Breakaway: Clan of the Ice Mountains (33 page)

Attu couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Elder Nuanu had spoken to them, had assured them of her protection. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the movement made him dizzy.

Rika was watching him. She looked odd. Was there something she wasn’t telling him?

“Is that all?” Attu asked.

“No.” Rika smoothed the wet cloth over his forehead.

“What else did she say?” Attu asked when Rika didn’t continue.

“It doesn’t matter. I can tell you later. You need to rest now.” Rika moved as if to jump up and tend the fire.

“Rika,” Attu said as he grasped her hand, trying not to scare her by grabbing her too hard. “No lies between us, remember? Tell me.”

Rika ran her fingers through her hair, as if to calm herself. “She said that when the time comes, I have to let you go.” She looked at him, her face a mask of pain.

“Let me go?”

“Yes. And I don’t know what that means. Where will you go without me?” Rika began to cry.

Attu reached out for her, and Rika fell across him where he was still lying and buried her face in his chest.

“We won’t know what Elder Nuanu’s words meant until we’re there, in the moment when it’s happening,” Attu reassured her. “She might mean something totally different from what you think. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Despite Rika’s protests, Attu sat up and wrapped Rika in a fierce embrace. “Listen to me,” he said. “I mean it. I will not leave you.”

“But Elder Nuanu said.”

“Like I explained, what is said through someone else, or in dreams, it isn’t like us talking in the Here and Now. It’s different. Like the ice bears looked like snow mountains with teeth, and seeing you across the gap of unfrozen water turned out to be you on the ice sheet. And you weren’t alone, like I dreamed. We will just have to trust and see.”

Rika nodded, but Attu could tell she hadn’t believed him.

They sat in silence for a while. Attu’s head was clearing and he realized he felt rested, as if he’d slept a long time, even though he could tell it was still the middle of the night. He hadn’t been in the Between of sleep that long.

Slowly, Rika pulled away from him and wiped her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her hand. Attu studied her face. She was biting her lower lip. “What else?” he asked. “I can tell something else is troubling you, too.”

Rika shook her head.

“Tell me,” Attu teased, “or I will haunt you.” And taking a piece of Rika’s long hair in his hand, he put it over his lip, screwing up his eyes to look like a spirit mask.

Rika laughed, but her face grew serious again. “I didn’t believe you before,” she admitted. “And I’m ashamed of that.”

“You didn’t believe me about the dreams, the visions?”

“I believed that; I’ve dreamed, too. I didn’t believe someone else spoke through Elder Nuanu to you. It just seemed impossible.”

“Oh, Rika...” Attu began.

Rika interrupted him. “But now, after Elder Nuanu talked through you to me... well... now I believe.” She looked at him, her face filled with regret. “I’m sorry I didn’t before.”

Rika lowered her gaze, letting her loose hair hide her face.

“It’s OK, Rika. I knew you agreed to go with me because you love and trust me, not because you believed in everything I told you, especially about Elder Nuanu speaking in the white-haired man’s voice.”

Rika looked up, her face confused. “Really? You knew? And you said nothing? I was feeling so bad...”

Suddenly, Rika smacked his shoulder with her hand. Her voice rose. “You knew? And you went along with my apology just now as if... as if...” She slapped his arm. “You tooth fish!”

Rika began pummeling him on the chest. “You knew all along...”

She pushed him back to the ground.

Attu fought back, tickling Rika as he dodged her small fists pounding on him. Soon they were both tickling each other, laughing until Attu couldn’t breathe.

“Stop,” he cried, coming up for air.

Rika grinned at him, and Attu had the feeling that kissing was going to replace tickling, and soon.

Attu took in a deep breath and called out to the night sky, “Thank you, Elder Nuanu! For everything!”

“F
og,” Rika said, looking up at the mountains disappearing into the whiteness. “Elder Nuanu told me about fog. She said it was the breath of the spirits and usually evil ones.”

Attu and Rika were standing on the edge of a small ridge, overlooking the pass through the mountains. They could see up to a bend in the pass, and nothing beyond that. The pass had been easy to find, just a couple of spear throws distance into the trees, marked by a cairn of rocks and with deep scratches dug into the side of the rock face at its entrance, some sort of symbols that neither Attu nor Rika recognized for sure, except for the signs for both their clans, the Ice Mountains and the Great Frozen Clan. These markings were the same as the tattoos all the men were given at their final naming ritual.

