The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [38]
“This is strange to be in my own classroom, you know. I think I’d rather move around, like a college professor. That way I’m not responsible for making the place all comfy and inviting and stuff.”
“You’re being a real Johnny downer. What’s this about?” she asked.
She sat down on his desk and scratched at a mosquito bite on her temple. She’d been leaving her hair back in a ponytail since they arrived in the village, and he suddenly wondered who would cut their hair while they lived there. Would they have to wait until they flew out at Christmas, and could they even afford to fly out over the holiday?
“Come on. Are you worried about your new students? They’re going to love you, John. Who doesn’t love John Morgan? They have to love at least a quarter of you.”
“Funny. What if that first day doesn’t go well? Don’t you worry about that? We’re stuck here. If I have some punk-ass kid and his dad is school board president—how do I deal with that? I’ve never taught in a small school before. Don’t you see? The school is the centre of the community. Its heart. Everything good and bad starts here or ends here. If I screw up, or someone turns the village against us? Then I’m the bad guy until further notice. No amount of blood quantum can fix that. It’s just scary, that’s all.”
She laughed and reached over to him. She took his hand and began pushing back his cuticles with her fingernail. “The kids are going to love you, Johnny. You care—they are going to see that from the first moment. From the sounds of it, they’ve had a lot of odd and shitty teachers. I think they’re going to appreciate your gentle heart.”
“My gentle heart. Ha. That’s a little presumptuous. You’re the gentle heart. I’m the one with the wolf-jaw snap.”
“I can’t win! Sorry for trying and hoping.” She got up and stormed to the door. “Screw you, mister!” She stopped and turned back and laughed. “How was that? Was I convincing?”
“Not at all convincing,” he said. “You need to turn a few desks over on the way.”
“I’m going back to my room to make some dinosaur mobiles to hang from the ceiling—you should make a few, too,” she joked.
“Yeah, dinosaurs, I’ll get right on that.”
She paused at the door, her eyes stopped on movement outside the windows across from her. She pointed. “Look.”
He stood up and watched as a father and son walked down the boardwalk between the village houses. The father carried a shotgun over one shoulder, and his other hand carried a handful of ducks by the neck. The boy’s back was covered in white, his hands clutching a long white neck at his chest, an Alaskan version of Leda and the Swan.
“What’s the boy carrying?” Anna asked.
“A bird. Swan, I think. Maybe a trumpeter swan.”
“That’s sad,” she said.
“Sad? No way,” he replied. “I bet they’re delicious.”
THAT MORNING the two of them left the village, with the girl riding in the sled to save her energy. Twice he glanced over his shoulder to check on her, and each time her head was turned back toward the village.
They hadn’t made it more than a mile or so along the river’s edge before she answered the question he’d never voiced.
“If there’s someone left, someone like us,” she said, “I think they’ll know.”
He stopped and rested for a moment. The sun had just started to lift above the long stretch of flat horizon, a grey cold sun that gave no heat or comfort.
“Know what?” he asked.
“They’ll know we’re not like the others.”
“Sick?”
“No. The other people, the outcasts. They’ll know we’re not like the outcasts.”
“How? How could they know that?”
Using his glove, he brushed some small clumps of ice collecting on his beard. The small thermometer clipped to his zipper read fifteen below. It felt colder. He clenched his toes in his boots. He couldn’t feel the little toes, and once feeling in the big toes left they would have to stop and try to get a fire going.
“How are your feet doing?” he asked.
“I can smell them,” she said.
“Your feet?” he asked.
“No. So dumb, John. The outcasts. I can smell them. But anyone else, anyone who spots us, even if they