Split Feather Page 14

  Nothing.

  There was the river, the riverbank, and the sky. Huh. Disappointed, I went to lower it again, but I swear the damn thing grabbed my hand and jerked it to the side, and then I saw it. A trail, like an oil slick, bobbing and glistening on the surface of the water. Emily had been this way, all right, and she’d headed up the river toward Oldtown.

  “I knew that already,” I grumbled at the stone. It gave one last little buzz against my palm and went still. Yeahhhhh… now I was talking to sticks and stones. Sane as the day is long, that’s Siggy.

  “Sticks and stones will break my bones, and the river will surely drown me,” I sang, and headed upriver, against the wind, against perfectly good advice and my own common sense.

  A raven flew low overhead, laughing at me: qa’hoq, qa’hoq.

  * * *

  Driving that boat was a little bit like riding a horse. Only facing backward, and the horse wants to run forward, and maybe he wants to buck, and maybe he’s not really a horse at all, but a water dragon with a taste for human flesh.

  Then again, maybe it was just me.

  As I said, I hadn’t had much experience with rivers. Or with horses, come to think of it. I know everyone says they only eat grass or whatever, but those things have always looked to me like they wouldn’t mind trying a bite out of my leg.

  In any case, I was fighting to keep the boat’s flat nose pointed upriver without catching enough wind to flip me ass-over-teakettle, or snagging a submerged tree. Apparently spruce trees like to swim, ’cause there were plenty of them in the river, and I kept expecting one to punch through the hull or jam up my motor.

  Passing by a couple of skinny little islands, I gave them wide berth because they looked like snag hell, and the water was so silty I couldn’t see a hand’s width under the surface. All the while I was gritting my teeth and leaning forward on the bench seat, wishing I dared to go faster. Looking up, I envied Raven’s ability to shoot like an arrow, quick and true over river and land alike. He did a barrel roll overhead, mocking me, and I flipped him the bird. Appropriate.

  The river was a mad thing, twisting across the land like a crazy snake, turning this way and that and doubling back on itself so that I had no idea how far I’d gone. Ten miles? A hundred? Maybe I hadn’t even passed the dump yet? Impossible to say. A mother moose and her twins—meese? Mooses? Someday I’d figure it out—regarded me from the riverbank, and a pair of fat birds exploded from a strand of willows with such drama I almost fell out of the boat. A beaver swam alongside me for a while, towing a branch and giving me the side-eye, but he was much too busy to bother with anything more. The world rolled on and on, unconcerned with such things as demons or Mondays or lost children.

  Calves go missing, the moose said. There will be others.

  Nests get robbed, a ptarmigan said. There will be others.

  Your life’s work will be washed away by the river, the beaver said, wisest of all. Build it anyway.

  Qa’hoq, Raven laughed, amused that I’d even try. Qa’hoq.

  An island loomed ahead, wider and wilder and more forbidding than the others. At least I hoped it was an island, and not a fork in the river… Did the Kuskokwim have forks? I tried to remember how it had looked from the air, and from the land as I’d walked beside it with my grandfather. By the time I’d decided that this might be a fork, though, and that I should probably take the left-hand side, the river decided for me, sweeping me off to the right.

  Had my grandfather been with me, he would have taken the left-hand way. He would have kept his eyes averted and his mouth closed, and pretended that the other way didn’t exist.

  Had Garvin been with me, he would have taken the left-hand way, and deflected any questions with a laugh and an inappropriate joke. They weren’t, however. I was alone and half-lost, and Raven had distracted me, so I was carried down the wrong-hand way.

  Dammit.

  The air over this part of the river was still and cold, as if the land was holding its breath. The trees on that island—if it was an island—seemed taller and darker than the spruce trees I’d seen around Tsone. The birches were unmarred by basket makers, and the willows marched right down to the water’s surface, leaving no room to pull up a boat. Not that I was tempted, or would have been tempted even if this had been a fishing trip on a lazy day. Nothing about that place was welcoming.

