due South fic: To Hold Fast
Nov. 26th, 2011 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaWoohoo, I finished a story! \o/
Title: To Hold Fast
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: PG-13
Warning: death of original characters
Length: 6700 words
Summary: Some travel alone, and some together.
Notes: Yes, it's another post-CotW story! Also a ghost story. I'm grateful to the following people for beta help:innocentsmith, who read an early partial draft, springwoof, and exeterlinden, who did an awesome in-person beta when I was in Denmark to meet her. Also thanks to the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ficfinishing community.
1998
It was the deepest cold of winter.
The sunlight slanted bright and sharp between the trees, but lacked all warmth. Flakes of snow drifted down, turned by the sun into a halo of glittering light. Not a breath of air stirred except for our own and the dogs', and our pants of exertion turned instantly to white puffs in the dry air, or froze to ice on our clothes and beards and fur.
"Like we need more snow," I heard Ray muttering.
It was true. We had snow in abundance, fluffy white powdery snow that would have been beautiful if it had fallen on the Chicago streets, or anywhere where one had a fire and a roof over one's head. It was still beautiful here, but one couldn't appreciate it as one did a picture on a postcard. Rather, it was an unavoidable fact of life, building up into drifts that slowed us down until we were struggling to make way, dogs and men both. Even the trees struggled against it--in the forest around us, the birches were bent down into taut arcs by their burden of snow.
"I didn't think it would be like this," Ray said, walking behind the sled and pushing on it. "I thought we'd just...swish along."
I stopped and turned to reply. The dogs behind me stopped pulling and lay down. They were not unwilling--indeed, they would work their hearts out on the trail--but this trudging work was hard on them. "It can be like that, if the snow conditions are right. I once went all the way from Tuk to Inuvik in one day. But that was in the spring, when the snow is compact and frozen to a crust."
Dief whuffed at me from his place in the lead.
"You're right," I told him. "We'd better give the team something to eat." With this toil and in this weather, their morning and evening meals were not enough.
I tramped over to the sled, ungainly with my snow shoes in the deep snow, and brought out a frozen sausage of fatty meat. Chopping off bits of it, I handed them to Ray for distribution. Dief and most of the dogs wolfed down their portions hungrily, but Kari turned her head aside and laid it down on her paws. I frowned.
"She's not eating," Ray said.
"I know. We'll keep an eye on her tonight, and see if she'll have anything then. Are you hungry?"
Ray shrugged. "I guess."
I frowned again. He should be eating more, too. I dug out the day's remaining thermos of hot water, a bag of pemmican, and a bar of chocolate. We sat down on either side of the front of the sled, leaning our backs together. The chocolate was brittle and hard as rock, and I kept it in my mouth as I drank the hot water. The chocolate melted, and I sucked on it, savoring the well-needed sugar.
Ray was heavy against my back, and warm even through all our layers of clothes--or perhaps that was just the contrast against the outside air. It was cold, very cold indeed, and we were not making good progress. I wasn't worried yet, not precisely, but I did wish we were closer to our next re-stocking point.
The heat that exercise had built up in my body began to dissipate, and the first hint of cold gnawed on my toes. I wiggled them. "Time to go again."
Ray stood up again, slowly, but he made no protest.
"Let me look at your face." I turned Ray's face towards mine and studied it critically.
"I'm fine, all right?" he said with a touch of irritation.
I let my gaze linger just a second too long on his frosted eyelashes, red nose, and the stubborn set of his mouth, then looked away. The beard hid the line of his jaw, and I still wasn't used to it. "You're right. No sign of frostbite."
"I could've told you that," he grumbled. "You want to trade off?"
"All right." Tramping down the snow for the dogs was heavy work, but so was pushing the sled.
The dogs stood up again as we made preparations to leave, and we set off.
***
1932
"You don't have to go, you know," Anne said. Her tone was light, but she had the small crinkles between her eyebrows that meant she was worried. She pulled the scarf closer around her gray hair.
"Afraid I do," Jim said. "It's not so much for us two as for Alma and the little one. I don't want Walter to have to leave them."
"No, of course not," Anne said, and glanced out the window of their cabin. It was night, but the full moon shone through the trees. No more snow tonight, at any rate, and Jim hoped the weather would hold. "But you don't have to go, either. Maybe we'll go hungry, but we'll get through it somehow."
Jim shook his head. "I do have to. You know that."
Anne was silent, and Jim poured them both mugs of what was almost the last of the coffee and squeezed her hand. "The trail won't get any easier if I wait. And I'm not getting any younger, neither."
"Oh, you," Anne snorted, and Jim got the smile he'd been angling for. He loved that about her, that she always had a smile even when things were difficult. "Go, then, if you have to. But you be careful."
He got up early the next morning and piled his sled with pelts that he'd sell at the Company store. Prices had been falling, but it would still be more than enough to buy provisions to get through the winter, and through the summer, too. Not for the first time, Jim wished his trapline wasn't so far from Red River.
Walter helped him, working silently beside him. He was a good lad, quiet but dependable, and a good husband for Jim's daughter. Walter would take over the trapping when Jim got too old for it, since he'd no sons of his own.
Jim kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. He gazed down on his pudgy swaddled little granddaughter as those impossibly tiny hands took hold of Jim's weathered thumb. Then he shook Walter's hand and set off.
The dogs pulled with a will--they'd been penned up for a few days--but he could tell it would be a hard run. The snow was piled deep, too deep for the dogs to gain much purchase despite all the will in the world. He pushed on his end, but when they came to the first uphill he had to stop and take a break.
"I'm not as young as I was," he told Sitka. His lead dog gazed up at him with full understanding in her deep brown eyes, and he brushed the frost from her muzzle and ears.
"Neither are you, I suppose." He'd got into the habit of talking to her. She was a better companion than many men he had known.
"Well, I'll go and prepare the way for you. Stay." Sitka sat down obediently, but Jim tied the sled to a tree anyway, in case a hare or ptarmigan startled nearby and set the team off. He tramped up the slope on his snowshoes, pressing down the powdery snow and clearing a way for the dogs. Reaching the top, he stood for a while to catch his breath, and saw the two cabins of his home a few miles off, just two small square blocks set down in the vastness of the forest.
He went down the slope again, half-sliding with his feet at every step, and Sitka greeted him by standing up again, her tail and ears up. She was ready to go, as long as he was.
"We'll just get up this slope, and then we'll have flat ground until tomorrow. I promise."
He was sweating hard by the time he reached the top, which was never good in this cold weather, but it couldn't be helped. In his younger days he could have done it without hardly noticing, but now his old bones protested.
Jim cast one last look at his home before he crossed the crest of the hill and headed on.
***
1998
"It's so cold," Ray said.
This was rather stating the obvious. "Yes," I acknowledged. The campfire in front of us burned brightly, but its warmth didn't reach far.
"No, I mean--not just freeze-your-balls-off cold, though it definitely is. It's cold like it's--hostile to us." Ray waved a hand to the forest around us. "No, that's not right either. It's like nothing up here cares what happens to us."
Night had fallen, slowly but surely, as we set up camp. The temperature had fallen as well, falling, falling, in the soft blue light of the moon. The shadows had deepened, and the sky above us was mercilessly clear, letting every scrap of warmth steal out into the endlessness of space. No wind stirred; nothing living moved. The trees endured silently, waiting for spring.
"You're right. It is indifferent," I said. I took a breath, feeling the cold air cut into my nostrils. "Don't you feel alive, though?"
