The Raven's Gift

Early praise for
The Raven’s Gift

“Rearden’s fresh, new voice is a kaleidoscope of cultural collision and the astonishing landscape of the heart.”

—Ron Spatz, Editor,
Alaska Quarterly Review

“A many-layered Alaskan intrigue which is gritty and engaging and an absolutely good read … all in a world, that Alaskan world—which I could believe.”

—Ron Carlson, author of
The Speed of Light
,

Five Skies
, and
News of the World

“Don Rearden’s writing is captivating and new. This is a writer who has many books in him. I predict he will be widely read, well respected, and greatly admired.”

—Jo-Ann Mapson, author of bestselling novels

Bad Girl Creek, The Wilder Sisters, and Hank
and
Chloe

“Take a remote Alaskan village, add a dedicated teacher, toss in a plague.
The Raven’s Gift
is a page turner with a message: We Alaskans are lost if we cannot find our own way.”

—Bill Streever, author of
Cold:

Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places

“In
The Raven’s Gift
, Don Rearden has created a kind of allegory for a people and place at risk, a generous and honest portrait of Yup’ik communities. His Alaska is one you won’t yet have seen.”

David Vann, author of bestselling novels

Legend of a Suicide
and
A Mile Down

PENGUIN CANADA

THE RAVEN’S GIFT

DON REARDEN grew up on the tundra of Southwestern Alaska. He is a produced screenwriter, a published poet, and assistant professor of Developmental Studies at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he shows young writers how to develop their creative voices. His experiences with the Yup’ik Eskimo culture shape his writing, and he considers the Alaskan wilderness a major influence in his work.

The

RAVEN’S

Gift

Don Rearden

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 2011

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Copyright © Don Rearden, 2011

The excerpt on page 1 is from
Intellectual Culture of the Copper Eskimos
by Knud Rasmussen, published by Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1932.

The excerpts on pages 3, 115, and 201 are from
The Eskimo About Bering Strait
by Edward Nelson, published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1899, 19 83.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Rearden, Don

The raven’s gift / Don Rearden.

ISBN 978-0-14-317333-5

I. Title.

PS3618.E32R38 2011     813’.6     C2010-905204-8

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see
www.penguin.ca/corporatesales
or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477 or 2474

For Dan and the Real People of the Kuskokwim River and of course for you, Annette

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have dreamt of the day I would write these words since
ellangellemni
, since I became aware that writing and stories would forever be a part of my life. And since this has been such a long dream in the making there are too many people to thank, and for that very fact I am so grateful.

Still, I must name a few important souls.

First I must thank the Yup’ik elders, tradition bearers, and families I have learned so much from, including the late George and Martha Keene, Dr. Oscar Kawagley, the Slims, Moseses, Ivans, Angstmans, Lincolns, Hoovers, Hoffmans, and Morgans (to name just a few).

Quyana to “Mikngayaq” Selena Malone for her photography skills and Yup’ik spelling assistance, and to “Piunriq” for always finding the right answers.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Yup’ik scholars and anthropologists Ann Fienup-Riordan, Alice Rearden, and Marie Meade. Without their work and the work of so many others dedicated to recording the elders’ wisdom, too much would have already been lost.

To all those haunted by the initial drafts of this novel, I thank you for the advice, criticism, and optimism. Special thanks to Shane Castle, for the incredible insight and calling me dirty names on that first copy of the manuscript. To Ben Kuntz for the killer notes and for not letting me end the story a little past Haroldsen’s. To Helena for her unending optimism and enthusiasm. To Sarah for catching, so, many,
comma, errors. To Shannon for coffee walks, Arctic whaling, and zany poetic distractions.

I have had some incredible teachers along the way. I’d like to thank Ronald Spatz for pushing me and for teaching me to slow down. A heartfelt thanks goes to Sherry Simpson and Jo-Ann Mapson for always caring and always believing in my work.

Thanks to Jodi Picoult for the advice and for insisting I direct my writing efforts toward the novel.

Of course this manuscript would have died a quiet digital death in some file on my laptop if not for my amazing agents. So I offer a huge thanks to Adam Chromy for all his effort and expert advice and to Danny Baror for helping me catch a penguin and making this dream a reality.

And to Adrienne Kerr, my editor extraordinaire, writers dream of having an editor like you who understands and shares their vision. I can’t thank you enough for your guidance and your faith in this story.

Thanks to Daniel Quinn for being my coach and for daring to save the world with
Ishmael
. With this story, I am doing my best to become
B
.

To my amazing family and to Annette, thank you for never doubting me.

Finally,
quyana
to the people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta for sharing with me the way of the human being.

PROLOGUE

Don’t you hear the noise? It swishes like the beating of the wings of great birds in the air. It is the fear of naked people, it is the flight of naked people! The weather spirit is blowing the storm out, the weather spirit is driving the weeping snow away over the earth, and the helpless storm-child … Don’t you hear the weeping of the child in the howling wind?

—BALEEN, COPPER ESKIMO SHAMAN, 1920s

PART I

The

Bones

of the

Mammoth

The bones of the mammoth are found on the coast country of the Bering Sea and the adjacent interior … the creature is claimed to live underground, where it burrows from place to place, and when by accident one of them comes to the surface, so that even if the tip of its nose appears above the ground and breathes the air, it dies at once
.

—AS RECORDED BY EDWARD NELSON, 1899

   1   

H
e crawled on his stomach through the snowdrift and lifted his head over the edge of the riverbank, just enough to see the first few houses, charred black and dislodged from the wood blocks and tall steel pilings meant to hold them off the tundra’s permafrost. Below the bank, the girl sat in a plastic orange toboggan, waiting. Her eyes stared back at him as white as the wisps of snow covering the thin river ice beneath her.

“They’re all gone here, too?” she asked.

He stopped short of shaking his head and half slid down the hard frozen embankment, holding the rifle on his lap.

“I’m going to check it out,” he replied. “Maybe stay for a few nights and rest. Let the ice firm up. Find shelter. Hopefully something to eat.”

She pointed her brown fur mitten upstream. “The riverbank is not so steep a little ways up. You can pull me up there. By the school,” she said, and then asked, “Are there any more tracks?”

He surveyed the light blanket of white covering the river, searching for the two strange snakelike lines he’d encountered at the river’s edge three days earlier. “No,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I don’t like those tracks.”

“Me either.”

He reached down, wrapped the yellow rope around his waist and began pulling her up the river of ice. His feet were numb with cold. He slipped with each step, the fresh snow making the going slick and
dangerous. He knew better than to be walking on the river ice so early, but they had to keep travelling. They had to beat the colder weather on the way, and he didn’t feel safe if they weren’t moving.

“Do you see the graves yet?” she asked.

He did. High up on the river’s bank a cluster of leaning and listing white wooden crosses poked out from the long straw-coloured grass that the snow hadn’t completely covered.

“That’s where you can pull me up,” she whispered, “between the graveyard and the school.” She turned her head away from the village, as if she could see the sweeping flat expanse of white nothing. “You know, I never liked coming to Kuigpak, for basketball games, or for anything, really. Even now, I don’t like it.”