  Shivering, I nudged the nose of the boat toward the far shore, breathing out a sigh of relief as the edge of the island curved away from me. Then that breath ended in a shout as the unfriendly trees dropped away and beyond them, on the distant shore, I could see the dark outline of broken-down houses.

  Oldtown.

  I let out a whoop, half-excited, half-surprised that I wasn’t completely lost after all. If Oldtown was on that side of the river, the mudflats were just a short hop across the water, and from there we could walk home. Once I had Emily. If, as I’d suspected, she’d gone to Oldtown to look for her folks. And if I could find her.

  I had to find her.

  Then I saw it… an Army-green boat, much like the one I’d been wrestling, pulled up on the low bank.

  “Emily!” I shouted, half standing. “Emmmmillllyyyyy!” My boat bucked, threatening to dump me, and I sat my ass back down, craning my neck in an effort to see up over the riverbank. I drew in a breath to yell again, when I heard a faint reply:

  “Aunt Siggy? Aunt Siggy!”

  A little brown head poked up over a tall clump of grass, and a skinny arm waved. I caught my breath and veered sharply toward Oldtown, and my Emily.

  “Siggy!” Another voice, fainter, called from downriver. “Siiiiiggyyyyy!”

  “Garvin!” I bellowed. “I found her! We’re at Oldtown!”

  “Siggy…” I could hear another boat, now. He was yelling something else, but I couldn’t make it out and didn’t try too hard. All my attention was on the little figure that raced along the riverbank now, heading toward her boat.

  “Aunt Siggy! Aunt Siggy!” Emily was yelling something, too, pointing toward me, jumping up and down and waving her arms. Then she pushed the other boat into the water, slung a skinny leg over the side…

  And fell into the river, disappearing beneath the silty waters with barely a splash. I screamed. Then I yanked the motor hard to one side, ignoring the way the front end of the boat jumped out of the water and caught the wind, ignoring the strange swells and dead spots in this part of the Kuskokwim, and the odd ruffled bits that hinted at snags and an undercurrent. Ignoring Raven’s calls and the trees’ threats and the river’s cold laugh, I veered sharply toward the place I’d seen Emily go down, skipping across the river like a perfect stone shot from a little girl’s hand, dodging the empty boat that had gotten away from her, screaming her name.

  The whine of another engine drew closer, and Garvin shouted something at the top of his lungs. He must have heard me scream. But I didn’t have time for that.

  Raven dove at my head, and again, so that I had to duck away from his sharp beak and shield my head with one arm. I didn’t have time for that, either, because Emily’s head broke the surface of the river; she was thrashing and crying out, and I saw her terrified little face being swept backward and away from me. My fuddled mind took a moment to wonder how she was swimming backward, when the odd ripples and flow of the river, the end of the island, and the dark patch of water all swirled together into my mind, and I understood.

  Whirlpool.

  But I could do this. I could do this. I cut the motor and stood, leaned from the boat as far as I dared, then farther, feeling the cold breath of the Kuskokwim hungry against my belly. I held one end of Grandma’s walking stick toward Emily as she swept back toward me, still facing away but getting closer, closer…

  “Siggy!”

  “Garvin! Here! We’re here! Emily, grab hold! Emily, you can do it!”

  The whirlpool brought her closer, closer; her terrified face twisted round toward me and one skinny arm shot out, she grabbed the stick and I b
raced myself against the side of the boat and pulled…

  And the tree root that had lain in wait my entire life flipped the boat over, and we were tumbling together in the ice-cold, end-of-everything-cold water, over and over, and I couldn’t tell which way was up and which was death. Emily’s arms wrapped round the top of my head, then my throat, and she thrashed, and I thrashed, and I took in a mouthful of water that tasted of mud and dead fish.

  As soon as the river touched my tongue, I knew. This way was up. That way was death. I grabbed Emily’s arms and kicked to the surface, glorying in my strength, determined not to lose her. Not to let her die. This one thing, this one thing in all my life I would do right.

  Give me this one thing, I begged the Kuskokwim. Just let me save her and then you can take me instead.

  Agreed, the river whispered.

  Raven screamed overhead as we broke through into the thin cold sunlight; I was blinded by the water and the cold.

