Anna, Like Thunder

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

To night, we’re split up. Nikolai Isaakovich and the crew remain in this toyon’s house while Maria and I are sent to a different house to sleep. We’re like spinster sisters once again sharing a mat and some bedclothes. When I lie down, thoughts whirl around my head like untethered shadows. The decision I made on the riverbank seemed so clear, but in the dark, where not even the stars can reach, it’s transformed into a restless spirit that won’t let me alone.

When Maria settles herself, her silence is too much.

“Joining Makee is our only choice,” I say. “You see that, don’t you?”

She doesn’t budge, and I think she’s already asleep. But then she mutters, “I see everything—and nothing.”

“That’s impossible. You can’t.”

“No? Well, I’m too old to do otherwise.”

“Well, I believe Makee,” I insist.

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am. He’s going to get us home.” My decision is sound and well-considered. The prisoners were released—Makee’s sister is free—and we’re going home as soon as a ship arrives. Eventually Nikolai Isaakovich will agree. “I just don’t know how to make my husband understand. He’s so stubborn.”

She’s quiet for so long I wonder if she’s fallen asleep. Then she murmurs, “You seem so certain. Perhaps he doesn’t share that. Perhaps he thinks you’re not seeing the whole picture.”

“What picture? Without Makee, our situation is hopeless.”

If only she would offer some reassurance, perhaps I could rest. I lie still, waiting for a sign. But all I detect from her side of the mat is her breath, so slow and measured. Finally, she speaks. “You say joining that toyon is the only choice. And you might be right. But why are you surprised your husband doesn’t see it that way? Surely he’s ashamed that his own wife forced him to give up command. And perhaps he’s worried about the ones who didn’t surrender. Is your decision going to help them?”

“You don’t know my husband,” I cry. “You don’t know anything about what he thinks and how he feels.”

“Then what about that toyon? He doesn’t seem very happy with you either.”

After she’s spoken, I feel even more confused. Try as I might, sleep evades me all night.

I’m awake in the morning before everyone else, and when I go out to relieve myself, no one follows. After I finish, instead of going back inside, I walk along the river’s edge toward the sea. The sky is clear, and the western horizon indigo blue. As the sun rises, my shadow is thrown out before me, tall and rippling over uneven ground as I walk. It’s like I’m breaking apart.

At the river’s mouth, the sea glitters where the early morning sun reaches it. The waves rise and tumble over themselves, drawing white, lacy lines along the water’s surface. The sea is calm today but, even so, it never rests.

I stop beside several pools of water that have collected at the base of a rock carved smooth by the waves. In one pool, purple and pink sea stars are wedged together, their arms clinging to one another and the rock. Waves wash over them, bathing them in salt water. I climb the rock. An eagle flies into view, swoops over the sea, wings yawning. With a flap and a pivot, it lifts itself and sails over my head, drawing a wide arc that leads it back over the forest and out of view.

I imagine it’s going home.

After Maria and I eat, we’re called to the water’s edge where the canoes sit. My husband huddles with the rest of the Russians. They’re like moths gathered around a lamp. My husband raises his eyes as I approach, and glowers.

Makee speaks quietly with our hosts and does not look at me.

Then, the moustached toyon declares, “Liátsal ax^wό xabá. Watalik ti asostoό,”[38] and Makee’s people move toward the canoes.

No journey ever begins, and no visit ever ends without singing. An older man on the beach delivers a line, everyone responds, and then he sings another. Back and forth, they’re like priest and congregation during Mass. We stand at the edge of the water, where land, river, and sea all meet, but I imagine I smell incense and feel the chill of old stone just as I would if I were in Vladimirskiy Cathedral on a winter day.

Maria lightly touches my shoulder. “You’re going now,” she says.

“Back to Tsoo-yess,” I say. “Aren’t you coming?”

“No. I’ll stay here. I won’t see you until next time.”

I turn my back to the people boarding the canoes. I close myself from the music and the sea and face only Maria. Trying to understand what she means by “next time” is like trying to imagine a Sunday afternoon at home with my parents in Petersburg.

“No. We’re not leaving you here,” I say.

She embraces me. “You’ll need the forbearance of the old trees,” she murmurs and then releases me with a decisive push. When she does, I realize she really is staying.

“We’ll be back,” I promise. “We’ll be back for you.”

“The koliuzhi are waiting.”

I climb into the canoe to which they direct me. It’s not Makee’s. His is already well into the channel, and paddlers are pulling against the surf and inching the vessel to sea. My husband, Timofei Osipovich, and the rest of the surrendered crew are in that canoe, too.

Into the mouth of the river the singing follows us, strong as the sea and the wind, as if it, too, will help carry us home. I wave for as long as I can see Maria on the shore. She does not wave back, but she remains until we pass beyond the headland and I can no longer see her.

As we disembark at Tsoo-yess, we’re received into song. Women, children, and men have gathered on the beach to welcome us home. Others are drumming on the rooftops, the thunderous sound shaking the ground beneath our feet. White down that, from a distance, looked like snow has been strewn plentifully for our arrival.

“Wacush! Wacush!” the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts cry.

The festivities that mark our return spin around us like a whirlwind crossing a field of dry grass. The gulls shriek, disrupted by our arrival. In the chaos, my husband is nudged over until he’s at my side. “How was your journey?” I ask. He looks me up and down before allowing himself to be swept back up into the throng.

Makee’s family has prepared a feast—fresh halibut and clams and roasted potatoes. Everyone’s wearing their finest clothing and jewellery. Makee’s wife wears a white dress with a beaded bodice—korolki in the pattern of a star. Inessa has a woven band of bark around her head and a new fringed and beaded belt around her waist. She smiles when she sees me, but immediately turns back to her work.

Hours later, everyone retires for the night. In my old corner, I lay out a new, larger mat that will accommodate me and Nikolai Isaakovich. The cedar mat walls are erected around the house, and the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts settle. The edges of the bedclothes of the people I can see are illuminated by light from the dying embers. Conversations are muted, children are hushed, and even though he’s turned away from me, I wait for my husband to say something.

When I can wait no longer, I say in a low voice, “You’ve misunderstood. You don’t know my side of it.”

He burns with rage—I can feel it—but he says nothing.

“Makee is going to save us.”

Tension presses against the edges of our contained space.

“Kolya, there are two ships on the coast. Two European ships. The koliuzhi have seen them. They could arrive any day now.”

My husband rolls over and thrusts his face close to mine. His breath is sharp, like rusty metal. “Anna Petrovna, there are no ships. That’s why the Tsar sent us. So we’d be first.”

“But the koliuzhi saw them.”

“And have you?”

Grey sea, grey sky, a grey horizon, all merged together, one single flat expanse that stretches as far as the eye is permitted to go—that’s all I’ve seen offshore. The only two ships I have any certainty about are the Sviatoi Nikolai and the Kad’iak—they’re ours—and one is wrecked.

“A ship will come. Makee promised we’ll be rescued.”

“Rescued? We’re slaves. Thanks to you,” he says in a voice too loud for this quiet house.

He doesn’t realize what he’s saying. What he knows of slavery and the serfs is what happens in Russia and in Russian America. He’s not given the koliuzhi a chance. Besides, we’re going home.

The fire pops.

“Kolya, please,” I say softly. “You don’t understand. Makee already arranged the rescue of an American. He told me all about it.” I remember the metal cheetoolth, and his sister’s silver comb. “He’ll do the same for us.”

“How dangerous of you to believe a toyon who calls himself Poppy Seed.”

“Makee’s virtuous—and kind—and there’s plenty to eat. There are cabbages here, Kolya. Cabbages!”

“You would value our freedom less than a cabbage?”

“And you would value mine less than four muskets?” He seems to have forgotten the botched rescue on the riverbank, the intractability of the crew, and his own failure to take command.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve betrayed not only me but the entire empire. We’re doomed because of you.”

But he’s wrong. We were doomed from the moment the Sviatoi Nikolai ran aground. Good fortune has allowed us to make it this far, and now there’s a way out. Why can’t my husband see the truth?

“Kolya, please stop quarreling. It gets us nowhere. We have to be strong and stay together.” I lift my hand and though he flinches, he lets me touch his face. With my thumb, I caress his cheek, what little of it shows through the even wilder tangle of his overgrown beard.

His eyes grow wide. I understand his apprehension. But when he gives Makee a chance, he’ll see. Nikolai Isaakovich is an enlightened man, capable of acting practically and decisively. He will see the sense of our surrender.

Suddenly, he grabs my hand. He squeezes hard.

“Anya,” he murmurs. The sharp odour of sweat wafts out from his armpit. He kisses the tips of my fingers. “I’ve missed you. You don’t know.”

“No, Kolya.” Even though the mats are up and the fire burns low, there’s enough light to put us on display. “We can’t. Not here.”

“If not here—then where? I can’t live without you anymore.” He slides closer and brings his lips to mine.

I turn my head. “But everyone will hear.”

“We’ll be quiet.” He slides his lips down to my throat. The sound of the kiss he places there fills this quieted house.

I refused him that night in the tent in the forest, and I was successful only because he fell asleep. What’s to be done this time?

“Kolya—I love you—but—”

He lays his fingers on my lips, then brings his mouth to my ear and moans softly. “I love you, too, Annichka, you can’t imagine—”

He wraps his arm around my hips jerking me to his groin like I’m nothing more than a feather pillow.

“Please. I’m too tired,” I whisper. “Tomorrow.”

“No—today—right now—”

I could push him away now my hands are free. But I don’t. Instead, I wrap my arms around him and hold on. I hold on not because my heart is in it. I hold on and pray that God may help him to lower his voice and that I’ll have the strength to show my face in this house tomorrow morning. I hold on because if this passion is the form his forgiveness has taken, then it would be a mistake to push him away.

It hurts when he enters me. But not as much as it would hurt if I had to tolerate more of his punishing silence.

In the morning, Inessa comes to the edge of our cedar mat and stands a respectable distance away. A basket dangles from her shoulder, but I don’t want to go. I look away. Inessa hovers in silence.

