Suka’s wrath. He would miss so many things about her. The bitter loneliness of it all ate at his insides.
He wondered if she would ever return here. Amarok looked at Ben’s cabin; light glowed from the windowpanes, spilling onto the snow. He saw his uncle standing inside, gazing into the night, waiting for him. Amarok lumbered up the snowy path. Jock would never be able to fill the hole Emma had left in his heart, but at least he no longer had to face life without her alone.
As he neared the cabin, he glanced at the lonely sky. Stars were beginning to twinkle in the early veil of twilight. If Emma died, would he find her among the glimmering specks dotting the heavens? If she passed on, he would die also, and join her in the sky.
41
Emma spotted a black wolf standing on the brow of a snowy hill. It lifted its regal head, watching her with a smoldering gaze. The wolf tipped his head and howled a sorrowful cry.
“Amarok, come!”
The wolf ignored her, pacing the mound. Why wouldn’t he come to her?
“Amarok!”
He howled again, a mournful cry that rang across the arctic tundra like the toll of a funeral bell. Emma called him again. Something was wrong. He couldn’t hear her. Why was he so sad? She started up the hill, wading through the heavy snowfall. Even with all the clothes she wore, her body was racked with chills. She was so cold, so bone cold.
The wolf circled the mound, digging at the ice-bound soil in frustration. Emma drove herself hard, wading through the snow, her legs so heavy she could hardly lift them, fingers frozen, unable to bend.
Emma almost reached the top of the hill. Icicles clung to her freezing hair. Amarok bayed even louder. Her heart started to pound. What was wrong with him? Was he hurt? Why was he crying like that? Then, as she crested the rise, she saw the answer. Looped around his neck, he wore a heavy collar. The thick, metal chain was secured to a stake driven into the permafrost. She reached to touch him, but her whole arm turned to ice. The freezing then hit her shoulders. Emma tried to move, but the ice crept through her entire body, extending, inches thick, out from her skin.
Emma felt herself lifting into the air, hovering over the frozen soil. Encased like a frozen mummy, wrapped in a solid block of ice. She flew across the land, miles above him, her screams muted in her sub-zero prison. She ached to pound at the ice with her fists. Amarok jumped and pulled at his chains, trying to reach her, howling even louder. Now, she understood his distress.
Her life was in danger, and wherever she was going, he couldn’t follow.
42
Days passed like months. Amarok waited impatiently for signs of Ben, returning with news of Emma. Every drone from the sky, every heave of ice on the river, made his heart race. Since her departure, he hadn’t been able to think about anything but her welfare and if, someday, she would return to him.
He woke before dawn every morning, hiking the frozen land for any signs of Ben’s return. And those lonesome morning walks only added to his feelings of utter isolation. Away from the cabin, there were no human sounds. In fact, there was little to hear of any sounds in the forest during the cold months—only the call of a bird now and then, or the occasional chatter of squirrels, or the rustle of new snow filtering to the ground through frozen pine needles.
A hum broke the silence. Amarok listened intently, putting the rifle, which he unslung whenever he stopped, back over his shoulder. The distant sound grew louder: an aircraft. His heart leapt. The sound faded, and his shoulders drooped. Moments later, it came again, and Amarok stood absolutely still, listening. The humming droned in the distance, growing louder. Ben!
Amarok hurried up the trail, his shoulders hunched against the morning chill. His breath came in rapid bursts, forming great white puffs. His raw cheeks tingled with the bitter air. A dry cold had settled over the land, gro
wing meaner by the day, penetrating every layer of his clothing. He had forgotten how much colder he could get as a man without fur, how his lips cracked at the corners and the tender skin of his face burned in the harsh weather.
Amarok headed over a rise and down a deep coulee to emerge near the riverbank. The water ran swift, higher than ever, crowded with pack ice that reminded him of broken eggshells. Soon the water would be cold and frozen like the heart of the shaman. He lumbered up the wooden steps, past Ben’s cabin, and to the landing site.