Ray snorted. "At least so far."
I went on, softly, "We are living in defiance of it. We are warm, alive, moving." I said the words as if they were a spell that could conjure the winter into letting us live.
Ray was silent. Finally he turned to me, and on his face was something that looked almost like awe. Or perhaps it was fear.
But he only said, "C'mon, let's go to bed."
Diefenbaker and about half the dogs slept with us in the tent. Dief circled around a few times and then settled down against Kari, tucking his nose under his tail. Kari had eaten normally tonight, and I checked her off as all right on the mental list I kept of the dogs' eating habits, the state of their paws, and their general health.
We slept together in double sleeping bags, as we had done for some time, and Ray immediately rolled close up against me for warmth. I put my arms around his chest. He shivered a little from the brief but cold transition between outdoor clothes and sleeping bag.
Ray and I had never spoken about our physical closeness out on the trail. Curling up together had become a habit, and while I had used to fantasize about such closeness with him in Chicago, up here it was just something that happened. We were the only human beings for many miles, and it only seemed natural that we should take warmth and comfort from each other.
A howl, faint and far off. I tensed, and Dief lifted his head. Kari stirred, and I could feel Ray listening, as well.
"Is that a wolf?" Ray asked.
"I think so, yes."
The howl trailed off, then came again, long and lonely.
Ray shivered, and I held him tighter. He let me, with no trace of the skittishness he'd had in the city. "It sounds so sad," he said.
I should perhaps have said that it's no use to read human emotions into animals, but in the dark tent listening to that eerie howl, I couldn't help but shiver myself. We lay silent, listening. The animal subsided after a while, and Ray fell asleep, his breath coming regularly and his body warm and heavy with sleep. He must have been exhausted, and no wonder.
I lay awake a while longer, my arm around Ray. I could feel the slight rise and fall of his chest and, faintly, the beating of his heart. He wasn't mine. I knew that. Out here, I knew vividly that life itself was not something that one owned and could take for granted, but something for which one had to struggle. If skill and luck were with you, you would live. If not, you might die.
When I was alone out on the trail and I had only my own life to answer for, I was more reckless. But now that I was responsible for Ray as well, I found that I worried more, thinking about all the many things upon which our lives depended.
I closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of Ray. He was alive, and precious to me.
***
1932
"Just another half mile now," Jim told Sitka. "And it's downhill. Then we'll set up camp."
Sitka looked back once, then pulled on, and the load eased as the land sloped downward to the creek below. Off to the left was Eagle Nest Crag, the only steep cliff for miles around--this was a country of rolling hills rather than craggy mountains. Jim looked at the familiar landmark and thought of warm coffee and a warm bed, though he wasn't likely to get the latter, at least.
The final steep slope down to the creek took him by surprise. He'd crossed this creek many times before, though at different places. The snow lay thicker than he was used to, and a bank of snow gave way unexpectedly. Jim braked hard, slipped downward with his foot. It was caught in the space between the brake and the sled.
He tugged at it in panic, his heart in his throat, as the sled slid down the slope. It was stuck, and he couldn't, damn it, he couldn't-- Then his foot met something hard. There was a snap.
Pain took his breath away. He hung double over the sled, barely hanging on, as it came to a stop at the bottom.
He only realized that he was the one making that high-pitched, keening sound when the dogs stopped and barked in alarm. Jim took a few deep breaths and then gritted his teeth, trying to pull his foot loose again. The pain almost made him black out.
By the time he'd got his foot out, slowly scooping away the snow that was in the way until the brake swung free, he didn't know how much time had passed. Jim was covered in cold sweat, and didn't dare take his boot off to see what his foot looked like. He could feel bone grating against bone, and swallowed against sickening nausea. He wondered if it had broken the skin.
It was full dark, and the moon shone above him indifferently. Jim could see his death in its bone-white face.
The only chance he had was for someone else to pass by, and the chances of that were as near to none as made no difference. There was no way he could keep sledding with a broken leg.
Sitka yipped and butted at him. He looked down at her, his heart breaking, and gripped her head in both hands. "I'm sorry, girl. I'm so sorry."
Her warm tongue licked at his tears, and her breath froze on his beard.
Well, he wouldn't sit here and wait for it. Jim stood up on his one useful leg and used the sled for support. He got the tent set up right next to the sled--not well, but it would stand if there was no wind--then took all the pelts he'd planned to sell out of the sled and put them in the tent. He could use the extra warmth.
By now, Jim's leg was throbbing in waves of pain, and he gave up the idea of trying to start a fire. He'd have to get through the snow to the trees for wood, and even those few yards seemed like an impossible gulf. Instead, he ate some pemmican and gave the dogs their frozen meat.
Jim worked his way into his bedroll and piled up the pelts on top. Sitka lay curled up close beside him, and he did his best to get some rest, if not sleep.
***
1998
I crept out of the sleeping bags, taking my boots with me--they'd been down at the foot end of the bags so as not to freeze. Ray turned over with a grunt and curled into a ball, tugging the opening closed again.
The cold took my breath away, and seemed to pierce my thick woollen underwear as if I had been naked. I dressed myself quickly--the best cure for it was to get to work.
Dief followed me out, and at his short bark, several dogs broke out of their nests in the snow, vigorously shaking themselves off. They were fine--in fact, with the lack of wind and the fluffy snow, they were no doubt quite comfortable at night.
I set the gasoline stove going to melt snow for our thermoses and breakfast, and fed the dogs.
"Ray?" I shook the tent.
A muffled moan.
"It won't get any easier if you wait."
"You're not helping." I heard the sound of the zipper on the sleeping bag and Ray muttering, "Christ, it's cold!"
After breakfast, we started to work without a word exchanged about it. Ray took down the tent while I packed the sled.
"Which way are we headed?" Ray asked.
I steeled myself. "Up the slope. I'm hoping that if we get above the treeline, the snow conditions will be better. The wind usually packs the snow on the open ground."
I'd expected Ray to argue, but he only bent his head to the work like a sled dog leaning into the harness. It was slow going, especially as we had to keep from sweating too much, but eventually the trees grew more scrawny and farther apart, and finally thinned out altogether.
We took a break for lunch, scooping out a bench in the snow. There were no sharp peaks here, no drama in the landscape at all, only the curves and hollows of high hills, smoothed and rounded further by snow. This far north, you didn't need much altitude to get above the treeline.
Ray looked out over the view, then looked at me, and I could see the hint of a smile curving his mouth behind his frosted beard. I nodded at him without a word, sure that he was feeling the same thing I was: satisfaction at a job well done, another slow stretch of ground covered.
Evening found us a few more miles along. The snow had been packed harder up here, as I had hoped, but traversing the sideways slant of the hillside was tiring, too. Off to the left and in the direction we were heading, I could see the dark rock of a sharp crag that rose above the white hilltops.
The long sunset of the north had already begun when we stopped to set up camp, and it was well into twilight when we sat down to our well-earned dinner and a warm fire. I'd made sure to put firewood on the sled before we rose above the treeline, and we were glad of it now.
"Hypnotizing," Ray said, gesturing to the fire.
"Mmm." I watched the red glowing heart of the fire, the flames licking at the blackened wood, and felt the heat of it against my bare hands as I held them out, and then the contrast of the deep cold all along the back of my body, even through my thick clothes. Dief lay beside me, his eyes half-closed against the firelight. Then he came to attention, and a moment later came a long howl.
