Ice Drift

by Theodore Taylor

  There were only a few days left before the sun would sink below the horizon and not rise again for three whole months. Could they survive it? Old Miak had done so, of course, facing starvation at one point. But then, Miak had had a lifetime of experience beforehand, a lifetime of winters, and was a seasoned hunter.

  Sulu soon crawled out of the tunnel. He asked, "Will Papa come out and rescue us today?"

  "Let's hope so," Alika replied, "but meanwhile, we have to build the larger house just in case he doesn't come out for a few days. If a blizzard begins, we'll just stay inside and play games."

  Sulu nodded. He knew all about blizzards. The wind could blow him off his feet, tumble him carelessly like a ptarmigan feather. He rubbed Jamka's muzzle.

  Alika added, "We need freshwater. Remind me." There were a few frozen pools of freshwater from the scant summer rains on the floe. They were easy to spot. He'd use an ax from the Reliance to dig out a chunk and melt it. They could also eat snow to quench their thirst in an emergency.

  Alika already knew the sledge, with its survival treasures, would eventually be lost as the floe broke up. Far to the south, they would lose their house, too. But he decided not to discuss that with Sulu. Later in the day, he'd strip the sledge and store everything in the small iglu to make more space in the larger one.

  He said to Sulu, "Let's start the big house, then we'll eat, then hunt."

  "I'm very hungry," Sulu said. For one so thin, he was always hungry.

  Alika answered, "Suck on some seal meat or char, and feed Jamka while I cut blocks."

  This time they'd start by building a knee-high sleeping and cooking platform out of the snow blocks as their papa had always done. The round ceiling would be higher than Alika's head. The floor would be eighteen inches below the outside surface to avoid the wind. But Alika would use the same method as the night before, quickly cutting the blocks with the snow knife. He'd start an inner-leaning spiral until the domed structure was completed, with a windbreak outside the tunnel to help keep out frigid air. Both Inuit and Eskimos had been doing this for centuries.

  For a while, Jamka watched as the boys worked and talked, and eventually went to sleep.

  It took a little more than five hours until Alika inserted the final "key" ceiling block and a low tunnel was built. Alika cut an air vent in the room's ceiling. Then he packed loose snow around the outside seams to make them airtight. The final touch was to spread the caribou mattresses on the sleeping and cooking platform. If it appeared they'd be staying longer than a few days, he'd cut a window space and fill it with clear sea ice to let moonlight in.

  Alika and Sulu looked at the house with pride. "Papa might have made it more quickly," Alika said to Sulu.

  Sulu nodded. "We did a good job."

  Alika said, "Before you were born and the Reliance wrecked, we lived in snowhouses that were connected with tunnels."

  "Mama told me that," Sulu said.

  "There were five neighbors where we lived, and we could visit back and forth without going outside. It was fun."

  The two snowhouses, separated by about a hundred feet, were like two large white knobs on the uneven surface of the floe.

  At last they sat on the sledge to eat, looking toward shore and the lonely white tundra that slid into the horizon, seeming much closer than it was. Out there on land this time of year were foxes, lemmings, hares, wolves, musk oxen and caribou, falcons, ravens, and snowy owls, but few humans. Most of the bears remained around the ice where the seals lived, sometimes riding floes like this one. How many bears, Alika couldn't guess.

  "Do you think Papa and Mama are coming today?" Sulu repeated anxiously, his small face almost hidden in the parka hood.

  Alika said, "Let's hope so, Little One." A rescue was doubtful.

  "Will the Moon-man help us?" Sulu asked.

  "Yes," Alika replied. "He will see us down here and take pity on us and give us especially bright light." Tatkret was always helpful.

  Sulu nodded.

  If their parents did not show up soon to track the floe, locate it, board it, the boys might be too far down the strait and the darkness day and night would hide them, Alika knew. He couldn't speak of those possibilities. He had to be cheerful, positive, and protective, assuming the ways of the hunter. Alika did think of himself as a grown hunter.

