Ice Drift

by Theodore Taylor

  "It is probably the same bear that came here before, the one that broke into the storage iglu. It knew we were here," Alika said.

  "And he could have eaten all of us," Sulu said, still breathing hard.

  That was true, Alika thought. Bears ate seals; wolves ate caribou and musk oxen; foxes ate lemmings and hares, and dined on the leavings of bears, quarreling with ravens over which got the last bites. Bears also ate unlucky humans. And humans ate all of the animals.

  Looking at the bear floating away, the blood running down over its black nose and spreading, Alika felt sorry for it. He'd never really liked to look at the five nanuk skulls in his front yard, although he knew it was tradition to save them, and he knew all hunters had great respect for the beautiful bears and their spirits. He also believed there was indeed a place where bears lived somewhere in the sky. Inu said he'd been there, and Alika believed him.

  Alika had never thought he would have to kill one. But his family had slept on bearskins for years, and they all wore bearskin pants. Bears had been good to them.

  He had watched, and even helped, as his papa and mama had cut up the carcasses of bears, rejoicing that they'd have the meat and hides. Yet they expressed sorrow each time that such a beautiful animal had to die.

  The third week in January, the sun came out weakly after mostly hiding for more than eighty days. Alika and Sulu celebrated by shouting, "Sikrinaktok! The sun shines!" and hugging each other. The terrible darkness was almost over.

  Sulu shouted, "Oh, how I wish I was home!"

  There would be the annual feasts, and children would go from dwelling to dwelling, snuffing out the old moss wicks in the qulliqs and inserting new wicks, lighting them with stones and flints. Everyone would eat until his or her belly couldn't hold another morsel.

  The children would be singing or shouting:

  "The welcome sun returns!

  Amna ajah, ah-huh,

  And brings us weather fine and fair,

  Amna ajah, ah-hu."

  The next day, Sulu finished his raven carving. It was ten inches tall. He blackened it with burnt wick moss from the qulliq.

  "It's beautiful," said Alika.

  "I'll give it to Inu," Sulu said proudly.

  Alika said, "Brother, you're a master carver already."

  Sulu had used the sharp steel knife from the Reliance to make the rough-looking throat feathers, the wedge-shaped tail, and the thin but sturdy legs. The replica looked exactly like Punna.

  It was the month of Alika's fifteenth birthday, and he celebrated by making aalu. Missing was a bit of ptarmigan intestine. There was no substitute for the bird on the floe. Sulu said the sauce tasted better without it.

  A single bowhead whale could provide Nunatak

  with more fuel for cooking, heating, and lighting than

  a thousand seals. But the bowheads seldom came

  anywhere near the village.

  14

  Kussu and Maja had watched the weak return of the sun, and Maja said to herself, "I have to go now. I must!" The sun would become stronger each day. Then she said to her husband, "I've got to find them." She'd constantly talked about going south ever since their boys had disappeared.

  "I forbid it," Kussu replied. He had broken his leg on a recent caribou hunt and couldn't go.

  For more than three months, they had both agonized over their missing sons, each in his or her own way. There had been days and nights of the terrible darkness when they hardly spoke. They'd repeatedly prayed to the spirits. But what had happened—or what was happening—to Alika and Sulu was a torment that could not be relieved by Inu or any of their neighbors.

  And Maja had talked endlessly to old Miak, asking him to try to remember each day of life on his floe, each night. In particular she wanted to know when the floe began to break up and where he had been rescued by hunters in their kayaks.

  "We must wait until my leg is better," said Kussu firmly. He still hobbled around on a homemade crutch. "We must go together." He had made the family a new sledge.

  "No, I cannot wait for you, and you can't ride the sledge, Kussu. You'll tire the dogs," Maja said. She'd made up her mind. Nothing would stop her from going.

  "Do you know what you're doing?" Kussu asked angrily. "Do you have any idea how far you have to go?"

  "Yes, Miak told me where he was rescued. It was off a village called Tarjuaq."

