“Mani was never a fan of the status quo. He had to put his personal touch on everything.”
Val shook his head with the heed of the inebriated, and I wondered how much he’d had to drink. “Not on you, though.”
“What do you mean?” Drunk people so rarely made sense.
“You’re nothing like your brother.”
I pulled back, uncertain whether to take offense or not. Val fingered a tendril of hair that had come loose from my braid. “You’re all golden,” he said. “Molten sunlight. But Mani, he was…”
“Darkness and moonlight,” I said, sticking to the analogy Val had started. I took after my father—honey-blond hair, gold eyes, a complexion that bronzed in the sun. Mani’s looks mirrored those of our father’s brother. They shared the same black hair, olive skin, and silver eyes. People often pointed out our differences as if they were offended by our lack of similarities.
“It’s not just your looks,” Val said. “Your personalities were opposite, too. Mani was always restless, driven, like he was never quite satisfied. Like he thought there was more that he was supposed to be doing or finding. But you…” Val didn’t have to finish his thought. I knew what he meant. I was everything Mani hadn’t been – staid, subdued, complacent – and I had been content to live vicariously through my brother.
“He adored you, you know,” said Val. “Talked about you so much, I was half in love with you before we ever met the first time.” That first time was when Mani brought Val home for a long weekend near the end of his first summer in Alaska. Mom and Dad gave me a precious day off, and I spent it with Val and Mani at the lake near our house. Val had flirted and teased and made me feel like the most beautiful and brilliant woman on the planet. Then he and Mani went back to Alaska, and I went back to work.
Val whirled me around and slipped his hand up my back, then to my shoulder, finally curling warm fingers around my neck. The aphrodisiac of alcohol and Pink Floyd made Val’s attentions feel so very nice when, for the last few months, I had put all my effort into feeling nothing at all. “How did we get so morbid?” I asked. “This is supposed to be a party.”
“You know what? You’re completely right.” He pulled me close, buried his face in my neck, and blew a raspberry. I shrieked, fell into a fit of giggles, and struggled halfheartedly to push him away.
“Having a good time, Miss Mundy?” Aleksander Thorin appeared before us as though he had materialized from the bar’s hazy shadows. His eyes flickered over Val before returning to me. His mouth stretched into a knowing grin.
“Yes, Mr. Thorin,” I said, pushing at Val until he relaxed his grip. “Thanks for inviting me.”
Thorin winked at Val. “Oh, one way or another, I think you would have ended up right where you are.”
I broke from Val’s grasp, miffed at Thorin’s insinuation, but my mother raised me to use my manners, even in the presence of those who lacked them. In this case, that meant biting my tongue and keeping my sharp reply to myself. I liked Val fine, more than fine, but I didn’t like anyone assuming he and I were a foregone conclusion, especially when I wasn’t certain of that myself.
Someone called to Thorin, and he excused himself and turned away.
I turned to Val. “Is he like that all the time?”
“Like what?”
“A jerk.”
“He’s intense, but he takes care of his people.”
“Like he took care of my brother?” That was an unfair judgment. Mani’s death was not Thorin’s fault. At least I didn’t think so. But he had rubbed me the wrong way, and I was feeling a bit chafed.
“As much as Mani would let him, yeah.”
Independent Mani wouldn’t accept coddling from anyone. I understood what Val meant.
The long drive from Anchorage, jet lag, and a limitless supply of beer left me swaying on my feet long before the party ended. Even though Val had a fresh drink in hand and had started a new round of cricket, he offered to take me back to Mani’s apartment. “I don’t think I’m in any state to drive,” he said, “but I could handle walking you home.”
I believed the sincerity of his offer, but his eyes kept shifting to the dartboard in a way that indicated he wasn’t ready to go. When I urged him to stay and have fun, he gave in with little protest. “You have a D.D.?” I asked.
Val nodded as he led me to the exit. “Thorin will make sure we all get home in one piece. I’ll call you in the morning to check on you.”