“I’ll come back soon,” I finally say to Nikolai Isaakovich. He grunts. Last night has, I hope, brought us closer to a resolution of our differences.

Outside, Inessa gives me the basket. I follow her, and she stops at another house where she gets her own basket, and, for the first time, another girl joins us. She’s no older than me or Inessa. Her cedar bark dress has long fringes that reach just below her knees. She tilts her head as she looks at me, then says something to Inessa, who responds briefly.

Then we head down the trail that leads to the sea.

All the way along the path, the girls talk and laugh. I don’t know what they’re saying but I think the new girl is teasing Inessa. She says something, Inessa cries out in horror, and the new girl shrieks with laughter and runs away. Inessa chases her, waving her basket high and wide as though she intends to hit her. I follow them but, since I soon lose sight of them, I don’t know how their joking ends.

The path turns, and around the corner I see them again. They’ve stopped next to a tree trunk. They’re picking off the gum, putting it in their mouths and chewing. When I draw close, Inessa says, “ku·, yaii·k aitbis.”[39]

She offers me a golden dollop. Gum is already smeared over her knuckles and the little scar on her hand.

I take it from her. It’s very sticky and covered with bits of bark and a fly. She says something and gestures for me to put it in my mouth. I dig out the fly and flick it away, but I can’t do anything about the bits of bark.

The gum tastes like the smell of the tree itself, like medicine, like a certain tea one of my mother’s elderly friends used to drink in the winter. It’s all crumbly but after only a moment, it turns soft and starts to stick to my teeth. I poke it with my tongue and suck using my cheeks. Inessa and the other woman laugh at the funny expressions I’m making.

But they’re no different. They open their mouths to show each other, and then urge me to open mine. The gum is stuck to all our teeth. I laugh, too. With our mouths gaping open, we look like a nest of baby birds.

We take our baskets and continue down the trail, each of us sucking at our teeth.

We go much farther than I’ve ever been along this trail and finally take an abrupt turn and emerge from the trees onto a shoreline I’ve never seen before. It’s rugged here, and much wilder than the coast near our houses. Tangled ropes of kelp are strewn about the slender beach that’s covered with small stones the size of quail eggs. At one end, there’s a reddish-brown headland with the sea churning at its base. At the other end, there’s a smooth rock that bulges up out of the beach.

The girls throw their baskets down and run along the shore, kicking water at each other. Their shrieks rise over the sound of the sea. Seabirds float nervously offshore and watch them. Then, as abruptly as it began, their game ends. Panting and smiling, they lead me to the end of the beach where the bulging rock lies. A gull, startled by our approach, takes flight and disappears into the grey. The girls remove tools from the bottom of their baskets—some sharp, others blunt—and then they point. We’re here for mussels.

cries the girl and waves her hand across the rocks.

“Kluchab,” I repeat their word for mussels. They both laugh and Inessa nudges the girl with her shoulder. The girl beams. “Kluchab!” I cry and nod my head. They look pleased with me.

We clamber over and around the rock, collecting some large mussels, some small ones, but never stripping a patch bare. I watch them. They mostly don’t use the tools. There’s a way of twisting the shells that makes them snap right off, and I try it too.

After managing a few mussels, I cut myself. Despite all the work I’ve done with Inessa, my hands are still too soft.

What have I done with my hands all my life? There were the years of writing and reading at my father’s side. The telescopes and the infinitesimally small moves needed to focus them. There was the needlework. Washing and beautifying myself. Eating. I’d held hands in a dance. Rubbed balm into them to keep them soft. I’d cut my fingers from time to time on sharp edges and thorns I didn’t expect to encounter. My hands could tell a story of a life filled with pleasure and indulgence.

The white scar on Inessa’s hand has stood out for me ever since the first time I met her. I’d felt sorry for her, as I knew how carefully all girls try to maintain a flawless appearance. But perhaps her scar, that perfectly shaped crescent moon, as pale against her skin as the real moon is in the night sky, might be an indication of her physical strength and evidence of all the things she’s done with her hands during her lifetime. Perhaps her scar is precious to her. Perhaps she pities me my hands and the small, cramped life they reveal.

We leave many mussels behind, and yet we easily fill all three baskets. They help me once their own are filled. Then, it’s time to head home. They slide the baskets onto their backs and slip the bands over their heads. I try to do the same, but because my basket is much heavier than I expect, it spills. The mussels clatter onto the stones, the entire morning’s work lost among small rocks. Inessa and the other girl laugh, but they help pick up all the mussels, and then hold the basket on my back while I slip the band over my forehead.

When we reach the houses, I follow the girls down to the sea. We place our three baskets in sheltered waters near the shore, immersing the mussels. The baskets lean together. We bring some of what we collected to the women crouched over the cooking boxes. Perhaps for supper I’ll get a taste. Perhaps by supper, the last of the tree gum will have dissolved from my teeth.

Nikolai Isaakovich returns to the house long after I’ve come back. His hair is straggly, his cheeks ruddy, and he smells of the ocean.

“They took us to hunt seals,” he says. “You can’t imagine how many were in the cove—floating, swimming, sleeping on the rocks—they were everywhere.”

“Did you catch many?”

“My God, you could almost pluck them from the sea like they were pansies. They tied their canoes to the kelp, right in the middle of a herd. All we had to do was lean over the gunwales. They wouldn’t let us use the harpoons, but they sure were happy we were there to help lift the carcasses into the canoes.

“Anya—a child—a little boy—he killed the fattest seal I’ve ever seen in my life. Just like that.” He snaps his fingers and lowers his voice. “If the chief manager could see it. He’d have a schooner here in a fortnight and we’d fill its hold in even less time. The koliuzhi can only take a fraction of what’s available. They don’t realize what they’ve got.”

Don’t they? I think of Nikolai Isaakovich’s seals—and of the number of mussels we left behind. What would happen if the schooners were to come? This is what the Imperial Decree tells us is our purpose. We’d become rich. We’d give the koliuzhi a fair trade—beads and cloth and iron tools and perhaps even a few muskets. What then?

Everyone thought sea otters were as countless as the stars. All along the coast that stretches from Russia to Novo-Arkhangelsk, they certainly seemed to be; then they disappeared from around Petropavlovsk. Next, they vanished from Kad’iak and all the other tiny islands. They’re almost impossible to find along the shores around Novo-Arkhangelsk. Our own mission is to discover the next place where they’re still to be found in abundance—and to take them before that place is as bereft of sea otters as the rest of the coast has become.

Would it be any different with the seals? The mussels? If the schooners were to come as my husband imagines, what would the koliuzhi do? Where would they get the shells and teeth and claws and whiskers and skins and stomachs and intestines—to make their knives and tools and bladders to store the oil and floats for whaling and blankets and clothing? What would they eat instead? And what would happen when the schooners come back for that, too?

When I make our bed at night and lie next to my husband, who falls asleep easily, my thoughts weave back and forth, constructing a useless garment that fits no one.

During the night, the rain starts and when we wake in the morning, it’s thundering on the roof. Whoever ventures out, even for a moment, returns soaked, and when I go out to relieve myself, I also return cold and wet as a farmyard hen. I remove my cedar cape and lay it out to dry.

I join my husband, who sits near the fire and stares deeply into the small flames. Many of the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts also huddle around the fires, talking softly, sewing, making baskets, weaving, braiding cordage, waiting for the deluge to pass.

Timofei Osipovich, Kozma Ovchinnikov, my husband, and I sit together near the fire.

“It’s terrible out there,” I say. “I hope the others aren’t wandering around in this.”

“They should have listened to Timofei Osipovich and come with us,” Ovchinnikov says.

Timofei Osipovich laughs, pleased with Ovchinnikov’s continuing fidelity. “They’ll surrender,” he says, “soon enough.” He looks smug and so certain that I almost expect him to crow. He doesn’t add that he wouldn’t be here, warm and sheltered from the rain, if it weren’t for me.

“Maybe they found another cave,” my husband says. “For their sakes, I hope so.”

I imagine the crew, how wet and dejected they must be if all they’ve got to protect them are the tents made of sails. Even if they’ve found a cave, they must be miserable.

Ovchinnikov pushes a piece of wood deeper into the fire with his toe. He still has his boots. “What happened to old Yakov?” he says quietly, without meeting my eye.

I forgot—how could he know? He has no idea what’s happened to us these past weeks. “I think he’s all right. Maria told me he’s back with the koliuzhi on the river—the Chalats—the ones who took us prisoner.”

“Savages,” my husband mutters.

“And Filip Kotelnikov?” Ovchinnikov asks.

“The apprentice is gone. But he’s probably fine. Makee told me they sent him south to live with some other koliuzhi. They’re Cathlamets, I think he said.”

Timofei Osipovich nods. “Good people. He’s lucky.”

“He hates the koliuzhi,” I say. The wind gusts and something outside bangs loudly on the roof. Two young men near the door slide beneath the mat that’s covering the opening and go out to look.

I ask nervously, “What about everyone else? After that battle…”

Ovchinnikov folds his hands and drops his head so low, his hair casts thick shadows over the little of his face that’s normally visible.

“We fared well,” Timofei Osipovich says. “We lost only one.”

I whisper, “One? Who?”

“Main Rigger Khariton Sobachnikov. God rest his soul.” He blesses himself. “An arrow pierced his chest.”

There are footsteps and banging overhead. They’re fixing the roof in the storm.

I hold my silver cross. I think about all the evenings I spent together with Sobachnikov on the deck of the brig. Together and not together. How he always let me do my work in peace. How he brought my telescope to shore and didn’t let a drop of water touch it. “How can that be true?” I say finally.

“We had to leave his body on the riverbank,” Timofei Osipovich says. “It was too dangerous to go back for it.”

The grey-brown mound. The hungry crows crawling over it, pecking at it, sailing overhead with strips of flesh swinging from their beaks. The stench, the repellent, pervasive stink of death left to the scavengers of the natural world to clean up. It was Sobachnikov. Ovchinnikov steals a glance at my husband, then Timofei Osipovich. My husband opens his mouth to speak, then thinks better of it.