  "And if you don't find them at sea off that village, what do you do?"

  "Miak told me the next one down is Angijuak."

  "Maja, this is crazy. You'll go hundreds and hundreds of miles by yourself."

  "I'll have the dogs. I'll hunt along the way. Kussu, it's the only chance we have before the ice across all the inlets and rivers breaks up. I'll have to cross all of them by sledge. I don't know the ice as well as you do, but I know I can do it."

  Kussu shook his head in despair. There were dozens of inlets, bays, and rivers all the way to the end of Baffin Island and Hudson Bay. She would never find the boys. She might die.

  But Maja had thought about this trip for weeks, well before the sun crept out. She'd even asked ancient Aninga, who could no longer hunt and relied on the good graces of his neighbors for food and seal oil, if she could borrow his rifle and some bullets.

  She said, "Husband, make sure I have everything I'll need for the trip. I want enough meat to last the first two weeks. I can kill seals as well as you can. I'll stop in any villages along the way to rest and resupply. I'll need your harpoon. Aninga is lending me his rifle."

  Kussu again shook his head. "There will be gales and driving snow. We know only two villages that are south of here."

  "Salluk and Anami."

  Kussu gave up talking about it. But a moment later, he said, "What about the dogs? You won't have Jamka to lead them."

  "Nattiq and I get along just fine. He isn't as strong as Jamka, but he has the strength I need. He's a good lead dog."

  Most important, she thought, the dogs could run without food for nearly a week and still pull the load.

  Kussu gave up, still angry that his wife wouldn't listen. He'd make sure the sledge had everything she would need. Food, seal oil for the soapstone lamp, a harpoon, knives, caribou robes, and a sleeping bag. Plus a half dozen other survival items.

  But he did, in a last effort, ask the hunters to come by and discourage her from even trying to reach Baffin Island, which would likely be near the end of her mission. One hunter, Shukok, asked, "Suppose you are crossing one of the inlets and the ice gives way?"

  Maja looked straight at Shukok and replied, "Along with the dogs I will die."

  None of the hunters volunteered to go with her. Kussu had asked them not to, hoping she'd change her mind.

  She gathered the women of the village into the community hall and told them of her plans. Most of them, especially those who had children, understood why she was willing to give her life to rescue her sons. She asked them to help her by making booties out of sealskin for the dogs.

  Kussu said, "Even with the booties, you'll have to stop and check their paws often. You know the ice can cut. You have to spread the toes apart and look for trouble."

  Maja had grown up with dogs, winters and summers, and knew all about how to care for them, but she let her husband advise her, trying to make him a part of what had to be done. She knew that he, the brave hunter, loving father, family protector, was torn apart inside that she'd be on a journey no man had ever tried. Just the idea wounded his pride. So he had to give advice about things she already knew.

  "I'll check their paws every hour," she promised.

  Facing the inevitable, Kussu had been groaning and sighing for three days, with spurts of anger between, knowing that his wife could not be stopped. He'd even enlisted Inu to make her change her mind, but the shaman said, "Let her go! She'll return."

  "When will I see you again?" Kussu asked Maja one evening.

  She answered, "After the winter freeze makes the ice safe. Our sons will be with
me." Ten months perhaps.

  Five days later, with six hundred booties for use in late spring when the ice began to melt and a fourteen-day supply of frozen raw seal meat to be shared with the dogs, noon sun shining above, moon fortunately due up that night, Maja shouted to Nattiq, "Huk! Huk! Huh!" And off she went, the women of Nunatak cheering her. The eight Greenland huskies were straining to go, howling loudly.

  Kussu, standing outside their dwelling, had tears in his eyes. He might never see his wife again.

  The nine-foot sledge used a typical fan hitch. The dogs were attached to the sledge with individual long sealskin ropes called traces. Their harnesses were made of sealskin. Short lines were attached with toggles made of walrus ivory, fitting into a loop at the end of a long rope of walrus skin, hooked to a short line of walrus from the front of the sledge with a connector also made of walrus ivory. The brake was a long, braided sealskin line looped several times and thrown forward over the front end of one of the runners to create friction and stop the sledge.