In the distance, he watched the plane drop lower and lower until it touched the ground, rolling to a stop. Streams of swirling snow danced into the air around it, obscuring everything in a white whirlwind. He strained to see Ben’s face in the cockpit, hoping for a clue to how Emma might be. The pilot smiled and waved. Amarok’s spirits soared. When the engines switched off and the propellers stopped spinning, he ran to greet him.
The cabin door flew open.
“How’s Emma?”
Ben pulled off his cap and removed his sunglasses, tucking them into a jacket pocket. “Good. She’s still unconscious, but they think she’ll pull through. They say it’s exhaustion, not any type of internal injury. Her vital signs are getting stronger. They think she’ll come around any time now. I’ll be returning to the hospital in the morning, and then I’ll be back here one last time before the winter on Friday. I should know more, then. And of course, I’ll return as usual sometime this spring. I can give her a ride up here then, if she’d like.”
“Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate it. She doesn’t have any family that I know of. Her mother died in a car wreck and…”
Ben held up his hand. “Someone already spoke to me about it. My wife and I never had any children. Maggie’s thrilled to have her for the school year. She has a bed all made up and she’s decorating the spare bedroom. Never seen her so excited about anything in all my life.” Ben smiled. “It’s good to see her so happy.”
“That’s great news! I really can’t thank you enough.” Amarok pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Could you give this to her?”
“Sure, I’ll drop it off at the nurse’s station tomorrow.”
Jock came out of the woods, pulling a runner sled loaded with firewood. He saw Ben, waved, and headed over, a big smile on his face. “Thanks for letting us stay here. I’m re-stocking the wood we used. Got pretty cold last night. Looks like we’re in for a hard winter.” He glanced at Amarok. “We better head over to Weasel Tail’s. I’ll have a supply list ready the next time you come in, but I’m afraid we can only pay with old gold coins.”
“That won’t be a problem. Price of gold is up now. I can take your winter trappings in when I come in the spring. That should give you plenty to live on.”
“I left some coffee on the stove. Should still be hot, if you’d like some,” Jock said. “We’d better be leaving before it gets any later.”
“Sure you don’t want to stay another night?”
Amarok shook his head. “No, we better get settled in the best we can for winter, take stock of what else we may need, and make sure the place is air-tight.”
Ben nodded. “Good plan. The Ryans were a filthy bunch. Best to burn the place down.”
“I agree with you, there,” Jock said. “The old place is just one bad reminder.”
The men said their goodbyes, and Jock and Amarok started the long trek to Weasel Tail’s. Amarok inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. Gone was the bone-deep worry that’d held him for that excruciating week. And though he knew Emma was recovering, doubt gnawed at him. Why would she return to him? He was an antique, a man from a century ago. Though he’d poured his heart into her letter, the fear wore on him.
43
Emma’s eyes popped open. She squinted in the bright fluorescent glow. White walls. White vertical blinds. White floor. The room stood silent, all except for the tubular lighting humming from the ceiling and an annoying bleep somewhere in the distance. She sat up, trying to swallow the dryness in her throat, and the bleeping sound quickened. She was in a hospital bed, tubes leading from her arms under cold metal rails.
The door flew open. A short, heavyset woman with steel-gray hair and a crisp, white uniform walked in.
“Good morning,” she said, munching on an apple. “I’m Sally, your nurse. Good to see you awake this morning.” She swallowed a bite. “You’ve really been out of it. Had us all worried.” She shook her head and clucked. “It was touch-and-go there for a while.”
She grabbed the chart from the end of the bed, rested it against a metal tray, and scribbled a few notes. “How are you feeling?”
Emma rubbed her eyes. “Where am I?”
“Eltan River Hospital.”
“What happened? How did I get here?”
“You’ve suffered hypothermia. A man by the name of Ben Redfeather brought you in here.”
Emma threw back her bedcovers. “I have to get out of here.” She struggled with the railing.
The nurse held up her hand. “Not so fast, young lady.”
“You don’t understand. My friend is still out there, and he’s hurt.”
The nurse paled and shook her head. “Oh, no.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“We thought you were alone. The man who brought you in here didn’t say anything about anyone else.”
Emma shook the rails. “I have to get out of here. I don’t have time for this. I have to get to him. He needs me.”