“What? What is it?” I ask. “You must tell me!”

“Anya—” my husband says. “He was killed going back to get the bundle that had your telescope in it.”

“What?”

“I told him to leave it. But he wouldn’t listen. He didn’t want to break his promise.”

I crush my face in my hands and press until I think a bone will break, a bone must break. He should have broken that promise. He had nothing to fear. Everybody saw how vicious that battle was; every man did what he could. Who would find fault with him? There must be some restitution for Sobachnikov’s senseless death. Where is justice? My telescope is gone and so is my star log. But they’re not enough.

We must withstand this ordeal. We must endure in memory of Khariton Sobachnikov. We must not let his death be in vain. By the side of this fire, with the heavens opening overhead, I press my hand into my silver cross and vow to do whatever is necessary for us to survive and make it home.

“Anna? Please come,” says Makee, in the afternoon, the rain still pounding on the roof. He’s on the bench at his end of the house with the three men with whom he often confers. His metal cheetoolth is cradled in his hands. We’ve not spoken since his sister’s been freed, and I dread this moment.

My husband glares at Makee and starts to rise. Timofei Osipovich looks at my face, then places a hand on my husband’s arm and shakes his head in warning.

I cross the floor. It takes forever. When I arrive and stand before him, I feel like a child. He must think less of me. The only question is: How much less?

“Is your sister well?” I begin.

“Yes, she’s at home. She seemed quite tired when I last saw her, but she was as well as could be expected.”

“I’m sorry I broke my promise. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”

“She’s not hurt. Thankfully. And neither are the others.”

“I know I made a promise. But I realized as soon as I saw everyone across the river that it was wrong. It was a terrible error for me to make that promise.”

Makee and the men sitting with him look away toward the fire. I turn to see what’s drawn their attention, but it’s passed. There’s only Ovchinnikov, staring at his hands, and Timofei Osipovich, his hand still resting on my husband’s arm. The fire casts very little light, but it’s enough to truly see how haggard they are, how everything between us is in disarray. It’s a miracle that only one man is dead. “We need you, Makee. No one will get home without you.” My voice cracks. “No one will survive.”

He presses his lips together and frowns. “You thought only of your people. You broke your word and jeopardized my sister’s life.”

“She’s free, isn’t she?” I mumble. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes, that’s what I wanted. But not like this,” he cries. His hand sweeps toward the fire. “What am I to do with all of you until a ship takes you away?”

“We’ll work. We’ll try to live as you do. Just as you requested. Please—we won’t be any trouble.”

He turns the cheetoolth in his hands. A carved eye stares at me. “Your people have already caused a lot of trouble.”

“It’s only until the next ship. And you said there are already two ships nearby. Please—we need your help.”

“Along the entire coastline, when there are too many babathid around, there is always trouble.”

“I’ll talk to my husband. He’s in command. I’ll tell him that everyone’s got to listen to you.”

He says something to the three men sitting beside him. One responds.

“And those who you left behind in the forest—who will tell them to leave us alone?” Makee says. “To stop shooting at us and stealing our food?”

“They’re leaving. They’re walking south. They think there’s a Russian ship—far away. They’re already gone.”

He says something else to the three men. The same one responds, then another adds his thoughts. Makee listens while I try to understand what they’re saying.

Makee speaks briefly then turns back to me. He sets his cheetoolth down on the bench.

“I forgive you, Anna. But you must speak to your husband. And from now on, I will hold you to your word.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Why should I do anything for that Poppy Seed?” my husband says.

“Nikolai Isaakovich, there’s no choice.”

“Of course there’s no choice. Anna Petrovna, we’re slaves! Prisoners! And these koliuzhi are only waiting for a chance to murder us.”

“They’re waiting for a ship—just like us.”

The sun is sinking into the ocean. The rain has ended and the heavy clouds have moved away, and now the sky is alive with pink and purple, the colour of boiled beetroot, the colour of the sea stars I saw in the pool beside the rock. There’s a brush of gold hovering over the cobalt sea. It’s a rare evening both for this sunset and for the fact that I’m watching it with my husband as though it’s a display of Chinese fireworks and we’re attending a gathering at a grand dacha outside Petersburg.

“Nikolai Isaakovich, if you don’t order the crew to cooperate, we’re never going to get out of here. Makee made me promise that we wouldn’t make any further trouble for them.”

“Make trouble—for them?” He laughs cruelly. “That Poppy Seed toyon is cunning. He has a scheme. You’ll see.”

I shake my head, no, but in the dying light—the sun is a glowing dome about to disappear into the water—he’s the one who doesn’t see.

I’ll have to find another way to fulfill my promise to Makee.

“Could I have a word with you—in private?”

Timofei Osipovich cackles. “With me? Are you sure? Whatever for?”

“We can discuss that when we’re alone.”

“Lead me where you will then,” he says. “I put myself in your lovely hands.”

I don’t want to go anywhere with him, but since my husband refuses to agree and Makee’s counting on me, I must find another way to convince the crew that cooperation with Makee is in everyone’s best interests. My husband won’t like it, but if I handle it skilfully, he need never know my part in it. I’ve seen it time after time on this trip. If I can persuade Timofei Osipovich, the others will follow, and it won’t seem like I’m undermining my husband.

I lead him down to the stony beach where the canoes rest. There are some girls and boys playing at the water’s edge not far from us. They toss fragments of dried seaweed into the wind. The seaweed floats for several seconds, then falls and scuttles along the beach until it comes to rest. The children run alongside the dark shards in a race against one another, against the seaweed. Other than a glance our way when we come to their attention, they pay us no heed.

“Timofei Ospiovich,” I begin, “I must ask for assistance concerning a matter of great importance to our future.”

“Our future? That’s a weighty subject for a pretty girl. Or did you mean our future together—yours and mine?”

“Stop your ridicule or I’ll leave.”

“Leave? No, please, I can’t live without you.” He chokes on a sob and brushes fake tears from his eyes. How dare he mock my husband?

“Wait,” he calls when I’m halfway up the beach. “Come back.”

I stop and face him, trying to determine his sincerity. He’s impossible to predict, and the fact remains that I need him. So, I plunge ahead. “Makee is concerned about having us here. He thinks we’re going to cause trouble. I told him we wouldn’t.”

“Well, that goes without question,” Timofei Osipovich says, as he strolls over to face me. “We’ve surrendered. The conquered are never in a position to declare war.” The wind blows a strand of his long hair over his face, and he brushes it back and tucks it behind his ear.

“It’s not just that. Makee expects us to live peacefully. And to work. To earn our keep until we’re rescued.”

“I’m happy to lend a hand here and there.”

“No,” I say, exasperated. “You don’t understand. Makee’s helping us and we have to help him. I’ve been collecting firewood and hauling baskets of water to the houses. This week, I’m gathering shellfish. We all have to work until we’re rescued.”

He laughs. “Tell your toyon he’ll have my full cooperation. But between us—I won’t be gathering, collecting, or hauling anything. I’m not his slave.”

“You don’t understand how it is here.”

“And what exactly do you understand, Madame Bulygina?” He draws out the “madame” in a way that raises the hair on the back of my neck. “Tell me. What is your experience of slavery? Did your father keep slaves back in Petersburg?”

“They’re not slaves,” I cry. “They’re house serfs.” As the words leave my mouth, I think of the arguments of my father’s friends. I think of Maria. I feel unsteady and wish I could stop myself, but Timofei Osipovich always knows how to provoke.

He laughs. At me. “And what about your dear husband? You don’t actually believe the Aleuts are here with him of their own free will, do you?”

“That arrangement is between them and the company! My husband does not mistreat them!”

He hasn’t stopped laughing. “And me? How long before your Tsar’s reforms reach me? How much more time before he gives me an estate in the country where I can live like your father does?”

“You leave my father out of it! And tell the others what I said!” I speak so loudly the children on the beach stop racing the seaweed and look over. “Don’t put our rescue in jeopardy.” I stomp away like I’m no older than the children on the beach, and then chastise myself for failing, once again, to act like I’m eighteen years old. How does he manage to always make me feel so infantile?

“You’re working far too hard,” he calls.

Despite what he said, Timofei Osipovich must have spoken to the others. The next day, I see his loyal Ovchinnikov and the Aleuts helping the Kwih-dihch-chuh-aht men dig a hole near the houses. With long, pointed sticks, they hack into the soil, breaking it up, and using baskets they move the earth to nearby piles. Ovchinnikov’s stick snaps, and he curses, but a man gives him another one. The hole grows deep and by the end of the day, it’s a pit.

I see neither my husband nor Timofei Osipovich taking part in the digging and I wonder how they’ve been exempt from the task. I hope they’re not idle, or, if they are, I hope Makee is not aware of their indolence.

In the evening, as we eat around the fire, I ask, “Where were you all day?”

My husband glances sideways at Timofei Osipovich and says, “We were on the other side of the headland.”

“Working,” says Timofei Osipovich. “I was told it would be advisable if we were to work.” He looks at me, raises his eyebrows, and smiles.

He didn’t say something to my husband. Did he? Nikolai Isaakovich keeps his eyes on his meal, and I know better than to ask anything further. They’re working; that’s all that matters.

The next day, I notice the Aleuts and Ovchinnikov helping make planks from a log that’s washed up on the beach. With a heavy stone tool, a man pounds wedges into the wood. Each strike rings out across the bay. The Aleuts hold the plank and guide it away from the log, as it splits down its length. Its final release from the log is gentle; it comes apart with no effort. Then, Ovchinnikov and other men carry the planks from the beach up toward the houses. They must be heavy—it takes four men to carry each plank.

