by John Smelcer
THE GIRLS WERE CERTAIN they were close to the trading settlement. They eagerly expected to see it every time they came around a bend. The white miles on the frozen river fell away quickly. But for days all they encountered as they trudged along was snow and ice and loneliness.
That suddenly changed one afternoon when the girls saw a cabin at the far end of a long straight stretch. Maura was certain they had found the settlement.
“We’re here!” she shouted. “We made it! We made it!”
Both girls quickened their pace, almost to a run. When they were close, they could see another cabin just around the bend.
Millie began to slow down.
“Come on!” Maura shouted gleefully. “We made it! We’re saved!”
But Millie grabbed Maura’s arm and yanked her to a standstill.
“Look,” said Millie, standing on the snow-covered river looking up the steep bank at the first cabin. “There’s no smoke coming from the roof.”
Millie was right. There was no smoke rising from either cabin, no tracks in the deep snow around them. They climbed up the bank and looked inside the near one. It was empty. Pots and pans and blankets and all other belongings had been removed. Only a small, rusted woodstove remained.
They inspected the other cabin. It was also empty. They decided to spend the night in one of the cabins. Millie started a fire, and when the stove was hot, she set their cooking pot on top, filling it with snow to melt for drinking water. Then she placed several thin slices of caribou directly on the stove. The meat smelled delicious as it sizzled.
And though it was the most comfortable night they had experienced in a long time—since their first night at the bearded trapper’s cabin—they slept poorly, tossed by their dreams. In Millie’s nightmare, the warming fire was thawing the frozen plague, which waited hungrily in the walls. Maura dreamed of her mother, who had fallen into a dark cave and called over and over again for help. But Maura was unable to save Mother; her shouts became muffled and distant and then faded altogether. She woke with her heart pounding. It took a long time until she fell asleep again.
The next day they passed several more cabins, not collected together, as in a village, and each as empty as those before it. The girls grew disheartened.
“What if they’re all empty?” Maura asked when they stopped to look inside a cabin with its door ajar and snow drifted a foot deep inside. She was beginning to believe that she and her sister really were the last two people alive.
“I don’t know,” replied Millie. “We’ve passed every landmark Father described. This should be the settlement. But where is everybody? Maybe they’re all dead.”
Millie was silent for a long beat. Then she said slowly, “But wait, Maura. Father often described the settlement as being many times bigger than our own village. All we’ve seen are a few cabins spaced far apart.”
Maura’s next words tumbled out. “He also said the settlement was where the two rivers come together, where this river joins a much larger one. We haven’t seen any sign of the second river yet.”
“That’s true,” Millie said, feeling slightly less anxious—but only slightly. They had traveled so far. She wanted to believe that they must be close. If so, the empty cabins could mean that the red spots had already killed everyone in this little community, then ravaged the village halfway upriver and finally their own—the most remote. By traveling downriver, the girls had been walking into the past, to where the spotted death had already come. Or maybe the lack of bodies and belongings in the cabins meant that the people hadn’t died at all but moved to the white settlement, which must be nearby and would explain why the cabins were so empty. Millie breathed deeply.
Maura abruptly sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree. “Millie,” she said, “what if everyone in the settlement is dead? What if it’s also empty? What will we do then? Where will we go? Is there any point to going on? We could spend the rest of our lives looking for people. Why not just stay here, live our lives here, die here?”
“Stop it, Maura,” replied Millie sharply. “We can’t know where the trail goes until we travel it. This can’t be the end of our walk. It’s not the end of our lives. It’s just not.”
Millie sat down beside her sister, and despite her strong words, she began to shake. She didn’t want to cry but couldn’t help it. “Oh, please, Maura. Don’t give up. We’ve come so far.”
Maura stood, faced her older sister, pulled off her thick mittens, dropping them to the white ground, and cupped her warm hands around Millie’s face.
“I’m sorry, Millie. I’m sorry. You’re right. We have to keep going. I’ll be like a badger again. I promise.”
Millie rose and put her arms around Maura’s waist, her cheek on her sister’s head. The two sisters held each other until a groaning ice shift in the river broke the quiet.
“Let’s go.” Millie sighed and returned to the river, slowly breaking trail through the deep snow, opening her parka, being careful not to work up a sweat like before.
Abruptly, the valley began to narrow, turning into a steep, treeless canyon. The trail led up into the hills, and the sisters left the river to follow it. By nightfall, they made camp on a little point high above and overlooking the river. They built a great fire, for there was plenty of firewood, and sat around it for hours in silence—each preoccupied with worry.
While the stars gleamed and a waning moon momentarily slid behind a solitary silver cloud, the girls finished the last of the caribou meat. Then they huddled small and alone in the silence of the snow-covered land and the frozen river.
* * *
In the early afternoon of the next day, after trudging since sunrise, Millie and Maura came upon a clearing near the edge of a hill. Inside a fenced area, barely visible beneath the drifted snow, were dozens of miniature painted houses made of planks, most about five feet long and two or three feet tall. Some were smaller, but each was surrounded by a little white fence with a painted wooden cross erected behind the tiny house.
The girls had never before seen structures and crosses like these. Nevertheless, deep inside, they knew that this lonely field was a resting place for the dead—most likely for the inhabitants of the empty cabins they had passed along the river.
More and more, it seemed as if no one except Millie and Maura had escaped the plague. They alone would be Death’s witnesses. Their perilous journey had been for nothing. The seemingly countless days and nights of hopeful suffering had been for nothing. The courageous deaths of Tundra and Blue had been for nothing.
They stood silently for a long time, leaning against the fence surrounding the little village of the dead. Millie struggled to find something to say, something that would lift their spirits.
Finally, she realized the truth. “Someone had to bury them.”
She turned to Maura, to watch her expression. “There must be someone alive. Surely there are people still alive somewhere.”
Maura nodded. It did seem logical. They both looked again at the little houses. They wondered who would bury the two of them when they died; or would they simply lie exposed to the wild, like the carcass of the dead caribou?
At last they set off once again.
The trail leading away from the graveyard was wide. The girls had never seen such a wide trail cleared in the forest. Soon, it began to descend over the edge of the hill.
As they crested the hill, the girls stopped, astonished. Below them, the river they had been following for so long joined a much larger river, more than twice as wide. Portions of the great river were unfrozen. At the confluence were many dozens of buildings built close together, every one of them larger than any cabin the girls had ever seen, and every one of them puffing gray-white smoke into the air. Several taller buildings looked as though two or three cabins had been stacked on top of one another. There was also a large white building with a cross on its top, like those behind each tiny house at the cemetery. The girls could see people and dogs moving about. They could even hear s
led dogs barking.
Millie and Maura stood on the hilltop for a long time, holding on to each other, a rising wind blowing their long black hair. Together, as they had been since the beginning, they ran down the hill as fast as their snowshoes could carry them, their packs bouncing hard against their backs, Millie’s rifle sliding off her shoulder.
The author would like to thank his editor, Bard Young, as well as Rebecca Davis, Ana Deboo, David Collins, Jaimee Colbert, and Jack Vernon.
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Copyright © 2009 by John Smelcer
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First Edition—2009
eISBN 9781466872189
First eBook edition: April 2014