"Same as yesterday?" Ray asked.
"Perhaps."
"Must be one lonely wolf." He tried to make it sound like a joke, but I thought he sounded uneasy.
It sounded again, closer this time. Dief sat up, looking into the night. I followed his gaze, and there, beyond the circle of light, glowed two pale eyes. They were far away, down towards the treeline, but they were unmistakeable. I stood up and shaded my eyes from the fire. The moon was up, and once my eyes had adjusted to the relative darkness, I could see the dark shape of the wolf, like a moving shadow.
"Can you see it?" Ray whispered, as if reluctant to speak aloud.
"Yes. It's coming closer."
"I thought wolves were afraid of humans."
"They usually are."
Dief whuffed, and I looked at him, surprised. "Dief says it's not a wolf."
"What else could it be?"
"A dog, I suppose. We're not near any settlements that I know of, though." I looked at the line of staked dogs by the sled. All accounted for.
Dief made a low growling sound, his hackles rising a little.
"What?" Ray asked.
"He...says it's not quite a dog, either."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Ray said, voice still low, but the profanity revealing his uneasiness.
The figure sat down, turned its muzzle up to the moon, and gave again that that long lonely howl. I saw it then, or thought I did: the shadowy shape of a bush, seen through the shadow that was the dog.
"What does it want?" Ray drew nearer to me, and I shifted closer, as if by instinct. I said nothing about the thing I might or might not have seen. After all, I wasn't sure.
"I don't know." I looked down at Dief to see if he could tell, but his attention was fixed on the figure downslope. It came closer, then barked, unmistakably like a dog.
"Sounds like it wants something, anyway." The bark was sharp and demanding, like Dief when he wanted to draw my attention or needed help.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and called, feeling a little foolish, "What do you want?"
The dog didn't come closer, though, just danced warily at the edge of the firelight.
I hesitated, then took a few steps towards the dog, and it was harder than it should have been to leave the security of the firelight. But I needn't have worried: the dog immediately turned and ran. Then it stopped and looked back at me, turning its ears forward as if to say, "Are you coming?"
I stayed where I was. I did not want to follow this ghostly dog into the night.
"Not now," I told it. "It's cold and dark. If you want anything, come back tomorrow."
The dog faded into the night, and I watched it until I couldn't see it anymore. Only then did I notice the cold creeping into my toes, and I stamped my feet and shivered. I had a moment of alarm when I couldn't feel the tip of my nose.
"It's all right," Ray told me when I asked. "It's red." His was, too.
We took all the dogs with us into the tent that night, and made sure our food was stored in dog-proof containers. I had my rifle beside me. The dog hadn't looked like a threat and I wasn't sure what help a rifle would be against a ghost dog, anyway, but you never knew. As I lay there with Ray, listening to him breathe and feeling our combined body heat fighting its way back into my feet, I tried to convince myself it had been a trick of the mind, but shivered despite myself.
Ray shifted against me. "What?"
I stroked his arm. "Nothing. Go to sleep." No use putting Ray on edge for what might just be my imagination. He half-turned and tugged me closer, and tucked his head into my shoulder. We went to sleep like that, two warm entwined bodies in the endless cold.
***
1932
Jim did not so much wake as drift nearer consciousness and pain. He stirred, and felt a warm tongue on his face.
Jim cleared his throat. "Sitka?"
She whined, and he scratched the warm soft fur of her neck with his clumsy mittened hands. Through the tent flap, he could see the merciless sharp blue of the sky, and it almost pained his eyes. He gritted his teeth, and dragged himself far enough that he could reach the food. That very effort made it clear to him how hard it would be to do anything else, but he would have try.
He steeled himself and felt at the layers of clothes over his broken leg. Blood. That was definitely blood underneath. The bone had broken the skin. He felt sick. Jim clenched his teeth until his head stopped spinning and made himself eat a little. Best to let his leg be--the boot might at least give some stability to his leg.
Jim thought about trying to move on, made himself think through all the steps of it as if he somehow hoped the conclusion would be different this time. He could lie down on the sled, try to get the dogs to pull without his help. That would add weight to the sled, more weight than they could pull unless the snow were well packed. But the snow was deep and loose and it was hard work for them even with him pushing behind. And he could never do that. Jim's mind felt slow and sluggish, but he knew there was no hope of going on.
His only hope was for someone to find him. But no one in Red River knew he was coming, and Anne and the others wouldn't start worrying until several more days had passed. There was no clear trail across this area in the winter, and if more snow came, no one would be able to see which way he had passed.
He was shivering now that he'd left the furs. Not a good sign; he needed to move. He set his teeth and stood up, cursing to gain strength. Damn that rock. Damn his inattention. Damn it all to hell. If he'd gone down that slope just a foot to the right, he might still be whole. If he'd had a partner with him... Thirty years he'd spent in these forests, and lived to come home at the end of every trip.
The dogs were curled up near the sled, resting and still in harness. Sitka stood up as he did, prepared to follow his lead. Jim made his slow way to the sled to feed the dogs, leaning on the shovel and hopping on one leg. It was only a few steps, but each one was a struggle.
Each task he did during that long day was a struggle, against the cold and the pain. It took him most of the day to fight his way through the snow to a group of trees, chop some wood, and get a fire going. It hissed and smoked, and he convinced himself for a while that perhaps someone would see it.
Night fell, and with it, snow began to fall, covering his trail. The fire died.
Jim thought of Anne, then, and his daughter and her husband and the tiny baby, as he hadn't let himself do during the day. They were waiting for him, but he would never come. His body was wracked with shivering as the last embers of the fire went out. Sikta lay by his side, staying with him as always.
Then he realized that maybe she shouldn't stay with him. The sudden hope was almost painful, like warmth returning to a frozen limb. "Girl, can you fetch help? From home?"
He had her attention all right, those brown eyes fixed on him, but she didn't leave his side. "Shoo," he said, waving his arm. She went a few steps, then looked at him quizzically. He tried again. "Go home. Fetch help."
She came back, sniffed at his face. He realized then that she didn't understand him, that she was just a dog, however loyal, and that he would after all die here. Anne would wait for him in vain. Jim began to cry silently, and Sitka licked at his tears.
At least the food would last them longer when he was gone. And Walter would take over the trapping. They would be all right. His thoughts were sluggish and confused, but Jim realized that his family would survive. He could let go.
With slow, stiff movements, he crept to the sled and cut the harnesses loose. The dogs would survive, too, if they could.
That night was very cold. Sitka stayed by Jim's side, but in the morning, he was cold and still.
***
1998
We continued to traverse the slope the next day, with easier going as the slope flattened out. In late afternoon, we came to a valley that marked the end of the gentle ridge that we had followed.
"Guess we'll be going down to the trees again, huh?" Ray said, stopping to take stock of the situation.
"Yes, we'll have to cross that valley."
"At least we're getting some easy going downhill to start with."
Evening was coming on, and as we stood there, the sun set behind the hill, casting its long shadow over us and over the valley. The sky to the west was still a pale pink, shading into a deep endless blue towards the zenith. The chill in the air deepened as the shadow fell over us.
And in that premature night, I saw the dog.
It was quite close, and Dief gave a single bark. This time it must have been obvious to Ray as well as to me that the dog was transparent, more so now than it had been in full darkness.
"Is that what I think it is?" Ray whispered.
"It's a ghost," I said, putting words to what we both saw.