  The wooden runners were coated with frozen char, bound with seal rope, and when she was not running behind the sledge, Maja would ride it, holding on to the wooden crossbar. Her long, braided whip of sealskin was used to guide the dogs, not lash them.

  The village of Salluk was forty miles south, and Maja thought she could make at least four miles an hour running along the shore and crossing the frozen inlets, skirting around any piles of drift ice. If the dogs got tangled, which they certainly would, she'd have to stop and untangle them. That was routine. She'd done it even when pregnant with Alika and Sulu. She planned to be in Salluk late the next afternoon, running all night by moonlight.

  She knew what she faced—wilderness and perhaps bitter wind with spikes of snow driven before it. She'd wear a snow-and-wind mask made of walrus hide when necessary. By the coast, there'd be no trees. Those were all inland, in the mountains, far west across the tundra. There'd be silence except for the whisper of the sledge runners. The dogs would not break the silence unless they saw a nanuk—then they'd roar.

  She likely would not come across a single human. Maybe a blue or white fox, maybe a bear. She would fight loneliness in this world of white. She would force herself to think only of Alika and Sulu.

  The sea doesn't freeze solid to the ocean floor because

  the downward growth of the floating masses is stopped

  when the ice itself acts as a blanket to prevent

  the water from losing its natural heat.

  15

  It was early February. Alika and Sulu watched as the aurora borealis streamers, in twilight, moved from west to east, forming a curtain of yellow and white. That was the general color except in the northwest, where the sky was deep red.

  Sulu said, "I'm still afraid of those lights."

  "They haven't harmed us, have they?" Alika pointed out. More icebergs were in view, a threatening fleet of them. "I'm more worried about the bergs than the sky."

  The next day, twilight lasted from dawn until late afternoon, another good sign that light was returning. But then a heavy snowfall and high winds began in the early evening. The three of them again stayed inside. It was typical High Arctic weather in late winter. No two days or nights alike. It could change on the hour.

  For almost four months, Alika had been trying to guide the conversation away from home, but Sulu persisted almost every day and night, often asking the very same questions. Alika always tried to answer them without repeating himself.

  "You think that Papa and Mama have forgotten us?"

  "No, they have not." But Alika knew that they might, by now, have some doubts that their sons were still alive.

  "How about the dogs? Have they forgotten us?"

  "Not at all. They'll jump all over us once we come home," Alika said.

  "How about Inu?"

  "No. He'd never forget us. Shamans never forget anything."

  Alika's mind was more on the snowhouse than on Sulu's questions. He'd built the original iglus not far from the west edge of the floe, and already there were signs of crumbling the farther south it sailed. The sun would warm the water. Melting was inevitable. Or those miserable crosscurrents could suddenly cause a split exactly underneath their house. It might happen in the middle of the night, leaving them a narrow wedge of ice on which to scramble. There'd likely be no warning. Alika decided to build another snowhouse nearer the middle of the floe the next day.

  "What is Mama making for dinner tonight?" Sulu asked.

  Without thinking, Alika said, "Oh, maybe caribou stew with those dried blackberries," and then regretted it. He also longed for the warmth and protection of their home, and meals his mama prepared. He also longed for safety. That might be a matter of luck.

  Sulu asked, "Will we ever see them again?"

  "Of course we will. Now go to sleep."

  When they went outside in the morning, they saw fresh nanuk tracks in the new white snow cover.

  Jamka sniffed them and Sulu said, "Another bear swam out."

  "Looks that way," Alika said in a calm voice. "Don't wander around." He had already reloaded the Maynard.

  They built the new snowhouse that morning and moved their meager possessions. It was near the middle of the floe, where the ice was thickest. It would be the last section to peel off. Alika moved what was left of the sledge. It was now a matter of waiting.