  So cold, so cold.

  I could hear Garvin, screaming and hysterical. Emily wasn’t moving, but her little arms around my neck still gripped tight, so tight I couldn’t breathe, so tight I didn’t want to breathe because it meant she was still alive and I’d struck a bargain, after all. I pried her arms from my neck and yanked her fingers loose from my hair even as the whirlpool sucked at my legs and something, some thing, brushed cold and sharp against my ankle.

  “Siggy!” Garvin sobbed, so close. “Emily!”

  I couldn’t see, but I could hear the desperation in his voice… and, finally, the love. I pushed Emily toward the sound, felt her taken from me, taken up by strong arms, safe. The water sucked at my legs, my hips. Something twined up my ankle, my calf, biting cold teeth into my flesh, tugging, insisting.

  You promised, the river whispered.

  Something bumped into my hip and I grabbed at it. Grandma’s walking stick. Shaking the water and the hair out of my eyes, I smiled. Smiled up at Garvin’s face, so afraid, already so far away. He held his hand out toward me.

  “Come on, Siggy,” he cried. “Come on, you can do it! Siggy!”

  Emily was at his side, in his boat, so pale, eyes closed. The water tugged at me, stronger this time as its cold teeth sank into my flesh.

  “I promised,” I told Garvin.

  Yes, the river agreed. Yes.

  Then it pulled me under, the cold water closed over my head, the water filled my eyes, my mouth, my nose, there was cold, and there was pain, and then there was nothing.

  I died.

  21

  Drifting for a long time I sank, tumbling this way and that in the cold water. At least I thought it was cold, though I felt nothing. Even pain and sorrow, my companions for as long as I could remember, had been lifted from me. I was free. This way and that, this and that, like a rag doll, a bit of fluff caught up in a strong wind, and I didn’t mind at all. Why should I? I was blood and meat, sinew and bone, even as the river was water and clay and hidden roots.

  We were sisters, she and I. We were kin.

  Even as these truths came to me I could feel myself unraveling, forced apart as the river was by an island. Those parts of me that were born of water and clay sank down, down into the quiet depths, where they would be consumed. Those parts of me that were stardust and lightning grew wider, thinner, becoming ragged and indistinct about the edges. My heart wondered at this, but it wandered from the path of thought, and faded as even the midnight sun will fade into the long, cold dark.

  The jagged teeth of the river bit into my flesh, tearing it from bone. I was devoured, as all things must be, each in their time. Finally I came to rest at long last upon the riverbed, my hair tangled in the roots of a very old, very wise tree, my finger bones scattered like pebbles. I was still me—that is, I still had some sense of myself, though the state of things was really no concern of mine any longer, and I was content to just let things be as they were.

  A pale greenish light appeared, like sun through seawater, and it grew brighter, closer, playing among the snags and shadows of the river. I was neither afraid of the light nor particularly curious, since I was in the process of pulling free from the lump of meat I’d called my body.

  The light grew until I could see that it was a sphere of sorts, or a window moving through the water. There was a figure inside of the light, walking toward me without hurry, with hair streaming behind like smoke. As it approached I could see it was a girl, younger than I was. She was short and curvy, dressed in an exquisite fur parka and leggings. Her face was moon-round and very beautiful. The tattoos on her brow and cheeks and chin lent her an air of fierce pride. She was so present that I recalled enough of myself to look into her eyes…

  …her eyes…

  They were terrible. There was no other way to describe them. They were terrible, and that was that. She stopped in front of me, and her hair spread out around us, tangled as seaweed, braided with kelp and shells and strings of pearl. Her eyes…

  No! I won’t look.

  She peered at me, peered through me, and did not speak. She was beyond words. We both were. She didn’t smile, or show the slightest pity as she reached out and touched my fleshless cheek. Her hands were mutilated, the ragged stumps of chopped-off fingers trailing plumes of black and clotted blood. I didn’t flinch, tangled there in the tree roots, beyond all fear.

  Sister, she thought. Her voice was the river’s voice, cold and endless.

  Yes, I agreed.