  "What is Mama doing now?" Sulu asked. It was a simple question that would probably be asked many times. Alika would have to reply each time.

  "Oh, maybe stringing caribou sinew for thread; maybe cooking a rabbit stew; maybe thawing summer berries for us to eat when we come home."

  Then the look on Sulu's face told him he was saying wrong things again, reminding his brother of their predicament. Finished eating, he said quickly, "Let's go get a seal."

  Alika guessed there were at least a dozen seal breathing-holes within five hundred feet of the house. The problem was finding them beneath the new snow. The air holes were tiny, no more than three inches across. A northwest wind was best for hunting, elders said. But nothing was blowing this morning.

  Jamka went about his job without being asked, tail wagging happily. He always seemed to take pleasure in finding an active hole, or one he thought was active, so Alika and his papa could take up watching it.

  Sulu by his side, Alika stayed by Jamka's selected hole for more than an hour and then ran out of patience. "Let's see how large the floe is," he said.

  He carried the loaded rifle in case a bear showed up. His papa had told him long ago, "Always make sure you kill it with your first shot. A wounded bear, especially a mother with cubs, is the worst enemy a hunter can have. They are deadly."

  The boys and dog went north on the floe. Alika wanted to take another look at the berg that had rammed them. It was a giant ship of glacier ice, most of it beneath the water.

  Above the water, nearing the top, were large swords of ice pointing skyward. Papa had said there were bad spirits in there, invisible ice people living in the bergs. The berg seemed almost human, a crystal monster without eyes or a mouth. It was already frozen to the floe.

  Looking at it, Alika felt sudden rage.

  He'd seen bergs out in the strait, glistening in the sun or menacing under gray clouds. He'd always been frightened by them.

  "I'd like to chop it up," he said to Sulu. But that didn't make sense. "Let's go."

  To the south as far as Alika could see, the floe ice around them was of varying thickness, with thinly snow-covered mounds, the high hummocks, and the flat parts sometimes five feet above the level of the water. Here and there were deep cracks. Gale winds had blown some of the snow away, leaving shining bare ice. They'd slip and slide on it. The surface of the floe was one of the worst Alika had ever seen.

  In what limited, ashen light remained, Alika, Sulu, and Jamka began walking south along the western edge of the floe. Alika thought it would be wiser to take that route rather than getting lost during this first exploration. Soon, scant daylight would fade almost entirely, and exploring would be too dangerous except during full moon. The first few feeble signs of returning light might not happen until late December. Even then the blackness would sometimes be so thick, they wouldn't be able to see each other fifty feet apart.

  Alika carried the Maynard percussion carbine at the ready. When his papa had traded a bearskin for this breech-loading rifle, he also got several hundred cartridges, and they had been used sparingly. Alika put three more bullets in his parka.

  Sulu had watched his brother handling the rifle and asked, "Do you think we'll meet a bear?" He was uneasy.

  "I hope not," Alika answered. "But I'm sure they're here." Sooner or later they were bound to encounter one.

  Jamka between them, Alika and Sulu began walking. They had gone about two miles when they heard the bellowing of walrus in the distance. The huge tusked animals, some much heavier than the biggest bears, often herded together in great numbers. They were the only natural enemies of nanuk, but the bears seldom challenged the walrus bulls, whic
h had sharp three-foot twin tusks and armor-like skin on their necks and shoulders. Walrus were even better swimmers than bears and could dive to three hundred feet to locate clams and other shellfish on the bottom. Sometimes they attacked kayaking hunters. The only animal that could best a walrus in the water was a killer whale. The killers, merciless, also went after hunters on rare occasions. When the sun was bright, the whales would burst through the ice, attacking the shadows of the horrified hunters in their kayaks above.

  Alika said, "Hear that bellowing? I think we're going to see a bear, Little One."

  "That's why the walrus are making the noises?"

  "I think so."

  When they got closer, Alika could see that a huge bear was getting ready to attack the herd, causing all the commotion. He'd seen an attack once before and steered Sulu and Jamka, growling and tense, behind a hummock to watch. Falcons were flying overhead, adding to the grim scene that Alika knew would turn bloody within a few minutes.

