Ice Island (14 page)

Her chapped face felt tight, like the skin stretched over the hull of a boat. A hot shower. A warm bed. Homemade bread. Playing with Bandit and her pups on a warm day. It didn’t hurt to dream.

Alone, she had conversations in her head. Conversations with her mom and dad, conversations with Beryl and Cole. She hated to think of the worry in her mom’s eyes.

Alyeska slowed and looked back, as if he wasn’t sure he was going the right way. “Come on, now,” she said to encourage him. “You’re in charge.”

Dogs knew their directions without a map, a compass, or stars. Dogs could
smell
their way home. Tatum could see farther than ever before. Through her goggles, she picked out the tiniest prism of light dancing on the snow.

When Alyeska swung wide around another frost heave, Tatum saw two small boys. They looked so strange in a patchwork of fur.

“Hey!” she hollered, hitting the brake hard.

The boys stared at her a long moment before running off. “Ghost girl!” they shouted. “Ghost girl!”

“Come back! Please! I need help!”

“Ghost—” Their voices faded away.

Tatum let the dogs pick up their pace. She followed the boys’ tracks over a rise. Up one slope, down the other. She sucked the bitter air. Her breath clouds froze. “Come back!”

She stumbled off her sled, seeing a square house with a peaked roof. It stood alone in a field of white. Dark smoke
curled from the block chimney. A snag of driftwood twisted as high as the roof. Kayaks leaned against a wall. Harpoons glistened. She smelled sea salt.

We’re close to the ocean
.

That meant Anvil.

Our journey is nearly over
.

She wasn’t sure how far she’d walked, but when she looked back she couldn’t see the dogs. She called out, and they answered.
I have to keep better track of where I am
.

Trembling, she rushed to the door.

I made it.

We
made it.

She nearly cried.

Tatum knocked on the splintering wood, shaking and listening. The sound of drums and singing swelled from inside. She listened for a long time, wondering what they were celebrating. She knocked again, waiting anxiously. Then she heard a gunshot.

Too tired to think, she stumbled backward.

Grandfather opened the door.

No!

•  •  •

Alyeska must have brought the team around when she fell off the sled. He stood over her, whining. Wrangell licked her face. She rolled to her knees and sat up slowly. A hallucination.
I was seeing things
.

“We have to stop,” she mumbled, trying to clear her mind.

The sun rested on the horizon, yawned, and sank, turning the sky rosy gray.

Tatum took care of the dogs and crept wearily into the sled. She wondered if Cole had already crawled inside his. His dogs would curl up in the snow, like always.

Just a nap
, she told herself in the dry bite of night. She cuddled with Bandit and the puppies, letting their warmth settle over her.

She awoke to Bandit’s wet nose on the back of her neck. “Hey, girl.” She rolled over clumsily. “How’re you doing?”

Bandit licked her nose. “Guess I’d better get up.”

She couldn’t even remember if she’d fed the dogs.
I am losing it!

She threw back the canvas flap. Dawn had washed darkness from the sky. A band of sherbet clouds looked like it stretched all the way to Nome. Tatum scolded herself, “Some nap!” Was she really heading into day five of this crazy ordeal?

She hollered to the dogs. At first the lumps didn’t budge.

“Hey! Lazybones!”

Alyeska stood up first. The line pulled on Wrangell and Denali. They stretched sleepily and shook off. Tatum moved in a groggy haze, slow to shovel snow into the cooker.
Shovel?
She felt like kicking herself.
I could’ve used it to chop up the meat!

The dogs gorged themselves, like they were preparing for a marathon. Even Bandit ate more than usual. Tatum packed up, tired and shaky. She stepped on the runners. “All right!”

The dogs drove on, heads down, carving their way
around another maze of hummocks. After a few miles, they left the last mound behind. Tatum glanced back, watching it grow smaller and smaller. “Good riddance.”

Then she saw Wolf.

She stopped the team and grabbed the bag of meat.

Wolf’s eyes grew wide.

“That’s right, fella. Meat.”

He padded closer, his tail ruler-straight. Frost glistened on his whiskers. She squatted in the snow and tossed out a fatty hunk. He gulped it down in a flash of teeth. The next bite landed nearer. He inhaled it.

