by Daniel Kirk
“They understand enough,” Mary said. “I send ’em down to the beach every afternoon to look for folk like you, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
The woman smiled. “I run sort of a day-care center here for some of the families where the parents are workin’. Not that there’s much work to be had.” She wrapped her heavy arms around a boy and girl and gave them a squeeze. “These two are my grandkids!”
Tomtar, still standing behind Matt, grinned mischievously and wiggled his fingers at the children. When they turned their faces into the woman’s breast their muffled laughter spilled out. “You want a glass of water?” Mary asked, prying herself away from the children. She went to turn on the television. “It’s about all I got to offer. Drinking water’s precious around here, these days. We’ve been scrapin’ it off the glaciers and storin’ it in tanks up the hillside a ways.”
“Look, I don’t mean to sound rude or anything,” Matt said, following the woman to the kitchen. “Anybody else would be running out of here, foaming at the mouth if they saw my friends. How come the sight of an elf and a troll doesn’t bother you at all?”
Mary chuckled and lifted a plate for Matt to see. “Look what I found! Do you think your friends would like a little muktuk? It’s air-dried. The kids gobbled up most of it, but there’s a few pieces left.”
Matt looked at the brownish chunks on the chipped plate; they looked a little like fried pork rinds. “What’s muktuk?”
“This kind is narwhal. You can also get it from beluga, but we like the narwhal blubber. Try it, it’s good!”
Matt was reluctant, but his stomach gnawed with hunger. He reconsidered and took a piece. “Thanks. I’ll give it a try, but Tomtar and Tuava-Li are vegetarians.”
“You won’t survive long up here without eatin’ meat,” Mary said.
Matt chewed the leathery blubber, which tasted like jerky and a little like nuts. He nearly swooned with pleasure as the juice ran down his throat. “They get by,” he said. “Look, this has been a really strange journey for me. I didn’t choose to come here. It’s all been just an accident, really, and I’m not the kind of person who … well, what I mean to say is, I’ve met people who know faerie folk, and they always have some kind of, you know, some kind of game they’re playing, and I usually end up the one who’s being tricked. So when I meet somebody who can see elves and trolls, and acts like it’s just the most normal thing in the world, I get a little nervous.”
“You three didn’t have anything to do with all those kids that got kidnapped and taken into Canada, did you?”
“No,” Matt said, his eyes wide. “What did you hear? I guess it was all over the news. Probably all around the world!”
“Eh, just a lot of Faerie mischief, as far as I could see,” Mary said, waving her hand. “It’s always been the same. At least, in the end, they let the kids all go! It could have been a heck of a lot worse.”
“What?” Matt said. “You mean they weren’t … killed?”
“Noooo,” Mary laughed. “Maybe the Faerie Folk were just tryin’ to make a point. Everybody’s fine, for now.”
Tuava-Li stepped quietly into the room and stood in the doorway. Behind her, the television blared. Mary filled a small glass from the tap and set it on the edge of the table for Tuava-Li to take. “No need to be nervous,” she said. “I’m just an old lady. I don’t bite. They call me an elder, when they’re tryin’ to be polite, ’cause I’ve seen a lot of things in my day. I’m spirit-wise, though. I’ve seen your kind comin’ and goin’ since I was a little girl; I just never knew what to call ’em. Now back in summertime—we call it Aujak—the kids found a couple of Faerie Folk out beyond the ridge. They’d been travelin’ north in that big Cord out there, and they plowed straight into the oil slick. They managed to get out, but they were lyin’ on the ground and coughin’ up black stuff when the kids found them. We cleaned ’em up as best we could, like you’d clean up a seabird or a turtle after a tanker spill. Didn’t do much good, though.”
“Then you know about the Cord?” Matt asked.
“Sure do!”
“The Cord’s not safe to travel in anymore,” Tuava-Li said. “We only used it because there was no other way to get north.”
“Ain’t nothin’ safe anymore,” the woman said. “The whole world’s comin’ apart, and it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“The Gods are looking out for us,” Tomtar offered, stepping into the doorway. “We’re on a mission!”
