Legends of the North Cascades

by Jonathan Evison

  As always, it was a relief to see the old familiar library, with its smudgy windows and mossy brick facade. As awkward as town could be, the library was the only place that Bella didn’t feel like she stuck out. The librarians were always well intentioned and helpful, even when they were kind of weird and rude, possessing what her dad called “bad social skills.” Though Bella would never tell him as much, his own social skills could have used some work, lately. For example, the way he looked straight ahead when he walked down the sidewalk, and never seemed to notice the people he passed. Most of the time he didn’t even notice if they nodded or smiled at him. Also, the way he never smiled in public. And the way he never chatted like other adults did, about the weather, or the price of gas, or anything else.

  Arriving in the children’s section, Bella headed hungrily for the low shelves, past the puzzles and the baby toys, past the early readers to the chapter books, where she began running her fingers over the spines, each one a little doorway to another world. Unless, of course, the writing was crappy. Like when they overexplained things, or talked to the reader in a parentizing way, like the reader wasn’t adult enough, or too dumb to understand something. The really important thing about stories was not the writing, though. What was important were the lives of the characters in the story, how we recognized ourselves in them, how we connected with them, how we cared about them, how they became real. People who weren’t us, people who were maybe nothing like us. People that did and said things we might never do or say. Reading a good story was like seeing into another person. At least, that’s how Bella understood it, and Bella had actually been inside of other people, or at least, they’d been inside of her.

  “Hey, you go to Nelson,” said a voice.

  Bella’s stomach was aflutter when she turned and immediately recognized a girl from Mrs. Gaskill’s third grade class, though she didn’t know the girl’s name.

  “Hey,” said Bella, suddenly self-conscious about her appearance.

  “You were in Miss Martine’s,” said the girl. “I had her for second. She used to give out gum on Fridays.”

  “Not for us,” said Bella. “She just gave out stickers.”

  “That’s lame,” said the girl.

  “I dunno, maybe, I guess,” said Bella to the empty-handed girl. “So, are you getting books?”

  “Nah,” she said. “My mom’s just here to use the computer. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Bella.”

  “I’m Grace,” she said. “So, what are you doing?”

  “Getting books.”

  “We just get videos,” Grace said. “Have you seen A-X-L?”

  “No.”

  “What about Ice Dragon?”

  “No.”

  “What have you seen?”

  “I’ve seen Wall-E, and Ratatouille, and Frozen. And I’ve seen The Iron Giant like five times.”

  “Those are ancient,” said the girl.

  “I don’t watch too many DVDs because I live in the mountains,” said Bella.

  “Duh. Everybody in V-Falls lives in the mountains.”

  “I mean way in the mountains. We don’t even have a TV, or electricity, or a lot of stuff.”

  “That sucks,” said the girl. “Is that why your clothes are all dirty?”

  Bella felt the heat rush to her face.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “I must’ve got dirty walking down here, or something.”

  “Is your dad that guy with the beard, the one with the big pack?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He must’ve got dirty, too,” said Grace.

  Before Bella could formulate a reply, Grace’s mom, who looked pretty proud of herself for somebody checking their internet at the library, and maybe a little too made up for the occasion, suddenly walked up, looking down her nose at Bella in an unpleasant way, as she shepherded Grace away by the wrist without a word. Not until they were halfway down the 700 aisle did Grace’s mother quietly reprimand her daughter.

  Bella’s heart hardened into a little fist. Maybe her dad was right, maybe it was a disease, maybe people really were getting worse.

  S’tka

  Five winters had passed since S’tka committed U’ku’let to the frozen ground. Five years of ice and hunger and solitude, of strain and worry and sometimes terror. Five mostly joyless cycles of isolation, and habitual survival. Five years serving her son. Five years hiding in the reeds from strangers. Five years wondering why the world did not offer her more.

  And yes, five years wondering nightly what had become of the clan who forsook her to this desolation. Did they die out there on the ice in their quest for something more? Did they weaken, day-by-day, moon-by-moon, as the wolves patiently stalked and menaced them to the feeble end? Perhaps, beleaguered and half-starving, her clan was sacked in the night by another. Knowing Yq’mat, Kt’ak, and Ok’eh, they might just as easily have eaten themselves.

  Or maybe, just maybe, they found their new world beyond the ice. If so, what did it look like? What did it promise? Was it everything they ever dreamed of? Was it their destiny, after all? If so, why, oh why, did the Great Provider set it so far out of reach? Why the perilous, frozen wasteland to traverse?

  Whatever the possibilities, S’tka would have liked to believe that world was out there, if not for her own sake, for N’ka’s. Were it not for the need to sustain N’ka, surely she would’ve walked out onto the ice and given herself to the wolves winters ago. But N’ka demanded her survival. And as ever, S’tka did what was demanded of her.

  Not to say that N’ka was not a revelation. N’ka the irrepressible, N’ka, spry and endlessly curious. N’ka, furiously awake to the world. See him sharpening his sticks and beating his chest like a man, though he’s never seen an actual man within a half-mile that he could possibly remember. See him sulk when his pride was hurt. See him crouching silently behind rocks, biding his time, saving his breath, not answering his mother’s call, only to leap out and startle her. See him laugh, see him scratch himself, see him empty his bladder as though it were a celebration. This is the spirit that men work so hard to preserve, to remain boys. And frankly, S’tka couldn’t blame them. When did she ever celebrate a piss?

