The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [66]
“What makes you think the kids did like Gabe Fox and qimakalleq?” the girl asked.
“Because they wasn’t in the gym,” the old woman said. “They run away to somewhere. Somewhere safe. But we need to find them before they cillam quella.”
“I don’t know that word,” the girl said.
“Maybe it means before they are made cold by the universe,” the old woman said. “Cillam quella.”
He turned his back to them and sucked the moisture from the handful of snow until all that remained in his mouth was a small ball of ice.
CARL AND HIS WIFE, Carrie, sat across the dinner table. They were their first dinner guests, in a village where sharing food and meals was nothing new, but formal dinners, complete with tablecloth, napkins, and the spoon-fork-knife set-up were unheard of.
“So fancy,” Carrie said, pointing to the display of silverware. “You guys always eat like this?”
“No, just for special guests.”
“I should have dressed up! I could have worn my town shoes!” Carrie said.
They laughed. John caught a glance between Carl and Carrie and suddenly felt very uncomfortable for them. Anna had overdone the table setting. The low lights. The candles. The separate serving dishes. It was overboard. Too much of a show for their guests.
Carl tried to make small talk. “Got a letter from my brother in Kuwait. Hundred and twenty degrees there, he said. He said he dreams of snow and ice. He knows pretty soon the river will freeze up and you and me can start hunting ptarmigan. Maybe I’ll show you how to trap marten and otters.”
“That would be nice. I’d like that. Hundred and twenty. Ouch. Is he doing okay there?”
Carl shrugged. “Best he can be for an Eskimo in the oven.”
“Sorry we don’t have sour cream,” Anna said, setting a plate of baked potatoes on the table. John shot her a look, but she was too absorbed in delivery of the dinner to catch his telepathic messages. Had their kitchen been in a separate room from their dinner table he might have had a chance to whisper in her ear to quit with the fanfare, but he couldn’t, and he felt the damage was already done. He’d worked so hard to fit in with Carl, to just be a hunting partner and not an outsider, and dinner seemed like a good way to let Anna in on the fun.
Now, as Anna opened a sixty-four-ounce can of grape juice and poured it into wine glasses, he could only hope to ever be invited out hunting again.
As Anna poured the juice she said, “I sure wish we had a little white wine to go with the chicken, but since the village is dry, this grape juice will have to do.”
Carl and Carrie laughed. John eased up a bit.
“You could sit that juice next to the furnace with some yeast and make homebrew,” Carrie joked. “That’s what some people do around here. Too bad bootleggers don’t sell wine. Otherwise Carl could get a bottle from his no-good brother in Bethel.”
“You have a brother in the National Guard and a brother who bootlegs?”
“Anna!”
Carrie turned to John. “It’s okay. His brother there is a bum. Doesn’t work and only sells weed and vodka. Poisons his own people for sixty dollars a bottle.”
Carl shrugged. “He’ll get caught someday.”
Anna dished out the chicken and then passed her homemade gravy across to Carrie. John realized Carl and Carrie were waiting, hesitating almost to serve themselves, so he dug in, leading the way. He took a spoonful of green beans and lumped them on his plate. He forked two large chunks of chicken beside the beans, stuck a potato with a fork, dropped it beside the chicken, and then smashed through the skin and made a decent trough for the gravy.
Soon they were all eating and chatting, the tension overcome with food and friendship. John squeezed Anna’s leg beneath the table and then lifted his wine glass full of grape juice in a toast.
“To our new friends. And to good duck hunting in the spring. Cheers.”
Their glasses