“A mission, eh?” Mary said. “Ya know, the Inuit have always known somethin’ about your kind, goin’ back thousands of years. There aren’t too many of us anymore who can still see the nature spirits, though. Your Cords come up out of the ice and snow, and most Inuit haven’t got a clue they’re even there. Here, look at these.”
The woman gestured to a window ledge, where small carvings made of bone and white stone stood in a row. The sculptures were of soft, rounded, ghostlike figures with heads and arms, and dots for eyes. “I made these. A few of us here make carvings, and there’s a woman who sells ’em for us down in the city.”
Matt’s heart pounded. The figures were exactly like the one tattooed on his chest. “What are these supposed to be? What do they mean?”
“They’re spirit guides,” Mary said. “They help folks in need.”
“They’re … really nice,” Matt said, trying to suppress his excitement.
The woman shrugged. “As a matter of fact, our people used to build shrines around the places where the Cords rise out of the ground. You can still see some of ’em out in the wilderness, if you go far enough. There used to be a lot of ’em out on the pack ice, before the temperature started to rise. Now the ice is breakin’ off in chunks bigger than Texas. Thank god there’s snow on the ground again, and Ukiassak’s finally here.”
“What’s here?” Matt asked.
“Early autumn,” Mary said. “Dark season’ll be here before you know it. Anyway, the shrines were marked with stones and carved wooden frames. We got experts nowadays claimin’ that the shrines have somethin’ to do with the way the Inuit used to hunt. But they don’t know anything.”
Tuava-Li craned her neck to get a closer look at the carvings. “You say that there were Faerie Folk here. Have they gone?”
“You might say that,” the woman answered. “They didn’t make it, after they’d been soaked in oil and lay out there on the tundra, sick and starvin’ for days. We kept it to ourselves, of course, and buried ’em out on the plain. You know there are derricks still out there from when the oil companies tried to run a pipeline? They gave up, because of the shiftin’ ocean ice, though they’ll probably try again in a few years when the ice is finally gone and they have easy access. They’ll pick our bones clean, I swear! This weather’s gonna bring this world to its knees. It’s changed our whole way of life already.”
“Uh-huh,” Matt said. “Global warming.”
Mary gave him a look. “You might not feel it in Pittsburgh, but up here, it’s tearin’ us apart. I guess it ain’t so nice for your Faerie Folk here, either. You’ll be next, Max, believe me.”
“It’s Matt.”
Mary nodded. “Anyway, since Aujak, I send the kids out once a day to see if anything’s doin’ with that Cord. That way, if anybody gets spat out of there and we find ’em soon enough, I figure we can probably do something to save ’em.”
“We’re all right,” Matt said. “We saw the oil in the Cord in time to get out. But my friend here has it all over his pants, as you can see.”
The woman looked at Tomtar, who was soaked from the knees down with black goo. “I took my shoes off,” Tomtar said apologetically.
“We need food,” Tuava-Li said. “We need supplies to help us to travel north. We need cold-weather gear. If you know where we can find another Cord that goes north, we’d be happy to pay you for anything you can do to help us.”
“Pay.” Mary laughed. “You don’t look like the type to car
ry a big wad of cash in your pocket. Lord knows I could use a few dollars, but I’m not gonna take it from you. You’re on a mission, after all. Hopeless, doomed to fail, like all missions these days, but still a mission.” The woman peered into the living room at the children, who were hunkered down in front of the TV screen watching cartoons. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen to us,” she said.
“We’ve got to reach the North Pole,” Matt said to Mary. “You’re right, we don’t have money, but we have something you can trade for money. Our world isn’t the only one out there, you know. There’s a faerie world, an elf realm, and there’s a tree up at the top of the world. We’re going to get a seed from that tree and plant it at the center of the earth. It’s going to make things better for the faerie folk. It’s going to make their world strong, the way it used to be.”
“Used to be?” Mary said with a touch of scorn. “Son, we used to have all the caribou we wanted to eat. We used to have char, and beluga, and we took tourists around to shoot polar bear. The ice shelf out there was five thousand years old. Then one day it just dropped off. We lost three-quarters of another ice shelf, and just this summer we lost enough ice to make three of your New York Cities. The bears are starving, and the lucky ones are going to drown before the last of the seals is gone. Don’t worry about saving the Elf world, worry about saving your own! Really, you should turn around and go back where you came from. There’s nothin’ you can do up here.”
