Split Feather Read online

  * * *

  Trying to hold onto a good thing, for me, was like trying to kiss a soap bubble. I always ended up with stinging eyes and a bad taste in my mouth.

  I was about halfway back to Grandpa John’s house when Aunt Trudy found me, and she wasted no time in telling me I was an idiot. She didn’t call me an idiot, of course, but her eyes were bright with anger, her mouth clamped tight against hard lines, and her strong face was flushed.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. Her hands were clenched tight and I was under the distinct impression she wanted to grab me by the shoulders and shake me till my teeth rattled. “We’ve been looking for you for hours.”

  “What? Hours? But I’ve only been gone…” I looked up, and only then noticed that the sun was skimming just above the treeline. It must have been really late, as the sun only dipped below the horizon for a very short nap up here. “But… I’ve only…”

  “Hours.” She saw my scowl and raised it two hands on her hips. She was mad. “We found your shoes pointing upriver, so we went that way first—”

  “Upriver? But—”

  “Don’t you interrupt me, young lady. I’m not finished. What were you trying to do, trick us? What did you think your Grandpa would feel when he saw her walking stick gone? Do you have any idea what you have done?” She was almost shouting.

  I shrank down inside myself, into a tiny cold core, slick and hard. That place nobody else could touch. I was taller than Aunt Trudy, and stronger, and harder, and I took a step toward her to let her know that I knew it. My face felt stiff, and my voice was soft and deep. Menacing.

  “I didn’t think anybody would miss me.”

  Aunt Trudy stood up to her whole five-foot nothing and somehow managed to look down her nose at me. “You didn’t think at all,” she snapped. “Not miss you? Not miss you? Grandpa John has been missing you pretty much your whole life, Siggy. Grandma died when those people took you, and Grandpa almost died, too, of a broken heart.”

  My own heart stopped at her words.

  “She died? When they took me?”

  Aunt Trudy wrapped herself in a hug, and stared off across the river. Her voice softened, shook a little. “She died. Yes. She went for a walk across the river, and she never came back. He found her walking stick by the whirlpool… and now you take her walking stick and you come out here, too. What did you think this would do to Grandpa? Who do you think you’re named after, Siggy John? That old man loves you so much, he thinks the sun rises and sets on your head. All he could talk about this summer was how he’d found you at last and how he wished you’d come home, and then this. Honestly, girl…”

  Aunt Trudy’s voice was eclipsed by the soft chirruping crickets, and lost in the whispered laugh of my demon, the susurration of her claws through my still-wet hair.

  Liessssss, she hissed, voice thick with laughter. She lies. Nobody looked for you. Nobody loved you. Nobody will ever love you. Worthless. Broken. If they knew you were crazy, they wouldn’t care if you disappeared. They wouldn’t care if you died. Stupid. Stupid, to think the old man could love you, worthless, selfish bitch…

  I gripped the walking stick with both hands to keep them from shaking. “Get lost,” I growled at the demon, in no mood to be fucked with. Worthless, selfish…

  Aunt Trudy went still all over, eyes and mouth round with shock. I thought for sure she would yell at me then, but when she found her voice again it was quiet, soft and sorrowing.

  “Get lost?” she said. “I come out here looking for you, crying for you, and you tell me to get lost?”

  I opened my mouth to explain, but stopped. What was I going to tell her—that I’d been talking to my demon? Aunt Trudy went on, her eyes filling as she spoke.

  “So hurtful, your words, so hard your heart. You, Siggy John Aleksov, you are the one who is lost.” A tear slipped down her cheek as she turned from me and walked away, footprints disappearing as she went.

  What have you done? the demon sang in my ear. What have you done?

  Raven wheeled overhead, laughing.

  I sighed, forcing myself to take a step, and then another. Though I knew the way back, and though I’d come to Alaska to find myself, Aunt Trudy was right. I was more lost than ever.

  12

  The door banged open. I hissed at the pain of a scalded hand and shoved the percolator onto the back burner before turning to eviscerate whoever had interrupted my coffee-ing, but stopped mid eff-word when I saw Garvin standing there carrying a young girl in his arms and a desperately worried look on his face.

