The Great Death

by John Smelcer

  Winter would accompany them on their journey.

  * * *

  Less than a mile downriver, the trail came to a wide, snow-covered creek, which emptied into the river. The white surface lay undisturbed. It was the broadest creek they had encountered on their journey. Others had been little more than rills, near empty in winter, easy to traverse. This one was at least thirty feet across, maybe more. But it didn’t look dangerous.

  Besides, they couldn’t go around it.

  Halfway across, Millie and Maura sank up to their waists in overflow, one of the most dangerous natural phenomena in the far North. Sometimes water runs over the surface of ice on a creek or river or lake, hidden beneath deep and undisturbed snow, a sinister and secret trap.

  The sisters struggled to get out of the slush. The snowshoes were too heavy to lift, and the girls had to lean down until the water nearly reached their shoulders to remove them, even as they stood in the ice-cold overflow. Blue struggled, too. Luckily, their packs did not get wet. When the girls reached the opposite side, they knew the danger they were in. Maura cried from the pain in her hands and feet. She was freezing, holding her arms across her chest and shivering. Millie made her crouch on the wind-protected side of a tree while she, with numbing fingers, fumbled to build a fire.

  They both knew plenty of stories about the perils of overflow.

  Their grandfather had lost all of his toes after his dogsled got stuck in overflow on a creek. He had been checking a trap line when the dogs and the sled sank into the slush. It was thirty degrees below zero—more than sixty degrees colder than freezing. For half an hour he struggled to pull the dogs and sled out of the overflow, scraping the freezing slush from the runners.

  Then he made a mistake.

  Instead of immediately building a fire to dry his clothes and the dogs’ feet, he pushed for home, ten miles away. By the time he arrived, his leggings and boots were frozen solid. When his family pulled off his boots, his toes were black and dead. They had to be amputated. Two of the dogs had to be put down; their paws had frozen, too.

  Overflow was a serious matter.

  As soon as Millie had a fire going, she broke branches from beneath a spruce tree and fashioned a lean-to by using the tarp and a pole propped against the tree. For the rest of the night they huddled naked beneath blankets, feeding the fire, drying their clothes and mukluks.

  Blue lay nearby, licking his wet fur and using his front teeth to pull chunks of ice from between his splayed paws.

  Taa'i Uk'edi

  (Thirteen)

  Raven taught the woman how to use a bow and arrow to hunt game. He showed her how to snare rabbits. He even instructed her how to trap beaver and muskrat and how to fashion warm clothing from their pelts.

  A BLIZZARD ASSAILED the valley by morning, the heavy snowflakes swirling on a hard wind that seemed to blow from every direction. The whiteout was so complete that Millie and Maura could barely see ahead, and the twisting and drifting snow quickly covered the light footprints of their snowshoes. The stinging flakes clung to eyebrows and froze eyelashes so that the girls had to rub ice from their eyes to see.

  Several times they thought they had lost Blue, but the dog returned when Millie shouted or Maura whistled.

  The sisters walked all day, without taking much notice of their surroundings, mindlessly putting one snowshoe in front of the other, deep in distracting thoughts and daydreams. They thought about the happy past before the sickness came to their village. They thought about the dead village behind them. And they wondered if they would ever reach the white settlement. They wondered what they would do if they found it abandoned, too. Where would they go from there? How would they live?

  All day the snow kept falling, getting deeper, making the going difficult for Blue, who sank up to his belly. Their only bearing was the river. Wherever possible, they walked along its treeless bank or beneath trees at the forest’s edge. They stopped only once to rest beneath a close stand of spruce trees, which offered some protection against the storm. Millie managed to make a fire, first kicking away the snow to expose the frozen ground, crouching over her little glass jar of matches, the striker, and strips of white, paper-thin bark, which she had peeled off a birch tree earlier in the day. As the flames grew, she carefully added dry pinecones and twigs, warily shielding the fire from the wind, which constantly threatened to extinguish the flames. She melted some snow in the pot, adding pieces of dried salmon to the boiling water, making a tasty fish broth. After the girls drank their fill, Blue licked what remained in the pot.