  Hundreds of walrus were clustered together at the water's edge, with their babies. The bellows shattered the silence. The tusks of the bulls looked like white knives against their rubbery blue-black hides, some of which were blotched with reds and pinks and browns.

  "I don't like this," Sulu said. His hand clasped Alika's arm.

  "I don't, either, Sulu," said Alika, heart beating fast.

  The bear selected his prey, a baby, with care and snatched it up as it shrieked pitifully. The bear dove into the water, away from the raging bulls, and swam with the baby wriggling in his jaws for several hundred yards. Then he climbed back out on the ice, mauling the baby and tossing it playfully before finally killing it with a single bite.

  The terror in Sulu's face told Alika he should quickly take his brother away from this savagery. On the other hand, perhaps it was good for the Little One. He'd seen nanuk, never afraid of man or animal, as pure predator this afternoon and would remember these moments if he ever had the bad luck to meet a bear face-to-black-nose.

  Sulu said, "I never want to see that again." His eyes mirrored his words.

  "I hope you don't," Alika said. But if his brother changed and grew up to be a hunter, it was likely the scene would be repeated.

  They walked back along the floe edge to the two iglus, and Alika tried another seal hole for a little while until full darkness descended. There was still enough emergency food in the small iglu to last them a few days. With luck, by then Alika would have harpooned a seal and skinned it. Then they'd have enough blubber and meat to last a few weeks, enough oil to burn for cooking, light, and heat.

  That night Alika again thought about the berg that had rammed them. Perhaps it was Kokotah, an evil spirit of the ice cap and enemy of the Inuit, who had guided it.

  Big bergs have a bluish tint. Smaller ones

  that split off are called growlers and are low in the

  water, indigo in color, awash like a whale's back.

  Bergs are sometimes locked in pack ice.

  5

  Mock moons—three bright smaller moonlike spots on lunar halos, seen only in the Arctic during winter—were out in the clear sky, the moon itself staying just a few degrees above the summit of the far western mountains. The mock moons surrounded the moon, which circled the horizon for days this time of year.

  Inside the large community hall, a drum was being struck. The shaman Inu would soon speak. Most of the caribou hunters had returned earlier in the day.

  Kussu and Maja had visited Inu twice, asking him to help find their sons. "You are now our only hope," Maja had pleaded, her face drawn and weary.

  The villagers always came out when Inu spoke his words of wisdom. Inuit believed that the powerful spirits, tuungait, could be influenced only by a shaman. The shamans worked with the supernatural and had their own secret language. Inu spent most of his time searching for stolen souls and fighting bad spirits, the people were told.

  What made Inu most special was that he could communicate with his polar bear spirit, his tornaq. He had gone to the moon and back with his tornaq, and had even talked with the long-dead Inuit hunters who lived in the skies.

  Inu wore a caribou-skin headband, and a caribou pouch hung from his long neck. No one knew what secrets were hidden in the pouch. Around his waist was a belt of wolf teeth. If bad spirits were attacking the village, he might wear a hideous mask made of whalebone. The people of Nunatak were afraid of Inu's powers, but he did seem able to cure certain illnesses, and he could communicate with the animals and birds, especially bears and ravens. His raven, Punna, was always at his side. It was said that they talked back and forth when alone.

  There were good spirits and bad spirits living with the Inuit. The very worst were the tupilait. They were evil liars and could cause illness and pain. If a good shaman like Inu caught them, he would end up covered with blood, and only the urine of a musk ox could wash it away.

  The flickering blue flame of the large oil lamp lit Inu's long, narrow face, smooth despite his years. He had a white goatee, and it was said his eyes were capable of seeing through stone.