“At the rate you’re going, I have a feeling you won’t be up for doing much of anything in the morning.”
“Then I’ll call you in the afternoon.”
“You don’t have to check on me.”
Val scowled. “I’m not going to let anything happen to Mani’s sister. Not on my watch.”
Lacking the energy to argue, I merely nodded and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. Val snatched my wrist. “Wait a minute. If you’re giving out kisses, I’ll be more than happy to take you home.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“You give me all kinds of ideas.”
Hormones and alcohol often gave me ideas, too, but letting Val have his way seemed like the wrong one at the wrong time. I pulled my wrist free from his grip. “Good night, Val.”
He exhaled a defeated sigh and pushed the door open for me. “‘Night, Solina.”
I stepped out into the cool evening. A glacial breeze from Resurrection Bay caught the loose strands of my hair and sent them dancing. I stopped and inhaled a deep breath of briny sea air, an antidote to the tipsy side effects of the beer. The door closed behind me, and the bar noise fell to a dull thunder, leaving me alone to relish the nighttime quiet.
“Leaving so soon?”
Startled, I spun around to find Aleksander Thorin standing in the shadows at the corner of the bar. “You scared me,” I said and laid a hand over my skittering heart.
Thorin stepped closer and shoved a cell phone into his hip pocket as if he’d recently finished a call. A nearby street lamp illuminated him, and his long, pale hair was incandescent. “It seems I’m stepping on your toes at every turn today.”
“No. You’ve been perfectly… nice.”
Thorin huffed. “Nice?”
What did he want me to say when the truth was that I found him intimidating and tactless? “I think it’s the jet lag. I feel like I’m dead on my feet.”
“Val isn’t giving you a ride?”
“He’s having a good time. I didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, Mani’s place is just down the street. I can walk.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I would feel better knowing you got home safely. Mani would want us watching over his sister.”
I held out my hands in surrender. “All right. If you insist.”
“I do.”
I shrugged and started down the sidewalk. Thorin fell into place beside me. His presence unnerved me in an inexplicable way. He exuded a quiet self-assurance most people my age didn’t possess. Of course, Thorin wasn’t quite my age. I glanced over at him. He was in his early thirties, maybe. Six or seven years older than me, if I had to guess. He was informal in jeans, work boots, and a Carhartt coat, but he wore his casualness like a disguise, a costumed attempt to convince people he was unassuming, laid-back, harmless. It was about as believable as a lion wearing bunny ears.
“How long do you plan to stay in Siqiniq?” Thorin asked.
“Long as it takes.”
“Long as what takes?”
I shoved my hands deep into my jean pockets and bunched my shoulders. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what business is it of yours?”
“Mani was one of my best people. He was with me from the beginning of my business. His death hurt us all—broke everyone’s heart, but we’ve started to recover. I’m worried your being here will be like tearing the scab off a slow-healing wound.”
I stopped and crossed my arms over my chest. Exasperati
on buzzed through me. “Do you think I came all the way up here because I was worried about maintaining the status quo?”
Shadows hid Thorin’s expression, but indignation rolled off him in palpable waves. “It’s more than status quo that I’m worried about. Your presence here is bound to attract attention—and not in a good way. Whatever evil found Mani is likely to come after you as well.”
“That’s my problem, though, isn’t it?” I said and started down the sidewalk again. I kicked up my pace. Thorin stayed back, letting me have my distance, but he shadowed me until I reached the safety of Mani’s apartment. Thorin’s concerns about stirring up Mani’s troubles were not unique. I had worried about the same thing as I deliberated over the decision to come to Alaska, and I hoped the results would prove worth the risk.
In spite of, or possibly because of, my jet lag, I slept uneasily. Images of Mani’s murder haunted me—as they had almost every night since his death—calling for vengeance. Hokey as it sounds, a vision of my brother’s murder had come to me the same night he was attacked. In the dream, Mani’s killer hid behind a mask—a wolf panting hot, carrion breath. My brother’s blood dripped from his fangs.
