Attu could feel himself grinning wildly, his heart racing from the leap. Rika grinned back at him and opened her mouth to speak. But Attu kissed her, instead.
“W
hat in the name of the lying trystas did you do that for?” Moolnik swore as he hauled Attu off Rika by his parka hood. Attu pulled back from Moolnik, making him let go of his parka and spinning to face the man.
Moolnik was furious, his whole body trembling with anger and fatigue from battling in the icy water for so long.
“I just threw myself down across open water to try and save you,” Attu yelled. “And you glare at me like you’re going to knife me next and drop my body into the water like you did Banek’s?”
Rika gasped.
“Why, you son of a tooth fish and a trysta!” Moolnik swore, and he tried to pull his knife and lunge at Attu, but he seemed to have lost the ability to move quickly. “You’ve been sent to kill me! Paven sent you, or was it Ubantu?”
Attu stepped out of Moolnik’s way as Moolnik stabbed the air clumsily.
Attu turned to face him again. “Moolnik, you don’t have to do this,” Attu began, but Moolnik lunged again, even slower this time, roaring and trying to cut Attu, but succeeding in only cutting the air and sending himself careening off balance across the ice.
Attu turned to face Moolnik yet again, but instead of attacking, Moolnik’s eyes suddenly rolled up in his head and he collapsed on his face, his knife hand flung out above his head. He lay unmoving on the ice.
Rika walked over to Moolnik and knelt to examine him.
“Is he dead?” Attu asked, hopeful.
“He’s gone Between to dream,” Rika said. “He’s not dead, yet. Help me roll him on his back.”
“Why bother?” Attu said, but he moved over and taking a moment to put a large fur next to Moolnik, the two of them rolled him onto his back on the fur.
“Are you going to kill him?” Rika asked her voice tense. “Is that why they sent you?”
“I wasn’t sent,” Attu said. His eyes searched her face, and he felt sick as he studied the red mark on her cheek. “I came on my own.”
Rika looked away. “But we’re supposed to kill him.”
“And you don’t want to? Even after he killed Banek?”
Rika cringed at the mention of Banek, but she said, “I think... I think this is the time, like the voice keeps saying in my dreams, when I’m supposed to show mercy, rather than justice.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But what if it is and I don’t heed the dream?”
“I’ve seen enough killing today,” Attu said, “enough violence. Let’s just wait and see what happens. He’s weak, no threat to us right now. He might even die on his own if the trystas don’t kill him first for profaning the spirits.”
“All right, we’ll wait. And thank you. For everything.”
The pair sat silent for a while, Attu trying to wrap his mind around their situation. It had all happened so fast.
––––––––
“W
hat now?” Attu finally asked as he looked around. They were a few spear throws from shore, and the ice sheet was moving quickly. It seemed stable enough. He’d leaped on it, and there was plenty of room to walk around on it. The ice surface was as big as three large snow houses, the ones that had held his whole clan.
“It’s going to grow dark soon,” Rika said. “Let’s look through the packs and see what we’ve got.”
“This one’s mine,” Attu said. “It has dried meat, extra furs, my bear teeth, my old foot miks, and my drinking pouch.”
Rika was rummaging through the other pack.
“Kinak said that one has a lamp and oil.”
“Thank the spirits,” Rika said. “We won’t freeze tonight.”
“I won’t let you freeze,” Attu said, and looking up, he met Rika’s eyes. Banek’s hand print on her cheek was darkening from red to the bruise it would become by next sun.
“I know you won’t,” Rika said softly. Suddenly, her body began trembling. “It was horrible, seeing Moolnik...” she began, and tears flowed down her cheeks as she clutched her hands to her stomach.
Attu reached for her, but Rika jumped up and ran to the other edge of the ice chunk where she threw up. She walked rather unsteadily back to where Attu was still sitting, watching her.
“I’m sorry, Rika. No one should have to die that way. Banek was going to be your man.”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Rika interrupted, her voice weary. She closed her eyes and leaned back on her own pack near Elder Nuanu, who lay, still unmoving, wrapped in the furs near the sled where Rika had pulled her off.
Attu got up, grabbing a fur from his own pack. He spread it over Rika. “Rest now,” he said. “I’ll set up a shelter for us. Whenever either of these two awake, they’re going to need your skills. You need to be ready.”
