The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [103]
But worse, it would be the day he would have to start trying to keep his word to Anna.
And on that day, he knew in his heart, he couldn’t keep it. She had whispered into his ear and asked him to do the unthinkable. And he said he would. He would have told her anything she needed to hear. And he did.
Anna whispered her dying wish in his ear, “Promise me you will love again, John. Promise me.”
“Promise,” he replied.
Asking him to promise he would keep on living would have been too much in and of itself, but to love again?
Impossible.
43
He crested the bluff just as the sun broke from the snow-covered mountains on the distant horizon. Streaks of orange and red sunshine shot out from the sky and swept across the blinding white span of land before him.
Somewhere in the light was the girl lying on her stomach. Covered only by the old woman’s caribou hide, and beyond her, a herd of caribou stretched east and west along the edge of the mountains and out across the tundra plain as far as his eyes could see.
Rayna sat up and waved for him to join her.
Relief swept through him.
The pistol sat in the snow at her side. He crouched low, worried the caribou closest might spot him, and he half ran, half crawled to her. The snow crystals cut against his bare knees. When he reached her, he held her two frozen feet in his hands. Spread out beneath her naked body was a wide, tightly woven grass mat.
“What are you doing? I was worried. You’re going to freeze to death,” he whispered as he ran his fingers over the grass braids.
“I heard the wolves howling in my sleep. I thought it was a dream. Then I heard them, the caribou. The tendons above their hooves, clicking. Lie down here. Listen. You hear them? You hear that clicking? Like the tundra’s heart. A spirit drum. Close your eyes and just listen,” she whispered.
“But the hunter,” he whispered, “he’s coming.”
“Shh …”
He looked back in the direction of their camp beneath the bluff. Caribou were beginning to move around them. He lifted the caribou hide, took off his parka, and wrapped it around her body. He slipped beneath the hide and stretched out beside her and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and held himself still.
Then he heard them. At first just a faint sound, like fingers snapping together. Click. Click. Click. The sound of a pistol firing on an empty chamber. The tap of a stick against the rim of a drum. The clicks grew louder and louder.
CLICK.
CLICK.
CLICK.
She pulled the caribou hide over their heads and eased herself closer to him, opening the parka, and pressing her warm naked body against his. She took his hand and held it against the frozen moss in front of them.
The soft clicking of the caribou hooves filled the world around the two of them. Above. Beneath.
“He’s going to kill us,” he whispered.
“You feel them?” Rayna asked, holding her hand over his, and pressing his palm down into the frozen moss and snow. “These are the tundra spirits,” she said.
“I feel them,” he said, “I can feel them through the ground. They are everywhere.”
“Maybe this is how we became Yup’ik, how we became the Real People. We could feel the earth’s heart beating and we would transform.” As she said this she lifted one hand from the cool earth and pressed it against her breast and the other on the grass mat she’d woven.
“And here,” she whispered. “I made this for us.”
He opened his eyes and she held the parka open and he slid his arms around her naked body. She lifted the caribou skin just enough that the morning sunlight radiated brilliant gold against the snow and reflected against her irises, forcing him to snap his own eyes shut tight against the glare.
But even with his eyes closed he could still see the piercing