Hilda had been in the cooking tent since morning. She had a huge fire going and she had four geese trussed and hanging from the main poles out over the centre, where they were spinning on their tie lines and sizzling in the waves of rising heat. Every once in a while she would take a bowl and catch the grease drippings. Perfect for bannock, she said to herself. The kids would be hungry when they arrived.
Abraham had skinned a beaver he had trapped the day before and had stretched the pelt for curing outside. The beaver meat was cooking in a slow pot held high over the main campfire. The entire camp smelled of food. But it was not the cooking smells that were making Abraham’s nose twitch. He did not like the smell of the wind bearing down on them, gusting direct from the north, the temperature dropping.
Even the dogs were uneasy. Abraham was one of the last Waskaganish trappers still working with sled dogs. He could have bought a Ski-Doo, but he stuck with the dogs because he had always loved working with them, and, besides, what could a snow machine ever tell you? The dogs were letting him know the storm was a bad one. They were nervous, and selfish. He had noticed them fighting over the meat; a storm like this made everyone, man or dog, think survival. The only thing good about the temperature going down further was that soon it would be too cold to snow. Soon, he figured, he would be able to see enough to travel in the dark. If he had to.
Nish was sure he’d heard something. And it wasn’t just Jesse up again to stoke the fire: this sound had come from outside the shelter.
He hadn’t been able to sleep. He could hear Travis snoring. He could make out the girls huddled against each other. He could see Jesse closer to the fire, his face turned toward it.
The fire was crackling. Rachel had explained that it was caused by the resin in the spruce. It was spitting and sizzling and snapping…snapping?
No, the snapping was coming from outside! Nish held his breath.
Snap!
Something was moving through the trees!
Nish could feel his heart pounding. The wind kicked the sides of the plastic tarp and it rattled and rippled the entire length.
Snap!
“Trav!” Nish hissed.
No answer.
“Jesse!”
No answer.
“Rachel!…Liz!”
Nothing.
Nish didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to shout for fear of alerting whatever it was on the other side of the tarp. He also had to go to the bathroom–bad. Too much Coke.
Quietly, barely daring to breathe, Nish waited. He counted to a hundred, then to two hundred. He was desperate, now, to go to the bathroom. Three hundred. Four hundred. He had to go!
Satisfied that whatever it was had moved along, he quickly pulled himself out of the sleeping bag. It was freezing cold–particularly for a twelve-year-old about to unbuckle his pants!
Nish stepped around the edge of the shelter. He’d go so quick, he figured, the hole in the snow would be like a bullet had passed through. But he never even got to try.
Something was breathing nearby…something big!
Nish was shaking. He could see nothing but pitch black around him. The trees were like huge shadows, with darker shadows below them. And one of the shadows was moving! He could hear growling, and snarling!
“Uhhhhhh!” Nish started. He didn’t dare move.
He could see eyes! At first he wasn’t sure, then he saw them again, yellow, shining.
The thing lunged. He could hear the intake of breath, the growl. It hit him dead centre in the chest. Nish went down, gasping. He could smell the animal. Sharp, rancid, disgusting. He could smell its panting breath–hot, and fouler than anything he had ever smelled. Nish thought he was going to throw up.
He still couldn’t see. He was down and the beast was striking him with its paws, the claws ripping into his arms and sides and tearing out his insides. He began to scream.
He screamed and gurgled, sure that it was blood rising in his throat. There was no pain…yet. But he knew he was badly injured, probably dying. All he could see was the burning eyes, all he could feel was harsh, thick fur, all he could smell was the foul, dead, disgusting smell.
Nish tried to move and could not. If his legs and arms were broken, he couldn’t feel them. He could feel a terrible warmth on his stomach, a sickening warm sensation that could only be his own blood pouring out.
“I’m dying!”
He tried to warn the others, but they wouldn’t wake. He could hear the tarp tearing as the beast ripped through it. He could hear snorting and ripping. He turned, barely, the warm liquid of his own insides cooling now. So this, he decided, is what it feels like to die.
