Snowblind

SNOWBLIND

Michael Abbadon

STORY MERCHANT BOOKS

BEVERLY HILLS

2012

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Abbadon All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

Story Merchant Books

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There is a wolf in me... fangs pointed for tearing gashes... a red tongue for raw meat... and the hot lapping of blood — I keep the wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

from
WILDERNESS
by Carl Sandburg

His mother saw him staring and turned her eyes away.

He could see she was afraid. Afraid of his hunger. Afraid of the wrath of the silver-bearded Father.

The night wind howled over the sod roof, moaned at the icy window. Three days had passed, and still the old man had not returned. They feared, again, he would come back with nothing. The traps had been covered in snow. They had no bait left — they had eaten everything.

On the table the sacred candle burned brightly. The candle could only be burned when the Book was being read. This was a Law of the Father. The Law could not be broken.

The eight-year-old boy read the Book aloud:

"What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment?"

The boy paused, gazed at the candle's dancing flame. The Father had said the words of the Book would fill his empty belly. If he did not learn them, he would not eat.

In his mind he repeated the words he had read.
What are human beings...

He looked down at his mother. She sat on the caribou rug, on the dirt floor, in the light of the flickering flame. Her dark skin glowed warmly, her hair hung black as night.

How could her belly grow so large when they had no food to eat?

The Father had taken her from an Inupiat village, on an island in the Arctic sea. She had long ago learned the language of the Book, but when the Father was out on the hunt, she would speak to herself in a tongue the boy did not understand. When he questioned her, she would point to the scar on her face, the scar from the Father's knife.

The boy was not allowed to know her words. The Book would tell him everything. The Book was all he would need.

He turned a page and read another passage.

"A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. Do you fix your eyes on such a one? Do you bring me into judgment with you?"

He paused again, gazed absently at the flame, his lips moving in silence. Still the hunger gnawed.

He looked again at his mother. She was stringing tiny blue snail shells on stiff threads of sinew. The shells would adorn the sackcloth doll that rested on her lap, a family heirloom whose ivory head had lost its amber eyes.

She noticed the boy staring. Again she looked away.

His hunger had turned on itself, clawing in his belly like a ravening wolf. He fed the wolf the words of the Book.

"Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who longs for death but it does not come, and digs for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?"

The boy stopped reading. He closed the Book. His pulse pounded, his hands trembled. The wolf would not be sated.

He stared until his mother finally looked at him.

For a long moment she peered into his eyes. Then she rose to her feet, holding her swollen belly, and went to the window. Out in the cold night, wind-blown ghosts of snow whirled over moonlit tundra.

Surely he would not return tonight.

She walked to the table, leaned over and blew out the candle. The sod house fell into darkness.

The boy waited anxiously.

His mother's hands were always warm. Even in the cold she wore no gloves. She held his face tenderly, then took his trembling hand and led him through the darkness of the room.

Faint gray moonlight fell across the bearskin bed. His mother lay on her side and pulled him down to her, speaking the strange, forbidden words.

She opened her dress, lifted out a pale, pendulous breast. His hands groped hungrily. He pressed his wet mouth to the dark aureole, his strong teeth seizing the nipple. The boy sucked ravenously. Soon, warm gorging milk flowed forth, bathing his tongue, filling his mouth, seeping out over his chin. He sucked the breast and lapped the milk, and held her body tight.

Minutes swiftly passed, the boy's hunger unrelenting. At last he pulled away, panting, his open mouth dripping spittle. Slowly, his languid eyes opened.

He froze, gaping into the morbid light of the moon.

"What is it, Job?" his mother asked. She turned to the icy window.

Outside, in the darkness, the Father stood staring, his starving eyes glaring like a wolf.

Sunlight flared off the glistening snow, blinding her path to the turn. For a flashing moment, fourteen-year-old Kris Carlson couldn't see the flag. She cut too late, displacing snow instead of arcing the curve, and for a few frightening seconds lost her balance, nearly spilling over the icy curl. She recovered quickly into the flat, her new stiffer skis gaining speed and stability for the run into the next turn. With luck, she'd pick up the lost seconds in the final sprint. She'd have to. Six points behind the fifteen-year-old downhill leader, Claudia Lund, she couldn't afford another mistake.

The next turn, even tighter than the last, glittered with surface ice, sheered to a sheen. Kris leaned deep into the arc, adjusting her radius in the middle of the turn with a subtle twist of her ankles. Her shoulder banged the flagpole as she cleared the twist, hopping into a quick series of steep moguls, her knees bobbing like a set of springs.

Final turn. She knew this one, she'd skied it in her mind a hundred times. She heard her father's voice: "Load the tail, skid the shovel." There was a fine line between going all out and not making any mistakes. It was a line she'd have to cross. She banked full speed into the long turn, loading up her tail, building critical power for the final sprint.

Kris shot out of the turn at record speed. The crowd roared — she had it locked. Soaring into the final run, she hugged her knees and schussed for the finish.

A grin grew across her face. Her dad would be at the bottom. He was always there, waiting for her.

She wanted nothing more than to make him smile.

*  *  *

The old moose trickled a bright red trail of blood in the snow. Hunks of flesh had been torn from its body, its matted fur glistened with sweat. It lumbered into the narrow ravine, tottering, weaving, out of breath, stopping at last at the frozen bank of the surging Sawtooth River.

