by Ray Hudson
“Try this. At least it’s clean.”
With the carving safely folded within, he buttoned the handkerchief inside his pack and yawned.
I watched him fall asleep. I have to admit I was getting used to having him around. My own eyes grew heavy, and I must have drifted off. I was awakened by the cranking of an anchor being lowered. The light coming through the porthole was brighter. I saw we were behind the gray protective bulk of an island. I nudged Booker, who yawned and stretched and was about to speak when short rocking spurts and creaks scraped the deck above us. He reached the porthole as something large plummeted past. He jumped aside as I clamped my face to the window.
“They’ve lowered a skiff,” I said. I went to the barrel and handed him a rain jacket before putting one on myself. Both of them were too large, but we rolled up the sleeves and did what we could. I cracked open the door and made sure nobody was around. The brief respite from the storm dissolved into another onslaught as we emerged from the cabin and hugged the outside wall. Three men stood at the stern. One of them pointed toward the island. We slipped around the corner as they stepped into the wheelhouse.
I slid along the wall until I crouched under a small window.
Booker inched down beside me and mouthed, Where are we?
“We’ll stay anchored,” a familiar deep voice said before it was drowned out by wind.
It belonged to Captain Hennig. The second Captain Hennig, maybe the good one. I inched closer to the windowsill and heard him say, “Old Kagamil will give us a little protection. The burial caves—” and rain slammed into the cabin. I crouched down and heard another voice say, “‘meantime, break out the cards, ’Ardy.”
We backed away. When the rain took a breather and the wind relaxed, the slopes of Kagamil seemed a little greener and a little closer. Maybe because I had held the fox again or maybe because it was almost home, but for whatever reason, I found myself estimating the distance to the nearest shore.
“In this weather?” Booker held his arms out. “You’re crazy.”
“It won’t take long,” I insisted. “The wind will practically push us there. I know we won’t find any Kagamil people, but I can bury the ivory fox someplace where Hennig One or Hennig Two—or any other pirate in this century or the next—will never find it and then—”
“What?”
“Then we wait until the ship returns to Unalaska, get the book from Vasilii, and go home.”
“Or try to,” he said.
I could tell he was tempted.
“Look, what’s the worst that can happen? We get caught. They’ll just think we’re a couple of crazy kids.”
“We need Vasilii if we’re going to try something like that.” But he saw I had made up my mind, and he half-growled, “I know. Haqada! Haqada!”
I hoped the card game was exciting enough to keep the men playing as the rain began to diminish to a drizzle. I pulled the line tethering the small wooden skiff until it was directly below us. And then I jumped—although my fall, like when I had escaped from the volcano, seemed closer to floating than falling. Booker adjusted his pack, climbed over the railing, and was about to let go when I shouted, “Untie it first!”
I think he was surprised at how easily the knot came loose. He pulled in the rope, gathered it taut to keep the skiff beside the ship. Then he shut his eyes and clattered down beside me as I positioned the oars and rowed. When I stretched the oars out, I saw that the backs of both my hands were slightly darker, as though a shadow had covered them. But I had never felt stronger as I sent us away from the ship and toward Kagamil Island, closer and closer, aided by a steady breeze. It wasn’t long before mist had almost entirely erased the Eider.
Rowing became harder as we drew closer to the shore. The water thickened, or so it felt because I had to double my effort to keep momentum. Booker saw me straining against the oars.
“What’s happening?” His voice was edged with panic.
“Grab an oar!” and I made room beside me. We pulled together and the skiff broke free from whatever had held it. But now it had a mind of its own. It rebuffed all our attempts to reach the shore. The bow turned away from the island, and we headed back toward the Eider.
On deck, a man stared at us, or, rather, through us, past us, over our heads, almost as though we were obscured by a cloudbank. We were within twenty feet of the schooner when he turned and walked into the cabin.
“Awesome,” Booker said. “Is it the same one?”
“Same one what?”
He held up an arm. “This!”
I looked at my own gut raincoat. “Unbelievable.”