  What little joy S’tka experienced, she experienced vicariously through N’ka, who was like the grass pushing up through the ice. Each day S’tka could feel the child longing to stretch out, to pursue his curiosity, to cast himself toward the light of the world.

  “Where are all the other people?” he asked, sitting in the glow of the fire.

  “They are spread out everywhere,” she said. “Here and there, as far as the eye can see.”

  “Why don’t we see them then?”

  “You’ve seen them, N’ka. Moving through the valley.”

  “But we never talk to them. We never stop them.”

  “Not all people can be trusted,” she said flatly.

  “But some people can, can’t they?”

  “Go to sleep, N’ka.”

  She could not shelter him forever, this she knew. Five, maybe six more winters, if she could sustain the two of them that long, before his jaw dropped, and he began breathing out of his mouth, before he started growing the first downy hairs on his chest, and between his legs, and asserting his manhood. Whatever she owed N’ka, whatever she wished for him, whatever she tried to build or preserve for him, would be irrelevant when that time came. Like his father before him, N’ka was certain to cast his own lot, no matter how foolish.

  S’tka wished she could say the same for herself.

  The Stranger

  Dave had been tracking the stranger’s progress since he crested the green lip of the canyon, a thousand feet below. From his perch at the edge of the bluff, Dave watched the lanky figure switch-backing up the incline for a half mile, pausing intermittently to catch his breath, and drink from his water bottle, carabiners glinting like mirrors in the weak autumn sunlight.

  He was coming from the west, so Dave knew he likely came in on FS 1
220, the old logging spur out of Lundgren. Still, it was a pretty decent hike from the end of the road, maybe three miles and two thousand vertical feet. Dave stood at the edge of the bluff, partially obscured by the great, gray outcropping of rock, monitoring the stranger’s progress as he disappeared behind the hump, then reappeared minutes later on the near side of the saddle, walking with purpose through the meadow.

  Before the top of the stranger’s head ever broke the upper plane of the meadow, before his khaki shirt and pea green pants emerged into plain view, Dave had already made him as a ranger. Retreating to the fire, still smoldering from breakfast, Dave propped one boot casually on the ring of the pit and awaited his visitor, hoping that Bella would not return from her wanderings to complicate matters.

  As he crested the edge of the bluff and stood upright, Dave could see that the stranger was quite tall, maybe 6’4", rangy, and a little stooped, like a guy who never wanted to be tall.

  “Howdy,” he said, approaching the fire pit.

  He was maybe forty years old, with some acne scarring on his cheeks, which were slick and ruddy with exertion. He wore a shiny badge, but Dave couldn’t read the name, nor did he care to know it.

  “Saw your fire,” said the trespasser, pulling up short of breath. “Decided I should check it out.”

  “There a burn ban I don’t know about?” said Dave.

  “Not at present. Just playing it on the safe side,” said the ranger, perusing the camp. “How long you been up here?”

  “Four days,” said Dave.

  “Four days, huh?” He pursed his lips, nodding his head in consideration.

  Just then, Bella appeared out of the brush. The ranger turned twenty degrees and offered her a nod, doffing his cap.

  “I heard voices,” said Bella.

  “Hello, young lady,” said the ranger with a pleasant grin. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

  “Mirabella,” she said. “But nobody calls me that.”

  “Ah,” said the ranger. “Kind of late in the season to be camping out, isn’t it?” he observed.

  “Maybe for some,” said Dave.

  “Hunting?”

  “Nah.”

  The ranger continued to look around the camp, considering the neatly stacked wood beneath the tarp, the well-worn chopping block, and the row of plastic water bottles, tucked tidily against the face of the rock hillside.

  “Where you from?” he said, at last.

  “Just down the canyon in V-Falls,” said Dave.

  The stranger registered the information

  “So, just camping then?” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Dave. “Been camping in these woods my whole life.”

  “In a cave?”

  Dave hinted at a smile.

  “On this occasion, yeah.” He said. “Pretty convenient, right? Gets awful windy up here sometimes. Not the best for tent camping.”

  “Looks like you’ve made some improvements,” he said, indicating the furrowed soil.

  “Not my work,” said Dave. “But it’s a good spot. Others have been here before.”

  “Looks like you’re fixed pretty well, all right. You armed?”

  “Yessir, I am. A pair of .22s and a .458, all licensed,” said Dave. “Teaching my girl how to shoot—with the .22, of course.”

  The ranger nodded his head.

  “Looks as though you’re dug in for a while,” he said. “How long you plan on staying?”

  “Not long,” said Dave. “About a week.”

  The ranger set his hand on Bella’s head.

  “Well, aren’t you a lucky girl?” he said, mussing her hair. “I didn’t realize school was out.”

  “I don’t go to school anymore,” she said.

  “Is that right?” said the ranger.

  “She’s homeschooled,” said Dave.