  The girl with the raggedy hands gathered up my finger bones and put them into a basket at her hip. She plucked the long bones of my arms and legs from the silt, and my rib bones and spine. My hair she untangled carefully from the root. It wasn’t easy for her, but she was patient and I didn’t particularly care—we had all the time in the world. When I was free she tucked my skull into her basket, and my walking stick, too.

  At her touch, it cried out in pain.

  When she was finished, she held her basket in front of her; between her poor bloodied hands, she held me before her face.

  No! Don’t make me look…

  And she blew me up, up and away.

  * * *

  The old woman walked up and down the beach, up and down, holding a little cup of fire in front of her face as she bent nearly double, peering at the frozen ground. Who was she? Did I know her? What was she looking for? The thoughts danced around me like the oily black smoke from her lamp.

  Oh! She’s found something. A long bone, slender and white—a rib, to be broken free of the crusted ice, perhaps boiled up into soup. Then another, and another, and a vertebra. The old woman bobbed up and down the beach like a strange bird, nodding and humming to herself and collecting old bones. Her old feet shuffled and danced closer and closer to where I lay half-in and half-out of the ice.

  She broke my skull free of the rime as well, and dropped me into her deep, dark bag. I slept then, though I don’t know for how long. When I woke again, it was to the crackle and heat of a smoky dung fire, the smell of burning flesh, and the thin scent of coffee.

  Coffee. I remember…

  Almost. Almost, but not quite.

  The old woman puttered about, preparing food—a lot of food. Fish soup and seaweed, pickled birds’ eggs and beaver’s tail. Flesh crackled and cracked, dripping hot fat to sizzle on the low fire, and the smoke tickled the back of my throat.

  Almost. Almost, but not quite.

  I was lying on a soft mattress, on the far side of a low, round room with low ceilings, and I watched the smoke tickle its way up the curved walls and out through the smoke hole. That seemed important, and then again not so much. Why should I care? Who was this old woman to me? Nobody, and nobody. I drifted back to sleep…

  Almost, but not quite. The old woman wouldn’t let me go. She sang a song, a low silly song about sick chillun’ and short’nin’ bread, about mairzy doats and ivy twines, and her words stung me like bees. They caught me like sticky honey, and wouldn’t let me go.

  Stop, I told her, and the cracked win
dow rattled in its pane. Let me go. Let me sleep.

  “I will catch baby,” she crooned, “cradle and all. There is a castle on a cloud…”

  “Let me sleep,” I begged her. “I’m so cold.”

  She came over then, drew a blanket up to my chin, a bearskin, soft and thick and warm.

  “Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Grandma’s gonna buy you a mockin’bird…”

  “…so tired…”

  “…a lady all in white…” Her voice ground together like bone and rocks, and somehow I knew. She’d been singing forever, and she was so tired.

  “Stop.” I wept, and my lips cracked and bled. She brought me a drink of water in a tin cup, cool and sweet.

  “Swing low, sweet chariot…”

  “That’s not even a lullaby,” I protested, and she laughed, and kissed my forehead.

  Something dug into my side. How had the walking stick gotten into my bed? I tried to push it away, but I was too tired. So tired. The old woman chuckled and moved it for me. She brushed the hair from my forehead and I blinked up at her.

  “I know you,” I mumbled. “I know you.”

  “Shhhhhh,” she said, and she kissed my forehead again. “Sleep now. You can sleep now. I’ll be right here.”

  My eyes slipped closed. “Don’t leave me,” I whispered.

  “I never have,” she said, and she sang.

  “Bye, Baby Bunting…”

  …and…

  “In the treetop…”

  …and…

  “Little bunny frou-frou…”

  And I slept.

  22

  I held up my hands and marveled that I couldn’t see the firelight through them.

  There was darkness all round us, thick as soup. It filled the empty bowls and the eye sockets of the seal skulls and fish skulls and bird skulls that lined the shelves. It hollowed out the old woman’s eyes and ran round and round the room, looking for a corner to breed in, but the fire cut through darkness and shadow. It sparkled in our eyes and made the soup hot.