"Yeah," Ray breathed. We stood silent, watching it. "You ever seen a ghost before?"
"Yes," I said simply. There seemed no reason not to tell him. I hadn't told him before, of course, because I'd been afraid he'd think me crazy (or perhaps I'd been afraid that I was crazy), but as we stood side by side in the darkness and the cold now, gazing at the dog, that didn't seem like an issue.
"Who?"
"My father."
"Huh. Did you see him often, or was it just once?"
"I used to see him often. He's gone now, though. After we caught Muldoon." We had been talking without looking at one another, keeping our eyes on the dog, but now Ray moved closer to me and awkwardly put his mittened hand on my shoulder, as if for comfort.
The dog came closer, and it whined. "What do you want?" I asked it again.
As before, it turned around and trotted a few steps down towards the valley, then turned to look at us. It didn't have Diefenbaker's trick of making himself understood, but still, it was clear that it wanted us to follow.
"Are we going?" Ray asked. I looked to Dief, and he walked a few steps towards the dog, following it.
"Why not?" I said. "It doesn't seem to mean us any harm."
Ray nodded, and we headed down towards the valley. There was just barely light enough to see by when the dog finally stopped, near what looked to be a streambed. The snow lay heaped in great uneven drifts, and I was snowshoeing down the last bit down toward the streambed.
"Careful on this part, it's steep," I was saying, when the sled behind me gave a lurch over a sudden edge.
"Ray!" I cried in warning. But as I was saying it Ray braked, as I had taught him, then lost his balance and the sled tipped over. He went down in the powdery snow.
"Are you all right?" I cried.
"Fine," Ray said, "just covered in snow."
The dogs were milling around, tangling up their harness. "Dief, here," I said, and the others followed him. Together, we got the sled down over the sharp edge that I had missed. My heart was pounding. "Good work," I told Ray. He just nodded. We righted the sled, and we were down.
The dog had kept its distance during the mishap, but now came up to us again. It began to scratch at the snow by the side of the frozen streambed, but its paws left no mark.
"Dief, can you talk to it?" I asked, and freed him from the harness.
Dief whuffed out a breath, and I corrected myself. "Her, then. Thank you. What does she want?"
Dief walked up to her, touching noses, and they circled around each other cautiously. The moon had come up now, and rested huge and round above the treetops, and by its light I saw bits of their conversation, the shift of ears and tails, but couldn't make out the meaning.
"What are they saying?" Ray asked in a low voice.
"I can't tell," I admitted.
Dief broke away and came up to me. Ray watched as Dief told me what he'd learned, and I turned to him when I thought I'd understood. "I think her master died here."
Ray moved closer to me as if unaware he was doing it. "When? Like, recently?"
"I don't know. I don't know if she does, either."
"Is he...is he around here?"
I glanced around us, at the shadowy half-formed shapes of trees and bushes, weighted down with snow. "If he is, he has no reason to wish us harm."
"Yeah, I guess." Ray shook himself, then straightened. "Should we try to dig him out?"
From the look on his face, he really didn't want to do it, but he'd still offered. I hesitated. We needed to get our camp set up, but looking at the dog, standing patiently over that patch of snow, my heart wavered.
"All right. We'll give it a try."
We put on our headlamps and began digging into the snow. About a meter down, it was clear that this place hadn't been disturbed for some time. "I'm sorry," I told the dog, who had been dancing around us while we dug. Her eyes glinted in the light from my headlamp. For a moment, I thought she wasn't going to let us out of the hole, and I shivered.
"We tried," I said. "But we won't find him now."
She watched us climb out.
"I'm sorry," I said again, and it seemed inadequate. "We'll come back. In the spring, when the snow is gone. We'll come back, and we'll find him. I promise."
She still kept her eyes on us, following our every move. "Dief, can you explain it to her? Tell her we'll come back."
Dief came between us protectively, and when he was done, the dog sat down and watched us move off to our own sled. Then she turned her head to the sky and howled, and it seemed inexpressibly lonely to me.
It could have been us lying there deep under the snow, if chance had willed it so. I knew it, and Ray knew it, and Dief did, too. Dief stayed close by my side as we set up camp, and even licked my hand and invited my caresses when we'd crept into the tent for the night, even though he wasn't ordinarily much for physical affection. I scratched his ears and murmured into his fur, "I won't. I won't if I can help it."
How long had that dog's master lain there? Had he or she been travelling alone, like I had before I met Ray? I could have died like that so many times over the years, with no human being to know where my body lay. Only Dief. Only Dief would have known. And before I met Dief, there would have been no one.
Ray pulled me close and held onto me hard when I'd closed the zipper of the sleeping bag against the cold. He pulled back a little afterwards, and murmured "Sorry."
I pulled him back almost fiercely then, so that we lay close together all along the length of our bodies. He was shivering, just a little bit. "Cold?" I whispered, rubbing his back.
He shook his head, and I let myself stroke his cheek there in the darkness. His beard was so long it had gone soft, not at all like the scratchy stubble I had imagined. I could feel him breathing against my neck.
Was it just the cold and the isolation drawing us so close together? Just as our bodies sheltered together for warmth, it was only natural that we would draw near each other for comfort and support. It didn't necessarily mean anything else. It didn't mean that he loved me.
I held him until he fell asleep, and then pressed a kiss to his forehead with my chapped and cracked lips. Dief was pressed warm against my other side, and the night was silent.
***
We did return in the spring, as we had promised. It was in early June, with the full flush of green over the land, but before the mosquitoes had hatched. I wouldn't have remembered the place if I hadn't marked it carefully on the map: the deep snow drifts were gone, the stream chattered and flowed over rocks and wound its way between tree roots, and birds sung in the spruces and the willow thickets. There was life in abundance.
In the few dark hours of the night, the dog came to us. She seemed pale and transparent in the summer night, and Dief touched noses with her. She led us down the valley until we got to a place where a steep rocky slope led down toward the stream. There she stopped and whined.
We looked around. I don't know what we had expected--perhaps a body, certainly a sled or snowmobile or equipment of some kind. But at first sight, there was nothing that set the site apart from other places along the bank.
Then I saw a flat shape lodged under a fallen log. It was a sled, or the remains of one--the wood was rotten and the metal details rusted.
"How old is that?" Ray asked.
"I don't know. But it's been here for years. Perhaps many years." We searched more closely down on our knees, sifting through the grass and sedge and among the roots of the willows.
"Look." Ray held a compass, an old-fashioned one that looked one like my grandparents' had had. When I took it, the needle still swung round to point faithfully north. I found a shovel, the handle rotted away, and an old rifle. The dog sniffed each of these anxiously. Finally I found the rounded cup of a skull, or part of one, half-filled with earth and covered with green growing moss. We both fell silent, looking at it.
I held it out to the dog. "I'm sorry," I said. She sniffed at it carefully, then stood there gazing at me steadily. She whined, a keening sound that wouldn't stop. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. You did your best, and there's nothing left for you here."
She didn't move, and I looked helplessly at Dief. I don't know what he did to make her understand, but afterwards they touched noses a final time, and then she faded away, like my father had done in that mine shaft. There was nothing left where she had been but the dusk and the flowing stream.
Ray reached for my hand. I squeezed his hand, then pulled him close to feel his warm stubbled cheek against mine. I could do that without hesitating--we were lovers now, and were close with no need for the cold to drive us together.
We buried that fragment of bone beside the stream, and it felt as if I buried a part of myself with it--the part that had lived alone and risked my life alone, with no partner by my side.
