Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 17 - The Garden of Death

The following day, Daniel went to his employer and explained that he would have to continue his journey. After some objections, he was paid his salary. He got hold of food and warm clothes and a pistol with ammunition in case he came across wild animals. Then, he began travelling eastwards across the vast tundra, which seemed endless!

He reached Naryan-Mar without any serious incidents, and now he started to hear the other language, that Vendel had taught him. The language of the Yurak-Samoyeds.

Daniel had not expected them to be so short. He was more than a head taller than the tallest of them! And they were so kind! They smiled from ear to ear, and when they heard his clumsy and helpless attempts at speaking their language there was no end to all the good they would do for him. Naryan-Mar was no city, only a small settlement, so the news of Daniel’s arrival spread quickly. They stared at him and admired him, and he got some idea of what a sensation Vendel Grip must have been. Vendel was blond and so much taller than Daniel, who was not exactly short.

After having eaten his way through several feasts in which reindeer meat and fish were the main ingredients, he could, at long last, open up about what he wanted to know. The worst thing was that he had no idea of the name of the place where Vendel had been.

He tried to explain. He spoke about the Yamal Peninsula and the estuary of the River Ob, and said that Vendel had come from there and had been led across the river at the foot of the peninsula to the summer camp of the Samoyeds by the Kara Sea.

The crowd looked at him questioningly. They knew the Kara Sea but all the place names were Russian, not in their own language.

It was not until he mentioned Taran-gai that he got a response. A gasp of horror went through the crowd. Now he had something as his point of departure.

“The summer camp that I am talking about, is situated east of Taran-gai. In a bay.”

Then they all knew what he was talking about. Now a unanimous “Aha” could be heard in the large tent. And then, they mentioned a place name he had not heard before. Either Vendel did not know about it or else he had thought it too insignificant to mention. They called the place in the bay Nor.

“Well, how do I reach Nor?” Daniel wanted to know. “Is the tundra accessible?”

They shuddered. “No, no, you can’t cross overland,” they all said at once. “It’s Taran-gai, don’t you see?!”

It was obvious that reaching this place would not be easy.

“You’ll have to travel by sea,” a man said. “It’ll take a long time, and it can be dangerous to get there. But it’s the only way.”

“All right. Then I must get a boat.”

They laughed. “You can’t go on your own!”

Then, they began to talk among themselves, so fast that Daniel, with his scant knowledge of their language, was unable to follow them.

Finally, one of the short men with the broad faces turned to him and nodded. “Isu and I will join you. Don’t worry. We’ve been there before.” It was not difficult to guess who Isu was. He was brimming with good nature, like a rooster.

“Thanks, that’s very kind of you.”

Then Isu said something that made Daniel start. “We’ve attended the annual games up there. A white man revived the traditional open competition. Many, many years ago.”

“A tall, fair-haired man?”

“Precisely. A good man!”

“He was my relative: Vendel Grip. That is why I want to go there.”

The crowd was delighted. There was a renewed serving of food and drinks. Vendel had certainly made himself popular. Daniel said cautiously: “I believe he married a girl – Sinsiew?”

Isu and his friends looked sad. They said that Sinsiew had passed away. She died in childbirth.

Oh, dear! Daniel felt cold all over. Was it the curse that had struck once more? But had not a boy been born in that generation up in Taran-gai? Then surely ...

He dared to raise another careful question: “And the child? What happened to it?” The men looked at one another and smiled. Then they said conspiratorially: “Just you wait and see!”

“Surely you can give me a clue?”

Isu turned serious again. “Remember that her maternal grandmother was from Taran-gai. And her father was of a foreign race.”

“Then it’s a girl!”

“Yes. Her name’s Shira. And you don’t even need to ask for her. The very moment you see her you’ll know who she is.”

Daniel breathed deeply. His first task – which was to find Vendel’s child – seemed to have been accomplished.

Only the wonderful people here did not know that he – and Vendel – were also related to the people of Taran-gai. So this Shira was of the Ice People on both her mother’s and her father’s sides.

They had no time to waste, because the summer was short by the Arctic Ocean. As yet it had not even begun, but Daniel had a lot to accomplish in a short time so they left the following day.

The boat was terribly small, made of walrus skin stretched over thin birch poles. Daniel could see that it was a beautiful piece of work, but how on earth were they going to cope at sea with it? He could not help feeling slightly uneasy.

First they sailed out through the vast delta of the Pechora River until they caught sight of the open sea. It sparkled cold and green, dotted with icebergs: they were not so large in the bay but Daniel could discern some majestically big ones away to the north. They also passed between ice floes, lingering after the winter, but these posed no problem for the Samoyeds. Daniel alternated sitting in the stern, keeping a lookout, with helping the others paddle and occasionally row the light boat.

The trip took much longer that he had expected. Most of the time they stayed close to the shore. Daniel was pleased that he had got hold of warm clothes, because the nights were cold. They travelled day and night because there were three of them, so one could rest while the two others sat at the oars.

Daniel had a bad conscience because he had absolutely nothing to pay the men with. He told them so. No, that did not matter. On the way back, they planned to do some hunting and fishing, and in this way they would earn some money. It was true that he had seen many sea animals, both big and small. He was grateful that they were waiting to hunt until the return journey. He did not want to take part in any of it.

They had already decided how he was to get back. The previous year, a seal-catcher boat had come to Naryan-Mar bound for Nor. It was to return to Arkhangelsk in late summer and then Daniel would probably be able to sail back with it. Then I will undertake the same journey as Vendel, he thought. I only hope I won’t lose my legs the way he did. But it was a long time since the first boat had arrived in this part of the world, and great progress had been made since then. The sailors had probably learned more about the dangers of the Arctic Ocean.

One day they had an unpleasant experience, when they suddenly caught sight of a polar bear drifting on an ice floe. The men shouted in agitation, clearly unprepared, and eyed their primitive weapons – the crossbow-like harpoon and the knives. Daniel made a dismissive gesture. He felt exceptionally safe.

“It won’t attack us.”

The others looked at him in surprise.

“I just know it,” was all he said.

He touched the mandrake under his shirt. Of course, he was taking a huge risk. He knew that. The polar bear was now so close that it only needed to jump into the water and swim up to the boat, and with a single blow from its great paw they would all be lying helpless in the water.

But Daniel – and the two men – knew very well that their weapons were not of much use against this huge animal that was staring them in the eye. The harpoon would only wound it, provoking it even more. In order to use a knife, the men would have to get very close to it. This was not a prospect that tempted them.