Rika nodded.
Attu smiled as Rika began snoring softly just moments later.
Using the two pack frames and part of the sled that had been reinforced with a bone framework after its initial construction, Attu was able to construct a small shelter. It would hold the four of them, barely, and it would keep in the warmth of the nuknuk oil lamp. Kinak had a full pouch of oil, enough for a few nights if they were careful.
It didn’t seem that cold, which worried Attu, but he’d other things to think about and he pushed the thought of warmer temperatures and melting moving ice sheets aside and concentrated on making a camp as comfortable for Rika as possible.
Once he was set up, Attu began to pull Elder Nuanu towards the shelter.
Rika awoke as he was moving past her, dragging Elder Nuanu on the large fur. Rika jumped up to help.
Moolnik was next. Elder Nuanu was cold, and seemed to be barely breathing. Moolnik, however, was hot. Too hot, and Attu knew that fever spirits were already attacking him because he had gotten so cold and exhausted in the water.
Perhaps the trystas would let the evil fever spirits kill him quickly, since he was a murderer...
“Put him right next to Elder Nuanu,” Rika said, “I’ll take their clothing off, make their bodies touch.”
“You want to do what?” Attu asked, incredulous.
What was Rika thinking?
Attu wanted to push Moolnik off into the water, not lay him naked next to the clan’s beloved Elder Nuanu. It was disgusting.
“If Moolnik is going to die of spirit fever, at least we can use his warmth to help warm Elder Nuanu,” Rika said, as she started unwrapping Moolnik’s body. He stirred but then fell back into a deep place in Between.
“Just one thing, first,” Attu said and carefully removed Banek’s knife from Moolnik’s belt, placing it with Moolnik’s own knife Attu had retrieved when Moolnik had passed out.
Rika turned her head away when she realized what Attu was doing. The knife, as well as most of Moolnik’s clothing, was stained with Banek’s blood.
Attu’s hands shook as he picked up the bloodstained garments and took them outside. He had no idea what ritual needed to be performed to take the curse off the knife and the clothing. He wasn’t sure there even was one. Moolnik’s actions were unforgivable.
“Thank you,” Rika said as Attu re-entered the shelter. Rika had lighted the oil lamp, and it gave off much warmth in the small shelter. Moolnik was sweating under the furs he and Elder Nuanu shared, and Elder Nuanu’s cheeks began to regain some color.
Attu grabbed a couple of dried meat chunks out of his pack, and the two of them chewed in silence.
“I don’t know what to do,” Attu admitted after a time. “I don’t know if this ice sheet will remain solid or break up suddenly.”
Rika shivered at the thought. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. We’ve got to get off of here as soon as we can, but how?”
Rika looked at the two bodies in front of them, both deep in the Between of Sleep. “How can we get Elder Nuanu to safety? And what about him?” Rika jabbed her finger at Moolnik.
“Both our clans have sworn to kill Moolnik,” Attu said.
“He deserves to die.” Rika took in a shaky breath. “But right now, his fever is helping Elder Nuanu warm. Perhaps that’s why we need to allow him to live, to save her.” She closed her eyes.
“If revenge must be sought later, I’ll do it.” Attu looked at Rika in the light of the lamp. “I’ll have no problem working justice for Banek, even though I hated the man.”
“You hated-” Rika stopped. She looked away from Attu’s face.
“What is that?” Rika whispered.
Attu realized he had let his parka hood slide back in the warmth and it was undone at the top. Rika’s eyes were fastened on his neck. She’d seen the slit in Attu’s throat, and the now dried blood trail down his chest.
“Banek threatened to kill me,” Attu said.
“He tried to dishonor me,” Rika whispered, touching her hand to her bruised face, then lowering her eyes. “I fought back, and my father heard the struggle and stopped him.”
Rika’s voice lowered even further. “Afterward, Father said it was my fault, all my fault for speaking to you, for letting you think-”
“No, Rika. No.” Attu reached for her, and this time Rika came to him. He wrapped his arms around her, and she tucked her head into his chest. He could feel her sobs as she cried quietly into his parka.
Attu held her until she fell asleep.
––––––––
A
ttu awoke in the night. Moolnik was thrashing.
