Slowly, she stepped back and let the antelope skins conceal her from view.
The clouds had filled the sky now, and the last of the daylight disappeared as she hurried to seek refuge in the ceremonial house, the town hall, as it were, of the Inuit people, where the villagers would traditionally come to sing and dance and perform their sacred rituals during the long, dark Arctic winters. It was a big, oval-shaped building, made from chunks of tundra and slabs of driftwood, knitted together with all sorts of skins and pelts, and the moment she ducked her head to enter the passageway that led to the narrow door—fashioned from what had once been the bottom of a kayak—she again heard noises. But not the sound of scavenging dogs this time. When she stood still, she heard a woman’s voice—faint and elderly—speaking in her native tongue.
She opened the door, which swung on a hinge made of caribou gut, and saw the old Inuit woman, short and squat, stirring a pot with a long ivory spoon. In the yellow glow of the fire, several children—their black eyes filled with grief—gathered around the old woman like bear cubs keeping close to their mother.
When Nika said, “Thank God some of you are still alive,” they all turned and stared at her as if she were a messenger from a foreign planet. Stone benches lined the walls, and the ceiling was hung with antlers and ornamental figures carved from whale baleen and walrus tusks. A totem pole, identical to the one in the center of Port Orlov, stood proud and tall as a mast at the far end of the lodge. Looking at its vivid colors and erect carriage, Nika was reminded of all that it represented, and felt a wave of shame. If she were given the chance, she resolved to do what she should have done long before.
“Nikaluk,” the old woman said in a weak but tender voice, “I knew you would come.” She had high, Asiatic cheekbones and her few remaining teeth were worn down to yellow nubs. “I knew it.”
If only Nika herself had been so sure. The flu had burned through her as it had burned through nearly everyone else, but somehow, she—like the children and the old people, whose frail bodies could not mount such an overwhelming, and self-destructive, resistance—had lived through it. Her chest, which had once felt like it was filled with smoldering coals, was cooler now. Her throat was no longer choked with a rising tide of her own blood. Her eyes, which had burned like shining pebbles on the beach, felt as if they had been bathed in a stream.
The old woman came toward her, the children clinging to her ragged skirts, and said, “You will save us.”
“Yes, yes,” Nika said, remembering her mission and slinging the knapsack off her shoulders. Quickly kneeling to undo the straps, she dug inside for the ampoules of serum … but to her horror they weren’t there. She dug deeper, but all she found inside was icicles, clattering like glass. How could she have been so deceived?
She had failed. At this, the most critical time, she had failed her people, and the shame, even greater now than it had been when she first saw the totem pole as it should have been, made her almost unable to look up into the old woman’s eyes.
But then she felt a hand on her head, like a benediction, and when she did look up, the old woman said, “You will save us,” and pressed something into Nika’s palm.
It was small and smooth, a piece of ivory, simply carved. In the flickering firelight, Nika saw that it was an owl, a guardian spirit of the Inuit people. Nika wasn’t sure if she should accept it—perhaps it was the only thing of value the old woman possessed—but she knew it would give offense if she tried to refuse it.
The old woman stroked Nika’s hair and smiled. A smile that reminded her of her own grandmother. Or, could it be … her own great-grandmother?
In that instant, Nika suddenly understood that she had not come to this place to give at all. She had come there to receive.
Bowing her head, she said, “I will try … I will try.”
But then, as if from the end of a long tunnel, she heard her name.
“Nika?”
This was not the old woman’s voice anymore, nor did she feel her hand on her hair. A white light suffused the room, a light too bright for her eyes, and a different hand—in a cool glove—was smoothing her brow.
“I will try,” she said one last time, before the old woman faded away, along with the children, the campfire, and the ancestral carvings hanging from the beams of the qarqui. The last thing to disappear was the grinning otter on the totem pole.
“Nika,” she heard again, and cracked her eyes open enough to see Frank, perched beside her bedside, surrounded by blinking screens and softly beeping monitors. “Nika,” he said, pulling off his visor and tossing it aside.
His cheeks, she could see, were wet with tears.