Title: To Hold Fast
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: PG-13
Warning: death of original characters
Length: 6700 words
Summary: Some travel alone, and some together.
Notes: Yes, it's another post-CotW story! Also a ghost story. I'm grateful to the following people for beta help:
innocentsmith, who read an early partial draft, springwoof, and exeterlinden, who did an awesome in-person beta when I was in Denmark to meet her. Also thanks to the ficfinishing community. 1998
It was the deepest cold of winter.
The sunlight slanted bright and sharp between the trees, but lacked all warmth. Flakes of snow drifted down, turned by the sun into a halo of glittering light. Not a breath of air stirred except for our own and the dogs', and our pants of exertion turned instantly to white puffs in the dry air, or froze to ice on our clothes and beards and fur.
"Like we need more snow," I heard Ray muttering.
It was true. We had snow in abundance, fluffy white powdery snow that would have been beautiful if it had fallen on the Chicago streets, or anywhere where one had a fire and a roof over one's head. It was still beautiful here, but one couldn't appreciate it as one did a picture on a postcard. Rather, it was an unavoidable fact of life, building up into drifts that slowed us down until we were struggling to make way, dogs and men both. Even the trees struggled against it--in the forest around us, the birches were bent down into taut arcs by their burden of snow.
"I didn't think it would be like this," Ray said, walking behind the sled and pushing on it. "I thought we'd just...swish along."
I stopped and turned to reply. The dogs behind me stopped pulling and lay down. They were not unwilling--indeed, they would work their hearts out on the trail--but this trudging work was hard on them. "It can be like that, if the snow conditions are right. I once went all the way from Tuk to Inuvik in one day. But that was in the spring, when the snow is compact and frozen to a crust."
Dief whuffed at me from his place in the lead.
"You're right," I told him. "We'd better give the team something to eat." With this toil and in this weather, their morning and evening meals were not enough.
I tramped over to the sled, ungainly with my snow shoes in the deep snow, and brought out a frozen sausage of fatty meat. Chopping off bits of it, I handed them to Ray for distribution. Dief and most of the dogs wolfed down their portions hungrily, but Kari turned her head aside and laid it down on her paws. I frowned.
"She's not eating," Ray said.
"I know. We'll keep an eye on her tonight, and see if she'll have anything then. Are you hungry?"
Ray shrugged. "I guess."
I frowned again. He should be eating more, too. I dug out the day's remaining thermos of hot water, a bag of pemmican, and a bar of chocolate. We sat down on either side of the front of the sled, leaning our backs together. The chocolate was brittle and hard as rock, and I kept it in my mouth as I drank the hot water. The chocolate melted, and I sucked on it, savoring the well-needed sugar.
Ray was heavy against my back, and warm even through all our layers of clothes--or perhaps that was just the contrast against the outside air. It was cold, very cold indeed, and we were not making good progress. I wasn't worried yet, not precisely, but I did wish we were closer to our next re-stocking point.
The heat that exercise had built up in my body began to dissipate, and the first hint of cold gnawed on my toes. I wiggled them. "Time to go again."
Ray stood up again, slowly, but he made no protest.
"Let me look at your face." I turned Ray's face towards mine and studied it critically.
"I'm fine, all right?" he said with a touch of irritation.
I let my gaze linger just a second too long on his frosted eyelashes, red nose, and the stubborn set of his mouth, then looked away. The beard hid the line of his jaw, and I still wasn't used to it. "You're right. No sign of frostbite."
"I could've told you that," he grumbled. "You want to trade off?"
"All right." Tramping down the snow for the dogs was heavy work, but so was pushing the sled.
The dogs stood up again as we made preparations to leave, and we set off.
***
1932
"You don't have to go, you know," Anne said. Her tone was light, but she had the small crinkles between her eyebrows that meant she was worried. She pulled the scarf closer around her gray hair.
"Afraid I do," Jim said. "It's not so much for us two as for Alma and the little one. I don't want Walter to have to leave them."
"No, of course not," Anne said, and glanced out the window of their cabin. It was night, but the full moon shone through the trees. No more snow tonight, at any rate, and Jim hoped the weather would hold. "But you don't have to go, either. Maybe we'll go hungry, but we'll get through it somehow."
Jim shook his head. "I do have to. You know that."
Anne was silent, and Jim poured them both mugs of what was almost the last of the coffee and squeezed her hand. "The trail won't get any easier if I wait. And I'm not getting any younger, neither."
"Oh, you," Anne snorted, and Jim got the smile he'd been angling for. He loved that about her, that she always had a smile even when things were difficult. "Go, then, if you have to. But you be careful."
He got up early the next morning and piled his sled with pelts that he'd sell at the Company store. Prices had been falling, but it would still be more than enough to buy provisions to get through the winter, and through the summer, too. Not for the first time, Jim wished his trapline wasn't so far from Red River.
Walter helped him, working silently beside him. He was a good lad, quiet but dependable, and a good husband for Jim's daughter. Walter would take over the trapping when Jim got too old for it, since he'd no sons of his own.
Jim kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. He gazed down on his pudgy swaddled little granddaughter as those impossibly tiny hands took hold of Jim's weathered thumb. Then he shook Walter's hand and set off.
The dogs pulled with a will--they'd been penned up for a few days--but he could tell it would be a hard run. The snow was piled deep, too deep for the dogs to gain much purchase despite all the will in the world. He pushed on his end, but when they came to the first uphill he had to stop and take a break.
"I'm not as young as I was," he told Sitka. His lead dog gazed up at him with full understanding in her deep brown eyes, and he brushed the frost from her muzzle and ears.
"Neither are you, I suppose." He'd got into the habit of talking to her. She was a better companion than many men he had known.
"Well, I'll go and prepare the way for you. Stay." Sitka sat down obediently, but Jim tied the sled to a tree anyway, in case a hare or ptarmigan startled nearby and set the team off. He tramped up the slope on his snowshoes, pressing down the powdery snow and clearing a way for the dogs. Reaching the top, he stood for a while to catch his breath, and saw the two cabins of his home a few miles off, just two small square blocks set down in the vastness of the forest.
He went down the slope again, half-sliding with his feet at every step, and Sitka greeted him by standing up again, her tail and ears up. She was ready to go, as long as he was.
"We'll just get up this slope, and then we'll have flat ground until tomorrow. I promise."
He was sweating hard by the time he reached the top, which was never good in this cold weather, but it couldn't be helped. In his younger days he could have done it without hardly noticing, but now his old bones protested.
Jim cast one last look at his home before he crossed the crest of the hill and headed on.
***
1998
"It's so cold," Ray said.
This was rather stating the obvious. "Yes," I acknowledged. The campfire in front of us burned brightly, but its warmth didn't reach far.
"No, I mean--not just freeze-your-balls-off cold, though it definitely is. It's cold like it's--hostile to us." Ray waved a hand to the forest around us. "No, that's not right either. It's like nothing up here cares what happens to us."
Night had fallen, slowly but surely, as we set up camp. The temperature had fallen as well, falling, falling, in the soft blue light of the moon. The shadows had deepened, and the sky above us was mercilessly clear, letting every scrap of warmth steal out into the endlessness of space. No wind stirred; nothing living moved. The trees endured silently, waiting for spring.
"You're right. It is indifferent," I said. I took a breath, feeling the cold air cut into my nostrils. "Don't you feel alive, though?"
Ray snorted. "At least so far."
