Cold Spell

by E. A. Copen

  Bo stepped up and muscled his way between Jackie, Bryce, and Nic to offer her his hand. “My name is—”

  “Beauregard Wheeler.” Osha crossed her arms. “Called Bo. And this girl is your progeny, Jaqueline. She goes by Jackie.”

  Bo lowered his hand and tilted his head to the side. “Am I supposed to be impressed that you know who we are?”

  “Lou called and said you were coming. Said I should keep an eye out and make sure you didn’t freeze to death.” She moved her head up and down, sizing them up before she stepped aside. “Well, you’d better come in, then. You look half-frozen already.”

  Nic nodded to in thanks and stepped through first, making sure to tap the snow from his boots before he removed them entirely and left them by the door. Bo followed his example, except he removed his hat as soon as he was indoors, too.

  Jackie came in last, but didn’t take her shoes off. She started to, but cringed after sliding her heel out of the first one.

  Bo tucked his hat into his coat pocket and eyed the old woman still standing out in the cold, waiting for Jackie to remove her shoes. Then he looked down at the ugly, shag carpet covering the floor and finally understood her hesitation. It felt okay to him, but sometimes Jackie could be funny about textures. One thing he knew she hated was thick carpet.

  “I think maybe I’ll just wait outside,” Jackie said and took a step back.

  Osha muscled her way into the house and shut the screen door behind her. Despite her short stature, she seemed to take up just as much space as Jackie. “Nonsense. It’s cold enough out there to freeze the whiskers off a whale. There’s a pair of fresh slippers next to the door there. Brand new.”

  Bo looked down and saw that she was right. A pair of fleece-lined brown slippers, approximately Jackie’s size, waited by the door, still in the plastic shopping bag with the tag attached.

  Osha gave a toothy grin. “I told you Lou called. He was very specific.”

  Just like Lou to think of all the small details, Bo mused.

  They waited while Jackie slipped off her snow boots, careful to remain on the tiny square of linoleum inside the door and not touch the carpet, and put on the slippers. She stepped onto the shag carpet with her arms stiff and fingers spread wide, as if she were walking on a tightrope rather than carpet. When the shaggy, brown carpet beast didn’t rear up and bite her, she relaxed.

  Osha grunted in approval and proceeded to usher them into the living room. A floral print sofa took up most of the room, but there was also a blue corduroy chair in the corner. Next to it stood a folding tray with some white bones along with some metal carving tools. Osha sat in the chair and pulled the tray in front of her. She took one of the tools in her knobby, wrinkled fingers and carved at the horn-shaped bone in silence.

  Bryce didn’t sit, but rather went straight through the living room and to the kitchen. The clang of dishes told Bo he’d started washing and cleaning up, an odd thing for a guest to do in an old woman’s home. Besides, wasn’t she Justice’s gran and not Bryce’s?

  “People still respect their elders here,” Osha said, shifting in her chair. “My grandson hardly ever visits me anymore, but the pack does well taking care of us old folks.”

  “It’s our pleasure to be of assistance,” Nic offered and sat down on the floral sofa.

  Bo cleared his throat. “So, if you talked to Lou, have you heard about what’s going on?”

  “These ears have heard a story. I doubt they’ve heard the whole story. Lou doesn’t know the whole story, not from his cottage in Whitehorse. Why don’t you tell this old woman your story?” She raised her eyes and met Bo’s. Osha’s gaze felt heavy.

  “I’ve seen it,” Bo offered quietly. “Whatever is killing the wolves in this pack, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  Osha lowered her carving knife and the bone, fingers shaking, more from age than fear. “And?”

  Bo looked over at Jackie. She too was waiting expectantly to hear his story. Since she’d come back, he hadn’t told her everything. He hadn’t told anyone, partly because he still didn’t believe it himself. Bo had seen a lot of monsters in his years. Rogue wolves, vampires, fae who could take the shape of great beasts… The thing that had appeared in his room that night was more terrifying than any of them. At least with vampires, werewolves, and fae he could guess at their motives. This thing, this monster, didn’t seem to have a motive other than to torture and kill. Jackie had said it was feeding on the wolves it killed, but Bo couldn’t believe it. Something as terrifying as that creature couldn’t feed on laughter, even if it were mad laughter.

