Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

Outside the window the shadow of Annie rose before her, as it did every night at this time: piercing dark eyes, the smooth skin of her arms and throat, the quiet voice Zeke seemed to have found so alluring. Annie had been helpless here, completely dependent on Zeke — and what man could resist that? Her very existence had set Lavinia in the wrong. But she’d been patient, so patient, willing Zeke to turn away from Annie by the sheer force of her own desire. She had won him back, only to see the hurt and disappointment in his eyes as she turned away from the dead woman’s son. Was it so awful, after their long separation, to want a scrap of normal life?

She’d stopped praying when Erasmus first returned without Zeke, started again with the help of Browning, stopped again when Zeke came home and her pleas were answered. Now she folded her hands across her waist and prayed she might be carrying a son.

H e woke to their sounds in the dark: whispers, rustlings, something dropped. In the moonlight the portraits above him shimmered, faces caught behind panes of glass like dead men peering through the ice, and at first he thought the sounds came from them. But there were footsteps moving his way. The two black dogs beside him rose and bristled; he sat upright on the mattress of caribou skins, terrified but determined to be brave. They had come to kill him, he thought. Zeke and his wife, who talked about him as if he weren’t present or couldn’t understand them. They wished him dead, as his mother was dead, and had chosen this night. They were leaning over him, while the traitorous dogs said nothing.

“It’s all right,” the woman said. “Can you be very quiet?” He could hear the dogs snuffling at her hands.

The man said, “We need to take you from here, so you won’t be hurt. Will you come with us?”

Tom said nothing. He recognized the woman as the one who wasn’t Lavinia; the one whose garment his mother had worn the first day here. The man was one of the brothers but he could never tell them apart. Then the man reached out and Tom knew him as Copernicus, from the bright painty tang of his hand.

“Tom?” Copernicus said.

He wasn’t Tom; his real name was his secret and he’d never speak it among these people. Two days ago he’d decided to stop speaking altogether. But he rose to his feet when Copernicus asked; he walked from this building so full of death; he sat where they placed him and felt the ground slip as if he were on a sledge. Two other brothers appeared, but one stayed only briefly. In and out of other doors, other rooms, some still and others moving; he slept when he could, ate now and then, said nothing. The walls rattled, the floors shook, trees moved past him and then more buildings. His clothes were taken and other clothes put on him. Erasmus was here, he knew Erasmus. Sometimes he dozed against his shoulder.

The landscape changed and changed again, but it was never the one he wanted. The people so close to him talked in low worried voices, but also sat still for long stretches. Where was Zeke? Somewhere else: farther and farther away, he hoped. His people had a name for Zeke, a chain of soft syllables that meant The One Who Is Trouble. To his face, they’d said the syllables meant The Great Explorer, and Zeke had smiled and nodded his head and done his best to repeat them.

He had plans for Zeke. Tucked into his jacket were bones he’d stolen from the place where Zeke had caged him: a bird’s curved ribs, a serpent’s spine, a mouse’s foot. He needed more. When he had enough he would make a tupilaq, a nightmare skeleton built from bones of all kinds of creatures, wrapped in a skin. By the edge of some water he would set it down and say the secret words; then the tupilaq would come alive and swim across any form of water, no matter how far. Blank-eyed it would swim up to Zeke, disguised as a familiar animal; sleek fur, smooth ears. Perhaps it would travel as a deer before allowing itself to be killed. After Zeke slit down the belly and parted the flesh he’d find all the wrong bones, connected in all the wrong ways. Then he’d die.

That vision kept Tom quiet as he traveled. This wasn’t like the journeys he’d taken with his people, moving happily behind the dogs to another hunting ground. This was like the later journey, the days in the box moving over the water. They moved over land now, but he was still confined. When he could, when Erasmus would let him, he hung out the windows and filled his lungs. There were trees, and then mountains. Then very large mountains and air so cool and fresh it almost made him think of home.

When it rained he held his hands out to catch the water. Resting on the top of the sky, he believed, was the land where the dead lived — a place of light and warmth and abundant game, feasting and song and dance. His mother was there. She’d abandoned her body so that she might watch over him; those men who came later, to take what was left, had only made visible the process she’d begun. Light from the land where she’d gone shone through holes in the sky, appearing as stars. Water fell through those holes from the rivers; that water was rain. Each drop that touched his skin was a message from his mother.

The movement stopped. The door was opened from the outside. When he stepped down and saw a man missing part of his nose, his scream was the first sound he’d made in days and it rang in his own ears. He pitched forward and crouched on the ground with his arms over his head, and would not be moved.

EVEN WHEN THEY reached the cabin on the Ausable River, no one could convince Tom to open his eyes. His arms wound tightly around his knees, his eyes screwed shut, his mouth sealed, he sat without moving where Copernicus placed him, on the small, red-blanketed bed.

“Has he been like this the whole trip?” Ned asked.

“Not quite this bad,” Erasmus said. He touched Ned’s shoulder. “I’m so glad to see you.” Then he turned to Tom again. “He hasn’t said a word since he was taken from the Repository.”

Ned made coffee for the tired travelers and quietly, with the boy in the background radiating a distress that no one could soothe, they caught each other up on the events of the past few weeks. Erasmus told Ned how Linnaeus had driven the carriage to their old home, although he’d do no more than that; how Copernicus and Alexandra had tiptoed into the Repository and swept the boy away. Each of them had told a separate lie, he said.

Copernicus had told his companions he was heading west. Alexandra, during a terrible quarrel with her siblings, had said she was taking a position teaching drawing at a female academy in Cincinnati. Erasmus, knowing the way Zeke thought and imagining how he’d set about searching for them, had purchased passage for two on a ship bound for Liverpool; it would take some time before anyone discovered that they hadn’t arrived.