  After the brief respite, the threesome journeyed on down the river and into the gathering dusk, looking for a place to camp for the night. As always, Maura straggled behind. She was, after all, younger than Millie, and her legs were shorter. Besides, the long and heavy snowshoes were meant for a much taller adult.

  Without signaling Millie, Maura stopped to relieve her bladder. She would be quick about it. She squatted on the trail a hundred feet below a fork where the river trail intersected a well-used game trail. Unaware that Maura had stopped, Millie plodded on, vanishing in the storm. Blue stayed with Maura, his back covered with snow. He shook himself and sniffed the base of a swaying birch tree and then left his own scent on the trunk.

  Millie had taken the trail that most appeared to follow the river, which she could not see through the trees and snow but knew was there, just out of sight to her left. The other trail curved abruptly at an angle away from the river, toward a flat valley between hills. She passed the fork without much consideration and without looking back, assuming that, as always, Maura and the dog were right behind her. The wind roared in the trees above, something between a whistle and a moan, and the snow continued unabated.

  After Millie had walked for another half hour absorbed in her own thoughts, she stopped and looked back for the first time since passing the fork. Her sister was not there. She stood on the trail for a while, peering into the dark, expecting Maura and Blue to emerge from around the bend. As she waited, she pulled a strip of dried salmon from her parka and chewed on it slowly, enjoying the flavor of the oily red meat. She saved the silvery skin for Blue.

  At last, Millie walked back around the bend and looked down a straight stretch. Snow was falling so heavily that she could see only halfway down the trail. Neither Maura nor the dog was visible. She walked down the stretch until she could see the trail’s bend with the river. Still nothing.

  Millie cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted her sister’s name several times, holding her breath after each shout and listening for a reply. It was so quiet that she could hear snowflakes landing on her parka hood. She wiped her eyelashes and yelled again.

  “M-a-u-r-a! M-a-u-r-a!”

  She tried to whistle like her father and sister, but she had never learned that art. She made a kind of whistling noise, no louder than the rush of breath escaping around her tongue.

  Suddenly, Millie felt sure that something had stolen her sister, perhaps wolves or a sleepless bear or angry spirits from the dead village. Perhaps the hairy-faced giant had survived the river after all and had taken his revenge on Maura and on Blue.

  Millie shuddered, more from fear than from the cold.

  But she had heard no sounds of struggle. Surely she would have heard Blue barking or Maura screaming.

  Millie ran down the trail as fast as she could on the snowshoes, the bundled tarp bouncing against her back, the slung rifle sliding off her shoulder. She fell twice. When she had returned to the fork, there was no sign of her sister or the dog, no disturbance on the snow whatsoever to indicate their passing. Millie remembered the last time she had seen Maura was half a mile or more upriver from the trail junction, where they’d had to step around a large tree that had fallen across the trail.

  Although it was already dark, she set off briskly upriver, in the wrong direction.

  * * *

  When Maura came to the fork, the wind was blowing so hard that she had to lean into it and turn
her face away from its might, squinting hard; otherwise, the snow stung her eyes so badly that she could barely keep them open. Blue, smelling some scent, maybe of a moose or a wolf or another porcupine, took off down the trail to the right, the wrong direction, and Maura followed without question. She hadn’t noticed the other trail at all, assuming that while the fury of the storm might impede her sight, it surely did not hinder the dog’s keen sense of smell. Maura was certain that Blue was following Millie. And although she was exhausted from the long day’s march, she quickened her pace to catch up, knowing that her sister was only a minute or two ahead, just around the next bend.

  Within half an hour it was dark. The clouds were thick and angry, racing above the valley, hurling snow at the world.

