Black Star, Bright Dawn

by Scott O'dell

  Black Star, Bright Dawn

  Scott O'Dell

  * * *

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O'Dell, Scott

  Black Star, Bright Dawn.

  Summary: Bright Dawn must face the challenge

  of the Iditarod dog sled race alone when her

  father is injured.

  1. Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Alaska—

  Juvenile fiction. 2. Eskimos—Juvenile

  fiction. 3. Indians of North America—Juvenile

  fiction. [1. Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race,

  Alaska—Fiction. 2. Sled dog racing—Fiction.

  3. Eskimos—Fiction. 4. Indians of North

  America—Fiction] I. Title.

  PZ7.0237Bm 1988 [Fic] 87-35351

  ISBN 0-395-47778-6

  Copyright © 1988 by Scott O'Dell

  All rights reserved. For information about permission

  to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue

  South, New York, New York 10003.

  Printed in the United States of America

  QUM 20 19 18 17

  * * *

  This story is dedicated to the brave legions of mushers, women and men, who have run the Iditarod, the grueling dog sled race across two vast mountain ranges and the Yukon River, against fifty-mile-an-hour blizzards, in temperatures of sixty degrees below, for more than a thousand miles, from Anchorage on the Gulf of Alaska to Nome on the icebound Bering Sea. And to the magnificent dogs who pulled their sleds.

  * * *

  1

  On the tenth day of November the sun did not rise. This was the day the sea froze up and there were no more waves. All the birds, except the ravens, flew south and we would not see them again until spring. It was very cold. The air was so still you could hear people talking far away at the end of the village.

  My father did not go out on the ice that day. It was thick enough to hold a man's weight, but he waited two days, then three, hoping that leads, streaks of open water, would appear. This is the best time to hunt in the kayak, the little canoe made of deerskin.

  After the third day and the streaks of open water had not appeared, a blizzard blew from the north and lasted for almost a week. It brought floating ice down from the Bering Sea, and the polar ice pounded against the ice along the shore.

  Bartok, my father, decided not to wait for the leads to open. He told me to get the dog sled and harness the dogs. He would hunt without a kayak.

  "We'll hunt bearded seals on the ice," he said.

  Bearded seals are heavy. They can weigh six hundred pounds. I harnessed our seven dogs to the sled and chose Black Star to lead the team. Bartok did not like him. When Black Star was a year old, my father decided that he would never in this world make a good leader.

  "He's stubborn," my father said. "You tell him something and he does something else."

  "He's smart," I said, remembering the winter when we were coming home and, just on the other side of Salmon Creek, Black Star pulled up and wouldn't move. My father took the whip to him and still he wouldn't move. Then my father walked out on the frozen creek and fell through the ice up to his neck. I remembered this time but said nothing about it. "Black Star knows a lot," I said.

  "Of the wrong things," Bartok said. "He's got too much wolf in him. His father came from Baffin Bay and had a lot of wolf blood. They bred him to a Siberian husky. So he's mostly wolf."

  I liked Black Star. I had liked him since he was a month old. There were seven in the litter and he was the most playful of them all. He bounced around and took nothing from his brothers and sisters, giving two bites for every one he got.

  He was of the purest white, with a black star on his forehead and black slashes under big eyes. But of everything, it was his eyes themselves that captured me.

  They were ice blue, the color of the ice that floats down from the Bering Sea on the days when the sun is at its tallest. At first I thought how cold and suspicious and wild they were, looking at me from a world I had never seen and would never know.

  After a while, I felt that behind this look was a shadow of friendship. That changed and I saw nothing but friendliness. Then that changed, too. Sometimes, when moon shadows were on the trail and we were hauling things down from the forest, the wild look would come back again.

  Before I harnessed him to the sled, Black Star went down the gang line, his bushy tail curled over his back. His ears pricked forward. I had seen a motion picture one time at school about a parade in Washington. There were soldiers standing in a line and a captain walking along, stopping to look at each one of them. Black Star reminded me of the captain, only when he stopped, he reached out and gave the dogs a sharp bite on the ear.

  "I tried hard to break him of that," my father said.

  "He wants the team to know that he's the leader."

  "Yes, but they know he's the leader without having their ears bitten off. Maybe you can do something with him."

  "I'll try," but I liked Black Star the way he was.

  "You could harness him up first. That way he won't have a chance to go along biting ears."

  "You tried that once, remember? And it didn't work at all."

  "I don't remember."

  My father could forget something he didn't wish to remember. Now he didn't want to remember that he had used a whip on Black Star. He was a strong-willed man, but the dog was strong-willed, too. He was silent as Black Star went down the line biting ears, all the while watching the caribou whip.

  "There isn't a cloud in the sky. What a fine day to hunt," I said.

  Last winter my father had killed only three bearded seals and there was a whole month when we didn't have much to eat. Hunting would be better this year, my father said. He was good at telling how far south the seals would go on their summer travels—a thousand or two thousand miles—and when they would return to the cold waters of Womengo.