  But he didn’t want to admit that in front of Jackie and some strange wolf. He couldn’t admit that he’d been scared.

  “It was the size of a man,” he began, and then paused, thinking again. “Bigger. Hair that looked like wet seaweed pulled from the blackest swamp. Big, lidless eyes. Long arms and fingers even longer.”

  “We think it might be a Mahaha,” Jackie interrupted.

  Osha’s attention shifted to Jackie. She raised a single finger to her wrinkled lips. “Speak its name quieter, dear, unless you wish to draw it here.”

  Jackie didn’t have the patience for the old woman’s superstitions. Bo wanted to tell her to be quiet and listen for once, but he didn’t dare chastise her in front of so many strangers. She’d never forgive him if he made her look weak.

  “We were hoping you could tell us how to kill it,” Nic said. “Last night, during the attack, I cut off its arm. It melted as if it were made of ice, but the creature bled like a man.”

  The old woman turned back to her bone carving and worked on it in silence for a few minutes.

  Jackie sighed. “I already talked to Justice. He told us the story about the Inuit woman in the igloo.”

  “Justice does not tell it right,” Osha grumbled. “And my grandson is a very bad liar. Bad liars make for bad storytellers. What he knows of our people and our ways couldn’t fill a shovel. Sit down and I will tell you a proper story.”

  Jackie rolled her head to the side and raised an eyebrow at Bo.

  Bo gave her a little smile and sank into the sofa, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees. Nic settled onto the arm of the sofa. Jackie finally sat down on the sofa next to Nic, but only after a few more minutes of waiting to see if Osha was really serious. One day, Jackie’s impatience would get her into serious trouble.

  Osha carved on the bone a little longer before she picked it up and blew some powder from it. She looked down the curve of the bone and grunted approval before she lowered it. “It was during a long night like this one. In those times, when the sun went down, it was for more than three months. Sometimes, the sun would sleep for years. This was in the starving times, when our ancestors shot every bird from the sky and many hunting parties went into the sea in search of meat to never return.

  “The woman was young and beautiful, but even young, beautiful brides must eat and so her husband went with the others on a hunt one day and left her alone. With her belly empty, she tried to sleep, but worry kept her awake. She worried for her husband, for her people, for the stars in the sky and the fish in the sea. All things. As she lay awake with worry, she heard a sound.”

  “The Mahaha snuck into the igloo and tickled her to death,” Jackie said, her tone impatient.

  Osha smiled. “Yes, but it was not just a tickling. As I said, these were the Starving Times. Some men who had become desperate found a way to survive without fish or fowl. They turned their backs on the ways of our people and sold their souls to evil for an easy source of meat: mankind. They were given dark magick that allowed them to feed on the joy of others, but it came at a grave cost. Though they feasted nightly on the happiness of others, it brought them no joy. The men became deformed, soulless beasts who forgot their humanity.”

  She leaned forward to collect a rag on the tray that she dipped into a dish of black paint and rubbed the paint onto the bone as she spoke. “The creature ate its fill. After so
me time, the husband returned and found his wife dead. As he examined her corpse, he heard a sound. He decided to hide in the bed with his wife’s body and see what it was coming into his igloo. And here came the Mahaha with his long fingers, blue skin, and white eyes. A mist of frost followed with it, cooling the air so much it made the young hunter shiver.

  “As soon as he saw the beast draw near, he jumped up, brandishing his knife. He chased the beast from his igloo, hoping to catch it. But the Mahaha was very fast, despite the cold. For days, the hunter trailed his prey, sometimes drawing near enough he could smell the creature’s death-like stench. Other times, such a great distance cut between them that the Mahaha was barely a spot on the horizon against the eternal twilight. But the hunter did not give up, not even after a week. He reasoned that eventually, the creature would tire.”