“Time? I’m sorry, honey, but you’ve been here over a week. If your friend is out there, it’s likely too late.”
The words rang in her ears, burned into her brain. No, it couldn’t be. She had failed him, and now Amarok was dead, just like her mother. Gone forever. Her heart felt ripped from her chest.
Emma’s mouth dropped open, and she started to scream. She screamed until her throat hurt, until they rushed her with a needle. She didn’t stop until her eyes rolled back in her head and blessed oblivion chased the horror away.
44
Amarok knelt in the fresh snowfall, his gloved fingers gauging the depth of the huge track. He stood and studied the shrouded landscape. He hoped to find Suka before he went into his den for the winter. Before long they wouldn’t be able to find any tracks in the unrelenting flurries. Amarok anguished over freeing the creature. Suka had proved to be a disreputable sort before the transformation, and in the intervening years, insanity had consumed what had remained of the man. His only consolation was that Suka, though undeniably unbalanced, would, as a man, lack the pure destructive capabilities of a full-sized grizzly.
All morning they’d been on the hunt for the bear, searching the most elusive hiding places imaginable—high canyon walls, knolls bound in frozen swamps, and countless other hard-to-reach areas, all to no avail. Although badly wounded, Suka still left traces of carnage in his path—logs ripped to shreds, animals half-eaten, winter caches destroyed. Earlier, he’d spotted crows circling high above, marking a kill. Amarok hiked over a frozen buckle in the landscape. A stiff polar wind rippled the ruff of his fur collar as he wove through a thick growth of alder trees and over clumps of wilted devil’s club into an open field. He spotted a wolverine laying on its side with its flank ripped wide open, exposing torn flesh. It seemed the bear wasted more than he ate. Amarok followed the tracks from the kill until he lost the trail.
Even if he didn’t find Suka, it helped to occupy his mind. He knew Emma was on the mend, thanks to the update from Ben, but his thoughts continued to wander to what could be… but what likely never would.
Amarok pushed his troubles aside, filling his lungs with chilly air. The frosty morning bit at his exposed cheeks and he squinted against the dazzling light reflecting off the icy surfaces. Amarok knew the dilemma Suka presented had been solved for him, at least for the time being. It was too late in the season to find the bear now.
Jock crested a rise, turned and shook his head, signaling he’d found nothing. Amarok lumbered
to his side.
Jock released a heavy sigh. “No sign of him heading south.”
“I found a track, but it’s not Suka’s.”
“Well,” Jock said, still favoring his wounded side, “we better start back.”
Jock led the way, his stride just as wide as Amarok remembered from his boyhood. It felt good to have the big man beside him. Jock made everything seem almost normal, and he filled the aching hole the death of Amarok’s parents had left.
Sometimes, when the light was just right, Amarok could see his father in Jock—in the way he moved his hands when he spoke, or how he set his jaw to a challenge, never giving in. In some ways, Amarok had inherited these same traits, as well as his native mother’s unbreakable will. Amarok carried his memories like a shrine, keeping those who were gone alive inside of himself. In the dark hours their spirits came to comfort him, and then he sang his songs of mourning.
In the quiet of the evenings, when the bright flames of the hearth burned to silent embers, Amarok and his uncle spoke of many things, but they never discussed the time they’d lost. His uncle seemed content to focus only on the future, although, when the subject turned toward town or the sea, his tone invariably turned wistful and he reluctantly admitted how much he missed it. Sadly, he would never sail again, a prisoner to the same spell that bound Amarok. They could travel only within the boundaries of this great forest, and no farther. If they dared, only death awaited them.
Amarok could only dream of what cities must be like now. He wondered if Emma preferred life in the city, too. The modern world was a mystery to him. He knew about airplanes and pickup trucks, as he’d seen them here in his refuge. He’d seen snowmobiles and four-wheelers, too. And Amarok had heard hunters speak of telephones, computers, and iPods as they passed briefly through his limited range, but he couldn’t even imagine what such things were. In his time, life was simpler, and the loss of it pained him greatly. If ever he walked among men again, the adjustment might prove difficult.
Amarok Page 12