We were carried beyond the protection of Kagamil Island and toward the northeast coast of Chuginadak. I looked back at a bank of fog, dense blue and semitransparent, hovering on the water where the Eider rode. Our skiff was now a slightly smaller version of the skin-covered baidar we had been in earlier. The volcano stood far to the west, tall and solitary and menacing as we headed straight into the shore. Booker jumped out like a pro and pulled the skiff firmly onto the gravel.
“Where do you think we are?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s not where the Kagamil people were berry picking. We must be closer to the volcano. I think we need to head east.” I smiled a little. “Maybe we’ll be lucky.”
“I thought you were just going to bury it and leave.” “Well, I was, when we were going to land on Kagamil. But maybe here we can find somebody to give it to. And if we can’t, then I’ll bury it and we can go back.”
“I think you need to make up your mind,” he said.
I touched my gut sleeve. “It’s pretty clear that somebody or something wants us here.”
We lifted the skiff above the high water line—it was surprisingly light—and secured it in a depression of thick grass. Heavy surf pushed and pulled the gravel below us as waves hit the beach and receded.
The last time I had hiked on the island, the day had been dry. Now the deep grass along the shore was heavy with recent rain, although the day was clearing up. Shoals of the wide blades of wild rye were bent double under the weight of water. Each blade funneled a stream onto me as I ploughed through. Even when we reached higher elevations, the ground cover was wet and the grass was as slippery as a carpet of kelp. Struggling uphill, we wrapped the wet blades between our fingers to gain traction. Gliding downhill, we pumped our arms and hands into the grass to slow down and to keep from tumbling headfirst. My fingers were chilled. Cold, wet, and exhausted, we hiked on until Booker plonked down.
“You’ll get your butt wet,” I said.
He widened his eyes at the absurdity.
I stared at the distant shoreline and again wished I had Vasilii’s ability to see things in the distance.
We set off, now angling slightly down toward what I hoped was the bay where Ash had first shown us the Kagamil people. He was a strange guy. He’d refused to help me return the carving, and then he’d taken us to the Volcano Woman who had been less than helpful. A stretch of hillside protruded in front of us like the rounded bill on a baseball cap. Still, I thought as I passed Booker who was adjusting the strap on his pack, he hadn’t been out and out hostile. “I think we’re going to make it,” I said and pointed toward a distant cove where two large open boats had pulled ashore. “I’m surprised that they’re here. They must really like these berries!”
“I wouldn’t have come,” he said, forgetting he just had.
“Berries won’t be at their best for very long,” I said. “They need to get them before—”
A shadow darted across a high ridge.
“Booker!”
He looked straight back.
“Not there. Higher.”
I caught another thin, swift flash.
“Not again!” he groaned and gave me a look that said he understood we were in danger of being discovered.
We ricocheted from side to side as we launched ourselves down the hill. For a moment, the shoreline came back into sight and
then it disappeared beneath the crest of another hill. We crawled out of a ravine of dense ferns and stunted lupine and hurried across a bare exposure, leaping from stone to stone. We sidestepped down a grassy incline. Twice he slid into my feet and sent me flying. My legs ached. Every muscle in my body felt stretched to its limit. After what must have been at least a quarter mile, we stumbled onto a narrow ridge directly over the bay where people had come ashore.
“They’re below us, Anna. I see a couple of them.”
We had reached a rocky saddle that extended like the peak of a grass-covered roof. The view was amazing, but more importantly we could now see the whole bay below. People had climbed into the lower hills looking for berries. We got down on our stomachs, despite the dampness, so our presence wouldn’t alarm them. “Look,” Booker whispered. A boy in a tattered gut raincoat was climbing toward us.
“He’s not picking many berries,” I whispered. The boy paused and looked back down toward his companions.
“Say something,” Booker whispered.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something friendly. Something in Aleut.”
“Jeez,” I said as I got to my knees and took a deep breath.
“Aang! Aang!” I said, and racking my brain I remembered a phrase from Old Man Bill Tcheripanoff.
“Slachxisaada!” Fine weather!
