So they stayed in camp that summer, and some of them went to Cedar Salmon River for the fall run, and some went out to hunt the herds of horses that came through the gorge, driving them up kolby canyons from which they could not escape. Those who stayed in camp trapped deer. They had to gather enough food to get through the winter, and also have enough to give back to the Raven pack what they had given them in the hunger spring, plus a little more as thanks. It was quite a task, given the loss of the caribou harvest, and it was interesting as the fall months passed to find that they could do it; all but the return to the Ravens, anyway.
—We may have to wait on that a year, Schist admitted.—Or see what happens in the spring, and decide then.
—We’ll have to make a compensation to the northers, too, Thorn warned him.—When we go to the eight eight next year. Even if it was their fault. The corroborators will make the judgment, and it could be against us. So we need to be ready for that too. But that shouldn’t be food, it has to be something else.
Loon had an idea about that.—We took some of their snowshoes when we escaped, and broke the rest. So we could give the snowshoes back, but better.
—Better?
—I can make snowshoes better than theirs, and we could give them those.
Thorn nodded thoughtfully.—That’s the kind of thing the corroborators like. We’ll tell them that we forgive the northers for stealing Elga, so they have to forgive us for whatever we did to them when we got you two out of there. We’ll give back the snowshoes we took, but they’ll be even better. Then let bygones be bygones, or else we’ll fight them to the death. And the corroborators don’t like fighting at the eight eight.
Schist said,—It sounds good. No one wants the ice men thinking they can push around the corroboree. So it might work. And we need to go back.
After that, as part of his fall foraging, Loon kept an eye out for wood to use in making snowshoes. They had stolen four pair, so he intended to make that many, ignoring the memory of the many more he had broken. The ones he made were going to be better than the jende’s snowshoes. He had thought about this sometimes while tromping over the snow by the great salt sea, hauling the jende’s sleds. They had to make their snowshoes out of the gnarled little spruce trees that filled the nearby ravines, and with occasional pieces of driftwood they collected from the shore. Little trees made for little lengths of wood, and so their snowshoes were strapped-together things. Down here under the sun, the trees were so much more big and various that there were all kinds of tough woods that could be used.
And Loon now had an image in his eye, which he painted on a flat rock. He was quite sure that the most important thing for a snowshoe was that the foot be held steady, while the frame was still free to rotate up and down over the ball of the foot. The jende had solved the problem of these contrary requirements by strapping their tall boots onto mammoth tusk crossbars that crossed the snowshoe just behind the toe hole, so that the toe of the boot could angle through the snowshoe into the snow when you went uphill, and the snowshoe would stay flat when you took a stride on flat ground. Their crossbar tie worked well enough on flat snow, and when going straight up or down a slope, but on any kind of a traverse the boot would twist and slide, and a great effort had to be made to place the foot as flatly as possible on the snowshoe, and the snowshoe also as flat as could be on the snow. On traverses this couldn’t really work, so one was always slipping, and it was easy to tear straps, or break the bar under the foot away from the rounded frame. A broken snowshoe makes a bad day, as the saying went; and yet it happened pretty often.
The way to secure the foot on the snowshoe, Loon had decided, was to lash a wooden boot sole to a tough crossbar stick across the back of the toe hole, with a wrap made of bear leather sewed to this boot sole, so that the whole thing was a permanent part of the snowshoe. One would then place one’s boot on the wooden sole and tie the wrap over it. One’s foot would be stabilized on the wooden sole, which would make traverses very much easier. With a strong frame made of a single curve of ash wood, and wide cross straps of leather, or spruce roots, tied to the frame, the result would be very strong. He could consult with Heather and Sage about the best knots to use. Also, antler tips lashed or glued to the front end of the wooden soles would give them more grab going uphill, which would be a great thing, and they would be almost retracted when the sole was flat to the shoe, which it would be during a downhill glissade.
He could see it so well, he easily drew it: the best snowshoes ever. The northers simply didn’t have the ash trees to make them, even if they did suddenly think up Loon’s design, which he doubted they would, having not done it before. They lived on a coastal plain, while Loon was a hill person; maybe that explained it and maybe it didn’t, but when the time came and the northers tried Loon’s snowshoes, they would see they were better, and never make them the old way again. Maybe. It was worth a try.
So all that fall and winter, while Thorn was struggling with Click’s ghost, and the rest of them were packing on their winter’s fat by eating and sleeping as much as possible, Loon spent a lot of his time in camp working on snowshoes. Quite a few of the pack got interested in what he was doing, because whenever the snow was soft they themselves went out on snowshoes that they had never taken much trouble to make. But there were a lot of storms that winter, and better snowshoes would be a good thing, all agreed.
Thorn was interested but dubious.—You need to make sure they have some give. If they’re too rigid they’ll break under a strain, and then you’ve got no snowshoe at all. Better to give a little over and over than give it all at once.
Loon nodded. It was true that his design would only work if the foot bar was very strong and well attached to the frame, and the wooden sole well attached to the foot bar. These were the parts that would be tested the most, time after time in the ordinary course of walking, and with extra force during traverses and step-throughs and glissades. So he did a little jumping up and down on them while they were suspended between rocks, to see what they could handle. They performed pretty well. Some he found difficult to break no matter how hard he tried. That was really pleasing.