  “Seems reasonable,” Bo said, nodding. “Even the strongest beasts eventually grow tired.”

  “Not the Mahaha.” Osha shook her head. “When he had gone so far that the land gave way to tiny islands of ice and snow, and nothing but the great, dark sea stretched on beside them, the mighty hunter conceded defeat. He sat down next to a stream of clean, fresh water while Mahaha stood on the other side. ‘I give up,’ the hunter shouted. ‘Eat me if you must, but I can chase you no longer.’”

  She paused for a long time, rubbing paint into her work and turning the bone a dark shade of grey.

  Jackie shifted her weight on the sofa and put one leg over the other. “That can’t be how it ends. That isn’t how stories are told.”

  The corner of Bo’s mouth turned up in a half smile at Jackie’s sudden interest in a story she claimed to have heard before. He found himself wondering if she’d listened to stories as a girl. It wasn’t hard to imagine her as a very young child, blanket pulled up to her chin, eyes big as she listened. The difficult part was imagining someone else reading to his little girl.

  I should have come for her sooner, he thought. But maybe it was best he hadn’t. At least she’d had a chance at a somewhat normal life before he got involved and ruined that.

  Osha picked the story back up as if she’d never even paused. “The hunter bid the Mahaha to come and eat him, for he was too exhausted to go further. ‘But first,’ said the hunter, ‘let me have a drink.’ The hunter bent over and scooped some water up with his hand and brought it to his mouth. When he raised his head, however, he found the Mahaha on the opposite bank, mimicking his movements. The creature also had water in its cupped hands, lifting them to its mouth. It peered at him with pale, white eyes, grin fading into a look that might have been recognition. Or it might have been confusion. Who knows with monsters?

  “But suddenly, an idea came to the hunter. He bent over for another drink and the Mahaha bent over. When it did, the hunter reached out and grabbed the creature, pulling it into the water where it drowned.”

  Jackie pressed her lips together. “You mean to tell me this terrifying monster was tricked so easily and drowned in a few inches of water?”

  Osha put the rag down and picked up another, clean rag that she used to strip some of the wet paint away. She worked at wiping away the paint for quite some time before she spoke again. “When we are preoccupied feeding our baser urges, the rest of the mind starves. And when we neglect matters of the heart, we grow cold and dead inside. Every person is a beast and every beast a person. When the two halves work together, a person is whole. It takes both halves, the beast and the person, to survive here. The Mahaha has forgotten itself. Remind it again who it is, and what it is like to feel joy and not just devour it.”

  The old woman put the towel down and held the finished work out to Jackie, who took it.

  Bo leaned in to examine the work of art she’d made. The black paint remained only in the little grooves she’d carved, forming a picture. In the scene, an Inuit man peered into a stream of water, staring at his reflection, only the reflection staring back at him wasn’t his own. It was feral and frightening with stringy hair and long fingers. The Mahaha stared back at him from the water, mesmerized by the man.

  “I don’t understand what that means,” Jackie said to the old woman.

  Jackie passed the bone to Bo. The hair on the back of Bo’s neck stood on end when he took it in his hands. He couldn’t tell if some magick had been worked into the piece, or if he was simply moved by the art itself.

  Bo swallowed as he stared at the image. “I do.”

  A long moment of silence passed before Osha shifted and pulled a blanket down from the back of the chair to throw over her legs. “There’s a storm coming,” she said. “It will be cold tonight. Be a good lad, Nic, and see that everyone stays inside.” She leaned forward and placed a hand on Jackie’s leg. “Especially this young potential mate of yours.”

  “Mate?” Bo made a face.

  Bryce stepped into the living room, wiping his hands on his jeans, and interrupted before the conversation could continue. “Is there anything I can get for you, Osha? You want me to heat up some soup or something?”

  Her bottom lip protruded. “I’m old, Bryce, not an invalid. I’ll heat my own damn soup. Take your friends and feed them. It’ll be a while before this one has another chance to eat.” She looked directly at Jackie as she spoke.

