Kim Robinson - Shaman

Night fell in the middle of the afternoon, and the temperature plummeted. The fat fire’s warmth was palpable then, though it was little more than a big lamp, and they blocked the entry to their low shelter with snow and hides, and huddled together around the little flame, pressing against each other in a tight circle to share what warmth they could through the sides of their bodies, and holding hands out to the fire from time to time to warm them a bit before tucking them back into their underarms.

Loon was too cold to think. He sat hunched, pinching his toes, feeling in him a deep sadness that he would be unable to rescue Elga, that it all would end for him so soon. He hadn’t felt anything so strongly in a long time.

But sometime in the night the wind seemed to change, and in any case picked up. Though they couldn’t be sure of it in the dark, when a gray light crept over the eastern horizon, and they took a look outside the shelter, the wind was clearly coming from the west. They stirred a little under the hides, ate a little frozen fish to give them strength for whatever the day might bring.

With the sun blinking over the horizon, they left their shelter to have a quick look around. In the distance they could see the hills behind their camp, and the ice wall looming over the hills. Their floating island slopped in the great salt sea, getting wet around its edges. Happily it was big enough that they stayed dry in the middle, even though it was getting windier, and broken waves sloshed onto the west side of the ice, throwing up little bursts of spray.

They went back inside to stay as warm as they could. For a long time they sat there in the gloom of their shelter. Finally the raft came to a grinding halt, and they rushed out to find they were well to the south of where they had broken off, and had been blown up against new black sea ice, very thin.—Bad luck! the jende exclaimed, laughing mirthlessly.

The northers walked quickly around their little island, then had a long discussion. Crossing the black ice was going to be hard; the possibility of falling through it was all too obvious.

Kaktak spoke and mimed to Loon and the other captives, in a way that Loon did not find completely clear. It looked like he was mimicking the big white bears who lived out on the sea ice. When confronted with black ice, these ice bears lowered themselves and shoved forward on their chests and bellies, toeing their way forward as fast as possible without kicking downward. Toe pushes and finger sweeps were the most that could be risked when it came to pressure on the ice. The only thing that differed for the humans compared to the ice bears, Kaktak indicated, was that they would also hold an una in each hand, lengthwise right next to their bodies, and would push down on them to help spread their weight over a bigger patch of ice as they slithered forward.

Kaktak spoke briefly to Elhu and the other man, and then with a graceful kneel and dive, he slid onto the black ice and squiggled forward like a big lizard, always moving the unas close to him on both sides. When he had made it to gray ice he quickly stood up, and immediately began to finger water down the fur of his jacket and pants, sweeping it onto the snow under him. He shouted to the rest of them happily.—Omoo! he called, and then slid the poles back over the black ice to them. It goes!

So it would, if you were good. But knowing it could work was the main thing, and Kaktak having tested it, the rest of the stranded jende were quickly across, one at a time, over slightly different places on the ice, trying to stay close to Kaktak’s route without repeating it exactly.

When it was Loon’s turn, he banished from his mind a vision of the way loons slapped the water when taking off across a lake, and recalled instead a red water lizard he had once seen slither away from an overturned rock in a stream, looking like a live root and quickly disappearing. He crouched and cast himself forward as smoothly as he could, smacking the ice right away with his nose and mouth, so that the salty tang of the coat of water on the ice was in him as he slithered forward on knees and toes and the two clutched unas. It was an awkward kind of crawling, but soon the ice was dirty white under him, and he pushed up to his knees and got to his feet, and began to squeeze the water down and off the front of his clothes before it froze there in the fur. Even though the air was very cold, there was some kind of wetness on the new ice, made of water saltier than the great salt sea itself.—Gatzi! Kaktak said when he saw Loon’s face. Salty!

The northers were very pleased at their return to land and their escape from death, so pleased that Loon suddenly realized they had not expected to survive. He had not been able to see that in them during their time at sea, and was impressed at the way they had fronted the situation.

The other captives slithered over to the gray ice and imitated the jende, drying out their furs with their fingers as completely as possible, which left their hands pink and wet and throbbing with cold. Then the jende pulled the sleds off their ice raft by throwing ropes in loops over them, and when they caught them, tugging them over the new ice to them as gently and smoothly as they could. The black ice bowed under them, but did not break.

When they had recovered the sleds, the jende took off toward camp faster than Loon had ever seen the northers move. He soon realized it was because their clothes were damp, despite their best efforts to dry them; the chill was so numbing that they had to run to be warm enough to move at all. The captives followed as best they could. After the running created some warmth in them, they slowed to a walk and caught their breath, but soon chilled and were forced to run again. So it went, run then walk, run then walk, but mostly run, huffing and puffing so hard that their blood should have been burning inside them, though it wasn’t; the best they could do was to keep just warm enough to move.

Loon followed the jende, and made no attempt to help the other two captives falling behind him. Surely that was the northers’ job. But the northers did not help, did not even look back, and when Loon looked over his shoulder he saw the last man, named Bron, was falling and struggling back to his feet. Loon waited, and when Bron caught up to him, he tied the man’s sled to his own, freeing Bron up to make his way back without pulling a sled.

Except a little while after that, he looked back again and saw that Bron had collapsed onto the snow. He circled back and left Bron’s sled behind, pulled the man up onto his own sled, then took up his rope again and heaved forward to start. He pulled and pulled on the loop on the end of the rope, and got going at last with his legs burning hot, while the rest of him burned cold; the hot pushed from inside out, the cold from outside in, but both painful. And yet somehow the two together would be enough to see him home. He began to sing one of Thorn’s running songs as he approached the northers’ camp, and he only stopped singing when he arrived at the tunnel entrance to the big house’s cold trap and went in to get help for Bron, still lying on the sled. He was not sure what the northers would make of his rescue of a fellow captive, and he was irritated with himself for standing out to them in any way. He went to his corner of the ground level and stripped to his leggings and stood right over the captive’s lamp fire to get warm and dry. Thawing out caused some of the fiercest burning of all, as usual, but it was all on the surface, simply the burn of feeling coming back into his numbed hands, then his face and ears, and, after he had eaten a lot of fish dipped in marmot fat, even his feet. Meanwhile the northers carried Bron up to the middle platform in the house and put him by the fire there, and only when he was coherent did they send him back down to the captives’ level to spend the night. Once down there again, he squeezed Loon’s arm with a look that Loon did not want to see on any captive’s face; he did not want to think of himself as one of them, or as a helpful stranger. But in the nights that followed, Loon sometimes woke to find Bron draped against his back, making of himself a living blanket in the coldest part of the nights. They did not know any words in the same language except for the northers’ words, and those words none of them spoke aloud. The ground floor under the big house was a quiet place.