by kc dyer
Suddenly, Darby heard a shout. Gabe and his group! She looked up to see them hurrying back across the snowy plain, followed some distance behind by a bounding yellowish dog.
They hadn’t taken ten more steps when Darby realized that the animal was as much a dog as she was a chicken.
“BEAR!!!” she screamed, jumping up and down and pointing. Gabe and one of the other group members were supporting a tiny person, no bigger than Sha’achi. How they were moving so fast, Darby had no idea. But they were not moving as fast as the bear.
Thinking about it afterwards, she was pretty sure it wasn’t a full-grown polar bear. She’d looked them up in the encyclopaedia and knew they could grow to be eight feet tall on their hind legs. The one chasing Gabe and his group was not eight feet tall, but he was plenty big enough. He had kind of a bumbly running style, and at one point he actually stopped chasing the group and rolled for a minute in the snow, like he was playing. Gabe and the people with him didn’t stop to watch, though. They were pretty close now, and she could see the strain on their faces as they tried to make it back to the tunnel ahead of the bear.
As they staggered up, Gabe and one other guy in the group half-pushed, half-carried the tiny person toward the entrance to the tunnel. Darby turned to see Sha’achi’s little face framed in the opening. “Nukum!” she squealed.
“Nanuq,” corrected the old lady, for Darby could now see that this must be the missing grandmother. “Inside!” she commanded, and Sha’achi’s face disappeared as the others thrust Nukum into the black tunnel and scrambled in after her.
And in what had to be the strangest moment of Darby’s entire life, she turned to find herself face to face with a polar bear.
Darby had done her share of school reports on Canada’s mammals. In grade five she did a huge project on the Kodiak, a very large type of grizzly bear found in the North. She distinctly recalled writing in her report that Kodiak bears were the biggest bears in Canada, even bigger than polar bears.
Standing on his hind legs, this guy was the biggest thing she’d ever seen. Seconds before, she had been terrified of plunging back into the black tunnel, but it was amazing how the close-set eyes of a polar bear gazing at her changed her mind.
The bear bounded up to the spot where the snow was flattened and suddenly stopped. With careful steps and a rolling gait, he moved toward the tunnel, shaking his massive head back and forth as he walked. Down on all fours, she noticed he was a little pigeon-toed, but the size of his paws soon drove anything resembling a clear thought out of her mind. They looked as big as frying pans, with claws as big as—well, as big as any claws she had ever seen.
He paused to one side of the tunnel, with his body directly between the snowdrift where Darby was standing and the tunnel. He put one front paw on the roof of the snow structure. In a moment he was towering over her, standing on his back paws and full out leaning on the top of the snow house behind the tunnel. The fur on his belly was pure white, or at least a little less yellow than the rest of him against the white ice of the snow house. She could actually see where his skin was almost black under the thick layer of fur, a black that seemed to emerge only with his sharp nose and again within his tiny eyes.
At that point she thought he might roar, or rip the top off the house and devour the inhabitants like a giant frozen people-pot pie, or turn and swallow her whole. But he did none of these things. Instead, he looked around in a nearsighted manner and, with his mouth open, noisily sniffed the air.
Darby stood frozen to the spot. Was it possible the bear hadn’t seen her? A creature this size had to have an awesome sense of smell. If he hadn’t seen her, then surely he could smell her now. It would only be a matter of seconds before she became a nice light snack.
He did see Darby. Saw her and smelled her. She knew he did, because he swivelled his head around and looked right into her face. He closed his mouth and made a kind of sing-song noise, half groan, half greeting. And then he tucked one shoulder under and rolled over into the snow, kicking his legs joyfully in the air like a dog asking for a belly rub. He rolled again, this time onto his feet, and lumbered around to the back of the snow house.
Suddenly, the power of movement returned, and before she could think about it twice, Darby dove into the tunnel.
The darkness she feared did not really materialize, because once Darby regained her feet she found herself crab-walking beneath the low ceiling toward a flickering light. Not a bright, beaming light this time, but two dancing flames, each contained within a small lamp. The smell from the lamps was very strong and her eyes watered with it. As she scrabbled into the room she could see there was a celebration of some sort underway.
Though most of the people had removed their outer clothing, Darby still felt cold. In fact, the inside of the little house didn’t seem any warmer than the outside. All around her was much laughter and conversation—and not a glance was sent in her direction. She sidled along one wall to where Gabe sat off to the side, a little apart from the celebration.
There was a lot of happy noise, so she risked whispering to him.
“Can you talk to me now? Can you please tell me what is going on here?”
He inclined his head slightly, and barely moving his lips, said: “Words must wait, I’m afraid. Things will be clearer with time. For now you must sit and listen and when the time comes, watch for the helping hand.”
He turned away then and joined in a conversation with the man beside him. No amount of tugging on his shirt made him pay the least attention to her.
It was the second time he had mentioned the helping hand. What was he talking about? But she was too discombobulated to be angry with him, so in the end she crawled across the fur rug that covered part of the floor, sat leaning against a wall and did as he said. She listened.