  The next day, there were beautiful crimson clouds to the south, a sign of spring, and Alika killed and dressed another medium-sized seal. "Our luck has changed, you see," he said to Sulu.

  The following day, the tops of the southern Greenland mountains were briefly illuminated by the sun and many narwhals swam around, their tusks sometimes projecting over the pack ice.

  "That's not good. They scare the seals away," Alika said.

  "I remember Papa saying that," Sulu said.

  Kussu had begun teaching Sulu about hunting when he was four or five, but Sulu didn't seem very interested. There was no school in Nunatak for the children. Hunting would be what their lives were all about. By the time he was twelve, Alika had gone to the ice by himself to hunt. That was his proud destiny, like his papa's.

  "Two more years, when you're twelve, you can go anywhere by yourself," Alika said.

  Let his brother think about what was ahead in his life, Alika decided. Let him think about being brave and strong. Let him know how great it would be for all in the village to call him hunter.

  The light was changing rapidly. The moon was not quite full, but the light was so strong by midday that even the stars couldn't be seen. Alika said to Sulu, "The sun and the moon are competing to give us light."

  One morning Alika and Sulu were watching the light increase on the southern horizon. In not too long a time, the whole orb appeared and stayed above the horizon for a short while, a red ball over the strait to the southwest.

  "Every day it will get stronger," Alika said.

  Always curious, Sulu asked, "Who makes the light?"

  "The sun does, and when the sun disappears, we have dark. You know that."

  "Yes, but is there a shaman up in the sky who makes it happen?"

  "I don't think so," Alika replied.

  "Someone does it," Sulu said.

  Alika said, "You ask me questions I can't answer. Ask Papa and Mama when we get home. If they can't answer you, talk to Inu."

  "Suppose he doesn't know."

  Alika shook his head, saying, "Little One, you're driving me crazy."

  In the afternoon, Alika harpooned a seal and butchered it immediately.

  Floe ice covers all the surfaces of the bays, inlets,

  and straits of the Arctic coast during the winter. It is

  usually strong enough to carry hunters and sledges.

  16

  Maja stayed two days in Salluk, a village of sixty sod-and-stone huts, sitting out a gale. Lodging with a family of four, she fretted about the time lost. The people had welcomed her, amazed at what she was trying to do.


  When she rode into Salluk, there had been a short vicious fight, a tangle not unexpected, between her dogs and the local ones. The fight was Nattiq's fault. He picked it. Maja and the Salluk hunters broke it up. Everyone in the Arctic knew about dogfights. They could be bloody and could end in death. Fighting and toughness were part of sledge-dog life.

  The run between Nunatak and Salluk had been uneventful. Nattiq and the team had pulled well, even joyfully. The dogs always preferred to run, day or night, rather than burrow down in the snow to sleep. Their muscles worked as though they were encased in seal oil. Inuit believed huskies were put on Earth precisely to do this work.

  The first night, the villagers had crowded into the largest hut to hear Maja's story about Alika and Sulu. They also wanted to learn what was occurring in the larger Nunatak, a settlement they envied. They'd heard about the wrecked Reliance and what gifts of wood and other materials it had bestowed. They were jealous.

  Villagers in the High Arctic were always curious about any visitor. A visitor could be talked about for winters to come, especially a rarity like Maja, the mother determined to rescue her sons no matter the odds, no matter how dangerous.

  "My name is Maja, and I'm the wife of hunter Kussu, who has a broken leg. I was born in Nunatak. My mother died of high fever when I was six; my father was drowned in the strait when I was fourteen," Maja said.

  She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice and further told them what she and Kussu thought had happened to Alika and Sulu. No questions were asked. This was the Arctic. What was there to say?

  A black-bearded hunter rose and spoke. "Turn back, woman," he said.

  Maja simply looked at him and the conversation was over.

  When she left the hut, he stepped out of the shadows. "I've been south," he said. "Watch out for snow-covered rocks when you are near the shore. If you break a runner and have no hunter to fix it, you may have to walk a long way to the next settlement."