I went on, softly, "We are living in defiance of it. We are warm, alive, moving." I said the words as if they were a spell that could conjure the winter into letting us live.
Ray was silent. Finally he turned to me, and on his face was something that looked almost like awe. Or perhaps it was fear.
But he only said, "C'mon, let's go to bed."
Diefenbaker and about half the dogs slept with us in the tent. Dief circled around a few times and then settled down against Kari, tucking his nose under his tail. Kari had eaten normally tonight, and I checked her off as all right on the mental list I kept of the dogs' eating habits, the state of their paws, and their general health.
We slept together in double sleeping bags, as we had done for some time, and Ray immediately rolled close up against me for warmth. I put my arms around his chest. He shivered a little from the brief but cold transition between outdoor clothes and sleeping bag.
Ray and I had never spoken about our physical closeness out on the trail. Curling up together had become a habit, and while I had used to fantasize about such closeness with him in Chicago, up here it was just something that happened. We were the only human beings for many miles, and it only seemed natural that we should take warmth and comfort from each other.
A howl, faint and far off. I tensed, and Dief lifted his head. Kari stirred, and I could feel Ray listening, as well.
"Is that a wolf?" Ray asked.
"I think so, yes."
The howl trailed off, then came again, long and lonely.
Ray shivered, and I held him tighter. He let me, with no trace of the skittishness he'd had in the city. "It sounds so sad," he said.
I should perhaps have said that it's no use to read human emotions into animals, but in the dark tent listening to that eerie howl, I couldn't help but shiver myself. We lay silent, listening. The animal subsided after a while, and Ray fell asleep, his breath coming regularly and his body warm and heavy with sleep. He must have been exhausted, and no wonder.
I lay awake a while longer, my arm around Ray. I could feel the slight rise and fall of his chest and, faintly, the beating of his heart. He wasn't mine. I knew that. Out here, I knew vividly that life itself was not something that one owned and could take for granted, but something for which one had to struggle. If skill and luck were with you, you would live. If not, you might die.
When I was alone out on the trail and I had only my own life to answer for, I was more reckless. But now that I was responsible for Ray as well, I found that I worried more, thinking about all the many things upon which our lives depended.
I closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of Ray. He was alive, and precious to me.
***
1932
"Just another half mile now," Jim told Sitka. "And it's downhill. Then we'll set up camp."
Sitka looked back once, then pulled on, and the load eased as the land sloped downward to the creek below. Off to the left was Eagle Nest Crag, the only steep cliff for miles around--this was a country of rolling hills rather than craggy mountains. Jim looked at the familiar landmark and thought of warm coffee and a warm bed, though he wasn't likely to get the latter, at least.
The final steep slope down to the creek took him by surprise. He'd crossed this creek many times before, though at different places. The snow lay thicker than he was used to, and a bank of snow gave way unexpectedly. Jim braked hard, slipped downward with his foot. It was caught in the space between the brake and the sled.
He tugged at it in panic, his heart in his throat, as the sled slid down the slope. It was stuck, and he couldn't, damn it, he couldn't-- Then his foot met something hard. There was a snap.
Pain took his breath away. He hung double over the sled, barely hanging on, as it came to a stop at the bottom.
He only realized that he was the one making that high-pitched, keening sound when the dogs stopped and barked in alarm. Jim took a few deep breaths and then gritted his teeth, trying to pull his foot loose again. The pain almost made him black out.
By the time he'd got his foot out, slowly scooping away the snow that was in the way until the brake swung free, he didn't know how much time had passed. Jim was covered in cold sweat, and didn't dare take his boot off to see what his foot looked like. He could feel bone grating against bone, and swallowed against sickening nausea. He wondered if it had broken the skin.
It was full dark, and the moon shone above him indifferently. Jim could see his death in its bone-white face.
The only chance he had was for someone else to pass by, and the chances of that were as near to none as made no difference. There was no way he could keep sledding with a broken leg.
Sitka yipped and butted at him. He looked down at her, his heart breaking, and gripped her head in both hands. "I'm sorry, girl. I'm so sorry."
Her warm tongue licked at his tears, and her breath froze on his beard.
Well, he wouldn't sit here and wait for it. Jim stood up on his one useful leg and used the sled for support. He got the tent set up right next to the sled--not well, but it would stand if there was no wind--then took all the pelts he'd planned to sell out of the sled and put them in the tent. He could use the extra warmth.
By now, Jim's leg was throbbing in waves of pain, and he gave up the idea of trying to start a fire. He'd have to get through the snow to the trees for wood, and even those few yards seemed like an impossible gulf. Instead, he ate some pemmican and gave the dogs their frozen meat.
Jim worked his way into his bedroll and piled up the pelts on top. Sitka lay curled up close beside him, and he did his best to get some rest, if not sleep.
***
1998
I crept out of the sleeping bags, taking my boots with me--they'd been down at the foot end of the bags so as not to freeze. Ray turned over with a grunt and curled into a ball, tugging the opening closed again.
The cold took my breath away, and seemed to pierce my thick woollen underwear as if I had been naked. I dressed myself quickly--the best cure for it was to get to work.
Dief followed me out, and at his short bark, several dogs broke out of their nests in the snow, vigorously shaking themselves off. They were fine--in fact, with the lack of wind and the fluffy snow, they were no doubt quite comfortable at night.
I set the gasoline stove going to melt snow for our thermoses and breakfast, and fed the dogs.
"Ray?" I shook the tent.
A muffled moan.
"It won't get any easier if you wait."
"You're not helping." I heard the sound of the zipper on the sleeping bag and Ray muttering, "Christ, it's cold!"
After breakfast, we started to work without a word exchanged about it. Ray took down the tent while I packed the sled.
"Which way are we headed?" Ray asked.
I steeled myself. "Up the slope. I'm hoping that if we get above the treeline, the snow conditions will be better. The wind usually packs the snow on the open ground."
I'd expected Ray to argue, but he only bent his head to the work like a sled dog leaning into the harness. It was slow going, especially as we had to keep from sweating too much, but eventually the trees grew more scrawny and farther apart, and finally thinned out altogether.
We took a break for lunch, scooping out a bench in the snow. There were no sharp peaks here, no drama in the landscape at all, only the curves and hollows of high hills, smoothed and rounded further by snow. This far north, you didn't need much altitude to get above the treeline.
Ray looked out over the view, then looked at me, and I could see the hint of a smile curving his mouth behind his frosted beard. I nodded at him without a word, sure that he was feeling the same thing I was: satisfaction at a job well done, another slow stretch of ground covered.
Evening found us a few more miles along. The snow had been packed harder up here, as I had hoped, but traversing the sideways slant of the hillside was tiring, too. Off to the left and in the direction we were heading, I could see the dark rock of a sharp crag that rose above the white hilltops.
The long sunset of the north had already begun when we stopped to set up camp, and it was well into twilight when we sat down to our well-earned dinner and a warm fire. I'd made sure to put firewood on the sled before we rose above the treeline, and we were glad of it now.
"Hypnotizing," Ray said, gesturing to the fire.
"Mmm." I watched the red glowing heart of the fire, the flames licking at the blackened wood, and felt the heat of it against my bare hands as I held them out, and then the contrast of the deep cold all along the back of my body, even through my thick clothes. Dief lay beside me, his eyes half-closed against the firelight. Then he came to attention, and a moment later came a long howl.
"Same as yesterday?" Ray asked.
"Perhaps."