Sometimes taking advice can actually pay off. Once Darby settled with her still-cold hands tucked underneath her armpits, she began to learn a few things.
The smell from the lamps faded out as she listened. The people she had thought were teenagers all turned out to be, with the exception of Sha’achi, adults. Their faces showed their age, and the grandmother’s face was the oldest of all, wrinkled like a rusty apple. They were all strongly built and certainly not very tall, though it was harder to tell in the small interior of the snow house. The house itself was surprisingly spacious, with the floor and walls made of firmly packed snow, and fur rugs and mats scattered around for everyone to sit on. There was no fire or fireplace. The only heat seemed to come from the lamps and the bodies of the people, and everyone seemed warm enough, except Darby. The same cold lingered on.
The good news was that Darby had found her missing flip-flop, tucked right inside the tunnel entranceway. The bad news was that it warmed her up not at all. She thought again about the knobbly sweater that Nan had knit for her last Christmas, and just the thought of it made her eyes well up with tears. Would she ever see Nan and her strange knitting experiments again? Darby made a vow that if she did somehow make it out of here, she would try to be more patient and kind to Gramps. She would be the model granddaughter. If only she knew how to get home.
“Nanuq has brought us good fortune,” said one man, in a voice louder than the rest. The other voices in the room quieted, and Darby could see that it was the man sitting beside Gabriel who was speaking. His voice was low and warm, and he spoke slowly, as though his words were very important.
“We have come through a time of great loss,” he said. “For the people this has meant much hunger and many long journeys. But the coming of Nanuq means the coming of joy.”
“Is it spring, Mushum?” squeaked Sha’achi, and everyone laughed.
“Yes, granddaughter, Nanuq’s visit means spring is not far away. And the fat seal we will eat tonight is yet another sign.”
Nukum’s thin voice rose above her husband’s. “In my journey, I have seen the most important sign of all—the atikuat are near.”
“You are right, grandmother,” ca
me another voice. Darby jumped a little when she heard Gabe speak. She realized that he was speaking in the language of these people.
He was speaking and Darby was listening—and understanding.
This thought actually made her head spin again. She rested her face down on her knees for a few minutes while she tried to get used to the idea. She didn’t even know the name of this language; how could she understand it?
After a few moments the sick feeling passed, and Darby tried her best not to think about it again. Gabe had said everything would be clearer with time, and she had no choice but to take him at his word. When she lifted her head again, he was still speaking.
“And so we must follow the caribou, as we have ever done, even though it means new territory for the people. Because for the people, atik means life.”
Nukum leaned forward. “When I left on my journey, I carried with me a heavy load,” she said. “My heart was heavy with fear, but my arms were also heavy. Along with the fear, I carried hope, in the form of stones to mark our passage. Now that I have seen the atik, it is important we remember all of the people. We must use the rest of the stones we carry, together with those we find on our path, to mark the way so that the other families will find their way to the atikuat as we have done.”
There was a general rumble of agreement to this, over which Mushum’s voice could be heard.
“Before we begin this last journey to our spring hunt, we must celebrate the visit of Nanuq. Let us feast!”
With his words, Darby could see the dull flash of metal above his head. He plunged a knife down into the carcass of a seal that was lying on some kind of sheet of tanned leather in front of him. Thankfully, she hadn’t noticed the seal before this moment and she tried to quell the surge in her stomach as he cut up and distributed the meat. The blood of the animal was carefully drained and most of it set aside in bags made of skin, but some of it was joyously shared as well. It was obvious how important this feast was, and Darby suspected the people in the snow house hadn’t eaten very well lately from the enthusiasm with which they enjoyed their meal.
Conversation carried on long after the food was gone, and Darby’s head nodded. Voices travelled through the air and it was hard to follow exactly who was speaking.
“This hunger has chased us far too long. We must make changes.”
“We have always followed the herds. It is the spirit of the caribou that has changed. The spirit wanders far. We must follow.”
Darby was still cold. She listened to talk of where the journey would take the people, of new landforms not seen before and perhaps even different animals to add to the hunt.
“We must mark the way,” one voice said.
Darby thought about the distance the people would have to travel to find the caribou. She thought some more about the bear and whether it was just waiting outside to gobble her up. And finally, she thought of nothing, because leaning against the ice wall of the cave, sleep came and stole her away before she even knew she was gone.
Darby didn’t know what awoke her. Can the sound of quiet act like an alarm clock? Whatever it was, she suddenly sat up with a start, having keeled over onto the icy floor sometime in the night. It was not quite pitch dark, as a little grey daylight crept through the passageway. There was enough light for her to see that everything filling the place last night was gone—the fur rugs, the flickering lamps and what scared her the most: the people. Including Gabe.
How could she have slept through everyone leaving? How could she have slept at all? Darby racked her brains frantically. In a best-case situation, this was a dream, and she couldn’t recall ever sleeping inside a dream before.
Her heart started to pound, but then she realized she’d never heard of anyone sleeping and then waking up again through their own death, either. Anyway, she didn’t have time to freak out. She had to put her dark side on hold, stifle her fears and go find Gabe. He was her only link to normal, and Darby was determined not to lose him again.
