The Great Death (5 page)

“Get up, Maura. We must go.”

Maura whimpered. “Can't we sleep just a little longer?” Her own voice ruined her foggy detachment. Even before Millie replied, she forced herself to sit up, wiping the crusty flakes of sleep from her eyelids.

“No. Come on and help me.” Millie tried to sound firm and sure of herself without scolding.

From the corner of her eye she watched her little sister begin to move about. How small and frail she seemed, draped in her nightshirt. Mother and Father were gone. Millie hadn't been able to save them. But there was one thing she could still do for them—for Mother, especially. She could take care of Maura. Watching her sister fumble with her clothes, Millie made a vow. She would be strong for both of them. She would keep Maura safe. Thinking of the long trip ahead, Millie had to stiffen herself to keep from trembling. She had to tell herself over and over to be strong, like the wolverine or even the weasel, which is fierce for its size.

The girls dressed warmly. Then they boiled a pot of weak tea and ate some of the dried salmon from the bundles they had found in the undisturbed cache. They stood in the doorway of their small house, looking inside one last time, both thinking of happier days. It had been their home for all of their lives. Then they went around to the back of the cabin to say good-bye to Mother and Father. Shortly thereafter, they were standing on the beach, their blankets and dried salmon loaded into the canoe. The white tarp was unfolded just enough to cover their provisions from the wet snow.

After steadying the canoe so that Maura could make her way to the bow, Millie shoved it away from the beach and jumped in, the boat momentarily rocking side to side. The girls paddled toward the river outlet a mile away, looking back at the gravel shoreline and their village, at the vast surrounding wilderness—the frontier of the world. They suddenly felt small and lonely.

The girls knew from their father and others that there was a village many days downriver. It was from that village that the Indian guide had brought the two strange men … and the sickness. Millie and Maura wondered if everyone there was already dead. Beyond that, there was said to be a large settlement where many of the men in the village went to trade. Father said the settlement was full of white people like the ones who had come to visit. It was very far away, at the confluence where the river emptied into a much larger river. Millie and Maura had no idea how long their journey would be, or if there would even be anyone left to greet them.

Snowflakes swirled in the light wind and melted when they landed on the canoe. The temperature had risen somewhat, and this first snow could not hold its grip.

At the river outlet, they came within view of a small cabin that belonged to an old man whose wife had died several years before. In his grief, he had built this house away from the rest of the community. Sorrow craves solitude. The old man was a first cousin to the man from downriver who had guided the strange white men. No doubt they had stopped at his cabin before walking the last mile into the village. Perhaps he had made a pot of tea for them and offered them something to eat.

From their canoe, the girls could see two dogs tied up to a tree in the front yard of the house. The door was wide open.

Millie dug the oar in deep, back-paddling enough to turn the bow toward the cabin. Perhaps the old man had escaped the sickness. Perhaps he was still alive. Yet they had not seen him in the village since the day the visitors left. Also, he would have been the first and last person on the lake to have seen the strangers as they passed by his cabin at the head of the trail downriver.…

When the canoe landed softly, Millie jumped out and pulled the bow onto the beach. The dogs sat up and barked. Millie grabbed her rifle from atop the pile of supplies.

“Stay here,” she warned Maura, gesturing with a hand for her to remain seated in the canoe.

Millie approached the cabin cautiously, calling out the old man's name as she walked up the worn trail. The dogs stopped barking. Instead, they whined and wagged their tails. When she was close, Millie could see that they were thin and starving. Their ribs showed through their mangy fall coats. She called out for the old man again. The only reply was the dogs' whimperings and Maura's voice from the canoe.

“Is he there?” Maura asked. “Is anyone home?”

Millie stepped close to the door and looked in warily, her rifle ready. The cabin was empty. Nothing was disturbed. There was no sign of anyone, no sign of a struggle. Had he escaped the sickness? But why had he left the door open, the dogs tied fast to a tree without food or water? Surely they would have accompanied him, as they always did whenever he came to the village.

