Arctic Smoke

by Randy Nikkel Schroeder

  “You’re in real danger here.” Seri patted the dust.

  Odin gaped at his fingers. “Jumping Jesus, he is here, where is he? This is the convergence of the universe! He’s where?”

  “You don’t want to know, believe me.”

  “Lotta faith, sister.” He picked up the bell. “This is the man with the vision, the king of big ice, who has glimpsed through the veil, the veil, dig me?—the veil of tears, of fears, of years, of seers and weirs and piers and mirrors, of, of, fuckin’, uh, dweers. . . .”

  “Well, that’s not a word,” said the night manager.

  Seri stepped forward. “He’s headed for the top of the island. Keep to your room until I’ve got him under supervision.”

  “Out of my way!” Odin threw the bell at the wall, one quick ding and a rattle. “He’s at the festival.”

  “There is no festival. Get to your room. I’m law enforcement.”

  He pushed her aside, boots clomping, hat bobbing. “This man is my father. This is a family re-yoon-yun.” He yelled through cupped hands—“Lor! The circus has come to town!”

  Lor? The dead one, obviously.

  “Indeed.” The night manager stood in a laced camisole, skin pinkening, goosebumps rippling her shoulders.

  Seri let the man go. He wasn’t going to catch Rooke, who had at least a couple of hours’ head start. She gathered herself. “How big is this island?”

  The night manager squinted. Raised her fingers to her shoulders, began to slide down the thin satin straps.

  “Never mind,” Seri said. “Do you have a radio, radio-telephone, CB, anything?”

  The night manager tossed her shirts into the pillowy fire. “Why not just use our regular phone?”

  Seri stared. “You don’t have one.”

  “We do.”

  Good God. Seri’s anger flared, replaced instantly by an ache to phone Gran, then by a cold drive. No time for family phone calls, she didn’t need that boost anyway. She squeezed her shirt pocket, felt the knife in her shoe. Careful where you step. “You said you’ve never had a phone here.”

  The woman began to unlace her camisole. “Where is here? And as for never, tricky—”

  Seri flung up a hand, spilling cold coffee. “Just give me that phone. I have a flight to catch.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The True Hallucinogen

  Lor tiptoed from his room. He floated through a frozen tearoom crackled with broken teacups, where twin windows let in beams of honey moonlight, collecting at the room’s corners, dwindling to gloom. At the rim of darkness, a small figure with black hair and widow’s peak leaned on a room-service cart, creaking the wheels, rattling icy teapots.

  “Sir? Ken?”

  Lor laughed. Of course, of course. He drifted on. One room dissolving to the next, dark passages unfolding to sunrooms smelling of old smoke.

  “Ken?” From the shadows. “Don’t go. I beg you. Don’t give it to him.”

  Lor slammed the door.

  Hugging his guitar, he marched into moon-scorched snow, until the hotel was far behind, an old ship frozen in arctic waters, turret listing, curtains flapping from broken windows. Soon a winged shadow appeared at his shoulder, and tossed up a cloud of snow, which twinkled down over his head. “Snow, Kenny. The true hallucinogen.”

  Lor’s feet crunched over ice chunks, which he saw now sparkled with blue-green. Wow. They’d been smoking this island itself on Christmas Eve. No wonder everything was fucked up.

  An arctic hare zigged by and dove into a fissure, scattering blues and greens, chased by dust devils of snow. Lor unbuckled his guitar case and dumped it in the snow, clutching the guitar to his breast. He moved on, to where his own footprints scored the snow. “You were once the snow angel, right? I dreamed you.”

  No answer.

  Lor slowed. “Are you the same as the snowman?”

  “Angels appear often as men.”

  “And demons?”

  Blue laughter.

  Lor squinted at the sky. “Why do you chase me?”

  “Who’s chasing who?”

  Lor, staring at his feet, saw suddenly that there were two sets of footprints. He slowed. “Tell me what to do.”

  No answer. Shadow gone.

  Lor plucked a long dark coat from the snow. Put it on over the Mackinaw. He walked, black and ragged, until the footprints stopped at a green river, where he mounted a spiny floe frozen to the banks. He kicked at it until it chunked loose and sluiced away.