  “Ah,” said the ranger. “Well, can’t argue with that. My sister down in Lacy did as much with my nephew. And she says she’s glad she did it. He just graduated from Wazu.”

  Just then Boris and Boots emerged from the depths of the cave, the latter pausing to splay her spotted arms and white paws way out in front of her, bow her back, and stretch extravagantly, while Boris, black and shiny as his mother, began to push himself up against the ranger’s ankle, purring like a sump pump.

  “They were already here,” said Dave, referring to the cats. “They could probably tell you who was working that soil.”

  “Hmph,” said the ranger, apparently not convinced. “It’s a wonder they can survive up here.”

  “Cat’s a resourceful creature,” said Dave. “Especially next to a dog. A dog can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble.”

  “I’ve got two beagles,” said the ranger. “They wouldn’t last two hours up here before they’d run off and get themselves in some kind of trouble. Probably corner a wildcat, or nose their way into a bear den.”

  The ranger squatted down to scratch Boots behind the ears. The imploring cat all but collapsed at his feet, exposing her nippled underside.

  “Doesn’t act like any feral cat, does she?” he said.

  “Guess not,” said Dave. “Long as they don’t follow us home, I’m okay with them.”

  The ranger left off petting Boots and rose to his feet.

  “Well, anyway,” he said. “You two stay warm. And keep that fire down to a reasonable size.”

  “Yessir, we will.”

  “Looks to me like you’re the responsible type,” said the ranger. “What’d you say your name was?”

  “You never asked. But it’s Cartwright.”

  “You register for a backwoods permit, Mr. Cartwright?”

  “Not a designated wilderness area, as I understand it—not like the park. Am I wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong,” he said. “Always a good idea to let folks know you’re out here.”

  “My people know right where I’m at,” said Dave.

  “That’s good. You’d be wise to get back to town before the weather blows in. Could get nasty.”

  “We’re paying attention,” said Dave.

  “And just so you know,” said the ranger, as though it were almost an afterthought. “Thirteen days is the limit for camping up here.”

  “Is that so?” said Dave. “Never heard that before.”

  “That’s the rule,” said the ranger.

  “Heck, thirteen days is more than I need out here at a stretch. I reckon I’d get a little stir crazy after two weeks,” said Dave.

  “A week’s about all I can take, myself,” said the ranger. “All the same, thirteen days is the limit. Just so we’re clear.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” said Dave.

  “You do that, Mr. Cartwright,” he said. “Good day, Mirabella. You be good at homeschool, you hear? I’ll probably be back through in a couple weeks, but I imagine you’ll be long gone by then. Right?”

  Bella flashed Dave an unsure look.

  “Like I said, we’ll be clearing out of here in a week or so,” Dave said.

  “Okay, then,” said the ranger. “Last thing I need up here is another squatter.”

  “I’m no squatter,” said Dave.

  “Glad to hear it,” said the ranger. “You take care, now.”

  And with that the ranger began making his way down the face of the bluff, and was soon crossing the meadow, with one final look back over his shoulder. Dave waved cheerfully, though the ranger’s sudden appearance had gone a long way in darkening his mood.

  “Daddy, you lied,” said Bella, once the ranger was out of sight. “We’re not only staying a week.”

  “It’s no business of his how long we’re staying, baby.”

  “But he’s a ranger. Doesn’t that make it his business?”

  “No, baby, actually it doesn’t.”

  “He said we can only stay thirteen days.”

  “He’s wrong, buddy,” said Dave. “It’s not up to anybody but us where we stay, or how long we stay for.”

&nbs
p; S’tka

  Slogging ankle deep through the snow on a downhill course, her ragged breaths sawing at the frozen air, S’tka observed the signs of another early spring all around her. The valley was no longer strewn with ice. The saplings propagating along the edges of the corridor had begun to crowd in on the grassland. These seedlings were not stunted in permafrost, nor bowed beneath the weight of the winter’s snow. S’tka saw life awakening all around her amidst the sprawling white world, saw it tentatively peeking through the ground, almost but not quite ready to commit.

  In the deepest folds of the basin there was mud like she’d never seen before, mud gathering in wallows, mud running like rivers, mud oozing down the hillsides, where it gathered in great, gloppy marshes. It was perilous, this mud, it could mire you, pull you down and suffocate you. It could bury you alive.

  But today, the mud was not their adversary. Today the mud was their ally.

  N’ka struggled to keep pace with his mother through the wet snow, his outsized spear further impeding his progress.

  “Are we almost there?” he said.

  “Almost,” she said.

  Down the slushy hillside they progressed, the snowpack vanishing as they descended, until they reached the bottomlands, dappled golden and green.

  “Are we here?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  They marched north through the basin, sticking to the reedy edges for concealment. It had been nine years since S’tka had spoken to another human besides N’ka, and should anybody cross her path now, she was not about to start.

  “You said we were almost there.”

  “Shush,” she said.

  For a half-mile, they trudged north with their spears, the great serrated peaks of the high country scraping the blue sky. Were it not such an unforgiving place it might have been beautiful.

  Finally, they arrived at the edge of a muddy morass near the foot of a sluice-like slide.