After Millie had searched behind the cabin, even near the outhouse, she waved for Maura to join her. Together, they untied the dogs, which bolted straightaway to the waterfront, drinking heavily for a long time, their brisk lapping like the sound of a moose splashing in the lake. When they had slaked their thirst, they trotted back to the girls, who fed them bits of dried salmon and moose meat they had found in the old man's cache—slowly at first, hoping not to make the starving animals sick from gorging. The dogs were grateful, taking the pieces from the girls' hands.

As Millie and Maura watched them eat, they both felt the only joy they had known in weeks. Tied up as they had been for so long, the dogs could not have eaten the dead. The girls were grateful for these two dogs. They were good dogs, and the sisters decided to take them along, welcoming the companionship of two more survivors of the Great Death. They named the dogs Tundra and Blue, for the one dog, though its fur was black as a moonless winter night, had bright blue eyes.

*   *   *

The canoe glided noiselessly across the far eastern end of the lake toward the mounting current, where the blue-gray river began. A startled fox standing far out on the beach sprinted lightly toward the forest, looking nervously over its shoulder as it ran.

Using her paddle, Millie swung the bow into the lazy current that pulled the canoe downstream. So close to the outlet, the river was slow and wide and deep, and the canoe drifted leisurely at the pace of an unhurried walk.

It required little effort from the girls to keep to the main channel.

Their confidence grew, and they began to think that their entire journey might be so effortless. They wondered why the river was called “swift water.” It certainly belied its name. They were content simply to sit and watch as they passed sand and gravel bars, from time to time drawing close to rolling hills where worn game trails came down to the water. Ducks floated on the surface. Geese rested on sandbars. And hungry bears, rummaging along the banks looking for spawned salmon, dashed noiselessly into the forest when the canoe passed by, the dogs barking madly.

There were moments in the first hours that passed with a kind of quiet, restful relief. But even though Millie and Maura tried not to think about their village, the faces of the dead kept rushing back to them.

Around midday they stopped on a sandbar to eat. While the girls made a small campfire, the dogs played in the nearby woods, chasing and barking at squirrels and flushed grouse. Millie took the matches from the tightly sealed jar inside the shovel crate and lit the tinder of dry grass and small twigs, just as her father had taught her. She remembered how he had told her to use paper-birch bark, which burned quickly and easily, and how he said not to smother the flames too soon, adding only a few twigs at a time until the fire grew large enough to breathe on its own. She took out a blackened pot and filled it with water for tea, setting it, teetering, across two stones. While the water rose to a boil, the sisters picked rosehips and blueberries and highbush cranberries from along the riverbank.

They were afraid of venturing too far into the woods.

Tundra brought them a decayed salmon he had found washed ashore. Its soft flesh was white and moldy. It was a putrid gift. But the girls petted him, thanking him for his generosity, even as they tossed it into the river with a stick. The dog waded into the water to retrieve the salmon, but the girls called him back.

When the water was ready, Millie and Maura sat around the smoking fire, feeling its warmth, drinking hot tea, and eating dried salmon, which they shared with the dogs, who stared intently each time either of the girls yanked off a piece with her teeth.

“Why do you think this happened?” Maura asked.

Millie finished chewing her meat. “What do you mean?” she replied.

“Why did everyone get sick and die?”

“I don't know,” Millie said simply.

“Why were we spared?” Maura asked.

“I don't know.”

Maura appeared to have a whole list of similar unanswerable questions.

“Why did Mother and Father have to die?”

Millie thought of her father, his spotted hands shaking as he patiently showed her how to use the rifle. She thought of her mother convulsing on her thin bed, slipping away in spite of their pleas. She couldn't take any more questions, couldn't take the still-fresh memories.

She said, more harshly than she meant to, “No more questions. I don't have any answers. Perhaps there are none. Some things simply are.”

