by Renee Hart
Hoping to get the day off to a better start, Kat pulled out an art project she’d selected and set the children to drawing animals. No one talked about ghosts or pirates and by the time lunch came around, she was hoping to let the matter rest. Most of the students had finished their pictures so Kat began hanging them up around the classroom. Each student would point to their drawing proudly after she’d pinned it up. She wasn’t surprised to see that many of them had drawn polar bears.
Her afternoon activity was to have the children write a story about the animal in their drawing. She moved among them quietly helping with word questions and spelling. Many of them managed to come up with nearly a page of writing by the end of the class. The rest of the afternoon was intended to allow the students to come up and read or tell their stories. Feeling confident that none of the stories would bring out pirates or ghosts, Kat took a seat at the back of the class and prepared to listen. The first volunteer went to stand under her picture of a polar bear.
“This is Nanuq, the great white bear,” the little girl began. “A long time ago, the People were friends with Nanuq and they could talk to him…”
“That’s not true,” one of the boys shouted. “You’re a liar!”
“It is so,” the little girl shouted back. “My grandmother told me because her grandmother told her!”
Before Kat could gain control, all of the students were shouting their agreement or opposition to the story and the little girl began to cry. Trying to quiet them, Kat wasn’t surprised to see Jim poke his head in the door with a sour look on his face. He took a quick look at the situation and retreated. Thanks for the help, Kat thought. Holding her hand over her mouth in an exaggerated gesture, she looked at each student in turn until they fell silent.
“Everyone take out your library book and read silently,” she said guiding the girl back to her desk.
“It is true,” the little girl whispered as Kat handed her a tissue.
Kat just nodded.
***
Winter came that year with a vengeance and the People struggled with the extreme cold it brought to the isle far too early. As they made preparations for the Great Hunt, many of them feared the strange conditions would prevent them from going out. On the evening before the Hunt, all of the People gathered for the ceremony, as was their custom.
Ulriq’s stepfather was very anxious as they waited for Nanuq to make his appearance. He didn’t know how to talk to the Great White Bear, but he couldn’t say that to the People. They would reject him as their leader. He tried to put on a bold face and spoke loudly to everyone around him to hide his fear.
The hour was very late when the People began to accept that Nanuq wasn’t going to come to the ceremony. Some of them suggested he had died and others whispered words they didn’t dare speak aloud. Many of the men gave voice to the idea of canceling the Great Hunt, but this would put all of the People at risk of starving during the long winter.
Finally the Elders gave the decree the hunters would use the same tally as last year. No mention was made of the fact that the hunters had broken the tally agreement. Some words were better left unspoken.
Ulriq was up early the next morning to prepare for his first hunt without his father. This year, he was old enough to participate with the other men, but his heart was heavy with dark memories. He took no pleasure in his preparations as he labored under ominous gray skies. The men were silent as they paddled their boats to the hunting place.
As the rocky isle came into sight, the men were surprised to see several polar bears lined up along the shore. The bears appeared ready to rebuff them from landing on the isle. As the boats drew closer, the polar bears stood up to their full height and roared in anger at the men. All of the men reacted in fear at this strange behavior and no one was willing to try and land their boat. Without a word, the boats turned around and headed back home.
When they reached the isle, all of the men gathered around the leader to see what he would say about this. He was silent in the face of their fear and anger and had no plan for them. Finally, one man suggested that they might try again tomorrow and see if the bears were still there. Grumbling among themselves, they headed back to their huts hoping to see better luck the next day.
Ulriq lay in his sleeping spot that night and listened to the wind howling outside. It carried the sound of angry voices into his dreams and he slept badly. The next morning the winds continued and all through that day and the next. There was no chance the boats could leave the isle. No one could remember a time when there’d been no Great Hunt. It was going to be a very hard winter if they had no food.
Several weeks passed before Ulriq could make the short trip up to the lodge to check on the progress of the men staying there. They were busy with their work and unaware of the situation in the village. The boy was their only contact with the People. He didn’t tell them what had happened on the Great Hunt. They probably wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
Chapter Seven
Kat wasn’t too excited with her progress in getting the students to talk. It wasn’t that the students weren’t talking, but they only wanted to talk about things they weren’t allowed to talk about at home. She didn’t understand the cultural barriers or the issues her students faced. This created conflicts between the students and problems with the parents.
By the end of the first week of this experiment, Kat was inclined to go back to the old model of her talking and the students listening. It was far easier even if it wasn’t very effective. The only bright spot in the week was J.T. bringing her a note from Lana inviting her to Domiq for the weekend. She read it while he waited for her answer and gave him a hearty reply fueled by her own growing loneliness. Having something ahead of her caused the rest of the week fly by and soon she was clearing her desk while she waited for J.T.