  Maura began calling Millie’s name, her tumbling words deadened on the fierce wind. She was crying, afraid of being alone in the wilderness—now she understood how Millie must have felt when she wandered off to pick berries. The tears only made her cheeks cold and her eyelashes freeze faster. She couldn’t imagine that her sister could be so far ahead of her. Maura had stopped only for a couple of minutes. And she had been hurrying ever since. She should have caught up well before now. What had happened?

  After walking a little farther, she decided to stop and wait for Millie, who would surely notice that she was missing and turn back to find her. Millie was okay. She had to be. And Millie was strong and capable and organized. She would find Maura. This was a good plan. Maura’s father had taught her that when a person is lost in the woods, it is sometimes best to stop walking, which only makes matters worse. Besides, it was so dark and the storm so unrelenting that she might easily step off the trail and find herself in the middle of nowhere.

  Blue, who had been leading the way, sat down beside her.

  Maura kicked away snow from beneath the base of a spruce tree alongside the trail. She managed to break off a few low-reaching green boughs from neighboring trees, and she piled them on the ground as an insulating pallet, preventing the frozen ground from sapping her warmth. After untying her bundle, she called Blue over to her, and they snuggled under the blankets, sharing a piece of dried salmon and their body heat. There would be no fire or windbreak. Millie had the matches and the tarp.

  Maura wondered if she and Blue could survive the night huddled as they were under blankets. Already Maura’s toes and fingers were tingling with the onset of numbness. Maura wondered where Millie was and how she could outlast the night without blankets. She wondered why Millie wouldn’t have stopped on the trail at some point and waited for her. Had she accidentally stepped off the trail and gotten lost? Was she somehow behind them? If so, would she soon catch up?

  Had something terrible happened to Millie?

  Maura held the dog close.

  “Millie will come looking for us,” she whispered sadly.

  Blue licked her face.

  “Don’t worry, boy. She’ll find us.”

  * * *

  Finding no sign of her sister or Blue at the deadfall where she had last seen Maura, Millie could only conclude that Maura had taken the wrong trail at the junction behind her. Millie calculated that Maura and Blue could be miles up that trail by now. She decided to return to the fork and spend the night. Perhaps Maura would realize her error and turn around.

  By the time she arrived where the two trails split, Millie was very tired, not simply from the day’s labor, but also from worry and a growing horror that her little sister might be freezing to death. It was too dangerous to travel any farther. In the darkness and storm she might accidentally step off the trail and get lost. Besides, if Maura turned back, she’d have to come to this point. Millie built a lean-to using the tarp and sat beneath it beside a crackling fire, watching the swirling snow and listening for her sister. She got up many times to collect more firewood, each time shouting Maura’s name. Only the sound of trees creaking in the wind answered.

  The long night passed slowly for Millie, who was afraid to fall asleep and let the fire die, afraid that her sister might inadvertently pass her in the darkness. She wondered if Maura would know enough to turn back or at least to stop and wait, or was she still out there wandering farther and farther as she struggled to find her older sister?

  Sometime long after midnight, the blizzard slackened and finally passed. In the terrible silence Millie fought off images of Maura frozen beneath the snow. Why had she allowed her to get lost? What would she say to her mother’s spirit when they met and the terrible question would come: Why did you abandon your sister?

  In the morning, she shook snow from the tarp, folded it, and carefully tucked the blackened cooking pot and the jar of matches inside the bundle. When she was done, she tied it into a pack, slung it over her back, and jumped lightly to adjust the load. She strapped on the snowshoes, took up her rifle, and started down the game trail that led away from the river, in search of her sister.

  Not long after leaving the fork, Millie encountered a pack of five wolves. At first they kept their distance, curiously observing the girl from behind trees. But then they grew more daring, encircling her, snarling and growling and snapping their teeth. Millie worked the lever of her father’s rifle and fired a warning shot into the air, startling the wolves, which bolted back into the trees. Millie kept trudging down the trail, holding the rifle ready, alert to any movement around her.