Millie wondered whether she should make up something, some reason why all this was occurring in their lives. She wondered what she might say as she sat avoiding her little sister's eyes.

“Millie?” Maura half whispered.

“What?”

“Are you angry with me?”

Millie finally looked directly at Maura and saw she was crying.

“No, of course not. I just don't know what to say. All I know is that we have to follow the river. We have to find other people who aren't sick.”

They sat quietly after that.

Then Maura spoke, slowly and apparently after much thought.

“That's okay. I'll try not to ask so many questions. I wish I could help more. I'm small, but I'm getting bigger.”

Millie smiled. “Yes, you are, little sister. Yes, you are.”

They packed up after lunch, kicked sand on the smoldering fire. Because the weather was fair, they carefully folded the tarp and lashed it with a short length of rope, stowing it atop the boxes. Maura climbed into the canoe first, and then the dogs leaped aboard and took their positions amid the pile of supplies. When they were ready, Millie shoved off and jumped in, to settle into her place in the stern.

The two sisters were once again on their way.

Konts
'
aghi

(Seven)

Raven jumped up and down, he stomped and stomped, until the overhang avalanched down, killing all the people below. For the rest of the winter, he dined on the corpses, savoring the delicate eyeballs, which were his favorite.

S
OON ENOUGH, THE CURRENT
quickened as the river increased its descent from the high glacial lake. The girls no longer wondered at its name. Rushing water poured itself faster through the valley, and the canoe gathered speed. Both had to work harder and harder to avoid obstacles, which came at them faster and faster. They had no time for rest. Several times the canoe almost smashed into boulders jutting up into the sunlight, the roiling white waves spraying around them.

“Left!” Millie yelled above the din of the raging river. “Go left!”

And Maura would yell back from the bow, pointing to some approaching object, “Look out!”

The girls paddled so forcefully their arms and shoulders soon sang with pain, but still they fought the water, blinking wetness from their eyes, desperately searching for the next threat. It took all their strength to keep the craft from being swamped. All the while, the dogs tried not to fall out of the canoe as the current twisted it this way and that, dipping into falls and shooting rapids.

Up ahead, on a sharp bend, the girls could see that a bank had given way and a large spruce tree, its roots still holding fast, leaned over the river, some of its branches dragging the surface: a sweeper. The girls paddled frantically, trying to win some distance from the danger, but the current was shoving the little boat straight at the tilted tree. As the canoe passed beneath the drooping boughs, almost sideways, the girls flattened themselves against their supplies.

“Tundra!” Maura shouted.

Millie looked up to see that the dog had been swept into the river. He was bobbing in the raging current, his paws working madly. Canoe and dog were careering together downriver, Tundra drifting farther and farther from the boat. Millie tried to turn the bow downstream, back-paddling to straighten the craft.

“Get ready to grab him!” she yelled once the bow was turned.

For a long, straight stretch the boat and the dog were side by side on the swift river. Maura reached for Tundra and tried to catch hold, but she was not strong enough to grip him to any good effect. He was tiring, the frigid water sapping his strength. His muscles were too cold to do as his brain told them. He was having trouble staying afloat. Maura was crying. It would have been better had the girls left him tied and starving outside the old man's empty cabin. At least there he would have survived the day.

“We have to save him!” Maura shouted. “Get closer!”

She leaned over the canoe as far as she could, and this time she managed to grasp Tundra's scruff and pull him close, holding him tight against the side of the craft with all her strength. His eyes were wide and terrified. Millie crawled over the pile of supplies. Together, the sisters managed to pull the sopping, exhausted dog back into the boat.

No sooner had Millie crawled back to take her place at the stern than the boat struck a submerged boulder. The impact turned the canoe sideways again. Downriver, a series of boulders, like the humps of a dozen giant bears, awaited them. The girls could hear the water rushing around the great stones.

It was thunderous.

Millie looked for a gap big enough for the craft to pass through.