Like reeling in a fish, she made each throw closer and closer until Wolf was within petting range. “I have meat and you have muscle,” she said, down on one knee. “We’ll make a good team.”

Wolf thrust his great head forward. He sniffed her glove. She let him lick the grease. Suddenly he took her gloved hand in his teeth. She froze but didn’t pull away. “It’s okay, fella.”

Wolf arched his neck, lifting his head above hers.

She saw his tail move, unsure if he’d wagged it. “We can be friends,” she said softly. She slowly wiggled her hand in his powerful jaw. He didn’t let go, but he didn’t clamp down either. “Come on, Wolf. Friends?”

Wolf shook his head.

“You want to play, is that it?”

He wagged his tail.

“You’re not a big bad wolf,” she said, letting herself breathe. “You’re just a big old puppy dog!”

Wolf whined and let go of her hand.

This time when she reached out, he let her pet him. But only briefly. “Will you take us the rest of the way?”

Tail wagging, he trotted over to the sled. Bandit peeked out. She greeted him, nibbling his chin. Wolf nibbled back.

Wolf, protector of pups and new stepdad, wrinkled his brow.

“Friends,” Tatum said simply. “And our new leader.”

With Wolf in the lead, her team ran better than ever. Strong and confident. At first Tatum had tried snapping him to the line, but she gave up when he flashed his teeth. Alyeska, Wrangell, and Denali followed him obediently, even though he wasn’t tethered. They knew he belonged in front.

Sometimes Tatum wondered if they were on the same route as days before, backpacking to Wager. But after an hour it was obvious that they were trailing the arc of the sun, from east to west. Wolf was taking them home, to Anvil, where he was raised. It had to be closer than going back to Wager, like Cole said.

Wolf had started out slowly, letting the team warm up, and kept moving at the same unfailing pace. They climbed along the ridge of an inland mountain. Below, a whirlwind twisted and turned, picking up snow as it left the ground.

Tatum pulled up her face mask and tightened her hood. She kept her eyes on Wolf, running a hundred feet out in
front. If he’d only wanted food, he would have gone home long before now. Wolf had followed them because of Bandit and the puppies. What an oddball family they had become.

Wolf dropped his ancient nose, caught a scent, and lifted his tail. Tatum checked her watch. Two hours had passed since they’d left their last camp. Now they were on a snowfield that fanned as far as she could see. The sled glided smoothly on the hardpack until the sun and wind worked at loosening the surface. Then the wind kicked up, blowing hard as ever.

Their fastest pace, barely a crawl.

Just as suddenly they slipped into a calm area. “Wind in the frozen north is like that,” her dad always said. “It can crank up and hit hurricane force in an hour, then quit just as quickly.”

Tatum held on as the wind struck again, a rumbling wave that frosted the dogs. They struggled against a crosswind. Then all at once it slammed them from behind, invisible hands lifting them up and pushing them forward. Swirling snow blurred the outline of her sled. The dogs turned white.

Tatum tried to keep her head down. Her face mask was clotted with BB-sized ice balls. She gripped the slick handlebars, as if she could keep the sled from breaking apart. Cold sapped her strength. Five days ago she’d been worried about making it back for the flight to Nome. Now she was worried about making it through the next five minutes.

When the visibility was this bad in a race, mushers had to walk the trail from marker to marker. If they couldn’t
see the wooden stakes, they’d stop and wait for it to blow over. Tatum was about to drop her brake when the dogs pulled up on their own.

Wolf appeared beside her, a white phantom pacing restlessly. His eyes told her they had to stop again. Who knew she’d be so good at waiting?

“Okay, fella.”

Using the shovel, she banked the sled the best she could. Her mind conjured up a silly word problem: Wind + Cold = Dehydration. She nearly laughed; her dad would like it.

The dogs hunched their shoulders against the gusts. “We all need water,” Tatum mumbled to herself. She crouched beside the sled and reached inside, glad Bandit and her puppies were safely tucked in.

Tatum talked to Bandit as she searched blindly for bottles of fuel. Every one was empty. No way to heat water or thaw meat.
Why weren’t we rationing?

What could she burn? Meat had fat. Fat burned hot. But how could she light it without fuel, as if it was even possible to light a match in hurricane-force winds? She tried not to panic, but everything bad that had happened in the past five days had gotten worse, a lot worse, before it had gotten better.

