Kim Robinson - Shaman

Out on the middle of the river they could hear the open water downstream better than ever. The ice under them was heaving a little under its snow blanket, and it groaned all around them, including upstream. Clearly it was feeling the break-up moving upstream toward it, and so it was flexing in place and crying out, whether in fear or desire Loon could not tell. He shuffled forward at the same deliberate speed. The other three were bunched right behind him, keeping a little less distance from each other than the northers would have in the same situation.

Downstream a gigantic crack and a number of low booms announced another break-off. Ice plates reared downstream, and the black flood was more visible than ever. The roar was like rolling thunder.

Loon shuffled along as fast as he could go. He had no awareness of Badleg; his whole body buzzed equally. He kept his eyes fixed on the ice they had yet to cross. They were getting closer to the other bank: no river is very wide if you run across it. The outside turn of a bend is where the ice is thinnest. And this time there were open leads blocking their way.

Loon veered to the left, upstream, and poked ahead to make sure the ice was solid under its blanket of snow. The pokes sounded some solid thunks, which seemed to indicate ice thick enough to hold him; he turned right and shuffled quickly over that section to the bank, and stomped up the snow there, establishing steps for the other three to step into. The other three followed him up very neatly, as if performing a big-step dance they had danced a thousand times before.

When Thorn joined them at the top of the bank, he tilted his head to the clouds and howled. The others joined in, they howled like wolves. In the roar of the breakup and the wind they could barely hear themselves.

I myself howled, and then slipped back into my place.

Now the burn of their crossing throbbed all through Loon, and he discovered to his surprise that Badleg was griping ferociously. His whole left leg was hot to the touch. He went to a fallen tree trunk, swiped the new snow off, and sat. He rested his sack on the front of his snowshoes, his elbows on the sack, his chin on his hands. He watched the great roaring spectacle of the river as the ice plates broke off and clunked downstream.

Elga sat beside him. Click crouched on a rock. Thorn took off his sack, put it down on the snow, and did a little dance in place, singing the break-up song again.

—Shut up or you’ll make the ice stay! Loon exclaimed.

Thorn ignored him, if he heard. And as they were almost certainly going to stay sitting there until this part of the river broke up completely, it was only setting him up for an I-told-you-so. So Loon shut up and watched Thorn sing and howl. After it went on for a while, Loon dug around in his sack, and was shocked to find his food bags so small. Somehow he had thought there was another full bag in there, and there wasn’t.

—How are we for food? he asked.

But at that moment the river ice straight out from them heaved up and broke, then floated away around the bend, white rafts smashing together. The noise was incredible. The rushing black water now visible under them was shocking to see in a world so white and still.

Now they could hear each other if they shouted, but there was nothing to say, so they sat there speechlessly watching the spectacle. Ice broke off and floated by, raft after raft of it. Upstream the black water poured out from under a jagged white line that moved farther and farther away. The whole valley boomed with the noise of it.

Upstream, at the bend where they could see no farther, a shallows had been revealed, studded with rocks that nobbled the water and caused gnashes of white to bubble the black sheen. The rushing clatter and tumble of water in a rapids came back to them, a sound they hadn’t heard all winter. Ice chunks kept sweeping by. After a time the river was all black, from the bend upstream to the bend downstream.

Thorn finished his break-up song.—No one’s going to be crossing this river for a good long time, he said.—So let’s make a fire!

They moved a little up and away from the bank, and found a flat spot in the middle of a small grove of bush pines and birch. By now the storm had covered everything with snow, so they could do nothing but stomp down a space in the snow with their snowshoes, and move some stones from a nearby boulder pile, the heaviest they could carry, to make a rough fire platform and some seating for themselves. They were going to have to bed down on snow; but with a fire, and their caribou hides, that wouldn’t be too bad.

The work of making camp took them the rest of that day, and by the time they were done, Loon was a one-legged man. Thorn had brought an ember from their last night’s fire with him in his belt flap, and with that and some duff and fat-soaked twigs and artful breathing, he got the fire restarted, after which he was very pleased with himself. In the cloudy dusk they settled in around their fire, their nook of trees again reinforced by Elga into walls of brush and snow. And between them they had gathered a tall stack of firewood.

It should have been a good moment. No one would be able to cross the river behind them, not for a fortnight for sure, and maybe not until late in the summer. So they had escaped the ice men, barring a twist of fate in which the northers took a completely different route to this same spot. That was so unlikely that it was not worth worrying about. So it was quite an accomplishment, outrunning such determined hunters. They should have been proud. And their fire was bright in the gloom.

But they had so little food. And it was still snowing.

They took account of what they had. Thorn had a nearly full bag of nuts, and he counted out a few for each of them, and passed around his water bag. They ate slowly as they dried themselves by the fire. They were quite wet, so that took a while. Loon had not even completed drying his things when he began falling asleep beyond any ability to fight it off. He gave up and lay on the snow just outside their fire ring, curled to stay as wrapped in his hide as he could. He was just barely aware that Elga was doing the same next to him.

Through the night he slept hard, only waking when cold air poured in some gap in his wrap and chilled part of him. He would shift, pull the hide closer, check the fire, throw a branch on if one was needed, then tuck his chin on his chest and fall asleep again. It kept snowing through the night, so it never got too cold.

In the morning they woke and stirred as soon as it was light. It was still snowing, and had become windier again. Even in the dim light it was obvious to Loon how gaunt his companions had become, and he supposed he looked the same; he could feel hunger pinching the inside of his backbone, making him weak and light-headed.

They sat up, added branches to the fire, drank water, regarded their remaining food, placed on a cleared stone next to the fire for their inspection. There wasn’t much. Nuts, dried meat, honey seedcake. Thorn heaved a heavy sigh as he regarded it, and took out his sharpest blade and began to cut very thin strips from the edge of his butt patch, lengths like the cords he had used to sew Elga’s clothes. Leather and fur: not an appetizing meal. But he handed strings to each of them, and started chewing one of his own. One nut, a bite of dried meat, a piece of leather and fur. Biting off the leather was hard. One chewed the leather for a long time before swallowing it.

The snow continued to fall, hissing into the fire. The renewed wind called up the choruses of trees on the slopes around them. It was not a good day to travel. Possibly they could dig up some roots to eat, if they spent the day foraging under the blanket of new snow. And they had a good bed of embers here. So it seemed like they should hunker down and wait another day, and Loon watched Thorn apprehensively as Thorn went out to take a look. But the moment he left their little knot of trees, three enormous claps of thunder broke, booming from ridge to ridge overhead, as if some river above the clouds were experiencing its own great break-up.