  He floated in darkness, into music—one shimmering note hung with overtones.

  Old moonlight, long stored in the snow, released and gathered in clouds at the river’s heat. Lor sailed into creeping mist that froze in jewels through his beard. Then into blue forest, light slicing bright nicks and notches before returning to the snow.

  The floe crunched to a halt as the river narrowed. All around, spruce bristled with tiny icicles the texture of frozen eyebrows, clinking like countless china teacups trembling in their saucers.

  Lor stepped from the floe and slumped down cross-legged beneath a tree. Lay the guitar on his lap. Closed his eyes. How lovely it would be to say a few last words to the guitar. But this forest was a place where words grew too heavy to float.

  He felt wind on his eyelids.

  Everything here was shedding its skin—love, culture, meaning. The Man was vanished. Lor missed Franklin, suddenly, keenly, as one would miss an older brother. But no goodbyes. He had been right to flee love. He took off his gloves. Reached into his pocket, feeling the photograph’s ashes. Closed his eyes.

  Now.

  Only this.

  † † †

  The cold forced Lor’s eyes open. He was wrapped in a tiny mist cloud that bit to his marrow. Knees cracking, he crawled toward the next tree. But the cloud followed him, droplets dancing. Lor stood. The cloud raised with him. He stumbled for the next tree, but the cloud beat him to it, stopping to float beneath blue boughs. He tried to fan it away with his guitar, but it dispersed and gathered again in a misty column.

  Fine. Perhaps he was not yet at the island’s tip. He would let the cloud lead him north, into increasing cold, where he would complete his calling. But the air warmed; he could feel it at the rim of his nostrils. An apple-scented breeze lit the back of his throat. He thought of birds.

  Remembering his purpose, he turned and inhaled the freeze behind him. He dug into his Mackinaw pocket and sifted the photograph’s ash. After one step, he turned back to the warmth. The mist danced above a rolling bank, beyond which Lor could not see. The scent of apples again. He remembered climbing an apple tree by a river as a boy, shaking the overhang, ripe red globes dropping to splash and float away. He remembered Alistair.

  The mist waited.

  Pulling out his ash-blackened hand, Lor got a firm grip on the guitar, then followed the dancing cloud over the bank, across a river, and around a tree, into a summer meadow thick with flowers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A Few Deep Breaths

  “Hurry up.” Seri’s fingers pressed around the pouch of dust in her pocket.

  Constable Rajinder Mohanraj, lone RCMP officer and pilot from the remote detachment in Kivalliq, raised a finger, though not his voice. “Easy. Just go easy now.”

  “Listen, pencil pusher, you can play policeman later.”

  Mohanraj removed and bit his sunglasses. “A few deep breaths. Take a few deep breaths. From the diaphragm. Like so.” He tapped a pencil against the coils of his notebook, glasses swinging from mouth. “No exaggerations, please. You say you’re with CSIS, and this Rooke fellow too. Though he’s gone now, correct?”

  “The details don’t matter.” Seri yanked out the mysterious pouch and clasped both hands around it. “This is an emergency. Let’s just get in that plane.”

  “The details always matter.” Mohanraj smiled. “Everything is in the details. Police work is in the details.”

  “Give me that damned ludicrous notebook.” She tried to sn
atch it, missed.

  He restrung the glasses around his ears. “The details. You tell, I listen.”

  “You’re hopeless!”

  “There is always hope. Hope remains.” Constable Rajinder Mohanraj of the Mounted Police slid Seri a tall wooden stool. “Sit down, please. A few deep breaths. Let’s make sure everything is in order.”

  Order. Christ!

  “Order,” said the night manager, behind her desk, burning peppermint tea bags and unpeeled containers of Cup-a-Soup. “Order is the strange engine of the world.”

  Mohanraj of the Mounties ignored her. “Sit please,” he repeated to Seri.

  Was this another tendril of God’s final test, to demonstrate patience when all she felt was agitation, to act independently of emotion? Seri sat, pouch in one palm, free fingers knotted in her bangs.