  After regaining their courage, the pack began to stalk her again, more wary this time.

  Millie aimed at the closest wolf, a dark-colored dominant male—the pack leader, most likely. She pulled the trigger and just missed hitting the animal in the head. This time the wolves ran away in the direction Millie was heading, in the direction of her sister.

  * * *

  Maura awoke to the sound of a rifle shot echoing in the hills. She and Blue, huddled together in a mound of snow-covered blankets, had not moved all night. She sat upright and listened. The sky was cloudless, and she could clearly see the surrounding hills. A few minutes later, she heard another shot. Blue pricked his ears in that direction.

  Millie, Maura thought as she jumped up and stood looking down the trail. Her feet were numb, but her hands were warm. She had entangled her fingers in Blue’s thick fur as she slept.

  Quickly, she rolled up the blankets, bound them tightly, and threw the bedroll over her shoulder. She laid both snowshoes flat, stepped onto one, secured the strapping across her mukluk, and then put on the other. The movement made her toes tingle, which was good, she thought. They had feeling, which meant they weren’t frostbitten. She could wiggle them slightly in her mukluks. As soon as she was ready, having donned her thick mittens, Maura took up her walking stick and set off in search of her sister. Blue was at her side, struggling in the deep snow.

  A little ways down the trail, a pack of wolves emerged from around a bend. At first they did not see the two, but suddenly they stopped, stared hard at the girl and the dog at her side, and then dashed after them, kicking up snow as they ran. A dark-colored wolf was in the lead, his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he bounded toward them.

  Blue started barking and raced for the wolves.

  “No, Blue! Wait!” Maura shouted.

  She swallowed her panic and felt a hot wave of anger flow up her back and into her arms. Not even five feet tall, Maura took the hatchet from her rope belt and waited, the hatchet in one hand and her walking stick in the other. Blue launched into the lead wolf when it was close. The two canines clashed in a fury of dark fur and teeth. It was difficult to tell them apart. The other wolves watched with a kind of detachment, keeping their distance and yelping among themselves.

  “Blue!” shouted Maura, trying to call the dog to her. “Blue!”

  Wolves often kill and eat village dogs. It happened every winter. Though terrified for Blue and for her own safety, Maura stood her ground and screamed at the wolf.

  “Stop it! Get! Get!”

  The valley echoed with the sounds of the furious battle. Another of the wolves suddenly c
harged at Maura, who struck it across the nose with her staff. The wolf yelped and retreated, frantically rubbing its snout between its paws.

  “Get out of here!” Maura screamed again and again, waving the long walking stick, desperately trying to frighten away the wolves, which paid little attention to her.

  Just then Millie came around the bend. She was out of breath, having run for a long time after hearing the ruckus. From where she stood, she could see her sister shouting and swinging her staff to keep the wolves at bay. She could also see Blue tangling with the same lead wolf she had shot at and missed earlier. Although she was far away, Millie fired her rifle into the air. The wolves turned and saw her. She fired again, and they ran away as they had done before, into the wooded hills, bounding through the deep snow. Hurriedly, she loaded several bullets from her pocket into the rifle and ran toward her sister.

  Blue was lying in a circle of trampled and bloodied snow, whimpering and bleeding from several wounds. Maura knelt beside him, holding his head and crying, speaking gently to the dog, stroking his wet and matted fur. By the time Millie reached her sister, Blue was dead. He had protected Maura the way Tundra had protected them both from the terrible man. Maura stood up and clutched her sister, her body trembling as she sobbed aloud.

  “Oh, Millie, he gave his life to save me.”

  Although it arced closer to the horizon than to the vaulted sky, the sun was bright on the deep, new snow. A raven cawed as it flew from the hills toward the river. A white hare, which had come out of its hole to see what the commotion was, hopped behind a stand of willows. The two sisters stood hugging each other for a long time. Neither spoke a word. There was little to say. Both wondered what they would have done without the other.