  Kussu and Maja sat with the others on the musk ox carpeting, waiting for Inu to speak. Maja chewed on sealskin, which she had planned to use to make summer trousers for Alika and Sulu. Feeble Miak had stopped by in the late afternoon to explain again how he'd survived on his floe many years before. He'd told and retold that story constantly in the village. It was the only memory he had that was substantial. Everyone in the village remained concerned about Alika, Sulu, and Jamka. Like Miak, they'd come by Kussu's dwelling to offer their concerns and thoughts. They all knew the dangers of a drifting floe.

  The drumbeater had finished, and Inu, looking directly at Kussu and Maja, said, "They are alive, along with Jamka. They have built an iglu and are safe. I can see them..." The silence of the people was as full as that of the mock moons.

  Miak, his chin whiskers white and his lips quivering from old age, shouted from the packed audience of eighty-one men, women, and children, "I told you so!"

  "Hush, Miak," Kussu said.

  Inu spoke again. "The dangers they face are nanuk and hunger. I do not know how many bears are on the floe with them, but Jamka is there to warn them. As you know, the farther they drift south, the scarcer seals will become. Alika must try to kill foxes and birds, the dovekies and ptarmigan, with arrows. They should not starve, no matter how long they have to sail."

  Miak insisted on interrupting. "I was down to eating pieces of my clothing before rescue!" he called out. Hunters in the Arctic, unable to find any game, were occasionally forced to eat pieces of the skins that covered their bodies. They ate sealskin ropes. It was a last resort.

  Miak continued, "Pieces of the floe kept coming off as I went south, until I was sitting on ice no bigger than three musk oxen..."

  Inu, eyes as sharp as lance points, said, "Be quiet, Miak. Nuliajuk will take care of them. I promise she will."

  Nuliajuk was the goddess of the sea. She was half woman and half fish, and she could communicate with bears, seals, walrus, and all the fish.

  When they heard Inu talk of Nuliajuk, Kussu and Maja smiled widely. If the queen of the sea was watching over Alika and Sulu, they would survive.

  The beat of the drum was measured and slow as Inu went into his prayer stance. In the most common séance, the shaman summoned his spirits and questioned them. It was said that when he was alone, he could go underground or take flight to the moon. Punna always went with him. He could also go to other lands in the sky. The people of Nunatak believed all this was possible.

  When he came out of his prayer stance, Inu said to Kussu, "You must make one last effort to find them. You must take the umiak and paddle south with your neighbors and search for them before another gale reaches us."

  There was immediate response from the men, even though most had just returned that day from the caribou hunt, and the big skin-boat was launched with twelve paddlers. Shooting stars crossed the sky above, sometimes forming a silver thread
from the point where one first appeared until it faded out. Kussu thought they might have luck in finding the boys. He was certain Inu had summoned the shooting stars.

  In the Greenland Strait above the Arctic Circle is

  slush ice, rind ice, cake ice. There is land-fast floe-edge

  ice, sometimes an ice foot along the edge of the shores,

  and glacier ice tongues; fields of pack ice a hundred

  miles square. There is broken sea ice, sometimes

  submerged, honeycombed and rotten.

  6

  "I'm so scared," Sulu said.

  "About that bear?" Alika asked.

  "Yes."

  Supper over, the flame in the qulliq extinguished, they were on the sleeping platform with Jamka. A thin shaft of moonlight was shining down from the new ice window.

  "I am, too," Alika admitted. They'd talked about the baby walrus and the bloody violence of the bear as they walked back to the snowhouse. It was not a memory that would soon go away.

  "How many nanuk are out here?" Sulu asked.

  "I don't know, but I want them to stay away," Alika replied.

  Sulu, rubbing Jamka's back, said, "We're lucky to have him. He'll always warn us if nanuk comes, won't he?

  "Yes, always."

  "I think we should give Jamka more meat so he's always strong and can fight nanuk."

  "That's a good idea, Sulu," Alika said with a smile.

  The polar bear was as much a part of Inuit life as the seal. In the very darkest part of the winter, Papa sometimes talked about nanuk while he carved a knife of walrus tusk or a spoon from musk ox horn. Mama would sit and listen while chewing on sealskin.