The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [44]
No smoke and no houses that looked livable told him all he needed to know. There probably wasn’t much of a reason to even waste the energy and walk through what remained, but if they could scrounge up a few pieces of wood they might be able to put together a fire for the night.
“Why is this village completely burned and ours wasn’t?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know,” he said as he took one last long look at the village, checking for any signs of movement.
“Do you think someone burned it to kill the disease?”
“I don’t know if that would matter. Could have just been a fire too, in all the chaos. It’s hard to say what happened as people got sick. People do crazy things when they’re scared.”
“When my family got sick, I tried to help as much as I could. Even my grandma said she remembered hearing about the sicknesses back in the old days. She said not many lived and times were really hard back then. She said it would be just like that. Just like the Great Death. She was right, I guess. I don’t know why they called it great. Death’s not very great to me.”
He pulled the sled and she walked slowly beside him. He kept the rifle at the ready as they entered what was left of the village.
“I think I smell burnt bodies,” she said. “I hope they weren’t alive.”
He turned away from one house, the walls and roof scorched, two half-burnt, half-decayed corpses stretched out on the bare floor joists, the plywood floor covering burned around the bodies, their jaws open, some teeth exposed.
“Will it be like this in every village?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does it look like?” she asked. “My sister Molly lived here with her husband and four of my nieces and nephews. Their house was three down on this side.”
She pointed toward a house with pilings that had burned, the house tipped on its side, a mound of twisted black sticks.
“There’s not much left here. Not much at all. Sorry.”
“Maybe she was in town. They were going to move to Bethel to get jobs. I hope they moved early. Maybe she’s safe. I hope the kids are safe.”
He picked up a few pieces of half-burnt wood and decided they’d camp away from the village. He couldn’t smell the bodies as she could, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t need to sleep near a crematorium.
“I think we’ll move a little more upriver, see if we can’t camp somewhere with shelter—in case it gets windy. Sound good to you?”
“Yeah,” she said. She turned and listened for a moment and he lifted the rifle.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“I heard something, and it feels like someone’s watching us.”
He spun slowly, trying to catch the slightest movement in the burnt houses around them. His eyes searched for tracks in the snow. Nothing.
An odd sound echoed through the suddenly still air, the sound of a single drop of water, magnified, almost comical-sounding. He turned and saw it—sitting on the flagpole outside what had been the village post office—a giant raven, coal black, staring down at them.
The bird made another water-drop sound and then squawked at the two of them and flew off.
“It’s just a raven,” he whispered, “trying to scare us.”
“Maybe he’s trying to tell us something. Yup’iks used to believe ravens were special a long time ago. Maybe they created the world, and the animals, and people. We never shoot them. Never eat them.”
“Or maybe he’s telling us he created this whole awful mess and that we should get moving.”
“Which way did he fly?”
“The direction we’re headed.”
“Can you still see him?”
“Yeah,” he said, and blinked the frost off his eyelids.
“Watch him,” she said. “Tell me what he does.”
“He’s flying away.”
“Keep watching.”
He focused his eyes as the bird flew upriver, almost out of sight. Just before it slipped from view he saw something, something he’d never seen before. The bird rolled, mid-air, almost like a fighter