I had suffered that dream countless times since that first night, especially whenever I was exhausted or frazzled. After a day of cross-country travel and Thorin’s lush party, I was both of those things, mixed with too many beers and shots of crappy tequila. And because my transition from consciousness to sleep happens like a slowly descending escalator rather than a plunge from a cliff, I can’t always discern delusion from reality. It probably happens that way for everyone, but the difference is that most of my dreams come true.
Tonight the nightmare was visceral, vivid and almost impossible to escape. I woke up screaming. The walls surrounding me were Mani’s, the same walls from my nightmare, and while some small part of me knew I was awake, my panic insisted I was still in the dream, the wolf was nearby, and he was coming for me. I rolled out of bed, clutching the bedclothes to my chest, and backed into the corner. My knees gave way, and I sank to the floor, shaking and gasping for breath.
When no blood-crazed beast lunged at me from the shadows, I allowed myself to believe it was the same bad dream as always. After a couple of deep, steadying breaths, the worst of my terror drained away. I wiped a fist across my eyes, as if the gesture might rub away the last of the lingering images. Then I rose on wobbly legs and stumbled to the kitchen. In the refrigerator, I found several bottles of water. I grabbed one, snapped the lid, and guzzled. The cold pierced my sinuses, but I ignored the pain and emptied the bottle in a few desperate gulps.
Given enough time, the words and visions in my nightmare would distill into random flickers and vague images. They always did. Maybe my subconscious dealt with debilitating terror by locking it somewhere deep down inside. Only at night, in sleep, could my nightmare fully escape.
But no matter how much I repressed the details, one thing always remained. One obsession fastened itself to my psyche and burned there no matter the time of day, whether I was awake or asleep. Mani’s killer spoke in a low, growling voice, and in his final words to my fading brother, he said: “I have swallowed the moon; my brother shall swallow the sun. The beast will rise and swallow the world, man and god.”
Chapter Three
Half awake, bleary eyed, and still in my pajamas, I sat on Mani’s sofa and clutched a mug of scalding coffee. The pale light of early morning stole through the living-room window and gave the space a spectral quality. Across the room, a pile of Mani’s belongings stared at me, issuing a silent challenge.
Initially, my parents had insisted on hiring a moving service to box up everything and ship it home for us to sort out there. Mom and Dad wanted nothing to do with Alaska and often behaved as though the last three years of my brother’s life hadn’t happened. They swallowed the unfairness of his death and their own impotency like some sort of inevitable, bitter pill. They wanted me to do the same, kept telling me to “let it go.” They almost had me convinced, too; I was never a risk taker. But the nightmares refused to relent. The more I tried to ignore them, the more they persisted. The dreams strained my rationality and took a toll on my well-being. My work suffered, my relationships –the few I had—fell apart. Do something, I had said to myself. Do something before you lose yourself completely.
So, maybe for the first time in my life, I stood up for myself, channeling my brother’s willfulness and independence. When I told my parents I had already bought plane tickets, Mom nearly choked on her outrage. In the end, they relented only because I left them no other choice. They mandated that I dispose of the majority of Mani’s things and bring home only the most necessary or sentimental. Easy for them to say with the insulation of several thousand miles between them and all the things that represented the essence of my brother.
My problem was that everything of his was sentimental, even the holey boxer shorts I had found in his hamper. Especially those holey boxer shorts. They had big pink bows printed on them, and I had given them to Mani for Christmas, years ago, specifically to embarrass him. I should have known better. As soon as he unwrapped them, he slid the boxers on over his jeans and insisted on wearing them for our annual Christmas morning photos.