Shielding her face, she got up and checked on the dogs. She staggered around until she’d touched all four lumps. Wolf was hardest to find, because he was off by himself. They’d forgotten about food and water, only caring about sleeping the storm away beneath insulated blankets of snow.

Tatum wormed her way into the sled and pulled the flap
over her head. She scooched down, struggling to take off her boots in the cramped space. Her socks were damp with sweat. “It’s a good thing we stopped.”

Bandit whined and nuzzled her affectionately.

She had to take off her gloves to put on dry socks. Her fingers turned to stone. She couldn’t feel her toes and kneaded them until they tingled. She swapped her parka for a heavy sweater. To kill time, she turned on her headlamp and picked ice off her face mask.

Then she scooted lower, listening to the wind batter the sled in secret code. If it had a message for her, she wasn’t receiving it. The wind would let up for a second, then come slamming back. She prayed it wouldn’t roll them over. Cole would be in his sled, just like this.

She turned off her light, fighting to stay awake. “Wait till Mom and Dad see the puppies,” she whispered to Bandit. She smiled inside, imagining the puppies big enough to roughhouse. “Beryl’s going to be so surprised.”

Tatum nodded off. She dreamed she was slapping her alarm clock. It woke her up. She turned on her light and checked her watch. They’d been holed up for about an hour. She loosened the flap and peeked out.

The wind was still whipping, but not as violently. High overhead, the sky had begun to show through the clouds. Wolf had coaxed the dogs to their feet. Tatum wasn’t sure they would run without eating first—but they’d starve if they stayed here.

She tugged on her boots and climbed from the sled. She had to trust Wolf’s nose to get them out of this mess. Still loose, he took his place in front. Alyeska, Wrangell, and
Denali glanced back. “Sorry,” Tatum said, knowing they wanted meat.

Wolf sniffed the wind, tossing his head. He barked an order. His tail went up and they dug in. The earlier winds had probably been more than seventy miles per hour, like the time she and her dad had gone out in a blizzard. Now the air barely moved. The sun burned bright.

Tatum traded goggles for sunglasses. “Come on, now! It can’t be far!” She prayed she was right.

Wolf ran with his head down, his ears forward. They dipped into a swale and threaded their way across a flat gully. The dogs ran and ran in the sun and calm air, over ice and soft snow. They ran without stopping, grateful for good weather.

Long into the afternoon Tatum thought she saw tracks. They seemed to appear from nowhere. Did she dare hope?

Wolf turned and looped back to her.

Tatum dropped the hook and walked forward. She blinked at the ruts in the snow, touching them gingerly. They were wider and deeper than those left by a sled. A snowmobile, she realized.

Tracks
.

They had to be real, because the dogs were in a frenzy.

The endless hours, endless miles, endless worry—impossible hummocks and half-frozen rivers—none of it had prepared Tatum for the sight of a single oil drum, rusted and lying on its side. A half mile later, she saw another one.

She counted seven drums before she spotted a pile of old tires and a beat-up snowmobile. The sight drove the dogs faster and faster. Wolf set a crazy pace. Tatum let him. She didn’t worry about them burning out, not if they were this close to the village.

Wolf’s going home
, she thought,
and my journey is finally coming to an end
.

Fog billowed from beyond a ridge. She looked again, realizing it was more than fog. Black smoke smudged the sky. Beautiful black smoke. Nothing had ever looked so good. Dirty smoke and muddy snow. Civilization!

The dogs gathered every morsel of strength they had left
and forged ahead with such speed the sled seemed to rise off the ground. Tatum hung on, laughing. “We really are flying!”

When they flew over a ridge the snow became even dirtier, more like frozen mud. Her runners caught on the hard clods. She heard herself gasp as a dozen frame houses came into view. The air was so clear they looked close enough to touch. And then, finally—the rest of Anvil. Grocery store. Church. Community center. Welding shop. Much like Wager.

Tatum thought she heard a bell. Of course! Kids going to school. It sounded like music. But the sun was on a downward path. No, it must be a dismissal bell. Yeah, kids getting out of school.

The dogs stopped, tongues hanging out. They stared at the village like they couldn’t believe it. She could hardly believe it herself. She stepped off the sled, speechless, and took it all in. She blinked at an elderly man leaving a house.