The boy froze.
Then he unfroze, or rather the whole side of the mountain unfroze as an earthquake shook the landscape. A jolt whipped the ground under us and brought us to our hands and knees. I leapt to a grassy oasis, but Booker slipped and in seconds he was surrounded by sliding rocks. He grabbed at anything—grass, rocks, twigs—but nothing held. He careened sideways as more rocks scraped his ribs and a stream of gravel carried him away. He dug his elbows in and arched his back. His raincoat was crushed up and under his armpits. His pack was torn off his shoulders. I saw him brace his legs to cut his acceleration, but the sudden jamming launched him headfirst. He sailed over a cascade of small boulders. A fine dust hovered in the air, and then the rumble of the landslide diminished.
I raced to where he had tumbled, sprawled cattywampus and groaning. When I touched his side, he struggled to sit up but immediately collapsed back. His right leg had slid into a trough over which a boulder the size of a truck tire had rolled. I leaned my shoulder against it, and shoved. I shoved again. If it moved, it didn’t move enough.
“My leg’s okay,” he said. “It’s just caught.” His palms had been scraped raw, but he grabbed his leg below the knee and tried to wrestle it free.
The acrid stench of a red fox washed toward us as the animal scampered over loose rocks toward the backpack. I shouted. It stopped at my voice, tilted its head as though expecting me to say something intelligible, and then it snapped the pack between its teeth, shook it, and in a moment had dropped it at my elbow.
“Give it to him!” Booker shouted as he tore at his pants.
“Give what?”
Then I was on my knees flinging open the leather pack. I reached in and removed the folded handkerchief. I opened it and held out the ivory fox strung on its leather cord. I held it at arm’s length toward the fox. My hands shook. The fox inched closer. My fingers twitched. It wrinkled its nose.
“Don’t you dare bite,” I said.
But the fox dipped its neck and leaned in closer. I slipped it over its head. It shook the way an animal does to remove a pesky fly, and the cord settled at the base of its shoulders. “Go!” I shouted and clapped my hands. “Go!”
Booker was pulling on his leg. But nothing gave.
“Find something, Anna!” he shouted. “A stick, a branch! Something!”
Fat chance of finding a branch high on a treeless island. I picked up a flat stone and wedged it under the boulder and pushed, hoping to leverage it loose.
“Try a larger rock!”
But I hurled the flat stone away and began digging around the base at the front, flinging stones every which way. Then I stood over Booker and pushed downhill, pushed with every inch of strength I had. It tilted, only a fraction of an inch, but just enough.
Far below, a skin boat had pulled away from the shore.
As Booker rolled to his feet, I glimpsed a boy and then a young fox where the boy had been. I again clapped my hands, and in an instant the fox and the charm were gone.
“Pee-yuu!” Booker said.
“Did you smell that?”
“Fox,” I answered.
“Stinky!” he said, just as the ground vibrated and a geyser of hot air tore from the rocks. I screamed and grabbed his arm as a voice that crackled like fire began to laugh.
FIVE
MARK OF THE RAVEN
19. Booker
The bookmark was jolted out of my pocket and into the air where it stayed just long enough for Volcano Woman to spit a sliver of fire at it. The words glowed for an instant, and then it burst into flames. Anna gasped, but I felt something slip into my shirt pocket. Torn and now probably burnt to a crisp.
We were balanced on a loose crust of earth. It tilted as the woman walked around us, inspecting us and trying to decide what to do with us. Wisps of smoke seeped out from the bottom of her grown that seemed filled with fire, and the feathers along the seams gave off sparks when they touched each other.
“I saw what you did, girl.” She had stopped in front of Anna. “The charm will do them little good.”
“They may surprise you,” Anna said.
“Just shut up,” I whispered.
“You’re a brave thing.”
“I did what I had to do.”
Actually, I was feeling a bit defiant myself. Probably left over from carrying the ivory fox so long. It would pass. Hopefully.
“Ash will be happy to relieve them of it again,” the woman said. “They will be happy to surrender it. Courage comes with obligations.”