Heather took an interest in these tests, because she liked tests. She came over and watched Loon closely, and even made some jumps herself.—Try making them a few different ways, she said,—and see how they do before you make any more. Different shapes for the shoe, different attachments and bindings. I wonder, could you reinforce where the foot bar fits into the frame? Make frame sockets out of tusk or antler?
Loon tried various things. There was a lot of time that winter around the fire, during the long nights and the stormy days, so much time that it was hard to sleep through all of it. Elga was sewing new clothes for him and Lucky, and all in all, there was little he was needed for once night fell. So he worked on the shoes. Eventually Thorn came to agree that the wider variety of trees in their region, especially ash, and the sheer number and size of trees, should allow for the making of snowshoes superior to the northers’, and any design improvements would be good too. Being better would make them an excellent compensation, because they would compensate while also being a little put-down. There was no doubt they were going to be locking horns with the northers at the eight eight one way or another, so a little poke in the eye was always a good thing. You had to front up to such crass barbarians, he said, especially if you happened to have scalded some of them for their badness.—But they can’t be so stiff they break, he said more than once.—You can always deal with a little slip and slide on a traverse, but a break can be a really bad thing.
—I know, Loon said, and was about to explain yet again how much flex there was in ash wood, and how the foot bars were to be seated in mammoth tusk sockets, when he saw that Thorn was staring white-eyed across the fire again. The hair on Loon’s arms prickled, and Badleg started humming inside his ankle. Slowly Thorn pulled his flute from his belt, and again breathed through it the low tune of his apology. He had recently begun adding to
it some birdlike notes that sounded like Click’s roop roop. As he played this song he continued to look across the fire, eyes still round, pleading with Click’s ghost to understand, to forgive.
During this particular visitation Heather was sitting by the fire, using its light to see dried branches of various herbs, plucking off their leaves and seeds and making careful piles on little patches of qiviut cloth, made from the underfur of the musk ox. She continued to do this without indicating in any way that she saw what was happening to Thorn.
It was only when she and Loon were alone the next morning, by the purling and chuckling ford of Upper Creek, that she said to Loon,
—Is it Click that Thorn thinks he’s seeing?
Loon didn’t want to talk about it, but he could not help but nod, almost in the same way Click would have.
She stared at him as he looked at the ground.—What happened to Click? How did he die?
Again Loon didn’t want to speak, but the words came out of his mouth anyway, like rocks he was spitting.—We woke up one morning and he was dead.
He told Heather about how they then took his frozen body along to use as a sled, a sled that they ate as they went, because without it they would have died. He told her how Badleg had forced him first to ride on Click’s back for a day, then to sit on Click’s frozen body and be pulled by Elga, while Thorn found the way. How Click’s ghost might have moved into Badleg during that time, because Click’s legs were among the first parts of him they had eaten.
Heather listened in silence, only nodding occasionally to show Loon that she heard him and understood. She sniffed from time to time.
When he was done she heaved a sigh.
—You need to collect Click’s bones and give him a proper burial. The ravens have cleaned them by now.
—We know. But until then…
She shrugged.—It’s going to be a long winter. It may be he will never leave this, no matter how long he lives. You never know how he’ll respond to things. He’s a hard man to guess.
—That’s true, Loon said.
Come second month of winter, he had the best pair of snowshoes he could make. When he was satisfied with them, or had defeated his dissatisfactions as much as he was able, he made another pair just like it. He invited Thorn to take a walk with him, and one morning they strapped the two pairs on and went downstream, as was proper for a first walk in a new pair of snowshoes. Thorn swerved left and right like a cliff swallow, traversing down the slopes to the river, cutting up and over the knob leading to Next Loop Down, and glissading down the steep slope on its western side. When he came to the confluence of the river and Upper Creek, he stopped over the lead. Black water slid smoothly by just beyond his snowshoes. He threw back his parka hood, and his earless balding head looked like a big black snake rearing up from a rock to look around. Liplessly he smiled at Loon.—They’re good. If Schist can keep from messing things up at the eight eight, we should be fine.
—You can help him, Loon suggested.
Thorn gave him a sharp look, but did not disagree.
One sunset soon after that Loon was on the ridge between Lower and Upper Valleys, and up the ridge beside the ridge trail he saw Click coming down. He leaped back in fear, then looked closer and saw that it was a different old one, a real one and not a ghost. Then he was afraid in a different way, and as he hurried down the ridge trail toward camp he pondered whether it would have been worse or better if it had been Click’s ghost. Possibly better. He could feel Click’s back, carrying him through the night he couldn’t walk; he could see Click’s snowshoe tracks, veering away to improve on Thorn’s routes. A spasm of grief cause him to groan like a loon in the night.