“Rika!” he yelled and Rika, roused from sleep, grabbed Moolnik’s legs while Attu tried to stop Moolnik’s hands from hitting Elder Nuanu. After a few moments, Moolnik grew still again.
“Tie him,” Rika said. “I’ll not let him hurt Elder Nuanu.”
Rika warmed some liquid from her healer’s bag over the lamp and drizzled a few drops into Moolnik’s mouth.
“That should quiet him, and if the spirits are willing, bring down his fever,” she said. “You heard him, Attu; he cursed the spirits. He murdered Banek, then he cursed the spirits. There’s not much hope for him at this point.” She shook her head.
––––––––
A
s the sky began to lighten, Attu left the shelter to relieve himself near where Rika had been sick the day before. He was shocked to see the ice sheet they were on had gotten much smaller in the night, and Attu had to admit to himself it was melting.
Rika came out of the shelter. They both looked at the land they were moving past. It was close enough so they could make out the details of the rocky hills and stretches of shoreline, bare of ice in places. The safety of land stretched out before their eyes, yet it could’ve been a lifetime’s journey away, the water stretching between them impossible to cross.
Rika lifted her hand to her forehead to throw back her parka hood. She opened her jacket. “It’s so warm,” she said. “I’m sweating in all these furs.”
“I’ve never felt so warm outside of a shelter or snow house,” Attu agreed, and they both took off their parkas and miks, standing in the breeze coming off the hills towards them. For a moment, Attu felt the freedom of wearing just one layer of furs, his forearms bare, then his heart sank again as he gazed out over the water that trapped them on this floating ice. He bent to grab his knife sling from his parka.
“Look!” Rika exclaimed.
Rising up from the edges of the hills just coming into view, he saw first one, then another, then suddenly whole groups of large green plants, with green arms, many of them, waving in the breeze.
“Trystas?” Rika asked. She looked terrified.
“No,” Attu answered her. “I think they’re called ‘trees’.”
A
ll that day, Rika tended Elder Nuanu, rolling her up first on one side, then the other, and again to her back, “to stop the spirits of sickness from entering her body through the ice and causing sores,” she explained to Attu. Elder Nuanu would swallow if Rika carefully dripped warmed water into her mouth, and toward evening of that first full day on the ice, Elder Nuanu stirred a few times.
“I think she may come back from the Between,” Rika said.
But Moolnik grew worse. Rika rolled him also and adjusted the ties on his arms and legs, but he wouldn’t drink and alternated mumbling and sometimes swearing as he fought the spirits of fever.
In the few moments of calm, Rika and Attu sat outside the shelter and watched the amazing landscape moving past them. As the day progressed, the green plants, the “trees” they saw, had grown larger and larger, until Attu and Rika realized the first ones had to have been stunted somehow; perhaps they were at the edge of where it had became too cold for them to grow. Now, the hills were covered with huge trees, and the smell in the air was spicy, like the potion Rika had used on Attu’s back.
“I’ve been thinking about how at first there were no trees then the trees became larger,” Attu said. “The Nuvik have spent so many generations on the ice; is it possible our people forgot that far to the south of us, here in this land, it is perhaps always warmer, at least enough to grow such large plants? And if that is true, why would our people have gone north, instead of south, when life in the north is so hard?”
“I don’t know,” Rika said.
“I think we have come much farther south than we thought to come. The ice is just starting to be unsafe where we came from; here it is breaking up, in some places almost gone. Perhaps it was never that thick to begin with, here in this warmer place.”
This is all so new, so confusing.
“I’d love to walk this land,” Rika breathed, looking with longing at the strange new world passing in front of their eyes. “It is beautiful.”
“You will, Rika, you will,” Attu said.
“How do you know?” Rika asked. “Look at this ice sheet. It’s becoming smaller as we sit here. In another two or three days it will melt to nothing...” Rika’s voice trailed off.
Attu shuddered to think of them all, this close to land, this close to reaching the end of their journey only to drown. “I’ll think of something,” he reassured Rika.
Moolnik moaned, and Rika sighed and went back into the shelter.
Attu paced the small distance back and forth across their ice chunk. He couldn’t understand why they continued to travel south, as if a giant hand pushed them along. Other ice sheets and chunks, some of them rising high out of the water, some flat like theirs, were traveling south too. It felt like their ice sheet was moving in the water faster than a person would walk on land, but it was hard to tell.