"Must be one lonely wolf." He tried to make it sound like a joke, but I thought he sounded uneasy.
It sounded again, closer this time. Dief sat up, looking into the night. I followed his gaze, and there, beyond the circle of light, glowed two pale eyes. They were far away, down towards the treeline, but they were unmistakeable. I stood up and shaded my eyes from the fire. The moon was up, and once my eyes had adjusted to the relative darkness, I could see the dark shape of the wolf, like a moving shadow.
"Can you see it?" Ray whispered, as if reluctant to speak aloud.
"Yes. It's coming closer."
"I thought wolves were afraid of humans."
"They usually are."
Dief whuffed, and I looked at him, surprised. "Dief says it's not a wolf."
"What else could it be?"
"A dog, I suppose. We're not near any settlements that I know of, though." I looked at the line of staked dogs by the sled. All accounted for.
Dief made a low growling sound, his hackles rising a little.
"What?" Ray asked.
"He...says it's not quite a dog, either."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Ray said, voice still low, but the profanity revealing his uneasiness.
The figure sat down, turned its muzzle up to the moon, and gave again that that long lonely howl. I saw it then, or thought I did: the shadowy shape of a bush, seen through the shadow that was the dog.
"What does it want?" Ray drew nearer to me, and I shifted closer, as if by instinct. I said nothing about the thing I might or might not have seen. After all, I wasn't sure.
"I don't know." I looked down at Dief to see if he could tell, but his attention was fixed on the figure downslope. It came closer, then barked, unmistakably like a dog.
"Sounds like it wants something, anyway." The bark was sharp and demanding, like Dief when he wanted to draw my attention or needed help.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and called, feeling a little foolish, "What do you want?"
The dog didn't come closer, though, just danced warily at the edge of the firelight.
I hesitated, then took a few steps towards the dog, and it was harder than it should have been to leave the security of the firelight. But I needn't have worried: the dog immediately turned and ran. Then it stopped and looked back at me, turning its ears forward as if to say, "Are you coming?"
I stayed where I was. I did not want to follow this ghostly dog into the night.
"Not now," I told it. "It's cold and dark. If you want anything, come back tomorrow."
The dog faded into the night, and I watched it until I couldn't see it anymore. Only then did I notice the cold creeping into my toes, and I stamped my feet and shivered. I had a moment of alarm when I couldn't feel the tip of my nose.
"It's all right," Ray told me when I asked. "It's red." His was, too.
We took all the dogs with us into the tent that night, and made sure our food was stored in dog-proof containers. I had my rifle beside me. The dog hadn't looked like a threat and I wasn't sure what help a rifle would be against a ghost dog, anyway, but you never knew. As I lay there with Ray, listening to him breathe and feeling our combined body heat fighting its way back into my feet, I tried to convince myself it had been a trick of the mind, but shivered despite myself.
Ray shifted against me. "What?"
I stroked his arm. "Nothing. Go to sleep." No use putting Ray on edge for what might just be my imagination. He half-turned and tugged me closer, and tucked his head into my shoulder. We went to sleep like that, two warm entwined bodies in the endless cold.
***
1932
Jim did not so much wake as drift nearer consciousness and pain. He stirred, and felt a warm tongue on his face.
Jim cleared his throat. "Sitka?"
She whined, and he scratched the warm soft fur of her neck with his clumsy mittened hands. Through the tent flap, he could see the merciless sharp blue of the sky, and it almost pained his eyes. He gritted his teeth, and dragged himself far enough that he could reach the food. That very effort made it clear to him how hard it would be to do anything else, but he would have try.
He steeled himself and felt at the layers of clothes over his broken leg. Blood. That was definitely blood underneath. The bone had broken the skin. He felt sick. Jim clenched his teeth until his head stopped spinning and made himself eat a little. Best to let his leg be--the boot might at least give some stability to his leg.
Jim thought about trying to move on, made himself think through all the steps of it as if he somehow hoped the conclusion would be different this time. He could lie down on the sled, try to get the dogs to pull without his help. That would add weight to the sled, more weight than they could pull unless the snow were well packed. But the snow was deep and loose and it was hard work for them even with him pushing behind. And he could never do that. Jim's mind felt slow and sluggish, but he knew there was no hope of going on.
His only hope was for someone to find him. But no one in Red River knew he was coming, and Anne and the others wouldn't start worrying until several more days had passed. There was no clear trail across this area in the winter, and if more snow came, no one would be able to see which way he had passed.
He was shivering now that he'd left the furs. Not a good sign; he needed to move. He set his teeth and stood up, cursing to gain strength. Damn that rock. Damn his inattention. Damn it all to hell. If he'd gone down that slope just a foot to the right, he might still be whole. If he'd had a partner with him... Thirty years he'd spent in these forests, and lived to come home at the end of every trip.
The dogs were curled up near the sled, resting and still in harness. Sitka stood up as he did, prepared to follow his lead. Jim made his slow way to the sled to feed the dogs, leaning on the shovel and hopping on one leg. It was only a few steps, but each one was a struggle.
Each task he did during that long day was a struggle, against the cold and the pain. It took him most of the day to fight his way through the snow to a group of trees, chop some wood, and get a fire going. It hissed and smoked, and he convinced himself for a while that perhaps someone would see it.
Night fell, and with it, snow began to fall, covering his trail. The fire died.
Jim thought of Anne, then, and his daughter and her husband and the tiny baby, as he hadn't let himself do during the day. They were waiting for him, but he would never come. His body was wracked with shivering as the last embers of the fire went out. Sikta lay by his side, staying with him as always.
Then he realized that maybe she shouldn't stay with him. The sudden hope was almost painful, like warmth returning to a frozen limb. "Girl, can you fetch help? From home?"
He had her attention all right, those brown eyes fixed on him, but she didn't leave his side. "Shoo," he said, waving his arm. She went a few steps, then looked at him quizzically. He tried again. "Go home. Fetch help."
She came back, sniffed at his face. He realized then that she didn't understand him, that she was just a dog, however loyal, and that he would after all die here. Anne would wait for him in vain. Jim began to cry silently, and Sitka licked at his tears.
At least the food would last them longer when he was gone. And Walter would take over the trapping. They would be all right. His thoughts were sluggish and confused, but Jim realized that his family would survive. He could let go.
With slow, stiff movements, he crept to the sled and cut the harnesses loose. The dogs would survive, too, if they could.
That night was very cold. Sitka stayed by Jim's side, but in the morning, he was cold and still.
***
1998
We continued to traverse the slope the next day, with easier going as the slope flattened out. In late afternoon, we came to a valley that marked the end of the gentle ridge that we had followed.
"Guess we'll be going down to the trees again, huh?" Ray said, stopping to take stock of the situation.
"Yes, we'll have to cross that valley."
"At least we're getting some easy going downhill to start with."
Evening was coming on, and as we stood there, the sun set behind the hill, casting its long shadow over us and over the valley. The sky to the west was still a pale pink, shading into a deep endless blue towards the zenith. The chill in the air deepened as the shadow fell over us.
And in that premature night, I saw the dog.
It was quite close, and Dief gave a single bark. This time it must have been obvious to Ray as well as to me that the dog was transparent, more so now than it had been in full darkness.
"Is that what I think it is?" Ray whispered.
"It's a ghost," I said, putting words to what we both saw.
"Yeah," Ray breathed. We stood silent, watching it. "You ever seen a ghost before?"