  “You okay?” Stupid question. I hurried toward them, wiping coffee on my tee shirt as Garvin came in, kicking the door shut behind him. “What’s wrong? Is Emily hurt?” Emily was his little sister, the youngest of the cousins, and a seriously cute kid.

  Garvin just stared at me for a minute, and my heart sank. No doubt his mom had told him what a bitch I’d been the day before. He probably didn’t want to talk to me.

  “She’s sleeping,” he answered in a low voice. “I came over to help my folks cut wood this morning and Emily was all by herself, crying. Mom never came home last night, and Mike went out looking for her. Now he’s gone, too. Is Grandpa here?”

  I went cold with fear. I had told Trudy to get lost, and she never came home.

  “No. I thought he went fishing.” I hadn’t seen him since the night before, either. I’d gotten home really late somehow, like two in the morning. The old man was always up and out the door so crazy early, I hadn’t found his absence alarming. Dread crawled through my gut like spiders. “Is he missing, too?”

  Garvin’s face went grim. “I dunno, but Mom and Mike never would have left Emily by herself all night long. Never. Can you watch her while I go look for them? If Grandpa John comes back, tell him folks are meeting at Slow Mo’s. We’ve run up a red flag already, and we’ve got search teams out.”

  As he spoke, Garvin laid the girl on Grandpa John’s couch and pulled the green wool blanket over her sleeping form.

  “I want to help, too.”

  “You can help by staying here with Emily. She was alone all night long, and she’s scared.”

  “Maybe you could stay with her and I could go help look for your mom? I’m really not very good with kids.”

  “Siggy.” Garvin sighed, running a hand through his hair and making it stick up all over the place. “You’re an Outsider. You’d just get lost, and then we’d have to go looking for you, too. I really need you to stay here with Emily. Please.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I told him. “No problem. Good luck.”

  The sound of the door banging behind Garvin as he left startled me. My heart was pounding and my palms felt sweaty all of a sudden. It wasn’t guilt, I told myself.

  What have you done? crooned my demon. Siggy, what have you done? I ignored her stupid whispering and turned to pour myself a cup of coffee. I hadn’t done anything wrong, I hadn’t.

  The demon wrapped a companionable arm around my shoulders and laughed.

  Are you suuuuuure?

  I tightened my grip on the blue enamel coffee mug to keep my hands from shaking. Of course I was sure. Aunt Trudy had gotten mad and stormed off. I came home and went to bed, that was it. That was all.

  Yeah, I came home and went to bed… at two in the morning. And now two people had gone missing.

  I hadn’t had a blackout in years. In years. Even then, I had never hurt anybody.

  But the spiders were still crawling around in my gut, telling me something was wrong. Sick with dread, I put the cup down and tiptoed out to the front porch, wincing as the screen door creaked, breathing out a sigh of relief when the kid slept on. That sigh of relief caught in my throat when I saw the walking stick.

  Where were you last night, Siggy? sang the demon. What have you done?

  The walking stick leaned drunkenly against the porch railings, thongs tangled together, feathers broken and missing, and the leather bindings were stained dark with what I knew would be bloo
d.

  No, I thought, backing away from the stick. No, no, no. Aunt Trudy left me at the river; she was mad because she thought I’d told her…

  My legs gave out as shadows unfolded inside my mind, wrapping me in secrets.

  She thought I’d told her to get lost.

  Oh, she got lost, all right, she got lost for good.

  I let go, and the demon’s laughter followed me down, down into the dark.

  13

  They walked ahead of me. Grandpa John, slow but steady, using his cane more for pointing than for walking, and the little girl Emily like his little moon. She skipped and ran around him in an erratic orbit, making enough noise to scare away every moose and bear within a hundred miles. A raven hopped from tree to tree, keeping pace with them, seeming to be bemused by the antics of the odd pair.

  “She doesn’t look much like him.” No more than I did.

  Garvin glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Why would she?”