I watch them make the planks from down the beach, where I’m with Inessa and the other girl. We’ve pulled the baskets of mussels from the sea and we’re removing their fibrous beards. They’re coarse like dried straw, and sometimes so firmly fastened to the mussels that I can’t detach them without a knife. I add each beard to a heap the girls started. Eventually, there’s enough to stuff a mattress though it’s not clear what use the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts have for the beards. I can see, now that I’ve done it myself, that they might be suitable for scaling fish or scrubbing the cooking ware.

After all the beards are removed, we put the mussels back into the baskets and carry them to the pit that the crew helped dig. Heat radiates from it—there’s a fire buried deep below—and it’s been lined with ferns. I prepare to tip my basket and pour the mussels in but Inessa stops me. She kneels at the lip of the pit and begins to place her mussels inside it. She leans in and positions each mussel beside the one she placed before it, leaving no room between. I lower myself nearby and begin to lay my mussels in the pit as well. We work slowly and deliberately, nudging the mussels up against one another. I bathe in the warmth that washes over my face and arms. When the baskets are empty, the dark ovals blanket the entire space and gleam like jewels. We lay more ferns over the mussels until they’re completely covered, and, finally, on top, cedar mats that we tuck in at the corners.

Two women pour water from a large basket into the pit. There’s a hiss, and a cloud of steam rises. They fetch a second basket, and then a third. Steam billows up as more water is added. After a few minutes, the steaming stops, and the smell of cooked mussels wafts up.

The mat is peeled back, and the ferns, now black, are removed. The acrid odour of wet charcoal is released. The shells gape, a frill of orange peeping out from each. We scrape out the flesh—still a bit gelatinous—and thread the mussels on sharpened sticks. Even the liquid in the shells is saved, poured into a cooking box.

The women who added the water to the pit look pleased when they see all the sticks of mussels lined up like orange soldiers at attention. One says something to Inessa and everyone laughs. Inessa blushes. Refusing to look up, she gathers the discarded shells, throwing them into the baskets, but she listens keenly to the women.

Eventually she calls, “Anna!” She motions me to come. We each carry a basket of empty shells to an area just beyond the edge of the village. There are thousands, maybe millions of shells already spread out here, bleached white by the sun. We each tip our baskets. When they spill, the river of shells rattles on and on, like it will never stop, just like the never-ending river that pours from the vase of Aquarius.

The world around us is starting to awaken. Thin, green shoots push through the surface of the damp earth. Buds swell at the ends of grey branches. Birds sing us awake, and flutter about with twigs and moss in their beaks as they fly away to build nests. Winter is coming to an end. The ships will be back soon.

On a rare afternoon when both Nikolai Isaakovich and I are idle, I say, “Let’s go see how the garden is faring.”

“Anya, gardens hold little charm for men of the sea,” he complains.

“It’s not far. Please?”

After a moment of hesitation, he nods and pushes himself to his feet.

I lead us along the winding path through the trees. The crows are cawing—we’ve startled them—and in the distance, the surf roars. New life is stretched out along the entire trail, in the buds and shoots and moss, vivid against winter’s dull palette. The odour of growth is also sharp. It clamours for attention, and behind the hopeful pleasures it suggests, there’s insistence, as the new season pushes against confinement. Spring wants to break free from the winter.

“How much farther is it?” my husband grumbles.

“We’re almost there.”

We pass the tree shaped like a chalice. The path veers closer to the sea. We bound across a rivulet channeling water toward the ocean. The water’s etched a shape like the outline of an ancient oak tree in the sand.

When we reach the garden, I find it more overgrown, as indistinct from the plant life that surrounds it as it ever has been.

“This is it?” Nikolai Isaakovich says.

Upon closer examination, I find that the burst of spring growth has not forgotten the garden. A green shoot pushes through the grey winter debris like a knife blade. Beside it is another.

“Look!” I point. I pinch the tip off one of the shoots and let him smell it.

“Onions?” he says.

“Open up,” I say, and I place the fragment in his mouth.

I pull the thatch back. It’s too early but I can’t resist. With a flat rock, I score a circle around the plant, trying not to get too close to the bulb. Then I dig away the earth. With my fingertips, I find the smooth skin of one small onion. There is another right beside it. I brush the earth from the first, and tug gently until it gives way and pops into my fingers.

It leaves behind a hollow space that’s perfectly round as though it once held a giant pearl.

“Give it to me,” Nikolai Isaakovich says and takes the root by its stubby stem.

He wipes it on his trouser leg. It’s an impossibly white and glossy ball, with a hairy tangle of roots.

He sinks his teeth into it. It crunches. He chews. “God, it’s delicious.” He wipes his chin.

I laugh. “Give me a bite.”

The juice rolls over my tongue. It’s so sweet and tender. I take another bite before passing it back.

There are only three bites each. It’s gone too soon.

“What else is here?” my husband asks.

I poke around, but it’s too early, and I find nothing of interest. Not yet. There may be a few seeds that have yet to germinate, a few shoots that have yet to push to the surface and so, I pull the vines back into place for next time.

I sit back and my husband flops down beside me.

“The koliuzhi don’t want anything from the garden,” I say. “Except the potatoes. They like the potatoes.”

My husband shakes his head in incredulity. “Why don’t they want it? They should take care of this garden. Make it bigger. They should make more gardens. They need farms. How can any civilization advance without producing its own food?”

“I thought the same thing when Makee showed me the garden. But now—Kolya—what if they don’t need farms? They get everything from the forest and the sea.”

“That’s impossible.”

“And anyway, they take care of the forest and the sea. They don’t plant gardens, but they tend to things. It’s not so different from the peasants tending to their land and livestock.”

“It is completely different! Have you lost your mind?”

The afternoon presses in on us. The heat weighs us down. There’s a bee humming and hovering woozily, and a buzzing in my ears, too, that might be the bees. Or it might just be me.

“Everything has gone wrong. Everything,” my husband declares.

“Not everything,” I reply softly. “We’re alive—and together.” I take his hand. It’s cold and limp.

“We’ve lost the brig and everything on board. Khariton Sobachnikov is dead. Yakov and Filip Kotelnikov are gone. And who knows what’s happening to the rest of the crew? If we ever get back home, what will the chief manager say?”

I tighten my grip. “What he’ll say is: you’ve made the best of a disastrous situation. Under your command…”

“But we’re slaves! I’ve failed!”

“Stop saying that,” I cry. “You’ve done your best, and we’ve far more men alive than dead. We’ll be rescued. You haven’t failed at all.” I draw him into my arms and kiss his cheek. I lean in and press my head against his. He softens and wraps his arms around me. I kiss his lips. Like me, he tastes of onion.

Perseus rescued Andromeda from the sea. He cut the chains at her wrists and ankles and set her free before the sea monster could take her. They married and had seven sons and two daughters. They whirl overhead and on any autumn night, if it’s clear, I will see them together and be reminded of their message: that love’s path has always been twisted and confusing, filled with hope—and fear. In the end, when we seek reassurance, we need only look overhead.

“Anya,” my husband whispers. He lays me down at the edge of the garden. I close my eyes and the sun’s so bright everything’s deep pink. His hand runs down my side, and when it reaches my hip, it begins to tug at my clothing. He swings his leg over, and pushes it between mine.

His desire is quick and demanding. It beckons me to follow. If I do, I must skirt a ledge so narrow there’s no space to turn around. I can’t see the end of the ledge—I don’t know how far it is and what lies beyond. There’s nowhere to go except ahead. And that is the path I choose.

When he finally calls out, I’m glad there’s nothing but a few birds and insects who’ve witnessed our coupling. I feel like one of the creatures here, wild and lacking the reason that would tell me how wantonly I’m behaving. We lie in each other’s arms for a long time and a short time afterward, while in the air above us those creatures trace lazy paths.

The next morning, the girls and I head into the forest. We carry smaller baskets with a tight weave, so I know we’re gathering something new. We stay on the trail and pass alongside an area where many logs crisscross one another. One gigantic tree has put down its roots atop a fallen log. The roots wrap around the trunk and reach to the ground, forming the moss-covered bars of a cage. We eventually emerge into a level grove where the canopy has thinned. Spring is here, too, in the swollen buds and the pale shoots that push through the surface of the forest floor.

I’ve long lost track of the date, but we’re close to the time of year when the peasants celebrate spring. My mother told me there’s a ritual in which, on a certain day, they go into the forest to look for a fiery fern.

“It’s not easy. It grows beyond the thrice ninth land, in the thrice ninth realm,” she said. “And it shows itself only one day a year. But…whoever finds it will become steeped in wealth.”

“Mother…” I said. “I’m not a child anymore.” I was still a girl, yes, but already too smart to believe in such superstitions. “There is no thrice ninth land except in somebody’s imagination. And people don’t become wealthy from finding plants.”

“Ah, you think so literally. I’m not talking about the kind of wealth they worship these days. The fiery fern promises prosperity in wisdom and an abundance of grace.”

“People can grow wise and choose to behave with grace,” I said primly. “They don’t need a plant if that’s what they desire.”

She looked at me doubtfully. “Well, you’d best watch for it when you’re in the forest. You’re young still and the possibility of learning wisdom and grace certainly won’t harm you.”

My mother, if she were here today, wouldn’t know where to look for all the ferns unfurling their fronds. As the days grow longer and hint of warmer days to come, they stretch out and open their pale arms.

The girls drop their baskets. Inessa gives me a shell knife.

I turn away from the ferns. The shoots we’re cutting are faint green quills with only the hint of leaves. I guess the ones growing near spiny canes must be berry shoots. They have tiny white hairs that hint of the thorns to come, but, for now, the stems are so supple I could pinch them off without a knife.

“Anna,” says Inessa. She holds a shoot and delicately peels back the skin in ringlets as pretty as freshly curled hair. Then she bites into the shoot and smiles as she chews.

She offers me a shoot. Nicking the end with my fingernail just as she did, I peel it. Then I bite into it.

“Čabas,” she says.

My mouth puckers—it’s so sour—but as I chew, that taste diminishes and something as sweet and fresh as summer rain emerges. It’s how I imagine waking up would taste if such a thing were possible.

She laughs at my surprise.