The sound of angry voices in the hall drew her to the door of her classroom. Peeking out, she caught sight of Marissa confronting J.T. Missing the context, Kat wasn’t sure of the point of the argument and she didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping so she retreated to her desk. The voices seemed to fade as she waited for J.T. to appear. The silence nearly drew her back to the hall, but J.T.’s sudden appearance in the doorway stopped her midway. His red face said far more than his simple question of “are you ready” and she only nodded her head. Grabbing her bag, she hurried to follow after him as he turned and left without another word.
They rode out to the lodge without speaking and J.T. didn’t bother to smile and wave at anyone they passed along the way. He just stared straight ahead and Kat felt the tension in his back as she struggled to hold on while giving him some space. It was clear the exchange with Marissa was still very much on his mind by the time they arrived.
As Kat dismounted, J.T. turned to her with a terse promise to be back for her on Sunday. She barely had a chance to reply before he drove away leaving her standing there. She stood there watching him drive away, lost in thought.
“Are you planning on standing there much longer,” Lana called in a friendly voice from the front door. “I’m not wearing a coat and its cold out here.”
She laughed as Kat turned a startled face towards her and hurried towards the door.
“I’m sorry,” Kat said. “I….J.T…, well, he seemed upset.”
“Hmm,” was all Lana said as she drew Kat inside the warmth of the lodge.
The lodge was filled with the sweet aroma of baking and Kat’s stomach rumbled as she pulled off her heavy coat.
“Something smells heavenly,” she breathed with a sigh of delight.
“Ah, yes! We couldn’t have a visit without something special to eat,” Lana smiled at her guest. “Besides, it’s a trick of the trade to make one’s guests feel welcome.”
The two women made their way to the kitchen.
“I’m so pleased you accepted my invitation. Your visit has really given me something to look forward to this weekend.”
“Oh, me too! I’ve had such a week and yo
ur invite is the only thing that got me through it,” Kat said.
“Let’s sit down here in the kitchen while I finish baking these cookies and you can tell me about it. I don’t know much about teaching, but I have learned some things in my lifetime that might help,” Lana said with a smile.
They spent the next two hours as Kat poured out the challenges she faced in her classroom. The warmth and bright lights of the kitchen made stories of pirates and talking bears seem silly so she left most of that out. Lana was a good listener and Kat found her concerns slipping away. The problems at school weren’t anywhere near as interesting as the woman sitting before her.
“That’s enough about my silly problems,” Kat laughed. “I’d rather hear your stories. I’ve thought about little else since J.T. brought me here. It’s your turn to talk my ear off.”
Lana laughed as she considered where to begin.
“I’m afraid it’s a very long story and you’ll get bored with me.”
“We’ve got all winter and I highly doubt you could bore me with anything. These cookies alone are worth the trip!” Kat grinned as she reached for her third one.
“Then I think we should start at the beginning,” Lana mused. “I also think a story’s better with pictures so let’s go upstairs, shall we?”
Grabbing Kat’s overnight bag on the way, the two women headed upstairs. Lana paused in front of a very old picture and pointed the couple out to Kat.
“The story begins here,” she said. “Allow me to introduce my great-grandfather, Ulriq and my great-grandmother, Iliana. I’m actually named after her. Lana’s just a nickname my brother gave me a long time ago.”
Kat stared at the picture of the unsmiling faces staring back at her. The strange sensation of being drawn back into the past, their present, caused her to wobble a bit. Lana reached out a hand to steady her.
“You feel them too, don’t you,” Lana asked quietly.
Kat pulled her eyes from the picture to stare at Lana.
“You look so much like her,” was all she managed to say.
***
The winter was the hardest the People could ever remember. Without the Great Hunt, they were forced to go out seeking food almost every day. Many days, the winds and the cold made hunting or fishing impossible. It wasn’t too long before hunger began to claim the weakest, and the darkest months were still ahead of them.
Ulriq divided his time between the men at the lodge and fishing for his mother. The workmen had a sufficient supply of foodstuffs in storage and weren’t affected by the lack of meat. They were used to a diet of hardtack and dried food. No one in the village realized or even cared to know how the foreigners were faring out beyond the edge of their small community. They had too much trouble at home.
Ulriq’s fishing skills weren’t especially noteworthy, but he always managed to bring home two or three fish on each trip. He suspected the bears were somehow helping him by herding fish towards him underneath the ice, but he could never prove this with any real confidence. He never saw anything more than fleeting shadows in the darkness of the icy water. It was enough to know that he was a part of something greater than himself.
His mother tried to help out the Elders and some of the other mothers by sharing what she could, but there was never enough for everyone. When some of the men learned there was food in the leader’s house, they became angry towards him and evil rumors went around about the family. They were forced to be more and more secretive as the People grew more desperate. Ulriq learned to come and go from the village under the cover of darkness or storms. Fear was taking hold of everyone and the new leader was powerless to contain it.