Ice floes churned and heaved in the current with a roar like muffled thunder. The moose drew a kind of power from the sound, the vibrations rising up through the animal's trembling limbs. The surge of strength suffused its body, steeling the beast for battle. The regal moose raised its crown and turned to face the wolves.

Loping lightly over the shelf ice at the shore, the five silver, silken hunters quickly circled their prey. They snarled, salivating, growling guttural and wild. The moose whirled, stumbling, its labored breath trailing dragon clouds of fog. They had circled before, and the bull had escaped. Now they were closing in for the kill.

The dark-eyed lead wolf lunged, tearing a gash in the great beast's rump. Another seized its leg, its razor fangs cutting deep. The moose groaned and scooped its towering head, impaling the animal in its tangled rack. The wolf yelped, staggered back. The moose charged, stomping, its pounding hooves crushing the cowering wolf's ribs.

The pack backed off. The wolf was dead. The moose trotted off up the frozen shore.

Snow fell softly in the windless ravine. Ahead, high above the rumbling Sawtooth, a black wooden bridge spanned the gorge. The moose clambered up the craggy slope as the wolves resumed their hunt.

*  *  *

Kris was traveling with her father and her seven-year-old brother, Paul, in her father's red Chevy pick-up, coming down through the mountains from Garrison Pass. Her new skis rattled in the bed of the truck. Kris had kept on her lilac snowsuit, zippered to the neck; her black hair hung straight to her shoulders, her bright blue eyes were smiling. She had won the Women's Junior Downhill race, first place in the girls' twelve-to-fifteen year age bracket, setting a personal best on the half-mile course down the north slope of Dome Mountain. The ski resort, on the edge of the Alaska Range, fifty miles from their home in Healy, always held the first downhill races of the Spring season. Kris was already looking forward to the next. She had her eye on the Alaska Alpine Championships.

"Dad? Do you think Mom will come to the Winterhaven trials?"

Her father studied the oncoming road through the falling veil of snow. "She won't want to miss it, Sweety. Not after we show her what you won today."

Paul sat between them, twisting the trophy in his small hands, trying to unscrew the tiny gold skier from the mount.

"Pauly!" cried Kris, pulling the trophy away from him.

"It's a boy, it's not a girl," he said.

Kris examined the figure. "You can't tell," she said.

"I can tell," said Paul.

Kris ruffled his hair with her hand. He grabbed her wrist, pretended to bite it, growling. Kris tickled him.

"No no no!" he shouted, squealing with laughter.

Kris turned back to the road, a smile on her face. A black bridge appeared through the falling snow.

"The 'woo' bridge!" Kris exclaimed.

"'Woo' bridge!" echoed Pauly.

The truck rolled onto the bridge, and a resonant "woo" sound rose up from the tires. All three passengers grinned, staring into the white wall of snow as the deep bellow of the bridge filled their ears.

Then the blood drained from their faces.

The colossal moose came charging out of the whiteness directly toward them. Kris's father instinctively slammed the brakes and pulled the wheel. The truck careened across the bridge, just missing the bloody, frothing bull, sliding past it through a madhouse of leaping wolves. He hammered the brake, but the ice had them. They continued to slide, smashing through the guardrail and out over the gorge.

Kris screamed, a high shrill scream of unblinking terror, as they dropped through the air toward the river of ice.

The truck pierced the tumbling floes with a bone-crunching jolt. Kris's head bounced against the dash, her body flung wildly as the seatbelt grabbed. She glimpsed her father's bloody, vacant face as the truck plunged headlong into the frigid water. They plummeted swiftly, sinking in the current, the cab raging with the inflowing torrent.

Paul screamed and gurgled as the water engulfed him. Her father tossed about, limp and unconscious. Kris tore at her seatbelt. The water rose quickly to her chest, neck, chin, mouth —

She was underwater, the truck tumbling in the current. The snowsuit miraculously kept her from freezing. Feeling blindly, she found the buckle, unlatched her seatbelt. Pauly clawed at her side. She opened her eyes to see him, and the frozen water clamped her eyeballs with icy talons. She saw her brother thrashing in the glacial murk. She reached for him, fought to undo his seatbelt. Her eyes went gelid, seared with the cold. She undid the belt, then turned, grabbed for the door handle. The door was jammed. She yanked on the lever, it wouldn't budge. The window crank, too, was stuck. The door had been crushed when they'd broken through the rail.

Kris's lungs burned. Her vision darkened.

Out of the dark came a glimmer of gold. She grabbed the trophy, slammed it against her window. Once. Twice. The third time the window shattered. She scrambled out quickly, shards of glass tearing her snowsuit, frozen fingers of water gripping her. She reached back through the window for Paul.

He was gone.

She peered into the murk, her eyes stinging, the icy water clawing her corneas. Groping wildly, she could not reach her brother.

Kris was out of breath.

She pushed away from the truck, pulled frantically for the surface, ramming hard into a ceiling of ice. Unable to see, she groped along, feeling for a gap. Her hands fell on the snaking roots of a tree trunk. She climbed the roots, an ice floe pounding at her back. At last she emerged from the teeth of the river, gasping, coughing, screaming for air. She crawled off the log onto the broad snow surface of a massive floe.

Pitch-black night had fallen in the middle of the day. Kris could not see — her eyeballs had been frozen into rocks by the cold. With a violent shiver, she collapsed, and the raging Sawtooth carried her away.

Two hours later, in the river town of White Circle, Kris Carlson's body was hauled from the ice.