  He looked tired, bone-tired. He’d been out night and day searching for his folks, and along with the sorrow, the lack of sleep tugged the corners of his mouth down, and hollowed out his eyes.

  “Well, he’s her grandpa, too, right?” I pressed. “And yours? Or is he your great-grandpa? I’m really not sure how we’re all related.”

  “Oh, well, we’re not related-related, you know,” he replied. “Not by blood.”

  My world froze. “Wait… what? But I thought… I thought we were family.” My voice broke on that last word, and I turned my face away.

  “Oh, we’re family, we’re just not blood-related.” I could hear a hint of the easy smile in his voice. “Grandpa John is my grandpa, just like Grandma Catherine was my granny. They took in my mom when she was just a kid. You know. That’s just the way it is.” He patted my shoulder. “You’re still stuck with me, Cuz. Nice try, though.”

  Get lost, chuckled my demon. Tell him.

  “Is that why I don’t look like him, either?” A sick certainty curled in my gut, and the wind in the trees held its breath. “Is he really my grandpa at all?” The raven skrawked and shot into the sky. Emily laughed and waved goodbye to the bird. Garvin was silent.

  I turned to face him, caught his shoulder.

  “Is he?”

  Garvin’s eyes slid from mine, but not before I saw pity in them.

  “You’ll have to ask him, Siggy. It’s not my story to tell.”

  I let go of his shoulder and hunched my own. I knew it, I thought. Goddammit, I should have known better than to get my hopes up. Stupid, Siggy. Stupid.

  The little girl called after the raven—qa’hoq, qa’hoq—and reached up to take the old man’s hand. The bright sun shone down on the pair, and truly, I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  In that moment, I hated them both.

  * * *

  “You remind me of your grandmother when you scowl like that.” Grandpa John sat down across the table from me and we regarded each other over our coffee mugs, like Viking warriors peering at one another over their shields. “You have questions.”

  “Are you even my grandpa?”

  Smooth, Siggy. Way to put your foot right in it.

  The old man slurped his scalding black coffee, unperturbed. “Of course I’m your grandpa.”

  “But… I mean…” I sighed and leaned back in my chair, tugging both hands through my hair. “I mean, are you my real grandfather. Are we even related? I didn’t get this from you.” I tugged at my hair, coarse and straight and black as soot, nothing like his wavy silver crown. “Or my hands, or my face, or… anything. I just… I don’t feel like I fit in here.” Or anywhere.

  If it was possible, the lines in his face seemed to deepen as I spoke. He blinked, slowly, and echoed my sigh.

  “Come with me.” With that, he tossed his coffee back, making me wince—that percolator made coffee that was seriously hot—rose from the table, and walked out of the cabin.

  Ooookayy. I sucked my own coffee down, hissing between my teeth as it scalded my tongue—but, you know, I’m not gonna dump out good coffee—and I followed the old man outside. He was waiting for me at the foot of the porch steps.

  “You might as well take that.” He used his chin to point at the walking stick. “It’s yours, now.” With that, he turned and walked toward the river, slowly, old-man legs short and bent as a bear’s.

  My heart turned over in my chest. Did he know? What did he know? I took up the walking stick, which was warm to the touch, and clean. The raven’s feathers shone in the sunlight, and the old leather, slick with years of handling, was innocent of blood.

  What. The hell. I hurried after the old man, heart and mind full of questions that might, at long last, finally be answered.

  It was a beautiful day, serene and quiet and content, in complete contrast to the storm that prickled and itched inside my skin. When we reached the little launch where everyone kept their long flat boats, he turned left—walking upriver—and I followed, feeling my heart drag behind me heavier with each step. I didn’t want to go that way. I mean, I really did not want to go that way, but I couldn’t have said why.

  We followed the road until it veered back toward town, and left it to follow the river. There was a wide path there, sandy and soft and lumpy with half-exposed roots, bordered with willow and spruce and stands of birch so pretty with their papery white bark. Sometimes I’d see a tree with a wide dark band of exposed flesh where someone had taken the bark to make a basket or something, and though the trees seemed healthy enough without their skin, it made me wince. We followed the path until it, too, left the river… and then we followed the river.