Attu thought he recognized the Tooth Fish clan symbol he had seen on Banek, but he wasn’t sure. The others must be clan symbols as well, Attu decided. Whoever carved them all into the rock had gone to great lengths to communicate to them that this was the way to safety, the way they must travel when the Warming time came.

Attu and Rika had built a waist-high cairn of rocks on the beach, above the high water mark, in a place it would be easily spotted, a clear flat area with no plants or hills to block the view of their marker. The clans would see it from far off.

They buried a long piece of tree arm in the rocks so it stuck out the top. To this, they tied three time stones, using both their parka strings. The message to the others would be clear. They were alive, and the clan needed to wait three days before it was safe to go through the pass.

Both Attu and Rika prayed to their name spirits as they headed into the pass, a narrow opening in the rocks, only wide enough for two people to walk, quickly growing wider until it became a path several could travel on at once. The mountains rose up on either side of them, a few twisted pines clinging to the rock, but mostly bare, and steep. When Attu tilted his head back and looked straight up, he could see the tops of the mountains, still white with snow.

The ground along the path they were walking was covered with small round stones, and their smoothness reminded Attu of the little rocks he’d sometimes found along the edge of the land he had lived on as a child. He picked one up, his fingers caressing its smooth blackness. He thought about the stream he had seen the day before. The rocks in that were rounded as well. Attu slid the rock into the pocket of his parka as he thought about his mother telling him about the rocks that grew round along the edge of their land. She said it was from the constant movement of the water under the ice. She’d held them up for him, and he’d collected a few while she gathered the mussels.
They bounce across the ice when you throw them.

But there was no water here, although the rocks were wet. Attu felt a sense of unease in his stomach, and it grew as they traveled along the path.

“I feel like the mountains will fall down on top of us at any moment,” Rika said. “I don’t like it.”

“We’re so used to being able to see to the horizon. I feel the same way. Let’s climb up here,” Attu suggested to Rika, pointing to a place where the mountain on his right seemed to ease back a bit, giving them a hard but accessible climb to a ridge high above the path.

They stood there now, looking down at the pass and up at the fog-covered mountains. The fog had snuck in when they were climbing the ridge, and the hair on the back of Attu’s neck prickled at Rika’s comment about Elder Nuanu and the fog spirits. Something was wrong. He recognized that feeling of suddenly being the hunted instead of the hunter.

“Do you hear that?” Rika whispered. “Across the pass and up on the other side. Look!”

Attu saw a pine tree’s green movement. There was no wind.

“Something is following us,” Rika said.

“Whatever it is, let’s keep distance between it and us. Let’s see how far we can walk along this ridge,” Attu said. “It will be safer up here on this side where at least we can see if it comes at us. It has to go across the pass, and there’s no place to hide at the bottom. We’ll see it coming.”

“All right,” Rika agreed, and they continued walking the edge of the ridge, climbing higher and higher as they traveled along the pass.

“Do you think we’ll be able to get down?” Rika asked.

“We may have to go back the way we came, but I’m not walking down there, not with something hiding on the other side.”

Twice more, Attu and Rika saw movement on the ridge opposite the pass. Rocks slid, making a clattering noise that echoed along the stony bottom of the pass. A while later, Rika thought she saw a shadow darting from one rock to the next. Attu didn’t see it, but Rika’s eyes were keener than his.

“I think there’s some sort of path over there,” Rika said, squinting to look across the pass. “It’s narrow, like this one. Do you think there are animals that walk along these ridges? Why would they do that, instead of walking the pass?”

“Same reason we are. Too visible down there. It’s like a trap.”

“When we come through here with our people, you will set hunters as guards,” Rika said.

“Yes.”

They walked on, climbing higher and higher along the ridge path. Soon they were walking in snow, large areas swept clean by what appeared to be places where the ice of generations had loosened from the rock in the Warming and tumbled down, bringing rocks and trees with it. The ridge path was scraped clean in places, in other places the path had been obliterated and Attu and Rika had to climb over dead trees and around large boulders in their path.