  The full moon was rising. There were scratchy clouds far down in the west, but it would be a fine day. Bartok got out his hunting things, put them on the sled, and got in beside them.

  "We hunted the south shore last year. Bad luck," he said. "Maybe we should hunt north this year. What do you think?"

  "North," I said, eager to go in any direction.

  My mother took her time to answer. She was wearing a parka she had made in the summer of fox fur and wolverine. She looked very pretty.

  "South was bad hunting last year," she said, handing Bartok some smoked salmon strips to eat while he was out on the ice. "So it should not be bad this year again."

  "No, I am sure," Bartok said. "Last night I had a strange dream. I was gathering clams along the shore. Out of the sea came a bearded seal. He was very thin and could barely move on his flippers.

  "'I have come a long way,' he said. 'I am starving. Will you give me some of your clams?'

  "I was about to say that I needed them for my family. Then I saw that each of his ears was a gleaming pearl. At once, I knew that it was the King of the Bearded Seals.

  "'You can have all of the clams—there are more than two dozen—if you make me a promise,' I said.

  "'I am starving. I'll promise anything, Bartok Machina.' (He knew me, he called my true name.)

  "'Then promise that you'll have some of your subjects, many of them, visit our shore this winter.'

  "'A hundred. Two hundred.'

  "With that, he scooped up the clams, swallowed them in one gulp, and waddled fast into the sea."

  Every year this sort of talk went on between him and my mother, Mary K. When he went
out on the ice they would always talk this way and always about a dream he'd had.

  There was a reason for such talk. Hunting is dangerous. Danger lurks everywhere. Killer whales are thirty feet long, and if a man is hunting in a kayak they can snatch him up, kayak and all. If it's angry, a Kodiak bear can kill a hunter with a single swipe of its paw. Polar bears are the worst of all. They feed on seals, and because hunters always smell of seals, the bears think they are seals and track them down. A hunter does not go out on the ice without fear. But he is not a man unless he does go.

  Women never hunt. My father was even criticized for letting me drive his sled to the ice, to help him bring back the seals he took. Women's place was at home.

  I had been doing it now for two winters. It started when my brother was killed on the ice, the day he speared a bearded seal with the harpoon rope looped around his neck and was dragged into the depths and drowned. In my father's eyes, somehow I became his son who had died on the ice.

  The hunters in the village and their wives did not like me to go out with my father. It made no difference to him. For a long time now I had driven the sled to the ice and helped him load the heavy seals on the sled, and driven back home. Often we drove down the village street in broad daylight so everyone could see us.

  2

  Smoke from breakfast fires hung above the village. Men were starting off toward the south. My father and I went north. We went along the shore, hunting for a good place to go out on the sea.

  During the freeze-up, polar ice was driven down through the Bering Strait by north winds and struck the shore. The collision flung up great mounds and spires and ridges, mixed with sand and rock. These eewoonucks formed an icy wilderness between the shore and the frozen sea.

  It took us nearly an hour to find a place to hunt. We staked out the dogs and climbed a jagged ridge. My father saw the head of a bearded seal, just the top of it, sticking up through the ice. The seal sank out of sight when it saw us.

  My father climbed down from the ridge and gathered up his things—his knife and his harpoon with the long rope fastened to it. He followed the ridge until he came close to the stretch of flat ice and the breathing hole where the seal had shown its head.

  Between my father and the hole was a narrow bridge of ice. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled slowly from one side to the other. Seals have good ears. They can hear footsteps many yards away through the ice.

  I watched him crawl to the lip of the breathing hole and not move for a while. He coiled the long rope harpoon. Then he crouched beside the hole a step away, his legs braced, his body bent forward, and the harpoon in his hand.

  My father was the best hunter in our village. It was because he was very patient. He could crouch for hours this way, bent over, waiting for a seal to show its head. Often he waited for half a day, sometimes for a whole day, and when I brought him food he wouldn't eat it for fear he would not be ready with the harpoon.

  There was so much waiting that I always brought schoolbooks to read. In this way I was able to keep up with my studies. My teacher, Helen Tarrana, was good about letting me make up the time I lost. But today it was so cold, the pages wanted to stick together. I did manage to read about the golden seal, which does not inhabit our waters. Her fur jacket is made of hairs so fine that three hundred thousand are packed into one square inch so that she's always warm and waterproof. Imagine! Who counted all these hairs? I wondered.

  Books can be exciting, useful too. My mother named me out of a book she was reading the morning of the night I was born. It was about seals, the beautiful creatures who live in two worlds. She came to a place in the book where, in the deepest of a sunless winter, for some strange reason, a day dawned bright, bright as a day in spring. That is how I got the name. Bright Dawn.

  I closed my book, climbed down from the ridge, and fed the dogs, who were restless. Then I climbed back up and kept an eye on my father. He had not moved. He looked like an ice statue crouching there among the eewoonucks.