He could see the beast dragging something. It was Travis! It had torn Travis out of his sleeping bag and was dragging him off.
“TRAAAAVIS!!!”
“Nish!…Nish!”
“C’mon, Nish. Wake up!”
Nish twisted, tried to open his eyes. He thought he must be in heaven, but it didn’t make sense; God wouldn’t call him by his nickname. He must be in a hospital. Somehow he must have been saved.
“Nish, wake up!”
That was…Travis’s voice. Nish shook his head violently. A good sign: it didn’t fall off. At least the beast hadn’t ripped out his throat. But he couldn’t tell if he could feel his legs, and the pool of blood on his stomach was freezing cold now.
“WAKE UP!”
Nish opened his eyes. Travis was leaning over him, shaking his shoulders. So Travis hadn’t been eaten! Behind Travis, Nish could make out the others, all looking at him, concerned. And behind them–what was that? The beast? He could see something big, and dark, and covered with fur.
“Travis,” Nish said, “you’re okay?”
Travis laughed. “Of course I’m okay. It’s you we’re worried about. Jesse’s grandfather is here! We’re saved, Nish!”
Saved? How could they be saved when a minute ago they were being eaten by a wild animal? He shifted so he could see creature. It was an old man! An old man with thick eyebrows and long greying hair, wearing a big fur coat. The old man looked more like a bear than…Jesse’s grandfather. But that’s who it was.
Nish could feel his legs now. And his arms. But he could still feel the wet where the beast had ripped out his guts.
Oh oh!
Nish closed his eyes. He knew.
He had gone to the bathroom last night all right. But he had never left his sleeping bag.
When the old trapper found them, the fire had gone down to nothing. Cree hunters had frozen to death in the past in a good shelter with a fire going: sleep had tricked them. When he first got there, with his dogs barking and nobody waking up, he had become quite worried.
As he told them later, with Jesse translating, he had tried to shake one kid awake. He pointed to Nish, laughing. Nish, he said, had started screaming at him. And then he had fainted. The old trapper said something and laughed to himself, shaking his head.
“My grandfather says you saw the Trickster,” said Jesse.
“I saw an animal,” Nish protested. “I think it was a wolverine.”
“You wouldn’t know a wolverine from a skunk,” said Rachel, laughing.
“Get a life,” Nish snapped.
“Get a diaper,” said Rachel.
Nish shut up. What could he say? He’d made a complete ass of himself. They thought he was a scaredy-cat, a baby. And he’d done nothing to make them think otherwise. He’d lost the Ski-Doo through the ice; he’d almost drowned; he couldn’t do a thing to help when they built the camp; and he’d peed his bed.
They all helped themselves to the meat that Jesse and Rachel’s grandfather had brought. It was black and greasy–“Mostly goose, some beaver,” Jesse had said–and it smelled…well, delicious, Nish thought. He took a nibble of what Jesse swore was goose, and it tasted wonderful. He took a second piece. It tasted even better.
They rode quickly to the goose camp. The wind was down, and the morning was, unbelievably, as beautifu
l as the day before when they had started out from the village. They looked like a gang out for a casual ride in the forest: two snow machines and a dog sled, nothing to show that they had nearly drowned, or frozen to death, or, for that matter, been attacked by the dreaded Trickster.
Travis got to ride on the dog sled with the grandfather. It was wonderful, if a bit slower than the Ski-Doos. The dogs barked and pulled, more with a series of yanks than with the steady drive of the machines, but it felt better. He could sense them surging, he could feel their joy as they got onto an open stretch of the bay. The sun was fully out now, and glistening where the ice had been swept clear of snow by the winds. There was no open water around here.
Travis thought about what had happened to them and how incredibly lucky they were. Lucky that Jesse and Rachel knew how to get someone out of the water and build a fire and a shelter. Lucky that the old man had found them.