  “And if you don’t mind,” Mohanraj continued, “Please refrain from swearing.” He stomped his boots, speedlaced mukluks with thermoplastic outsoles. Then he looked up. “Unlike you, unlike her, unlike everyone in this barren land, I am an upright man.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Enough Storms

  A painted ocean. Poppies swaying in perfumed currents, pale skies combed with summer clouds and drifting heat. Butterflies flitting in slants of sunshine, the hum of bumblebees.

  Lor stopped and stared.

  A river flowed up to the sky in misty sheets, pulled by dark clouds to fall back as snow. Sunlight thinned against gloom, the world caught between day and night.

  He turned toward the warm half.

  He stopped.

  A stone’s throw away, shimmering in the heat, stood a boy in a top hat and red military jacket. One arm was stuck with fat quills. The other held a magpie.

  The boy smiled. A cold smile. “Welcome, thief.”

  Lor swished through the poppies. He opened his eyes. He didn’t remember closing them. He was sitting on the ground, tall stalks swaying overhead.

  “Stay awake.” The boy held up a palm. “We have a reckoning.” At his side, a white cone rose from between poppies. Lor saw the boy’s arm was stuck not with quills, but knives.

  “Who did you expect?” The boy smiled. Two clean rows of baby teeth. He pulled a knife from his forearm and flung it up spinning. Then another, another. They hung in the air by his head, whirling bright blades.

  “Let me pass,” said Lor.

  The boy’s eyes darkened, deep blue to green. “First return my dust.”

  “Yours?” Lor stared.

  The boy laughed. “Come. We have raised enough storms for now.” He tapped the white cone at his knees. “I have a family reunion to attend. I need my dust. I will offer you your own life.”

  “No.”

  He pointed at the sky. “You think I can’t bring winter back?”

  Lor stayed silent.

  “Give me my dust.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  The boy’s eyes turned from green to black.

  “Any more—” Lor quickly added.

  “Ah, Theodore.” The boy reached to stroke his magpie. “Seems we have a complication.”

  Theodore squawked.

  “Who has it?” the boy said. “Did you offer it to my beloved?”

  “I don’t know your beloved.”

  The boy reached to touch the belt mark on Lor’s neck. “You do,” he said, mouth twisting bitterly. “Tell me. In the morning. Did she stay?”

  Lor said nothing.

  “Perhaps one of your brothers has it,” the boy said, thoughtfully.

  Lor touched his neck.

  “Or,” the boy’s eyes sapphire, “perhaps the virgin.”

  “I don’t know any virgins.”

  The boy stared, tapping the white cone.

  Lor shrugged. “I’ve never known any virgins. I don’t have your dust.”

  The boy squeezed the tip of the white cone, knuckles darkening. The knives clattered and dropped to the ground. Lor’s fingers twitched and thrummed the guitar’s strings, scattering chords. Sunlight traced the dust glued to the body.

  The boy saw. His eyes softened to blue. “Ahhhh. A thief and a liar. Well: one bargain for you.” He stooped to pick a knife. “Give me the guitar and I’ll let you pass.”

  Lor hugged his guitar.

  The boy fingered the knife’s thin blade. “You will be alone, finally. It’s what you want.”

  It was what Lor wanted. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t solitude the point of this long journey?

  “No,” he said, surprising himself.

  The boy’s eyebrows arched. The magpie shrilled.

  Lor looked down at his guitar, spangled with blues and greens. Thought of his long flight north. All the people he had met. All the people he had fled. Once, long ago, far from this place, in dead summer when chinook winds scorched prairie grass, he had sneaked with Alistair and Franklin down the coulees for a picnic of peyote and ’shrooms, to an unlikely meadow much like this one, where wild roses mingled with dust and prickly pear, and the three of them, connected by filaments of hallucination, had argued and gossiped and laughed like family, and finally passed out, and awakened as strangers to cold shadows and an early evening moon. Franklin and Alistair. Left far behind now.

  “A-ha!” A delighted laugh from the boy.

  Lor started.

  The boy smiled, hands folded prayer-like around the knife. “You’re not exactly what you seem, are you? You dream of your brothers, despite yourself.”

  Your brothers are near.

  “Near?” Lor almost dropped the guitar.

  I will give them to you. Voiceless words, a melody of air.

  “Who spoke?” the boy snarled.