  For all his bent back and bowed legs, Grandpa John moved with a kind of grace. He was as at home here in the wild as he was back in his little cabin with the checkered curtains and polished wood table… more, maybe. As he moved through the trees it was a dance, in and among the branches and bushes without a sound or so much as a disturbed leaf. I felt like a drunken moose stumbling in his wake, crunching things beneath my feet, tripping over roots, and catching every spider web with my face.

  Eventually we came to a sharp bend in the river. The trees parted like the curtains on a stage and gave way to some kind of thigh-high grass and a sparkling mud flat and the wide, bright river beyond. I hesitated—Garvin had warned me not to go out onto the flats—but the old man kept going.

  “Grandpa John?” I called after him. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Yes,” he answered, but he didn’t stop, so I followed, testing the way gingerly with Grandma’s walking stick.

  Grandpa John stopped at the edge of the river, and I let out a little sigh of relief. For a minute there I’d been half certain he’d meant to walk straight into the water and take me with him. But he lowered himself slowly, awkwardly, to sit on the ground.

  I stood, half beside him, half behind him, filled with a sudden and ridiculous dread. I’d come all this way for answers, but now that I was here, what I wanted most in the world was to run away.

  “You’d get lost, you know,” he said, looking out over the water and not at me. “There’s no finding your way home if you don’t know where you are.”

  I gripped the walking stick in both hands, so tightly it hurt, and reluctantly took a seat at his side.

  “Siggy,” he said. He sighed again, and the sorrow in his voice brought tears prickling into my eyes. “Oh, my Siggy. I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” I croaked.

  He turned to look at me then, and I was shocked to see tears rolling down his weathered cheeks, dripping from his stubbly chin. Shocked again at the urge I felt to hug him up in my arms and tell him everything was okay.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” he said as he wept. “For everything.” Then he cried like a little boy, he cried like someone whose heart had been broken beyond all hope, and I bit my lip hard, widening my eyes to keep them dry, hardening my heart against the old man’s tears. I turned my face from Grandpa John.


  And something across the river caught my eye.

  “Grandpa, what’s that? Over there…” There were shadows, so I couldn’t see any details. “Is that another town?” I craned my neck, trying for a better view, but the river was wide and cold and the sunlight unmercifully bright. “Is that the fish camp Garvin was talking about?”

  Grandpa John wiped tears from his face with the back of his hand. He did not look across the river.

  “That’s why I brought you out here. Oldtown.”

  “Old Town? Could we get there in your boat? I… hey! Hey!” I jumped up, waving my arms. “There’s someone there! Maybe it’s Trudy and Mike… maybe they were over there, and their boat got away from them…”

  Maybe I’d imagined the blood on the walking stick.

  Maybe I wasn’t some fucked-up psycho who blacked out and got people killed.

  “Ssssst!” Grandpa John hissed between his teeth. He tugged at the hem of my shirt, trying to pull me back down beside him, face more animated than I’d seen it the whole time I’d been in Tsone. “Don’t do that. There’s nobody there. Nobody, hear me? We’re not in your city, Sigurd. Sit down now, and listen to me.”

  I quit waving, stopped cold by the look on the old man’s face. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was scared.

  “But… I saw…”

  “There’s nobody there, Siggy,” he said firmly. “Sit your ass down and listen.”

  Ah, so there was an end to the old man’s patience, after all. Finally, I saw myself in him, a little. I sat, and I listened, though my eyes kept trying to drag me back across the river. I wished we’d brought a boat. I wished I knew how to swim.

  “Siggy, listen to me now. I have a story to tell you.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, but I wondered whether I might be able to paddle across the Kuskokwim on a log or something. Wait, didn’t Garvin have a boat…?

  “It’s a story about your mother.”

  Okay, that did it—now I was listening. I scooted around, turning my back on the river and giving Grandpa John my full attention. I’d tried before to get him to speak of my mother, but always he’d dodged my questions, saying he needed time.