The way began to clear again, covered in snow but no more debris.

“This area doesn’t seem to have been affected by the Warming,” Rika said.

“Not yet,” Attu replied and looked above him at the wall of snow and ice, barely clinging to the edge of the mountain. He grew even more wary, wondering what it would take to send the whole mass down the side, on top of them.

Coming around the next bend in the ridge, Rika stopped. Their way ahead was blocked by a tumbled mass of trees and rocks.

“What to we do now?” Rika asked.

Attu walked to the side of the ridge. It was steep here, but not as steep as in some places. “I think we can climb back down.”

“Attu, look!”

Attu turned and looked back the way they had come. They were far enough above the ravine’s floor to see the entrance of the pass with the sea behind it. Attu saw smudges of movement against the stillness of the rocks and occasionally a flash of color. People were coming through the pass.

“They didn’t wait.”

“No, and look.” Rika pointed upward where a dark mist was swirling above the trees and rocks of the blocked ridge. “The fog spirits are gathering. Something awful is about to happen, Attu, I feel it deep in my spirit. I think Elder Nuanu is trying to warn us.”

“Hurry,” Attu said, and the two of them scrambled down to the floor of the ravine. “We’ve got to make it through the pass first. It feels like a trap down here, but there’s no other way.”

Neither spoke as they hurried along in the shadows of the mountains on either side.

As they rounded yet another sharp bend in the pass, Rika stopped. Attu ran into her.

“What?” Attu asked.

“Look!” Rika said, bringing her hand up to her mouth. “Moolnik,” she whispered as she stared at the figure in the pass ahead. Attu reached for her and felt her begin to tremble under his hand. “It’s the ghost of Moolnik.”

Attu stared ahead. “No!” It looked like Moolnik, dressed in a parka and fur leggings and carrying a tree arm, long, like a spear. He was running along the bottom of the ravine near the ridge, looking up. He apparently hadn’t seen them yet.

“It can’t be...” Attu said.

“But, he drowned,” Rika said, her voice small and filled with disbelief.

“I should have known Moolnik wouldn’t die that easily,” Attu muttered as he drew himself closer to Rika and readied his spear. “I’m tired of this devil, this Moolnikuan,” he said, more to himself than to Rika. He lifted his spear and leaped ahead with a cry.

Moolnik saw him and ducked, but continued running as if to run past them.

“Wait!” Rika yelled. “Stop, Attu. Don’t kill him.”

“Why?” Attu asked, but he lowered his spear. Instead he rushed Moolnik, cutting him off. Moolnik’s speed caused them both to tumble to the ground. Attu grabbed Moolnik by the back of his parka, jabbing his knife into the man’s side.

“I’m going to kill you, like I should have the last time I had the chance, on the ice sheet.”

“No!” Rika begged.

“Why not?” Attu asked. He wanted to kill Moolnik. He’d had a taste of what it was like to live thinking the man was dead.
Life is better without madmen like Moolnik lurking in the shadows waiting to strike. “
I’ll make sure you die for good this time. It’s clan law.”

But he glanced at Rika. She was studying Moolnik.

“No, Attu. There’s something very wrong here. Look, Moolnik is wearing one of my father’s old parkas; I recognize the pattern, and look,” she jabbed with her foot. “That’s my missing knife.”

“You’ve been following us all along,” Rika accused Moolnik. “You took my knife, and you must have sneaked up on the clans’ camp and stolen that parka.”

“More reason to kill him. He’s a murderer and a thief.” Attu pushed the knife harder into Moolnik’s side, but the man was strangely silent, his face impassive, although he was sweating. He didn’t even struggle.

“No. Don’t you see?” Rika asked. “This is all wrong. How did Moolnik find the pass before we did? What is he doing here? Look at his hands, and the front of his parka, and that tree branch he was holding.” Rika motioned to the broken piece of branch that Moolnik had been holding before Attu tackled him. “They’re covered in mud. What has he been doing to get so dirty? And why?”

“Who cares? He won’t be able to do any more harm once he’s dead.” Attu grabbed Moolnik more firmly with his free hand and dragged the man into a standing position as if to get a better position for stabbing him.