“Chabas,” I repeat.

We work our way around the grove until we arrive at a damp hollow of shadows. Here, we shift our attention to a different kind of shoot. These look like tiny Chinese bamboo, their stems segmented into ever-decreasing lengths, dressed in frilly, brown skirts. The shoots are so slender, it will take many hours before we fill our baskets. Nevertheless, it happens and when the girls seem satisfied, we wind our way back along the trail.

Along a drier section of the path, I come across a big patch of chabas. The shoots, lush and pale, are everywhere. I can’t believe we missed it on our way out.

“Chabas,” I cry out and point. “Chabas.”

The other girl smiles at me, then says something. Inessa agrees. I expect us to pick these shoots—surely we could squeeze a few more into the baskets—but the girls carry on.

In Russia, everyone believes the wilderness is free and open to all. The bounty of the land goes to the first man clever enough to find it and he’ll take it all before anybody else can get it. The koliuzhi don’t live the same way. Either we have enough already, or they want to save what’s here for another time. In any case, they’re not afraid somebody else will take it, which, in Russia, is how most people would feel before harvesting every shoot in sight before the sun had the chance to set.

We eat the shoots that night. The cooks steam them in shallow pits, similar to how we steamed the mussels. They’re served with grease and a flaky white seafish that tastes of cedar and the smokehouse. They slide down my throat easily, but I think I preferred them peeled and raw on the side of the trail.

“My shirt was torn today,” my husband says through a mouthful.

“Where?”

He twists away from me and with greasy fingers, points. There’s a tear running along the shoulder seam, then down, forming a triangular flap of fabric. “It was caught on a branch.”

“I can fix it,” I say. I’ll get Inessa to give me a needle and thread.

“Would you? While you’re at it, some stitching is loose at the bottom.”

I lean over and look more closely. “Tomorrow morning,” I say. “There’ll be more light, and I’ll be able to see properly.”

He runs his fingers around his bowl, scooping up a last shoot, and nods as he slips it into his mouth.

“Why does she come for you every day?” my husband grumbles.

Inessa’s waiting with a basket, just as she does every morning. It’s raining, but it’s so light, barely a mist, it won’t keep us from our work outdoors.

I start to rise. “I’ll be back soon.”

“No,” my husband says. He grabs my arm and holds firmly. I can’t stand. I’m hunched over, waiting. “You’re supposed to fix my shirt this morning.”

“I’ll fix it when I come back.” I struggle to keep my balance.

Inessa shifts uneasily and my husband glares. “There are other people here. Somebody else can go with her.”

“I will make your shirt as good as new when I get back. I promise. I won’t be long.”

He pulls on me, but I resist. I refuse to sit. “Tell her you can’t go.”

I laugh. “How? I don’t know her language.”

“Stay here.”

“You’re making a scene. Let me go.”

“If you won’t tell her, I will.” Nikolai Isaakovich thrusts me away. I stumble backward. He leaps up and grabs Inessa. “No. Go away,” he shouts into her face. “She’s my wife. She has work to do here. Leave us alone.”

Inessa recoils. Despite telling her to go, he won’t let her. She twists and tries to free herself, but he holds on. Her hair falls and covers her face. He screams. “She’s not going. Do you hear me?” Inessa throws her head back, and her hair parts like a curtain. Her anguish drives me forward.

I thrust my body between them and try to force them apart. He smells of sweat and grease from his breakfast. She smells of smoke and cedar. “Stop, Kolya, leave her alone. It’s not her fault.” Inessa’s head hits mine and she cries out. Everything goes white for an instant.

My husband tries to shove me aside, but I won’t let go. “She’s my wife. Don’t you understand?”

Then the man with the scar on his chest is on us. His voice is like a blow. “hiyu·a!”[40] Strong arms do what I could not—he forces himself between Inessa and Nikolai Isaakovich and pulls them apart. The scarred man holds my husband’s arms behind his back. Inessa pauses an instant, gasping, her face a mask of disbelief, and runs outside. Her basket, one side caved in, rocks back and forth on the floor where she dropped it.

“Don’t come looking for her again,” my husband shouts.

“She’s never going with you.” He twists against the scarred man who finally lets him go and runs after Inessa.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I snap. “You hurt her.”

“I did not. Didn’t you see the way she ran out of here? There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“You can’t do that to people here,” I say. “Nobody acts like that. They’re not used to it. And now Makee’s going to think we’re causing trouble.”

“All you care about is what that Poppy Seed thinks.” His expression of disapproval makes him look like a toad.

“I’m going to work now. I’ll fix your shirt later.” I storm out of the house. There’s no sign of Inessa, and without her, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.

I walk away from the houses to the edge of the forest and stand beneath the shelter of the boughs. They’re enough to keep me dry. The misty rain falls, but the sky is light, and I think it won’t be long before it stops. Down on the beach, some men have gathered beside the canoes.

The scent of smoke in the air makes me want to go back to the house, where it’s warm and dry. But I can’t face the mess my husband’s created. Let him deal with the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts. Let him explain to Makee. I should find Inessa, but I haven’t any idea where to go look for her.

Somebody steps outside Makee’s house. For an instant, I think it’s my husband, but then I see it’s Timofei Osipovich. He looks around and when he sees me in the shelter of the trees, he comes to me.

“You don’t need to stand out here in the rain. Come inside.”

“No,” I say. “Please leave me be.” I have no patience for him today.

He turns and watches the men on the beach, but he doesn’t go. A gust of wind blows, and heavy drops of water fall from the boughs. One lands on my head and trickles down my face. It’s cold.

The men on the beach have turned one of the canoes over. They’re running their hands along the keel, deep in discussion.

“There’s nothing you can do about it out here. Come back.”

“Everything was fine,” I blurt. “Things were finally working out for us.” Tears press against my eyes, but I won’t give in to them. “I thought he understood. He’s been working hard, hasn’t he? Just like Makee wanted?”

Timofei Osipovich peers at me, in disbelief, then laughs. “Yes, he’s been working hard.”

“Then why this outburst?”

He sighs. “Madame Bulygina, I must show you something. Come.”

We go into the forest and follow the trail that leads toward the headland. We veer away from the sea and climb, then descend on the other side. It’s the same trail I took with the girls to collect mussels.

When we’ve passed the headland, we turn off the trail and head toward the beach. Before we step out of the trees, he stops and points.

A huge patch of soil has been disturbed. All the shrubs have been torn out. Boughs have been collected and propped up against one another. We go closer. It’s a hole in the ground that’s covered with branches. There’s a tiny opening with steps cut into the earth leading into the darkness. “What is this?”

“A house. A place to live.”

“Who made it?”

“Your husband—and I.”

“Makee asked you to build a house?”

“No, Madame Bulygina,” he replies, enunciating each word. “Makee did not ask us to build a house.”

They have been working hard. It took a lot of work to build the hut. But this is not what I meant, not what Makee wants.

“It’s almost finished. We’ll move here in a few days.”

“We can’t!”

“We can.”

“We’ll never survive!”

“And why not? We’ll eat fish. Snare a few rabbits. Get some mushrooms and roots. We’ll make kvass!” He smacks his lips. “We’ll trade with the koliuzhi for anything else we need. You may not realize it, but Kozma Ovchinnikov is more than a strong and loyal man. He’s also a good carver.”

“Does Makee know what you’ve done?”

He laughs. “Why? Are you going to tattle on us if he doesn’t?”

“Does he?” I insist.

He shrugs carelessly. “Probably. There are no secrets here; he must have accepted it. He’s done nothing to prevent our little project from proceeding.”

“You shouldn’t have done this.”

He bursts into laughter. “Dear Madame Bulygina, your sanctimony is a never-ending source of entertainment. Even when circumstances are most dire, I can always depend on you to make me laugh.”

A few hours later, Makee calls out from the bench. “Anna? Please come—and ask the commander to come as well.” He’s been in conference with the three older men all afternoon.

“Why should I go?” my husband mutters.

“Get up,” I whisper. I nudge him with my knee, a little harder than I should.

Nikolai Isaakovich glares, and gets up as slowly as he can. Once up, he surveys the room as though it’s something he must map but can’t decide where to start. Lazily, he saunters over to Makee, every step defiant. When he reaches the bench, he says, “What is it—Poppy Seed?” He mispronounces Makee’s name.

Makee’s hands are folded over his cheetoolth. It rests lightly on his lap. The three men are stern. “Earlier,” Makee begins, “there was a dispute in my home.”

“We’re sorry,” I cry. “It was a misunderstanding, and it won’t happen again.”

My husband ignores my words. “Yes, there was a dispute—about how my wife is being overworked.”

“I’m not overworked,” I say. “Sorry, Makee. There’s no problem.”

“Yes, there is a problem,” my husband says. “She’s not your slave. She can’t be performing menial tasks for you. She has other obligations.”

To my surprise, Makee gives a short nod. “I understand. She’s your wife. But you hurt that girl.”

“She’s fine. She walked out of the house. I saw her.”

“She’s hurt. I saw bruises on her arms.” His spine stiffens. “She refuses to come back. Everyone is distressed. And for what? Why didn’t you come to me first? We could have worked on a resolution.”

“I told you both. There’s no problem,” I cry. “I can do whatever my husband wants—and whatever you need, Makee. There’s plenty of time in the day.”

Makee addresses me as though my husband is not here. “This is what I was trying to tell you. Whenever there are too many babathid around, the smallest feather transforms into the heaviest and most immoveable of rocks. Always.”

“Makee—I’m sorry.” I don’t dare look at my husband.

“Did he tell you about the hut in the forest?”

Heat floods my face. “It’s a mistake. Please—give us another chance.”

“How many chances should I give? Tall mountains are built of many small rocks. The tragedy is already taking shape. I have a responsibility to my people.”

“What are you saying?” my husband spits. “Speak clearly—all this talk of mountains and tragedy and responsibility—nonsense. What do you want?”

A gust of wind scatters drops of water on the roof that sound like soup on a slow boil.