With that, she signaled for us to start walking on a trail that materialized when she waved in the general direction of the volcano. I stumbled after Anna, feeling a warm presence close behind me. The breeze was in front, pushing against us, as we climbed a narrow path bordered with soft heather, a trail now here, now there, now suddenly gone. Whatever dampness remained in my clothes soon evaporated. When I leaned into the wind, it acted like a full-body walking stick, giving me a wedge of support. I focused my eyes on the ground for stones, flat and loose and ready to slide, and for creeping stems of shrubs, bare and brown and more like roots than branches, that rose just high enough to trip me.
We stepped onto an expanse of flaked shale and made our way across the inward curve of a high valley. After another upward stretch, I saw the great volcano brooding off in the distance, all by itself. Its green skirt rose to a crown of rocks cut with deep crevices packed with years and years of snow and ice. Time had no passage there. Not the minutes and hours and weeks and months that I knew. Not even the years. It was like I had stepped out of time. I was so hypnotized by the beauty of the mountain that I crashed into Anna.
“Booker!” she snapped as she regained her balance.
The woman arched an eyebrow at me when I checked to make sure our collision hadn’t knocked the bookmark out of my pocket. We began a descent to the base of the volcano. She pointed toward a boulder the size of a house. Anna again went first. I pressed my left shoulder against the huge stone and turned my eyes away from the embankment on the right. My feet released a slight dusting of pebbles that started a brief cascade of rocks.
Great, I said to myself. Another avalanche.
On the far side of the boulder, the trail sloped down until we crossed a narrow valley between the eastern side of the island and the great volcano to the west. After a moderate climb, we approached the ragged mouth of a cave. Sharp stones littered the ground like broken teeth. Ribbons of steam curled out from the two lowest corners. I shuddered at the thought of climbing through those hungry jaws. As though she understood my fear but didn’t care, the woman ordered me to take the lead. R
ocks cluttered the cave’s protruding lip as I stepped into a smooth tunnel that led downhill.
Exactly like inside a throat, I said to myself as I reached out and touched a cool stone wall.
The sound of the wind brushing the entrance to the cave diminished. It had swept the opening like somebody blowing across the mouth of a bottle, but now it whispered and before long it fizzled away. I expected the cavern to be dark, damp, and cold, but the long passage was dry and filled with dim light. And wide. Not so much a tunnel as a series of rooms connected by narrow corridors and bridges. At times I held my arms out, balancing the way I once crossed imaginary chasms on two-by-fours. Back when I was just a kid. Back when everything was normal.
If I could see myself now, I thought, what would I think?
The path meandered back and forth, and then we descended a dozen wide stone steps to a landing. Massive stalactites glowed like lamps. My parents had visited Carlsbad Caverns and had hiked along cliffs in western Washington where there were cavities like small caves. Inside one of them they had found light-blue agates and used them in Death and the Cavity of Fear.
Mrs. Bainbridge had snorted, “Sounds like an unpleasant trip to the dentist.”
This had to be a hundred times more amazing. And scarier. The path that led out from this landing was carpeted with a wide grass mat. Several minutes later, the passage divided into three equally wide corridors. I hesitated.
“Stay on the matting,” Volcano Woman instructed.
I did, and from then on whenever an alternative trail branched off, I followed the matted way.
“It’s a maze,” I said to myself. I wondered if the people in one mythology knew those in another. I was about to ask if she had ever met somebody named Daedalus who had made a famous maze when I became aware of a sweet sulfuric odor, like garlic when Mrs. Bainbridge cooked an Italian meal. The thought of food drove mythology from my head. We passed through a vaulted room where delicate lava straws quivered on the ceiling like jittery fingers. The walls held clumps of white gypsum flowers and what looked like tangles of stone seaweed. We entered a cool chamber. I looked where I heard water trickling and saw rivulets winging across dark polished slabs and sliding into a stone bowl the size of a backyard swimming pool. Judging from the hefty stream that tilted out the far side of the chamber, I guessed the pool was also fed by underground springs.