“’Tis a shame you feel that way,” Tuava-Li said. “But this is our destiny. If you can help us, we’d be truly grateful, but if you cannot, we’d be happy if you could tell us where we might find food and shelter tonight. We’re not prepared for cold like this.”
“Seems to me you’re not prepared for much,” Mary said. With a deep sigh she got out of her chair and walked slowly into one of the dark rooms at the back of the house. She flicked on a light, and Matt and Tuava-Li could see her bending to tug a trunk out from under a bed. When she returned, she had some worn-looking coats, mittens, and boots in her arms. “These belonged to my kids when they were little,” she said. “I was savin’ ’em for the grandkids, but they don’t want my old stuff, anyway. Everything’s gotta be new, new, new these days. Their mama works down at the co-op, and their dad, he runs cargo planes, when there’s work. So I’m gonna give these to you.”
She dropped the clothing in a heap on the floor, and Tuava-Li reluctantly stepped forward to finger the fur that lined the jackets and mittens. “You’ll have to go by the co-op and see about buyin’ somethin’ your size,” Mary said to Matt. “They’ve got a few rooms for rent there, too, and you could stay the night, if you’ve really got money. I’ll see if my daughter can get you a break on the room. You can eat there, too. I suppose you’re hungry, the way you scarfed down the last of my muktuk.”
Truck tires sounded on the gravel road outside and Matt tensed when he heard the back door of the house creak open. Tomtar and Tuava-Li moved behind the kitchen cabinet and crouched there in the shadows. “Don’t worry,” Mary said in a low voice, “it’s just Joe. He wouldn’t notice an Elf if one was sittin’ on his chest and singin’ hallelujah.”
A man stepped into the narrow hallway and set his rifle down in the corner. Then he took off his coat and hung it on a hook. “Company, Joe,” Mary called, and looked at Matt. She leaned in and spoke in a whisper. “I’m gonna say your dad’s a scientist up here, doin’ research on climate change or somethin’, and that you took off from school to give him a hand.”
When he ambled into the kitchen, Matt saw that the man wasn’t much taller than he was. He was stocky, with a broad face and a mop of black hair, and tired brown eyes. He looked wary when he noticed Matt standing by the table. “This is Matt,” Mary said. “He’s come in from the U.S. to help out his old man.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Uh-huh, workin’ up at the Pole, and writin’ up some research for school. Isn’t that right, Matt?”
Matt nodded.
Joe held out his hand and Matt shook it. “He’s stayin’ down at the co-op,” Mary said, “and Joan called and asked me if I could give him some local history. I guess everybody figures I’m the expert around here.”
“Does he talk?” Joe asked.
“I talk,” Matt said.
Mary went to the refrigerator and got her son-in-law a can of soda. He slumped into a chair as she popped the lid and placed it on the table. “I guess you didn’t shoot nothin’ today.”
“Nah,” he said, and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sweater. “Couldn’t find a caribou interested in bein’ our dinner.”
Mary smiled and turned to Matt. “One of them big animals will feed our whole family for two weeks.”
“I’d have taken a seal, but the pickin’s are scarce out there. You ever shoot anything?” Joe asked Matt.
“Uh, yeah.” Matt remembered aiming a red-hot rifle at the Air Sprite that breathed down fire all around him. He remembered what happened after he pulled the trigger and decided it would be best not to provide too many details. “There are a lot of hunters in my family.”
Joe took another swig of his drink. “It’s hard finding enough ice to stand on. Pretty soon I’ll have to do all my huntin’ from a boat, like it’s summer year-round. I guess there’s always char.”
“You know the kids don’t like fish,” Mary said.
Joe shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Matt pressed his lips together and nodded. He was wondering how long he could keep up this charade.
“How you gettin’ north?” Joe asked Matt.
“I, uh—”
“His dad’s gonna come down and get him, isn’t that right, Matt?”
Matt swallowed. He didn’t like having to make up so many lies on the spot; it would be hard to keep his story straight. “Yeah, pretty soon now.”