“Tell me,” says Makee coldly, “what is sacred to a Russian?”

I fear Nikolai Isaakovich’s answer. I blurt, “God. God is sacred.”

“The Tsar,” says my husband as though I haven’t spoken. “The Tsar and everything he stands for is sacred.”

Makee presses his lips together and repositions the cheetoolth. When he raises his head again, he says quietly, “There is another village. They will take you.”

“What do you mean?” I cry. “We want to stay here.”

“You can stay here,” Makee says, “but the commander must go.”

“No!” I beg. “Makee, please!”

“I will slay the man who tries to separate me from my wife,” my husband declares. He raises his elbows and clenches his fists. He takes a step toward Makee and holds his ridiculous stance.

I pull his arm down. “No, Kolya. Don’t.” He jerks his arm away.

Makee remains calm. He knows Nikolai Isaakovich’s blustering will come to nothing. “There is no choice. We have decided.”

The three old men watch. Their eyes dart from corner to corner of our little triangle. They can’t know what’s being said, but they certainly understand it.

“Then I want to go too,” I say. I don’t. But Makee’s edict forces me to say I do.

“You can’t.”

“Why not?” my husband demands.

“They won’t accept more than one babathid.” He sighs. “Please go peacefully. I will try to bring you back together again—either there or here. But now it will take time. And it won’t be possible if you keep fighting and causing trouble.”

“In the name of the Tsar Alexander and the Russian Empire, I won’t go!” my husband screams. “You hear me, Poppy Seed? You can’t make me do anything! I’m in charge. Come on, Anya. We’re finished here.”

He tugs my arm so roughly that my teeth snap together. He drags me outside.

“What do you think you’re doing? Have you gone mad?” I say. I reach for my silver cross, but it’s gone. How long it’s been gone, I can’t say. Where I lost it, I don’t know. I lay my hand against my heart, feeling the shape of absence. Where will it turn up? Who will find it? Whoever it is must not forget that the fate attached to lost necklaces found in the forest was determined long ago.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“What are you crying about?” Timofei Osipovich scolds mildly. “He’ll be back.”

We’re perched on the southernmost point within sight of Makee’s village. The canoe carrying my husband—and fifteen other men and two women—disappeared in the mist a long time and a short time ago. I watched them transform from a rocking cradle of paddlers and singers to a silent, dark cylinder magically suspended against a grey background, to nothing when they slipped behind the dreary curtain.

My husband didn’t look back but if he had, he would have seen me waving my arm until it ached like it was about to snap off. When I could no longer see them, I collapsed and landed on a sharp stone, but that wasn’t what made me weep. I cried for my abandonment, for once again losing my husband. I imagined my tears channelled into a stream that ran to the sea. Salt to salt. If only I could have slid over the rocks and disappeared, too.

Timofei Osipovich found me curled up, with my head pillowed on a cold stone. The shroud of grey mist was the only thing that refused to leave me.

“Go away,” I say.

“Go away? And leave a lady in distress? The damage would stain my reputation.”

“Your reputation is well known, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He laughs. “Ah, you must be feeling better.”

I watch the sea. The water moves gently like the ocean is breathing. Like it’s an animal waiting patiently for something that no one could ever guess.

“He’ll be back.”

“Stop trying to cheer me up.” I know I sound like a child, and I wish I didn’t, but once he starts, I cannot suppress the words, cannot alter my tone.

“The sea will bring him back to you. One day soon, he’ll float back here, and a strong wave will toss him into your waiting arms. It’s inevitable—for it is impossible for a man to live without the sun, and equally impossible for him to live without his beloved!”

“Who sent you here?”

He grins again. “Your toyon is looking for you. And those slave girls you’ve befriended.”

“Will you never stop?”

“Those girls have something to show you. A new trinket. Perhaps a jewelled locket. Maybe a scrap of white lace for your bonnet.”

I lift my head, jump to my feet, and make for the path that leads to the village. His mockery follows me. “Or a bonbon from Paris. A satin ribbon for your neck? Maybe one of them has received an engagement ring. Maybe a golden—” until thankfully the wind carries away his voice and his silly sing-song chant fades to nothing.

Of course, no one is looking for me. Timofei Osipovich’s tale was a fabrication, but if he meant it only to get me to return to the house and stop pitying myself, then perhaps, grudgingly, I must give him credit.

With the improvement in the weather, my thoughts go to the ship that will rescue us. Makee assures me one will come.

“They often stop at Mokwinna’s village first. He has a reputation. Sometimes, if they find what they want, then they leave, and we never see them. They go straight to China to sell the furs.”

“Can’t we send a message to Mokwinna?”

Makee smiles. “We must never dream of it. Did you forget? He wouldn’t let Too-te-yoo-hannis Yoo-ett go—remember the American I told you about? I had to get him released. It’s better we say nothing to Mokwinna because once he’s involved, your rescue will become more complicated.”

“Is there no other way?”

“Be patient, Anna. You will get home.”

One evening, as I’m eating with Timofei Osipovich and Ovchinnikov, I say, “I think a ship will come soon.”

“Ha!” Timofei Osipovich cries. “Ships are out there every day.”

“They are?”

“Indeed they are.” A frown flits across the loyal Ovchinnikov’s face and disappears so fast I almost wonder if it was ever there.

“Then why doesn’t anybody see them? Why aren’t they coming here?”

“Who knows? Perhaps there’s no reason to stop here.”

“What about trade?” I say. “Or maybe to look for us.”

“Madame Bulygina,” he says, his mouth half full of fish. “If you want a ship so badly, you better build one.”

“Just like the hut you built?”

“No,” he says dismissively, “I’m talking about a grand enterprise like in Petropavlovsk. Just think of the ships you could build!”

“I don’t want to build a ship.”

“You don’t? Aren’t you Russian? Have you no spirit?”

“Since you’re so spirited, why don’t you build it?”

“I just might.”

“Have you ever built a ship before?”

“No! But neither have I been invited to the Tsarina’s chambers for a private visit. Nor have I ever stumbled upon a cache of gold coins big enough to feed me on cream and jam until I die. But naturally I dream about such things.”

Ovchinnikov laughs.

I say, “You’re mad. You dream too much.”

“And you, Madame Bulygina, don’t dream enough. Imagine this,” he says. “The koliuzhi cut down the trees. They make planks and beams and masts—whatever we need. Then I show them how to assemble it. And they build it. They can build one of their own while they’re at it!” He grins.

“Why should they listen to you? They already have their own boats. They don’t need Russian ships.”

He looks at me like I’m the insane one. “They certainly do.”

“Whatever for?”

“The toyons want everything we have to offer. They’re smart. They’re thinking about the future.”

That evening, when I go out to relieve myself one last time, I walk down to the beach where the trees won’t obstruct my view. It’s the first time since finding out about Main Rigger Sobachnikov’s passing that I’ve felt like looking at the stars.

The sky is clear, and the moon is waning. There’s my Polaris, everlasting and strong. Who has depended on her since I last cast my gaze upon her? Countless men, I imagine. Traders, explorers, and wanderers of all sorts.

To her side lies Draco the dragon, dim as ever. With one finger, I trace his long back bent like the keel of a ship. My imagination must be spurred on by my longing. For next I see Polaris not as the tip of Ursa Minor’s tail, but as the top of the mast to Draco’s keel.

There was a ship constellation, the Argo Navis, but half a century ago, Monsieur Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille dismantled it because he thought it took up too much of the sky. He divided it into three constellations: the Keel, the Sails, and the Stern. And then he went on to name the Compass, the Clock, and even the Telescope. I’ve seen none of them—they’re all in the southern hemisphere. Long ago, I pledged to see them myself and, one day, I will.

Without the Argo Navis, the night sky needs a ship. Has any astronomer thought to look for it in the northern hemisphere? How natural that Polaris, the Ship Star, would be part of it. How perfect that she would be the point around which the vessel’s path would revolve. Such a ship would always come back to where it started. It would always get home.

How I wish my father were here. He appreciates thoughts like this, and the discussions they spur on. He might tell me that my imagination had run amok or point out the flaws in my discovery. I know they’re there. He might say that even if the academy could ever be convinced to support my claim, the authorities at the French Royal Academy might not view it so favourably. I would know that what he really meant was that he was proud that here, in the land of the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts, a possible new constellation had just been named—by his daughter.

Dressed magnificently, the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts board the canoes. They wear clothing of fur and hide and cedar bark, much of it clattering with korolki and shells. Their dresses and robes ripple as they move, bringing to life the designs of animals and people that are woven into or painted onto their clothes. Their necks and arms are adorned with jewellery. Hats perch on men’s heads, those men’s faces, arms, and chests painted red and black. We’re going to celebrate a marriage—so Makee informed me yesterday.

Makee has a freshly brushed sea otter cape draped over his shoulders. Timofei Osipovich sits just in front of him. He’s tied back his hair with a sinew, and it hangs nearly to the middle of his back. He must have tried to trim his beard with a shell knife; it looks less disorderly than it did yesterday.

The Aleuts and Kozma Ovchinnikov are in the same canoe as me. Ovchinnikov’s followed his master’s lead and also done something with his hair and beard. I can almost see his eyes now. He and the Aleuts have paddles.

Inessa and the other girl wave from shore. They’re staying home—as are some of the older people, three new mothers and their babies, and a cluster of young men who are already strutting about the beach like roosters. They’ll watch over the village while we’re gone. One of them is the man with the scar on his chest. He’s watching Inessa wave at me.

A few days ago, when Makee told me about the wedding—and that I was to attend—he also told me I’d be given a new dress. When I later took the garment from his wife, it was much lighter than I expected. It draped over my arm like it was made of fine linen. It was much more delicate than the cedar robe I had to wear when I washed my clothing. Still, if anybody had told me in Petersburg that I’d one day own a dress made of bark, I would have thought her words in jest. I smiled. “Oo-shuk-yu—” I hesitated because I’d forgotten half the word. Enunciating each syllable, she said, “Oo-shoo-yuksh-uhlits.” I thought that one day I’d get the entire word out without help.

