The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [32]
“I feel like we’re going to rock this little house off its blocks,” she said.
He chuckled. “That would be kind of embarrassing.”
He imagined the whole house falling off the treated timbers that held it up off the soggy tundra, listing to one side like a sinking ship, the spongy earth slowly swallowing them before they could escape.
“What will be embarrassing is if we get caught like this,” she said.
“What’s the name of this position, arctic entry?”
“Funny. Are you done already?” She was joking when she said this, but to add emphasis, gave a slight Kegel squeeze that sent him over the edge. He groaned and leaned in to her, holding her close.
“Just don’t expect me to do this out here in the winter,” she said.
They slipped back inside. She pulled a robe on and he just slid under the covers, naked.
“This is where I wish we had running water,” she said, dabbing between her legs with some tissue. “Remind me again why the school is the only place with plumbing in the whole village when this state has tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue?”
NEITHER OF THEM had much energy to walk those first few days on the frozen river. His legs were out of shape and starved. The girl was in the same condition, if not worse. She walked thirty or forty feet behind him, a distance he chose to keep out of earshot of her questions.
When he finally stopped to rest, she caught up and sat down on the toboggan and ate a handful of snow. “When we get to wherever we’re going, then what?” she asked.
“Then what? What do you mean, then what?”
“When we get away from here and if the rest of the world’s not sick. Then what’s next? Where will you go?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t waste my time thinking about it,” he said. “No use worrying myself about it until it happens.”
She took another scoop of snow and seemed to look back at their tracks, a long line of dark holes in the white drifts that stretched into the distant sky.
“Well, I worry,” she said. “I don’t know anyone outside. I’ve got no place to go.”
He took up the rope of the toboggan. “Well,” he said, “worrying isn’t going to get you there. Sit there, I’ll pull you awhile.” He began pulling her, wishing he could leave her worrying behind him.
An hour later they crossed the ski tracks. He dropped to his knees and hunched low, swinging the rifle from across his back. He didn’t need to study the tracks. He knew what sort of tracks one person travelling alone on skis left.
“What is it?” the girl whispered. He knew she sensed his fear. Perhaps she could hear his lungs tighten and his heart accelerate.
“Tracks. A skier.”
“Skier? People don’t ski here,” she said.
“I know.”
From the angle of the round holes the ski poles had poked into the crust, the distance between the holes, and the slight outward turn of the tracks, he could tell the skier was making good time. Moving. Fast.
“Which way is he going? Toward Kuigpak?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s get going. I don’t like to know someone has skis.”
His eyes followed the two long, dark cuts in the snow, like twin frozen snakes stretching for as far as he could see to where the wide river turned east and out of sight.
12
He walked the girl to the principal’s office and sat her in the chair. He flipped the pad of paper over, even though he knew she couldn’t read it. Still, he could imagine her running her fingers over the impression the ballpoint had left, and just knowing.
“Why are they dead in there? Why would they do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Just sit here. Okay? I’m going to go check the kitchen.”
“Don’t leave me, John. Don’t, please?”
“I have to. I’ll be right back,” he said, standing just outside the office. He’d turned and looked back at her. She had her legs pulled up with her arms wrapped around them. She kept wiping her nose against one sleeve and then the other. She hadn’t stopped shaking and her eyes were closed tight, as if she struggled to keep them closed against some horrible vision. He went back in and wrapped her parka around her.
“You can lock the door if you want,