Full winter, but the days getting longer; storms; sitting around the fire, making things and telling stories. Making love with Elga in the night when everyone else was asleep, doing it silently among the rest, feeling themselves melt together into one silently spurting and clutching beast with two backs, nearly motionless under their blankets, a way of doing it that made it strangely intense, a fusing of two into one, a secret love blossoming like a red prong out of the snow. The snow, the iced-over river. Black leads that they didn’t have to go anywhere near. Elga wedge-browed at something she didn’t like that Thunder or Bluejay had done, hard-eyed and silent as she thought what to do about it. Starry taking care of all the new kids. Lucky babbling, learning to talk a little, learning to walk. Making them laugh. Hawk with Ducky. Despite all the talk, the women had recently arranged several in-pack marriages. Apparently, they were told now, this was not unusual.
Eating what Schist pulled out of his holes, watching his face to see how they were doing.
Remembering the previous winter, and feeling luckier than Lucky.
In the spring when the snow had melted off the south-facing slopes, and black water was opening on the sunnier ponds, Thorn and Loon went back to the tree west of Northerly Valley where they had left Click’s body to the ravens. Thorn never said a word about why they were going there, and Loon didn’t either. There was no need to point out something so obvious: Click’s ghost led them every step of the way, slipping through the trees ahead, occasionally looking back at them as if to make sure they were following. Thorn resolutely ignored these sightings, and Loon felt a warm humming in Badleg that made him nervous, as if the pain would come back if he did not behave well. If it had not been for Thorn’s presence he most certainly would have turned tail and run back to camp like a rabbit, keeping his eyes on the ground the whole way.
They got to the tree, which Thorn located without a problem. There was Click’s exposed ribcage and skull, with the other bones scattered around, moved by the little scavengers of that spring. A number of his bones were obviously missing, but then again they had not given the complete body to the ravens anyway.
Silently Thorn and Loon gathered the bones. Almost all of them were picked clean. Thorn stacked them carefully against each other, like sticks of firewood arranged for easiest carrying. Loon carried the skull inside the ribcage, at Thorn’s request. Before putting the skull and jawbone in the ribcage, Loon touched the skull to Badleg, and whispered inside himself, Thank you Click. If you want to help me, stay in me here. If not, go to your place in the sky, and leave Thorn alone.
They carried the bones down to the narrow pond that was the highest one in the canyon they were in. On the deepest part of the shore, Thorn took Click’s skull and jawbone out of his ribcage. He sang the spirit-freeing song:
When we die
We fly into the sky
And everything begins again
Loon looked at Click’s thick bony brow, his bulky forehead, his skull so long, his big worn chompers. His teeth still looked just as they had in life when they had been revealed from inside his lips in a fear grin, or a shy smile. Seeing that gave Loon another stab of grief, a hot rush in his eyes and throat. The skull was both Click and not Click. A body was just clothing; Click was his spirit, as was made clear by his ghost, still out there in the forest with them. Although now he was concealed, which was a great relief, even though they could feel that he was nearby.
Thorn sang with his eyes closed, then opened them. He looked around, and it was clear he saw nothing but the ice-edged pond, the trees, the tight valley walls, the sky. Loon saw a weight lift off Thorn’s shoulders at that moment.
Loon took in a deep breath, let it out. He realized, by the beelike humming that had now started in his leg, that Click’s spirit was inside him, occupying the numb spot in his ankle. Again he decided that Badleg’s new name would be Click. Badleg was gone. Loon would carry Click along inside him and hope that Click would be his friend, even though Loon had been forced to eat some of him. That seemed like a lot to ask. But Click had been willing to help them. Ever since Heather had tended him back to life, he had been willing to serve. So, possibly that would continue. Loon would find out later.
For now there was just Loon and Thorn, alone in the forest. Carefully they set the bones in an open patch
of black water and watched them sink into the pond, one by one, while they chanted together the good-bye:
We who loved you in the time you lived
Who cared for you as you cared for us
We lay you to rest now to sleep in Mother Earth
So your spirit can live on in peace
Free of this world in dreams above the sky
We will always remember you
In the seventh month of that year, with Elga pregnant again, they left for their summer trek, past the Ice Caps and then north to the steppes. The walking was so unlike their forced march home of the year before that their escape seemed more than ever a dream. Or else this now was the dream; to Loon it often felt like one. The skies were clear, the air warm; the salmon run at Cedar Salmon River gave them more than they could eat. When they had smoked a load of fish they walked on, hauling the travois only a fist or two at a time. Short hikes, long rests, with every valley, every ford, pass, rest stop, and camp familiar to them. On the steppe they followed the trails along the curving streams north to their caribou ravine, and though there were not as many caribou this year as two years before, they still managed to direct a line of the beasts into their chute with its little cliff, and the resulting glut of meat kept them busy both day and night.
One night before going to sleep Elga and Loon went down to the river to wash off, and they heard two loons downstream. Loon looned his loon cry, and the loons looned back, and then Elga tried it, and the loons hesitated, and then answered her too. They held each other and laughed aloud to be so blessed. There’s nothing like a loon’s cry.
Then it was new moon of the eighth month, and they were off to the festival. Everyone in the pack began to act a little jumpy, but none of them could possibly have been as nervous as Loon, who could not bring himself to leave Elga’s side for even a moment. She was about halfway through her pregnancy.