Would my husband be irritated when he saw me in my dress? Probably. But it made no sense to refuse. I’d been wearing the same clothing for several months now. The cuffs, collar, and hem were stained and shredded. The seams had all come apart and been stitched back together. There were tears where I’d caught my sleeve or hem on branches while I was working. I repaired my clothes as often as needed, but the fabric was so thin and had torn so often that, in places, my clothes were held together by mending and nothing more.

Besides, I now found the cedar dresses, with their fringes and the patterns woven into them, to be quite pretty.

Inessa and the other girl helped me dress. They showed me where the robe should sit on my shoulders and they tied a belt around my waist to hold the dress in place. Inessa patiently untangled my hair and fixed it in a single braid that trailed down my back just like hers. I felt nearly unclothed without my chemise, and with my limbs so exposed. My cedar cape would keep my shoulders covered and assure some modesty.

They circled me when they were finished, tucking in the dress where it protruded, and my own stray hairs. The only mirror I had was their faces. My doubt was alleviated for what I saw reflected back surprised and pleased me.

Once the canoes leave the shelter of our cove, the waves lift us like we’re in a basket and set us down again on the other side. However, this canoe is so solid and heavy, it never feels like it will capsize. I sit still and low in the boat where the wind can’t reach, and I listen to the songs that carry us with the current.

We pass the stacks and stumps with their fringe of trees, and the open arms of beaches. Gulls follow us then veer back toward the shore. A compact black bird shaped like a Chinese teapot floats in groups farther out to sea. On a pan of rocks, at the base of a stack, seals bask. They raise their heads and look, but as far away as we are, they deem us unworthy of their attention, much less important than the sun.

The ocean opens on our other side to a kind of eternity that’s as timeless as the night sky, and, on a day like today, just as beautiful.

For a long time and a short time, we continue until finally, barely visible, a thread of smoke rises straight through the tops of the trees. The canoes turn toward it, toward the mouth of a river that will lead to it.

This is the Quileutes’ village. Where I last saw Maria.

Beneath the cries of the seabirds, the faint sound of drumming rises, thin as that wisp of smoke. As we draw closer to shore and it grows louder, the paddles begin to dip and pull to match its rhythm. Finally, we’re near enough to see the faces of the people waiting on the beach.

In a cluster off to one side, there’s Maria. And Ivan Kurmachev, the carpenter. There’s the American, John Williams, so pale and thin now that with his shock of red hair he looks like a candle. Do they see me? I wave. I didn’t realize they’d all be here.

Maria comes to the edge of the water, her eyes all but invisible in their deep creases, her mouth stretched wide. “You said you’d be back, but I didn’t expect it would be so soon.” I take the hand she offers and sink into her arms once again, feeling the frail bones of her back.

Timofei Osipovich is pulled into the centre of the men. They wrap their arms around him and won’t let go. Ovchinnikov and the two Aleuts are also dragged into the wild tangle. They look like a nest of octopuses. My heart swells.

And then I realize.

He’s missing. My husband is not here.

I turn to Maria. I can’t breathe.

“He’s here,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

“Where?”

“Fishing,” she says. “Down the coast.”

“When are they coming back?”

No one knows.

All the men are thinner and more worn down. They’re dirtier and their clothes are even more ragged than the last time I saw them. Still, joy lights up their faces; it eases my worry. We’re far from being the creatures we were when the brig ran aground, but the fondness they exhibit in their smiles and their embraces reminds me of their camaraderie on the ship. It renews my confidence. We will overcome this tragedy.

Maria’s the least changed of all. The most conspicuous difference is a sinew with a beaded pendant she now wears around her neck. The pendant, made of those tubular, white beads and korolki, hangs between her saggy breasts like an artifact from happier times. It’s hard not to look at that female part of her and wonder what kind of a young woman she was and what hopes she’d once nurtured.

When the men draw apart and there’s space between their words, I ask, “Where have you been? What happened?”

They look at one another, and from the fear and pride and uncertainty and confusion in their gazes, I understand, without having heard a word, that much has happened—just as it has to me—and that it’s hard to know where the story begins. The carpenter Kurmachev answers the challenge. “We were determined to stay free men,” he says, “but as you can see, we failed. We planned an escape by sea. The moon was unfriendly that night, peeking through a rent in the clouds as though taunting us. There was so little light for a sea voyage.”

They built a canoe. It capsized in the surf. They scrambled for their lives. They got back to shore. But they lost everything.

“From that moment, there was no choice,” drawls the American. “We surrendered to these koliuzhi.”

“If I’d heeded you, Madame Bulygina, that day on the river,” says Kurmachev, “I’d still have my flask. But to each his lot is given!”

Every man speaks at once. Agreeing, disagreeing, explaining, qualifying, contradicting, exaggerating, and teasing. Multiple truths are set before me, and I’m invited to choose the ones I want. Some mesh with my story and some don’t. Some are spoken quietly, others shouted with passion. I don’t know which is most deserving, or what to believe. But I feel light as a feather, lifted up by the pleasure of hearing their voices once again.

The moustached toyon’s house overflows with guests from the village as well as up and down the coast. Makee’s sister with her silver comb sits with a group of women my mother’s age on a bench near one of the posts. The Murzik has a long conversation with Timofei Osipovich. They’ve met before and I soon deduce that our prikashchik gave him the handkerchief that caused so much trouble with the Chalat Tsar. The injured eyebrow man is also here. Not only is he here but he’s the bridegroom—marrying the moustached toyon’s daughter.

He’s wearing a breechclout, but covering it, and the top half of his legs, is a decorated apron. The queer koliuzhi creatures are woven into it—a big-snouted animal like a bear or a wolf stretched out along the top, and beneath it, a toothy creature with huge eyebrows that mirror his and a checkerboard neck. The apron is big enough to cover his scar. He also wears a new, red shirt that can only have come from us.

Nikolai Isaakovich returned from fishing just after we’d finished warming ourselves before the fire. The chill of the sea voyage had left my body. Timofei Osipovich called out to him as soon as he entered, and he stopped. He smiled, hearing the familiar voice, and when he found the prikashchik’s face, he strode across the house and they embraced, pounding one another on their backs. When my husband pulled away, I had the chance to really see him. His face was ruddy, his hair wet and stringy, and he looked savage in a way that I know would have bothered his sensibilities only a few weeks ago. Timofei Osipovich said something else to him, and he looked up and found me.

I smiled. How did he see me? I’d taken great care with my appearance. Inessa and the other girl had let me know I was pretty in my new dress. But what did my husband think?

After a long, fearful moment, his lips pressed together in an uncertain smile. I rushed to his side and threw open my arms. He embraced me. He brushed his lips against my hair, and lowered his mouth to my ear. “My God, Anya, what happened to your dress?”

I hid my face against his chest.

The evening is filled with songs and stories and dancing. Though I’m tired from the journey, I can’t look away. I press myself into the side of Nikolai Isaakovich and soak in the grand spectacle. The colourful masks. The regal clothes—sea otter capes over the shoulders of many men, and jewellery such as I’ve not yet seen anywhere. The drumming that shakes the walls. The smoke that, on a whim, conceals or reveals. The voices that soar into the rafters and plummet back down and squirm into our ears. I think our breathing has been harmonized, and our breaths together are part of the songs and stories. But not exactly a part—it’s more like they’re the canvas on which the songs and stories are embroidered. I try holding my breath to see what will happen, but as soon as I start breathing again, I follow the same rhythm as everyone else. To do otherwise would be like sailing against the wind and current.

At the end of one dance, two men begin to banter alongside a small fire. One of them is the groom—the eyebrow man. As they tease one another, women thrust kindling into that fire. It crackles and smokes for a bit, but then the wood catches and the fire flares, throwing light and shadows on everyone’s faces.

Each man is given a dish—the dishes used to serve grease. The first man raises his dish to his lips and takes a sip. The groom does the same. Afterward, both have broad smiles and glossy lips and teeth—they were drinking grease. I look at my husband, but he’s wide-eyed, watching the drama in disbelief.

The first man takes another drink—a longer, deeper mouthful. He swallows. And again, the groom does the same. The people in the house are calling out and laughing. In response, both men again drink—downing even bigger portions of grease.

“What on earth is this about?” my husband says.

They keep drinking from their dishes, back and forth, two gulps of grease, then three. Finally, the first man tilts his dish to the ceiling and drinks until the grease is drained. He tears the dish away and spits into the fire.

The fire unrolls toward the ceiling with a whoomp. Somebody screams. The faces of the nearest people are lit up like on a hot summer day. Many jump back. Everyone cheers. When the flame dies down, black smoke fills the house.

“That’s madness,” my husband says.

The groom tips his dish back and drains it, too. And then, with his head tilted right back, he gestures frantically until a woman gives him another grease dish. He drinks from it, too, the grease running down the sides of his mouth and neck, and all over his new red shirt.

He throws his head forward and spits into the fire.

The flames roar and touch the ceiling. I scream. And then it ends. The fire dies down, black smoke clouds the room—and the people cheer for the groom who has won the competition.

Glistening with grease, the groom calls out and circles the house. People laugh. Some brush him away. But one man raises his arm and steps forward. He’s young—barely sprouting facial hair—but he’s brimming with a combination of masculine confidence and bashfulness. The people cheer for him.

Two ropes that I hadn’t noticed hanging from the rafters are released from hooks on the wall. They sway until they come to rest. They glisten. They’re coated with grease.

A man starts to beat on a drum and when he stops, he calls out.

The young man and the groom run, jump, and throw themselves onto the ropes. The ropes swing. They start to climb.

Everyone shouts.

The ropes are impossible to climb. Neither man can get higher than one length of his arm before he comes sliding down to the bottom. But they keep trying. The groom wipes his hands on his shirt, but it’s even greasier than the rope.

Their arms bulge as they squeeze and hold on. They twist the rope around their feet. Their toes grip like birds’ talons. Still, they slide down more than they climb up.