When the dark time came, fewer men were willing to go out to hunt or fish. The People from the neighboring island came to visit relatives and were horrified at what they found. There was plenty of food on their island and it didn’t take much to convince the others to go back with them. One family at a time, they began to migrate over the ice to the larger western island.
As the huts slowly emptied out, the few fish Ulriq brought home went further and the ugly rumors changed to quietly whispered words of gratitude. Though he was barely a man, some of the People began to talk of how he was their true leader. These words angered his stepfather and soon Ulriq found himself unwelcome in his own home. His mother was powerless against her husband’s jealousy and she warned her son to stay away for his own safety. He stayed at his cave behind the lodge for longer periods of time, coming only to the village to bring his mother food. The winter was a long and lonely time and only his thoughts of his beloved Iliana sustained him. He dreamed of her return every night.
Chapter Eight
Lana pulled a worn journal from a trunk in the sitting room and stroked the cover gently. Kat could feel her mind being drawn into the past as the room cloaked them in silence. Only the sound of the wind swirling around the corners of the house came to her ears. The old house stood as solid as a fortress against the onslaught of the cold outside, as it had done for generations. It had been built to withstand a thousand winters far worse than this, Kat thought to herself.
“This is my great-grandmother, Iliana’s journal,” Lana began. “The sad thing is that it’s in Russian and I never learned to read it though I can understand the spoken language. The words have been lost to my family because of this.”
“How odd,” Kat said in surprise, “because I can read Russian. My first name’s actually Katerina and my mother’s family were second generation Russian immigrants. I became very interested in my family genealogy when I was young and my babushka taught me many things about the motherland. I’m not very good, but I’m willing to try.”
Lana’s eyes lit up at this revelation and she passed the cherished book to her guest.
“I would be greatly honored if you would do that for me,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Holding the treasure on her lap, Kat closed her eyes for a moment and formed a picture of her beloved babushka in her mind. The old woman had seemed ancient to Kat with her wrinkled skin and weathered face. She’d tried to keep the connection to their roots alive in the family, but the young generation only wanted to know about the present or the future. The past held little interest to all of them, except for Kat. She listened again and again to the old stories and legends until they were as much a part of her as the fairy tales shown on TV or read to her from books.
The fire in her blood lit by those stories called for her to make a trip to visit Russia when she finished college. Despite all that her grandmother had told her, present day Russia bore little resemblance to the memories she held in her heart. The death of her grandmother left a void in her life and her trip put a lock on the door to the past. There was no place to go back to in the motherland anymore.
Carefully, Kat lifted the cover of the journal and peeked inside at the faded writing. The delicate letters at first confused her as her mind struggled to make sense of the unfamiliar characters. This had clearly been written before the time of Kat’s grandmother. It took her several minutes to work out the words of the first sentence.
Looking up at Lana with a sad face, she pursed her lips in frustration.
“This is going to take some time,” Kat said. “I’m not as familiar with the older forms.”
Lana shrugged.
“That’s okay. Like you said, we’ve got all winter.”
The two women laughed at that and Kat turned back to the text. She began to read slowly in broken Russian as the present world faded and Iliana’s words drew them to another time. Neither of the women noticed the presence leaning against the doorway of the room taking in the words along with them. It was as if they were alone in another world.
***
If winter had come swiftly to the isle, the haste with which it departed was equally as sudden. In a normal year, the ice in the strait took weeks to break up. The People would stop everything to watch for the first cracks to appear and begin to count the days until it was gone. This st
range year brought danger as the ice shifted and collapsed upon itself in ways never seen in the past.
Two men manning a fishing hole lost their lives when a sudden upheaval cast them into the sea. This served as a warning to the others to stay ashore until the ice floes were driven away by the strong ocean currents or risk losing their own lives. The hunger and the frustration of the People continued to grow and their leader was powerless to help them. Even worse, the desperate winter without the Great Hunt left the People with nothing to trade for food when the ships would come from afar seeking hides and skins. There was great fear in the village that there would be no relief from their suffering.
The builders at the lodge were also growing anxious as their own supplies dwindled and their patience wore thin. A couple of the men had families back on the mainland and hoped to return to them. The others had grown tired of the isolation and seemingly endless cold. The majority of their work on the lodge was complete, leaving them with too much time on their hands.
Ulriq withdrew from them as squabbles and fights broke out over trivial matters. He resumed his post on the bluffs to watch for the return of his beloved and her family. It was a difficult wait as there were no guarantees he could hold out, only this burning hope fueled by his love. His one relief was sleep and even there he dreamed of sailing ships and great white bears.
When the water was free of the ice, the first birds flew in on a warm breeze bringing life back to the village. As they gathered eggs, the People began to realize how much had been lost to them. More than half of the population was dead or gone and the few left were weak and sickly. The empty, broken-down huts outnumbered the homes of the others and many doors swung brokenly in the wind with no one to fasten them shut anymore.