I finished my coffee, washed the cup, and dumped it on the draining board. Then I showered away the sour odors of bar and beer sweat and slipped into a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt from Mani’s closet that still smelled like him. After tying my hair back into a damp ponytail, I approached the living room, wearing my best no-nonsense expression. I set my hands on my hips, blew out a heavy breath, and said, “Okay, let’s do this.”
I organized everything into two piles, but the keep stack quickly outgrew the throw out stack. Throughout the morning, I forced myself to go back and reconsider. Each item I discarded took a piece of my heart along with it. When I had first approached this task, I thought it would only take part of the morning to finish, but by lunchtime my progress had stuttered to a halt. So many of Mani’s things absorbed my attention—his pictures, old birthday cards, his library of handwritten journals. In this collection of miscellanea, this assortment of nostalgia, Mani was still alive. How could I ignore the allure? How could I resist spending time with him again, even if it was in the past?
I flipped through the most recent of Mani’s journals, a fat book bound in worn leather and stuffed full of ticket stubs and other odds and ends. Mani kept meticulous records of both the adventurous and mundane days of his life. His journals were more than a simple effort to capture a memory. They were a tool he employed in his quest, his unappeasable need to find answers to the mystery that led him away from home and into the wilds of Alaska.
The pages of Mani’s journal flipped by in a blur until one caught my attention by mentioning my name. I knelt, pressed the journal open on the floor, and leaned close to study the page. Mani’s familiar scrawl filled every line. The swirls, loops, dots, and dashes made something tangible out of the intangible thoughts and emotions of the one person who had commanded absolute devotion from me. His handwriting was a surprisingly intimate thing. Here, above all the other objects in this room, was the proof that Mani was real. He had existed.
The page where I stopped was dated almost three years ago, when Mani had been in Alaska for about a month.
Got a care package from Solina today. Fudge cookies. I thought after working in that damned bakery I would never want to see another cookie again, but they smelled so much like home. I think Solina would like it here, but then I think nothing will ever get her to leave it all behind—home, the bakery, Mom and Dad.
Now that I’ve been here for a while, I see how I let her shoulder the weight of family obligations for both of us so I could get away from Mom and Dad’s expectations. I think she understood that I had to get away if I was going to figure out what’s been going on with me lately—the weirdness with the cold and darkness. The way shadows sometimes seem to cling to me. Those times when frost forms in my fo
otsteps. Solina’s the only one who believes me. Said she saw it in one of her crazy dreams—me manipulating shadows and ice, bending them to my will.
She said she saw me framed by the hazy glow of a midnight sun and it felt important. Portentous. She likes using words like that. I think it means she reads too much. Solina either has her hands stuffed in a batch of dough or her nose stuck in a book. I don’t know how many times we’ve fought about her introverted tendencies. Anyway, there are only a few places in the world where the sun never sets at certain times of the year, and Alaska is one of them. Was it a coincidence that I got this job in Siqiniq as easily as I did? Who knows, but whatever the hell is going on with me, this is as good of a place to start looking for answers as any. Plus I speak the local language. Can’t say that about Russia or Greenland.
If I thought Solina totally loved the family business, got some kind of thrill out of cranking out wedding cakes day after day, I wouldn’t feel so guilty about leaving her. But I think she only does it because Mom and Dad expect it of her. Maybe I expect it of her too. I may have to admit that I used my sister. I guess that makes me a total ass.
I wish that she’d stand up to them, find her own way, get her own life. I hope Mom and Dad know how lucky they are.
I closed the cover before tears splattered and smeared the ink. Mani’s words touched a sore spot I usually managed to ignore—the loneliness I had suffered at his absence. In retrospect, the pain of his leaving was a minor abrasion compared to the deep, festering wound inflicted by his death. I sent those fudge cookies in place of myself because I was too afraid to leave home, too afraid to disappoint my parents. I filled the emptiness by putting in more hours at the bakery, and Mom and Dad saw my work ethic as proof of my dedication to them and our “family business.” Really I was only digging myself into a deeper hole.
Midnight Burning Page 2