  Bo’s heart leapt into his throat, though he couldn’t explain why. Nothing about the old woman’s look had changed, and her prediction wasn’t particularly ominous. It just felt that way. Something about this old woman unsettled him. Bo could see why the locals thought she was a witch.

  But Nic said there were no witches in Barrow. Maybe Nic was wrong.

  Bo stood. “I was told there was no one with magick left in Barrow. Something about you makes me think I heard wrong.” He held the carved bone back out to her.

  For the first time, Osha opened her eyes all the way. “We live in an age when metal birds scrape the sky and I heat my home with the touch of a button. I am old enough to remember a time before such modern luxuries. If you’d told me about them when I was a girl, I would have thought them magick. Your failure to understand something doesn’t make it magick.” She nodded to the bone. “That is scrimshaw. A priceless gift. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to refuse a gift?”

  Bo lowered his hand, suddenly feeling ashamed until he realized she’d avoided answering his question. “So, is it true? Is magick dead in the North Slope?”

  Her eyes returned to squints, focused on her hands as she folded them in her lap. She smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Twenty or so babies are born every year up here, and each one of them makes the world feel magickal again. Whenever I doubt the existence of magick, I always have Justice take me down to the hospital’s nursery to visit the babies. Perhaps you should go, old man.”

  Bo felt himself smiling back. “Maybe I should, old woman.” He bobbed his head in acknowledgement before going toward the door.

  “One more thing, Bo,” Osha called after him.

  He paused just before reaching where he’d left his shoes and turned around, expecting another verbal barb.

  The old woman’s face remained serious. “Take the scrimshaw with you.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  J ackie shivered as she stood in the snow and wished she’d found time to sleep. Barrow was two hours behind Billings as far as time went, which meant back home it was nearing ten in the morning. The sun was up, she’d had her first cup of coffee and she’d be sitting down to go through the account ledgers at home right about now.

  She missed that certainty. Numbers didn’t need interpretation. They didn’t need to have their layers of meaning picked apart to understand them. Numbers were concrete, and their value didn’t change depending on who worked with them. Numbers couldn’t lie, not at all like people.

  Stories were just creative lies, which meant storytellers were liars. Jackie couldn’t trust the old woman or anything she’d said, but Bo seemed to. Bo had always loved stories and legends. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he listened to oth
er old people talk and tell stories every time they worked together, somehow thinking it would help them with their work. Jackie couldn’t see how the old woman’s story would have any bearing on the real world. It was just a fantastical lie. If they wanted to kill the thing, they’d need more than luck and a few inches of cold water.

  She looked up at the dark sky where the eerie colors had danced just a few hours ago. Now, they were hidden behind a veil of white and fat clouds. Big snowflakes tumbled down at a hurried rate, threatening to bury the town.

  The snow drifts had deepened several inches while they were indoors, and the wind had kicked up with no sign of stopping. The old woman had said there would be a storm. How long would the snow last, she wondered? Would they be stuck there in Barrow for days? Weeks? Would it really be so bad?

  “Weather’s getting worse,” Nic said, stopping beside her close enough she could feel his body heat.

  She wanted to step into the pocket of warmth, but resisted the urge. “Think we’ll be snowed in?”

  “Not likely. We don’t get much precipitation up here. This snowstorm is something of a fluke. We usually only get three or four inches in January. Forecast this morning was calling for about six, but it’s the wind you’ve got to worry about, plus plummeting temperatures. Without trees up here to break the wind, it gets intense.”

  “Ever think about going south for the winter?”

  Nic chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Certainly. But the tradeoff is we get extra daylight in the summer, even if it almost never gets above fifty.”

  “Not that we’d object if it did,” Bryce said.

  Jackie turned to study the big man. He was an odd second, unlike any of the others she’d met. Bryce didn’t seem like the kind of werewolf who would run his own pack one day, which was a common eventuality for most seconds in packs. They were training to be alphas themselves. Bryce, however, seemed to be content as Nic’s second. Maybe she just didn’t know him well enough. The whole pack was strange, after all. She’d never seen one function quite the same way.