"Yes," I said simply. There seemed no reason not to tell him. I hadn't told him before, of course, because I'd been afraid he'd think me crazy (or perhaps I'd been afraid that I was crazy), but as we stood side by side in the darkness and the cold now, gazing at the dog, that didn't seem like an issue.
"Who?"
"My father."
"Huh. Did you see him often, or was it just once?"
"I used to see him often. He's gone now, though. After we caught Muldoon." We had been talking without looking at one another, keeping our eyes on the dog, but now Ray moved closer to me and awkwardly put his mittened hand on my shoulder, as if for comfort.
The dog came closer, and it whined. "What do you want?" I asked it again.
As before, it turned around and trotted a few steps down towards the valley, then turned to look at us. It didn't have Diefenbaker's trick of making himself understood, but still, it was clear that it wanted us to follow.
"Are we going?" Ray asked. I looked to Dief, and he walked a few steps towards the dog, following it.
"Why not?" I said. "It doesn't seem to mean us any harm."
Ray nodded, and we headed down towards the valley. There was just barely light enough to see by when the dog finally stopped, near what looked to be a streambed. The snow lay heaped in great uneven drifts, and I was snowshoeing down the last bit down toward the streambed.
"Careful on this part, it's steep," I was saying, when the sled behind me gave a lurch over a sudden edge.
"Ray!" I cried in warning. But as I was saying it Ray braked, as I had taught him, then lost his balance and the sled tipped over. He went down in the powdery snow.
"Are you all right?" I cried.
"Fine," Ray said, "just covered in snow."
The dogs were milling around, tangling up their harness. "Dief, here," I said, and the others followed him. Together, we got the sled down over the sharp edge that I had missed. My heart was pounding. "Good work," I told Ray. He just nodded. We righted the sled, and we were down.
The dog had kept its distance during the mishap, but now came up to us again. It began to scratch at the snow by the side of the frozen streambed, but its paws left no mark.
"Dief, can you talk to it?" I asked, and freed him from the harness.
Dief whuffed out a breath, and I corrected myself. "Her, then. Thank you. What does she want?"
Dief walked up to her, touching noses, and they circled around each other cautiously. The moon had come up now, and rested huge and round above the treetops, and by its light I saw bits of their conversation, the shift of ears and tails, but couldn't make out the meaning.
"What are they saying?" Ray asked in a low voice.
"I can't tell," I admitted.
Dief broke away and came up to me. Ray watched as Dief told me what he'd learned, and I turned to him when I thought I'd understood. "I think her master died here."
Ray moved closer to me as if unaware he was doing it. "When? Like, recently?"
"I don't know. I don't know if she does, either."
"Is he...is he around here?"
I glanced around us, at the shadowy half-formed shapes of trees and bushes, weighted down with snow. "If he is, he has no reason to wish us harm."
"Yeah, I guess." Ray shook himself, then straightened. "Should we try to dig him out?"
From the look on his face, he really didn't want to do it, but he'd still offered. I hesitated. We needed to get our camp set up, but looking at the dog, standing patiently over that patch of snow, my heart wavered.
"All right. We'll give it a try."
We put on our headlamps and began digging into the snow. About a meter down, it was clear that this place hadn't been disturbed for some time. "I'm sorry," I told the dog, who had been dancing around us while we dug. Her eyes glinted in the light from my headlamp. For a moment, I thought she wasn't going to let us out of the hole, and I shivered.
"We tried," I said. "But we won't find him now."
She watched us climb out.
"I'm sorry," I said again, and it seemed inadequate. "We'll come back. In the spring, when the snow is gone. We'll come back, and we'll find him. I promise."
She still kept her eyes on us, following our every move. "Dief, can you explain it to her? Tell her we'll come back."
Dief came between us protectively, and when he was done, the dog sat down and watched us move off to our own sled. Then she turned her head to the sky and howled, and it seemed inexpressibly lonely to me.
It could have been us lying there deep under the snow, if chance had willed it so. I knew it, and Ray knew it, and Dief did, too. Dief stayed close by my side as we set up camp, and even licked my hand and invited my caresses when we'd crept into the tent for the night, even though he wasn't ordinarily much for physical affection. I scratched his ears and murmured into his fur, "I won't. I won't if I can help it."
How long had that dog's master lain there? Had he or she been travelling alone, like I had before I met Ray? I could have died like that so many times over the years, with no human being to know where my body lay. Only Dief. Only Dief would have known. And before I met Dief, there would have been no one.
Ray pulled me close and held onto me hard when I'd closed the zipper of the sleeping bag against the cold. He pulled back a little afterwards, and murmured "Sorry."
I pulled him back almost fiercely then, so that we lay close together all along the length of our bodies. He was shivering, just a little bit. "Cold?" I whispered, rubbing his back.
He shook his head, and I let myself stroke his cheek there in the darkness. His beard was so long it had gone soft, not at all like the scratchy stubble I had imagined. I could feel him breathing against my neck.
Was it just the cold and the isolation drawing us so close together? Just as our bodies sheltered together for warmth, it was only natural that we would draw near each other for comfort and support. It didn't necessarily mean anything else. It didn't mean that he loved me.
I held him until he fell asleep, and then pressed a kiss to his forehead with my chapped and cracked lips. Dief was pressed warm against my other side, and the night was silent.
***
We did return in the spring, as we had promised. It was in early June, with the full flush of green over the land, but before the mosquitoes had hatched. I wouldn't have remembered the place if I hadn't marked it carefully on the map: the deep snow drifts were gone, the stream chattered and flowed over rocks and wound its way between tree roots, and birds sung in the spruces and the willow thickets. There was life in abundance.
In the few dark hours of the night, the dog came to us. She seemed pale and transparent in the summer night, and Dief touched noses with her. She led us down the valley until we got to a place where a steep rocky slope led down toward the stream. There she stopped and whined.
We looked around. I don't know what we had expected--perhaps a body, certainly a sled or snowmobile or equipment of some kind. But at first sight, there was nothing that set the site apart from other places along the bank.
Then I saw a flat shape lodged under a fallen log. It was a sled, or the remains of one--the wood was rotten and the metal details rusted.
"How old is that?" Ray asked.
"I don't know. But it's been here for years. Perhaps many years." We searched more closely down on our knees, sifting through the grass and sedge and among the roots of the willows.
"Look." Ray held a compass, an old-fashioned one that looked one like my grandparents' had had. When I took it, the needle still swung round to point faithfully north. I found a shovel, the handle rotted away, and an old rifle. The dog sniffed each of these anxiously. Finally I found the rounded cup of a skull, or part of one, half-filled with earth and covered with green growing moss. We both fell silent, looking at it.
I held it out to the dog. "I'm sorry," I said. She sniffed at it carefully, then stood there gazing at me steadily. She whined, a keening sound that wouldn't stop. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. You did your best, and there's nothing left for you here."
She didn't move, and I looked helplessly at Dief. I don't know what he did to make her understand, but afterwards they touched noses a final time, and then she faded away, like my father had done in that mine shaft. There was nothing left where she had been but the dusk and the flowing stream.
Ray reached for my hand. I squeezed his hand, then pulled him close to feel his warm stubbled cheek against mine. I could do that without hesitating--we were lovers now, and were close with no need for the cold to drive us together.
We buried that fragment of bone beside the stream, and it felt as if I buried a part of myself with it--the part that had lived alone and risked my life alone, with no partner by my side.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-30 05:13 pm (UTC)