The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [21]
Her questions passed the time, especially when their stomachs cried out, almost in response to the nightly howling of the few packs of sled dogs that had been turned loose or managed to escape and had so quickly remembered the instinct of their wolf cousins. Avoid man. The dogs avoided being seen just as he avoided most of her questions. But still, the questions lurked, especially the ones he ignored.
Some he would answer, the ones that didn’t burn. The ones that made sense. The ones that didn’t require a lie. Or a half-truth.
“Why didn’t we get sick, too?”
That was one of those questions that loped around his mind at night. He’d been asking himself. Until the question didn’t really matter any more. Any speculation, about his background, his life before moving to the village, any previous sickness or exposure, presented few possible answers. What traits or characteristics did he share with a blind Yup’ik girl? She was at least ten years younger and had never even travelled beyond the broad tundra plain of the Kuskokwim River Delta. Once he started asking himself her questions in his head, he would just shut her out completely. “That’s enough,” he’d say. “No more questions. We need to sleep.”
“Why didn’t anyone come for us? Did they want us all to die?” she asked, feeling for her bundle of grass and running her fingers through the stalks, searching by touch for the perfect dried blade.
Another question that brought only more questions. Her questions would kill him, slowly squeeze at his heart, until he could no longer breathe, engulfed by that suffocating feeling of the walls closing in, and of the world becoming too small.
Some nights after the muscles at the side of her jaw went slack, and her breathing steadied and they readied themselves for the nightmares that would surely come, the questions would continue. They would hang in the air like campfire smoke on a cloudless night. Her endless questions would overlap in her soft voice, in her cries, and sometimes mingle with the voices of others. His mom. His grandpa. His students. A janitor. An old friend. Anna.
Where will we go? Can we make it walking? Why didn’t you float out during the summer? Why do I feel like someone else is out there? Maybe coming after us? How did you find me? What was it like in the Lower Forty-eight? Why did you find me? Why don’t you leave me behind? How many people do you think died? Was it everywhere? Did they want us to die? What made people act like the outcasts? Will you leave me? Do you miss her? Do you miss her? Do you miss her? You won’t let me starve to death again? Okay? Please? Do you miss her? Do? You? Miss? Her?
8
He stopped at the bottom of the steps that led to the old woman’s house and just listened. He had learned from the girl to quit relying solely on his eyes. He could hear the two talking softly inside, but beyond that, nothing. No birds. No dogs. Just the breeze rattling a piece of torn metal roofing on a half-burnt plywood shack that had probably been either a smokehouse for fish or a steam bath. He doubted anything useful would be found in the village, but still, he had to look.
He’d start with the school, the heart of every village: the sanctuary for kids, the public meeting place, the dance hall, the non-stop basketball court, and the community dining room. If he were to find anything of use, it would be there.
The school, a boxy green building, stood on skinny metal pilings with chain-link fence wrapped around the base to keep kids from playing under it, something he’d learned the villages started doing after losing more than one structure to bored kids playing with matches.
The unbroken windows and the small drift of snow building up at the front door didn’t make sense. He stopped and inspected the grated steel walkway that led into the building. The heavy door wasn’t open wide, broken, or pried—it was closed. He could see no sign of tracks. He listened until the silence made him uneasy. A quick glance at the wide river and at the