Nish was still acting as if the dream was real, not something he had dreamt at all. Travis couldn’t believe that Nish could have gone to the bathroom in his sleeping bag; he must have been truly terrified. He wondered why he hadn’t had a bad dream himself. And then he remembered. The dream catcher. Rachel’s present was in his pack. It was working!
The dogs began yelping and howling as they came closer to the island where the camp was. The snow machines had already arrived, and Jesse, Rachel, and Liz were hurrying about, checking out the camp.
Jesse and Rachel’s grandmother had all sorts of food laid out for them: bannock, caribou, goose, and big fat oatmeal cookies baked with the goose drippings she’d been collecting.
“I’m starving!” shouted Nish, and he began digging in. He winked at Travis.
Jesse radioed back to the village, and Travis, standing beside him, was sure he could hear whoops coming from someone who sounded a lot like Muck. He had never heard Muck whoop before, but he was still pretty sure it was him.
“We’ve all missed games,” Jesse said when he turned off the radio. “Rachel’s team won this morning.”
“All right!” shouted Rachel. “Go Wolverines!”
“We can’t get back in time for our game against the Northern Lights,” said Jesse. “My dad and some others are coming, but they can’t be here until at least two o’clock.”
“What’ll we do?” asked Nish.
“Play hockey,” Jesse said.
“Yeah!” agreed Rachel.
“Whadya mean?” Nish thought they were still making fun of him.
“Didn’t you see the ice on the way out here?” Rachel asked. “It’s better than Maple Leaf Gardens!”
“And a hundred times as big!” Jesse added.
Travis liked to think of himself as a bit of an expert on ice conditions and hockey rinks, but he had never seen, or felt, anything quite like this.
Until now, he had always believed he liked the ice at the beginning of a game best, when it seemed a puck might slide forever. He liked the way he could kick his ankles out on a corner and shoot up a quick spray of ice with nothing more than a flick of his skate blade.
But now he liked new ice in an arena second best. This, he told himself, was special. The howling wind of the night before had cleared the narrows between the island and the shore. The surface was smooth as polished marble.
It was the hardness that delighted Travis the most. Once he put on his skates and set out, he found the noise of his blades astonishing. It was as if someone had turned up the volume.
There was a light wind and, when he went with it, it seemed he was flying even faster than Dmitri. With the skates making a sharp rasp on the ice, he could turn in an instant, the ice so hard and the skates so sharp that there was simply no play in the two at all. Instant response.
They were all out there now. All in their team jackets, different coloured toques, pants, gloves. They threw down a puck and began rapping it back and forth, the sound much louder than in an enclosed arena. It sounded like music to Travis.
“Let’s have a game!” Jesse shouted.
“Uneven numbers!” Travis called back.
There were five of them out on the ice: Jesse, Travis, Liz, Rachel, Nish. They’d have to go three-on-two.
“Where’ll we play?” Nish asked. The others all laughed, but he shook his head violently. “No, I’m serious–where?”
“Wherever we want!” Liz shouted.
“I’ll get some posts,” Rachel said.
Rachel skated back toward the camp. Travis could see the grandparents outside, down by the shoreline. They were piling a toboggan high with a variety of goose decoys, some of them the modern plastic kind from the South, most of them original Cree style, made from tamarack twigs tied together to fashion a head, long neck, and plump body.
Jesse and Rachel came back, each carrying two of the large plastic geese. Rachel dumped hers close to the other kids, while Jesse skated farther down the ice with his two.
“Goal posts,” she announced as she began setting them upright.
“We’ve still got uneven numbers,” said Travis.
“Grandpa’s going to play. It’s North against South.”
Nish couldn’t believe it. “Your grandfather?”
Rachel smiled. “It’s his rink!”
Travis had never even imagined a game like this. No boards, the ice going on forever, goose decoys for goalposts, a switch at half-time because of the wind, and a goaltender with a shovel!
