The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [55]
“They’re on the river around the next bend,” Carl said, starting the motor. “We’ll go fast around the corner and you can shoot. Get ready.”
“Are they legal? Cranes?”
“Only thing Fish and Game and the scientist guys care about lately is blood samples to check for bird flu. We shoot what we need to eat. Tonight, hopefully, it’s crane.”
He gunned the boat forward and John slipped his hand into his pocket and took out two shells and held them in his left hand between his index and middle finger like two cigars so that he could get off a couple of quick shots and impress his new hunting partner. He tried not to think of what Anna would say about shooting cranes. You might as well have shot an albatross, he imagined her saying in disgust.
JOHN AND THE GIRL ate the last of the hare, and he’d kept the bones, just in case they would need to break them open and boil them for the marrow. They tucked the tarp in a grove of willows so that the fire couldn’t be seen from the river. All he wanted to do was curl up in his sleeping bag beside the fire and sleep. That night, for some reason, he wanted to sleep almost worse than he wanted something of substance to eat. Just a night with solid, restful sleep. No nightmares. No waking up and straining his ears for approaching footsteps.
The girl crawled into her sleeping bag between his bag and the fire. He knew she somehow felt safer there. Safe between the warmth of the fire and his gun. She set the bundle of grass beside her. Touched it once, and then put her hands inside her bag to warm.
“Why do you think I lived?” she asked.
He thought for a while, even though he had no answer. Her survival made little sense. He didn’t want to tell her that she wouldn’t have survived much longer if he hadn’t found her, but he didn’t know that either. The girl was tough enough to do whatever she put her mind to. She’d already proved as much. But why had she lived? Why had either of them lived?
“What are you weaving?” he asked.
She ignored him and asked her question again.
He couldn’t find the words to answer. He almost wanted to ask her if she thought this was really living, if they really had survived, but he didn’t.
“Why do you think you survived?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I think I’m just here to help you get to where you think you need to go. Maybe even I wish that’s why I’m here. When we’re walking and not talking I think about what’s left in my life and it’s just all empty. I feel empty, you know? Hollow like a drum. My heart’s a drum, a tundra drum that pounds and there’s no one to listen, no one to dance. I have no one. Nothing. I can’t even see all that I’ve lost. I’ve lost everything. My family. All my cousins. The village. If I’m here to help you get somewhere, then there’s at least a reason for this.”
“I hope there’s a better reason for you being here than to just help me. I doubt that’s reason enough,” he said.
“I do help you, don’t I? I’m not totally useless to you, am I?” she asked.
He pulled his arm out from his sleeping bag and ran his hand down the back of her head. Her face was turned away from him, but he knew she was crying from the way she held her breath to hide her sobs.
“I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave, if I hadn’t found you.”
He was nearly asleep when she asked him one last question that left him searching his memory until she was fast asleep.
“Was I pretty when you saw me before? John, do you remember ever seeing me before, at Christmas, the Slaviq starring celebration at Carl’s house?”
20
They rounded a long bend in the river when the girl stopped and turned back toward the old woman’s village. He kept walking, but he didn’t make it far. The square structures were barely visible, just a row of dark boxes pressed between the white sheet of ice and the grey sky.
“What is it you’re trying to see? Quit worrying about someone who we don’t even know is out there.”
“It’s not too late to go back,” she said.
“We’re not taking her with