  The moon was full. By late morning its light began to fade. A south wind came up and shifted around to the north. It was much colder now. I climbed down and built a fire and warmed myself. Then I climbed back up the ridge. Bartok still hadn't changed his position beside the breathing hole.

  The seal had another hole somewhere, I decided. Seals can't stay down for much more than five minutes before they have to come up for air.

  The wind died and it started to snow, large flakes at first, then small ones that had ice on the edges. We were miles from home. Part of the distance was through the eewoonucks. I called to my father to give up the hunt. He did not answer. By now he looked like a snowman.

  I called again. Slowly he raised a hand to quiet me. The snow was coming down harder, but it was very still, except that from far off I heard the rumbling of shelf ice.

  I climbed down from the ridge, taking my time. It was very slippery. The dogs were lumps in the snow. I scraped them off, searched around for driftwood, and tried to build up the fire. I had no watch, but I was good at telling the time of day. It must be an hour after noon, I decided.

  The fire would not burn and from a cloudy sky the moon cast only weak shadows. But I found my way along the path Bartok had taken. It was hard to see. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the shelf and groped along to the bridge that connected the shelf to the polar ice.

  It was not there. Instead, I saw a jagged point sticking up like a spear. Beyond, I caught a glimpse of blue water, the sea.

  I cupped my hands and shouted. The wind flung the shout back in my face. Was my father on a floe that was drifting away from the shore? Had he come back to the bridge, found it gone, and taken another way to reach the shore? Wherever he was, I would never find him.

  I went back to the camp, harnessed the dogs, and started off against the raging wind. The eewoonucks all looked alike. I did not try to find the way back to shore. Knowing that I would never find it, I walked along beside Black Star and let him guide us.

  When we were near home, Mary K. heard us and was at the door. She was calm. Mothers and wives were always calm when bad news came. They were trained to hear bad news. Not a winter went by that at least one of our men was not lost on the ice.

  Mary K. hurried into her parka. My feet were wet, beginning to freeze, so I changed my socks and boots and we ran up the road, spreading the news through the village. All the women and the old men came out and followed us to the outpost store.

  Anvo Noorvik, the man who owned the store, said, "Nothing can be done until the hunters come in from the ice."

  We knew that.

  He looked at his watch. "Six o'clock," he announced. "Some will be back in an hour. Everyone will be back in two hours. In two hours we will start the search. Now we will return to what we were doing."

  When we came in, Noorvik was opening a box with a pry bar. The bar was still in his hand. He gave the box a jab as we filed out.

  Everyone wanted to take us into their homes, but my mother refused. We walked into the blizzard, heading along against it, through the village to our home. But we felt better, having been with our friends.

  3

  The first thing I did when we got home was to tie a leather rope across the room under the ceiling.

  If a rope goes limp, my father had told me, it's a sign that the hunter is in danger. If it goes limp more than a little, if it hangs down, then the hunter is dead. Then the clothes that hang behind the stove to warm him when he comes in are taken down and put away forever.

  An hour went by. The rope did not move. The blizzard piled snow against the windows. It shut out the light, so I lit candles. My mother busied herself over the stove. She did not believe in the rope. She had gone to a school in Nome where they did not like what they called Eskimo superstitions.

  When we heard dogs barking in the village, I ran outside and started toward the store. The blizzard was at my back and I went fast.

  Most of the men were home fro
m the ice, more than twenty of them. They had heard the news from Anvo Noorvik, but they wanted to know it from me. I told them what had happened, leaving out nothing that I thought would help. They hugged the hot stove and were silent. I wondered if they would ever thaw out and talk.

  At last, squat, lank-haired Utak Tuktu, who was a good hunter, said, "Now we go to look for Bartok."

  "To find him," Louis Katchatag said.

  "And bring Bartok home," someone said. "He is safe. He is friends with the ice for a long time."

  I asked Tuktu if I could go with him. He didn't bother to answer.

  Hunting on the ice was not something for girls or women. This I knew well, but I asked him again as the men filed out. Again, he didn't bother to answer.

  They took four dog sleds and nine kayaks. I followed them down the road and saw them disappear in the driving snow.

  When I got home, my mother was watching the deerskin rope, even though she said she didn't believe in it. "It hasn't moved a bit," she said. "It still hangs tight."

  We cooked supper and ate some of it. The blizzard had stopped. I cleaned the snow off the window so we could keep track of the weather. The moon shone in a cloudless sky.

  Around midnight we heard dogs barking in the village. I went up the road to see what it was. The last of the hunters were returning from the ice with the seals they had killed.

  We divided the time; my mother slept for an hour, then I slept. Toward morning, while I was watching the deerskin rope, I saw it move, or thought I did. I got my mother and she sat down and watched, too.

  "I see nothing," she said, a little angry with me for believing. "You are tired. Your eyes are tired."

  "They are not tired," I said, begging her pardon.