The next step was to get up the courage to once again climb out through the tunnel. Though she no longer feared the white light at the end, the polar bear was something else. It was only the thought of how much her delay was costing in terms of finding Gabe that finally pushed Darby through the doorway.
To her vast relief, there was no sign of the bear when she climbed cautiously out through the passageway. But there was no sign of Gabe or the people, either. And how would she ever find them, especially wearing flip-flops?
In the end, Darby used the tried and true method of walking in their footsteps. There was no other choice, really, and luckily it hadn’t snowed since they had left. The small amount of daylight was already fading and she hurried on, head down except for the moments she took a quick peek to ensure Nanuq hadn’t changed his mind about a Darby appetizer.
She tried not to think about the oddness of the situation, but she couldn’t help worrying about the cold. And she had another little problem. Her stomach was seriously starting to rumble. Darby had no idea how long she had been in this strange place, but she did know she needed to get herself some food, and soon. Even the raw seal from the night before was starting to look pretty good in her imagination.
The thought that Gabe may have dropped something on the trail she might be able to eat made her look up, so in the end she credited her stomach for getting her out of the biggest jam of her life. Because that’s when she saw it.
Not a snack left by Gabe, but rather Nukum’s helping hand. Darby couldn’t believe Nukum had left it there for her, but help her it did. She had been struggling up a low hill for some time, and now in front of her, on a spot where the wind had swept the snow from the rocks, she found it. Nukum and her family had done as she had promised and left a sign for the people who were yet to come. Over the crest of the hill in the last pink light of the day, she could see far below the tiny group of people as they worked together to make another shelter, this one of rocks and skins, for the night. Beyond them, a herd of caribou as huge and widespread as her eyes could take in was grazing on the first shoots of greenery on a vast, windswept plain.
And beside Darby? She rested her hand on a low pile of rocks—a stone marker, pointing the way to the future for The People yet to come.
Something wet and cold was running down Darby’s cheek. She reached up to rub her fingers through it. Was it blood? Her head was pounding so hard she could hardly open her eyes, but when she checked, there was no blood on her fingers. She tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea hit her and she decided to stay put for another minute. This was no ordinary headache. Even with her eyes closed she could see spots dancing like—like snowflakes.
That got her up. As she lifted her head, the headache slammed home like an axe through her skull. But she had to think. She had to think.
Snowflakes. What had happened to the snow? She squeezed her eyes open a crack, but all she could see was grass. Grass with yellow flowers dotted here and there.
Darby was in the secret garden. Her skateboard was on the ground and she sat with one hand on the stone windowsill of the old building.
She wiped her face again and realized that what she had thought was blood was actually saliva. She must have been lying in the garden, drooling on herself.
Disgusting.
Darby tried to scramble to her feet, but her stomach heaved and pretty soon the drool wasn’t the only disgusting thing she left in the garden.
She couldn’t ever remember a headache like this one. With wincing eyes, she glanced at the stone windowsill. Had she fallen and hit her head? It was so hard to think.
The sky was clear, with a few wispy clouds turning pink at the edges. No sign of a storm at all. Darby could see a single evening star gleaming through the leaves of the huge oak tree. The light of it pierced her brain and forced her to look away. Under her feet, the grass was a little wet, but it felt more like dew than the remains of a cloudburst. Hadn’t it been pouring when she was last here? Darby had to put the thought aside—sh
e needed all her energy just to get herself up off the ground.
There was a rustle and Maurice jumped out through the window and down onto the grass beside Darby. He meowed and circled around her feet, a calico figure eight.
“Better watch where you’re stepping, cat,” she muttered to him and he purred at the sound of her voice. The spots seemed to be fading and the headache had eased a little since she had been sick, but she knew she had to get back to Nan and Gramps. Maybe she’d given herself a concussion. Her head was so sore she didn’t even want to think about what she had just been through. How long had she been gone? Had the police been looking for her?
Darby felt a weird pang of guilt. Poor Nan. She must be out of her mind with worry. But it was so hard to think with her head pounding. She wished with all her heart to be home in Toronto, but she also knew Nan would know what to do. Nan had brought up Darby’s dad and his brothers, and being the mother to three boys meant she had probably seen enough cracked skulls to know what one looked like. Darby just had to get to her, first.
As she stood up, Maurice leaped through the garden toward the front of the house. By the time Darby had staggered around there, she could see him zipping through the rusted gate and heading for home. She followed, moving pretty slowly. Every step jarred her head and the red late-afternoon light was making her feel nauseated again.
Nan met her at the door. “Have you been chasing Maurice, Darby? He’s all worked up,” Nan began, but her words died on her lips when she got a look at Darby’s face. “What’s the matter, dear?”
Darby dropped her board on the front porch with a clatter that made her wince. Not one word about how she had been gone for two days. Nan was just upset about the cat? A pain was stabbing through the back of Darby’s right eye and she couldn’t think anymore. She muttered something about hitting her head and before she knew it, Nan had her wrapped in a comforter on the couch in the living room with a cold cloth over her eyes.