And he believed it. The lights were like a celestial staircase, and he could envision the old woman—Anastasia, Grand Duchess of All the Russias—climbing the steps at long last.
He could see other things, too. He could see himself remaining in this place, with Nika forever at his side, and running the medical clinic that the town so desperately needed. For too long, he had tried to save the world. Now he would concentrate on saving just this tiny, much-overlooked part of it.
When the lights went out, snuffed like a candle, and Nika turned her head in the darkness, he bent down and kissed her. All the words he’d meant to say evaporated, all his questions were answered. There was no need to speak at all.
And even the wolves, he noted, had gone silent. Apart from the cry of a hawk, soaring overhead but impossible to discern in the night sky, there was nothing but the empty and incessant howling of the wind.
Still holding his hand, Nika started back down the pier, but Slater stopped a few seconds later and said, “I just have one thing to do.”
Nika, though curious, stayed where she was as he reached into his pocket for the emerald cross and returned to the end of the dock.
The hawk, still crying, swooped past the dock, some wriggling prey clutched in its talons.
Nika saw him raise his arm, and heard a distant splash, and when he came back to her, she didn’t ask him what he’d done. She didn’t have to.
The lights in town flickered back on, and arm in arm, they walked toward home together … as the hawk settled into its perch atop the Yardarm. There, it went about devouring its hard-won meal—a tiny white mouse, with an orange stain on its back and tail.
Afterword
As some readers may have noticed, certain authorial liberties have been taken with the Alaskan backdrop of this story. For instance, you won’t find on any map St. Peter’s Island, the town of Port Orlov, or a road leading directly from the northwest coast into the city of Nome. Consider the road my gift to the citizens of Alaska.
And while I’m here, I would like to take a moment to thank my indefatigable editor, Anne Groell, and my faithful agent, Cynthia Manson, for all their help with this book. As any author knows, writing a novel is a long journey, and it’s nice to have such wonderful company along the way.