  Behind him, a faceless snowman defied the sun.

  “Who spoke?” The boy turned. His shoulders jerked up, then slowly, smoothly, descended. “Oh, Theodore. We have an unexpected visitor.”

  You have outrun all of them, Kenny. But who, finally, can escape what he desires?

  “Certainly not you, phantom,” the boy sneered. “Get out of my clearing.”

  The magpie squawked.

  One bargain, Kenny.

  “I’m speaking to you, daemon.” The boy raised his knife. “Listen.”

  You know what I need, Kenny. Every grain.

  Lor plucked a string. “I lost most of it.”

  Blue chimes, ice cracking.

  “I’m speaking to you,” said the boy.

  Give me what remains. But now I will offer only one brother in return.

  “Which one?” Lor said.

  “I’m speaking to you.”

  I will not say.

  “What am I, a ghost?” The boy plunged his knife into the snowman and began to carve a face. Wide eyes. A cold nose. A crooked smile. “Forget this visitor, Lor. Give me the guitar,” chopping chin and cheekbones, “I’ll lead you to both your brothers. A reunion. All three of you, together again, at last.”

  He lies.

  “Do not.”

  He speaks with a frozen tongue.

  “Don’t you ever melt?” The boy dropped the knife. The magpie bobbed and warbled.

  Lor looked at his guitar, and it felt like his last and dearest friend. A reunion? Wasn’t that exactly what he was fleeing? Searching for a newer, cleaner, colder life?

  The boy stared with sapphire eyes. “Give me my dust.”

  It isn’t yours.

  “Ah.” The boy snapped his fingers. “So you do speak.”

  Don’t listen to his voice, Kenny.

  “Kenny.” The boy smiled. “Is that what your brothers call you? A good name is better than precious ointment.”

  Don’t listen.

  “Bah! You will die.” The boy again raised the knife. “Daemon. Can you offer him his own life?”

  No.

  The boy grinned. “Both brothers, Kenny, I promise you. A family at last.”

  Lor clutched the guitar. He was tempted.

  Do not give him what remains of my heart. He will use it for ill. He will so
w the seeds of hatred, break the bonds of love, kill his own family.

  “No.” The boy shook his head violently. “No.” His features softened, lost their guile. Then quickened like a child’s on Christmas morning. “You have been told the wrong story. Or, rather, you have been told the right story backwards.”

  Don’t listen. His heart is a museum of evil.

  “You are too quick to rely on easy myths of evil,” said the boy. “You, of all creatures. What about your story?”

  The snowman slicked with ice.

  “Does the boy tell the truth?” Lor said.

  Kenny, baby, I don’t know.

  The boy smiled, almost kindly. “Lor. For your kind the dust will bring only sorrow and disenchantment. But for my kind, the dust is a talisman of restoration. If not to heaven, at least to wholeness and love.”

  Lor’s fingers squeaked on the strings. “Then why are you here, alone?”

  The boy frowned. “My family is too far fallen. They cannot imagine anything beyond malice, and seek only to checkmate my plans. They are addicted to their own hatreds, truth be told.” He extended a hand. “Lor?”

  Lor stepped back. “Does he tell the truth?”

  The snowman paused. Who can say? Each tells his own story.

  Four seasons’ worth of time drifted down, leaves, soft snow, and cottonwood. Lor began to thaw inside, bones melting, blood coursing with runoff.

  “Okay.” His voice was dry and distant. He loosened his tight embrace.

  That’s mine. Blue chimes and angry wind.

  “A fair bargain?” said the boy.

  Mine.

  As Lor raised his arm to trade the guitar, his shoulder stuck, and his knuckles clenched. The boy laughed, reached, and, one by one, pried Lor’s fingers from the neck.

  You’ll regret—

  Just as the guitar changed hands, a distant magpie chattered. Theodore bobbed excitedly, then crouched and flexed his wings. The boy reached with his free hand and pinned the magpie’s claws before it could fly. “Dear watchmaker in heaven. Will this tale ever end?”

  Again the chattering. Lor turned. In a knotty poplar, a second magpie cackled, wings raised high, black feathers twinkling. Lor turned again. Theodore struggled in vain against the boy’s fingers.