There was nothing else for the old man to play with. He didn’t seem to mind. He dropped it off his shoulder and plonked it down onto the ice. Then he shoved it hard into Travis’s stick and dislodged the puck. The old man laughed. “Hockey,” he said.
“Hey!” Nish shouted to Jesse. “Your grandfather can speak English!”
“He can’t,” said Jesse, laughing. “There’s just no Cree word for the game.”
They split up into teams, and Travis, Liz, and Nish went down to their own goal, carrying the puck. They gathered for a moment.
“Go easy on them,” Travis said. “We don’t want the old man falling down or anything.”
“Let’s go!” shouted Nish.
Travis lugged the puck out a way, then dropped it back to Nish. Nish tried to hit Travis as he broke, but the puck was behind him and shot away, nearly all the way to the island.
“Go get it!” Rachel laughed. “You missed it.”
“Now you’re finding out why Crees always complete their passes,” Jesse called after him.
Travis couldn’t believe how far the puck had travelled. Maybe Jesse was right: play here every day and you’d never take a stupid chance. And come to think of it, Jesse’s one great strength was the accuracy of his passing.
Travis brought the puck back and lobbed a long pass to Liz, who skated easily with it and then dropped it back to Nish. With Rachel chasing him, Nish dumped the puck out to the middle, where Travis picked it up in full flight. He took Jesse with him toward the island, then let a soft backhand go for Liz, who went in on the old man, only to have him poke-check her perfectly with the shovel!
“No fair!” Nish called from behind.
“Whadya mean, ‘No fair’?” Jesse demanded.
“How are we supposed to get by a shovel?”
“Wait till you see him rush with the puck!” Rachel laughed.
“Huh?” Nish said, then realized she was kidding.
Jesse carried the puck up, skating easily by Liz. He then passed to Rachel, who was coming up Travis’s side. This was the first Travis had seen her skate. She was fast, very fast.
He cut her off, and when she tried to tuck the puck in under his stick, he used his skate to catch it and move it up onto his own stick. He was clear. Nothing between him and the Stanley Cup but an old man with a shovel.
Travis came down on the goal not knowing what to do. He couldn’t get too close or the shovel would come out. He couldn’t hoist–that would hardly be fair. And he couldn’t just shoot a quick one along the ice: the shovel pretty well covered the whole net.
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Travis decided to try the amazing move he’d been working on in practice but never dared try in a game, the one Muck kept shaking his head over. He came in, and Jesse’s grandfather, laughing, went to the poke check. But just as the shovel moved toward the puck, Travis dropped the puck back so it clicked off first his right blade and then his left, and then, on an unsuspected angle, past the shovel and out the other side. Travis jumped over the shovel, home free, and tapped the puck between the geese.
He turned back and dropped instantly to his knees, spinning as he glided down the ice. He flipped his stick over, pretended to clean the shaft like a sword, and then made a motion as if he were sheathing his trusty blade.
“Hot dog!” Jesse shouted, laughing.
“Muck should be here!” Liz called. “The famous move finally worked!”
“Yeah,” Rachel added, “on an old man with a shovel and no skates!”
Travis couldn’t tell whether she was kidding him or insulting him. He had to admit it was a bit much. He didn’t really know why he’d done it–the big turn, the drop to the knees, the stupid sword thing–but he had. He wanted Rachel to appreciate his terrific move. He wanted her to know what a good hockey player he was. Maybe he didn’t know much about the bush, but he sure knew the game of hockey.
They played with no sense of score or time. They raced from end to end, the sounds of their skates as loud as their shouting, the ice flying, the skate blades flashing in the sun, the old man laughing as he stood his ground at the Cree net with his shovel and big hunting boots.
They played until they dropped, and then they went back to the camp, where the grandmother had another meal laid out. Only this time it wasn’t goose. It was moose.
“Sorry, Nish,” said Rachel as they sat down. “No nostrils, I’m afraid.”
Nish scowled and held his plate out. He was too hungry to waste his breath taking shots at anyone. He took extra bannock.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1 Page 25