“Don’t worry, Joe,” Mary said, “business will pick up in the spring.” She turned to Matt. “Joe does some business flying cargo down to Resolute in a Twin Otter. Once in a while he gets a job takin’ hunters or scientists from one place to another, but now that summer’s gone, the work’s dried up. You know the sun’s goin’ down pretty soon, and there won’t be light again until the end of February. Most of the scientists have already headed home.”
“What’s a Twin Otter?” Matt asked.
“What’s a Twin Otter?” Joe repeated. “How’d you get here, kid? Had to have been a Super King, or a DHC-6 Otter.”
“It’s an airplane,” Mary said. “Workhorses of the Arctic, isn’t that right, Joe?”
Joe finished his soda and got up. “I’m gonna get the kids and head on home, that is if I can pry ’em away from the TV.”
When he’d gone into the living room to collect his children, Matt cast a quick glance at Tomtar and Tuava-Li. They were still standing behind the counter, and their faces were anxious. “Let me help you with the kids’ coats,” Mary said to Joe and left the kitchen.
When she returned Tomtar was pacing nervously. “My friends get a little uncomfortable if they spend too long in a—well, in a building made for humans,” Matt said.
“Okay, you want to go,” Mary said. “I understand. It’s gonna be cold tonight. I’ll call my daughter and tell her you need a room. Your friends gonna be able to tolerate that, or do they have to be outdoors?”
“I think if they’re asleep we’ll be okay.”
“You said you have money?”
“I have … I have jewels, from the faerie world, but they’re jewels pretty much just like ours. Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, stuff like that. I was hoping we could trade some for money or supplies.”
Mary’s eyes widened. “Nobody will even believe they’re real, if you show ’em around. Let me see!”
Matt opened a sack of jewels and spread the gems on the table. Mary examined them carefully. “There’s gonna be more folks comin’ by to pick up their kids, any time now. Look, I’ve got some money saved up. Wait here.�
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Mary disappeared into her bedroom again and came back with an old wooden cigar box. She lifted the lid and withdrew a pile of bills. “This is my retirement, if I live long enough to retire. I’ll take your word for it that these jewels are real. I’ll trade you the money, for the sack.”
“I don’t know,” Matt said, glancing over at Tomtar and Tuava-Li. “I’m sorry, but we just want to trade in enough jewels to get the supplies we’ll need to get to the North Pole. How far is it from here, anyway?”
“You can’t reach the North Pole from here. Not on foot; it would take you months. There’s too much water out there, and thin ice, and hungry polar bears, and you’re just a kid. Whole teams of experts get lost or drown out there, and you don’t know anything. Listen. Tomorrow we’ll find out what it’ll cost to fly you to Ottawa, or somewhere else you can connect to home. I’ll give you the airfare in cash, in exchange for … let’s see.”
Mary moved the jewels around on the tabletop. “I’ll take these stones. Just five little rocks, okay? Nobody’s ever gonna say I don’t have a good heart. I don’t want to see you get hurt out there, and I know you will, if you keep on with this notion of reaching the Pole.”
“You don’t understand,” Matt said. “I don’t have a home to go back to. My parents were abducted by elves, and my house was burned down. I’ve got to get to the North Pole to take care of this business with the seed, and then these guys are going to help me get my parents back. I can’t fly anywhere. I’ve got no passport. And do you honestly think I can get seats on an airplane for faeries?”
Mary frowned. “I don’t know what to say. I’ll call my daughter, and we’ll get you set up for the night. Tomorrow you can come back here and we’ll discuss our options. Okay? Just don’t tell anybody about the jewels. Let me give you some cash in advance.”
Matt looked to Tomtar and Tuava-Li for approval, then nodded. They were going to have to trust this woman to help them; there was no other choice. Mary picked up her telephone from the counter.
Ten minutes later the travelers were out on the gravel road. Tomtar and Tuava-Li were dressed in their new cold-weather gear, and Matt shivered in his thin jacket and jeans, his shoulders hunched and his hands jammed into his pockets. He looked up at the gray sky and wondered what time of day it was; the sky already looked darker. Fat snowflakes drifted down as the trio plodded along the gravel road toward the Inuit Co-operative. “Why do you think my tattoo shows the same kind of thing that Mary carves?”