Finally, when the groom’s slid down once again, he lets go of the rope. He bends to the floor. He slaps his hands against the earth and something from there must stick. Because when he grabs the rope again, he climbs not one length of his arm, not two, not three. Something propels him right up to the rafters. He hooks one arm around the wood and hoists himself up. He waves in triumph.

The young man below just laughs and waves his hand dismissively. He knows, as does everyone in this room, that the winner of every contest tonight will be the groom, the eyebrow man.

I squeeze Kolya’s hand. I hold on.

When it’s time to eat, serving dishes the size of the skiff are brought into the house. They’re carved into koliuzhi creatures and painted: big heads with tongues that loll out at one end, and tails at the other. Feet and wings extend from the sides, and what would be their bodies has been hollowed out and filled with food.

Women ladle this food into trays until they’re heaped with fish, clams, steamed roots, and grease, and distributed around the house. I sit between my husband, our arms and legs barely touching, and Maria. The others sprawl out around us, and dig into our food.

Nikolai Isaakovich tears off a fragment of fish and pushes it into his mouth. He chews. Swallows. He takes another piece. I feel these movements against my side.

“I will never understand why the koliuzhi gorge like this—and then have nothing for later. Don’t they know anything about rationing?” Some of the others nod but their mouths are too full to reply. “Days of scarcity are always right around the corner. A wise man must plan—or suffer the consequences.”

No one contradicts him, but he’s wrong. The koliuzhi do prepare. When Makee caught the whale, we feasted, yes, but then we worked, preserving everything that wasn’t eaten, dividing it up and storing it in boxes and bladders. Even after all these weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised to know a few bladders of oil remain.

And it’s not just the whale. Salmon, shellfish, roots, and berries, everything stored in boxes, baskets, and bladders, and buried in holes dug deep to where the air is as cold as an icehouse. They don’t neglect to prepare for lean times. People work long hours at it. I do it, too. The planning Nikolai Isaakovich sees as absent must have been present for generations. Otherwise how would these people have survived?

When Nikolai Isaakovich is away from the houses, what does he think the women do? He’s not here to witness it, but there’s slicing and skinning and deboning and skewering, peeling, hanging, rendering, smoking, and though it’s all fundamental to his survival, he’s oblivious to it.

He’s like the men of Petersburg. All the lotions and creams and washing and brushing and curling, the ironing and pleating and tying—all so we look presentable, and if we are lucky, pretty. No man could possibly realize how much effort is involved.

He says gruffly, “Eat, Anya. Eat all you can. You may as well. Are you not well?”

“I’m fine.” I should eat, but words, stuck in my throat, won’t allow me to swallow.

“I’m sick of these koliuzhi and their ways,” my husband continues. “I’m hunting duck and geese in the rain and wind and cold—it’s so unpleasant, you can’t possibly imagine. And they become quite displeased if I can’t kill the entire flock with a single shot. The toyon here is lazy and demanding and pompous—just like that Poppy Seed.”

“Makee’s friendly,” I say. “And so is this toyon. When we first met, I sat across from him in the tent—”

“You don’t see what’s really going on here, do you?” He shifts his body away and is sullen the rest of the meal.

When the dancers and singers are exhausted and it’s time to retire for the night, we Russians are divided among the houses in this village. My husband, Timofei Osipovich, and many of the rest of the crew are to stay in the toyon’s house—along with Makee. I will go to another house to sleep alongside Maria once again.

While the arrangements are being discussed, I pull Nikolai Isaakovich to me and quickly kiss him. “Good night,” I say.

He looks surprised and confused, but he kisses the back of my hand before I turn away, and before anybody notices.

Maria and I lie next to one another as the night noises of the house begin to unfurl—fires snapping and sighing as the embers die down in the darkness, children settling, hushed conversations, and tonight, the occasional smothered laugh.

I won’t sleep until I know. “Why aren’t Yakov and Kotelnikov here?” I whisper.

Maria says no one has heard from the apprentice since he was taken away—but Maria doesn’t think he reached the Kad’iak. “It’s been so long, he would have returned for us by now if he had,” she adds. She’s heard nothing about Yakov and thinks he’s still with the Tsar’s family.

“We’ll find them,” I say bravely. “They must come home with us.” She says nothing.

“Maria? They will. We wouldn’t leave them here anymore than we’d leave you here.”

Her head, outlined in the dim light, shakes slowly. “I think I’ll live out my days here.”

“No, Maria,” I say. “You don’t have to. You’ll come home—with us. Don’t you want to return?”

“To where?”

“Your home.”

“I haven’t been there in a long time. I don’t even know who’s there anymore. If I have anywhere to live.” She sighs. “I don’t expect you to understand. I know it’s not like that for you.” It’s dark and she can’t see my face flush. “Anyway, this is a good place for an old woman. They’re very kind.”

Long after Maria’s deep and regular breathing indicates she’s asleep, I’m awake mulling this over.

The Enlightenment has shown us the errors of our past when freedom was apportioned to men based on birth and status. The Tsar has set us on a path to eliminate hypocrisy at all levels of society, but my father’s friends agree that we remain far from our destination.

What have the lofty ideas of the Enlightenment done for Maria? For Yakov, the Aleuts—for Timofei Osipovich? If I’ve learned anything from my time with the koliuzhi, it’s that my father’s friends are more right than they realize, as they perch in their comfortable chairs around a table full of food and drink brought to them by house serfs. We’ve fallen short of our ideals. We’ve not yet reached the place where our values and our actions are consistent and honourable.

I wish my father were here. He would understand my doubts. He would encourage me to keep struggling.

This much I do know. There is a truth that we are taught and another truth that we come to see. Though they should be, they are never exactly the same.

The following day, during a lull in the festivities, the old carpenter Kurmachev suggests we walk to a nearby beach. It’s sunny and for the first time, the promise of summer hovers in the air. So Nikolai Isaakovich, Timofei Osipovich, and I accept. We head off following a trail that, contrary to expectations, leads into the forest.

We hike down and along a narrow, muddy path. The wet seeps through my boots reminding me it’s time to apply another layer of grease. We then ascend the other side of this gully, past berry bushes starred with pink blossoms and two moss-covered trees that fell in the shape of an X. When the trail levels out again, it broadens, and I fall back to my husband’s side.

“Do you know the beach we’re heading to?” I ask.

“How could I? They drag me up the river or into the forest every single day. Visiting a beach is a luxury.”

“I’m glad we’ll get to see it for the first time together then.” I shyly slip my arm around his waist and feel his scratchy greatcoat—now missing all its beautiful buttons—against my skin once again.

He leans over and kisses my cheek. His lips linger there, but not long enough.

“Be careful here,” Kurmachev calls from far ahead.

“Where? We can’t keep up—you’re going too fast, old man,” my husband calls back. He gazes at me but says to the carpenter, “Maybe you should go ahead without us. We’ll catch up.”

“No,” calls old Kurmachev. “The trail’s a bit confusing. I’ll wait for you before we go down.”

My husband pulls me close and kisses me on the lips, but I push him away and say, “No. Come on.”

The descent to the beach looks steep. I start walking down on the heels of Kurmachev, who’s surprisingly like a goat on the bumpy trail. My husband is right behind me, his breath in my ears. I cling to branches and place each foot carefully on the overgrown trail. Timofei Osipovich on the other hand releases himself, and with a holler, he hurtles down the hill, half sliding, half bouncing, ignoring the trail altogether. Brush crashes. He’ll be scratched to bits if he doesn’t break a leg first. He shouts when he reaches the bottom, “Hurry up, you feeble old men. You’re taking the long way!”

“Nobody’s feeble up here,” calls Kurmachev, just ahead, and he winks up at me. “This way, Madame Bulygina, only a little farther now.”

His friendly wink gives me confidence. I let the slope pull me down, two quick steps. One more. Then I slip and fall.

I slide through mud and over the rutted surface of a rock. My dress cinches up around my hips. I slip over a steep edge and keep tumbling. I reach for branches, but whatever I grab snaps off or comes out by the roots. The forest rushes by in a blur.

Then the ground levels and I come to a stop.

“Anya?” calls my husband.

“Are you all right, Madame Bulygina?” Kurmachev shouts.

“Yes—yes—I’m fine,” I call back. I scramble to my feet and pull down my dress.

Just ahead, light extends through the underbrush. I part the branches like I’m opening curtains.

The sand shimmers in the sun. The sea’s blue and green, as sparkly as a gemstone. Far to the right is the flat-topped island that dominates the view out to sea at the river’s mouth. The arc of the beach is framed by rocky headlands around which the sea curls luxuriously as the waves are drawn to shore. There are fragments of shells bleached white by the sun, and driftwood bleached grey. Thick strands of bronze kelp lounge along the waterline. Birds drift lazily overhead or bob gently just a little way from shore.

The men emerge from the trail to join me at the lip of the forest.

“Kolya?” I turn to him, my hands clasped. “It’s paradise. I fell down a hill and landed in paradise.” I laugh. He smiles in return.

I run a little way toward the water then stop short. Should I take off my boots? I do. I throw them aside and dip my feet into the surf. It’s freezing, and I run back up the beach, away from it.

I throw myself down on the sand and soak up the warmth through my palms. I squeeze the sand in my fist and let it run out like my hand’s a sandglass. I fall back, stretch out, and close my eyes. I’ve been feeling tired the last few days, but it all slips away in the sunshine that laps against my skin and sinks into my cold bones.

My husband stands over me. “Come, Anya. Let’s go for a walk.”

I put my boots back on before I take his hand and we wander down the beach, leaving the others lying on the sand.

“I’ve missed you,” he says when we’re far enough away. His words are carried away in the wind.

“I’ve missed you, too.” He drops my hand and slides his arm around me. He pulls me close, and I lean into his warmth. The surf breaks and sighs as the water runs back to the sea. Warmth from the sun cuts through the cool ocean breeze, and though it’s much too early, it feels like summer has come to the wedding, too.

When we reach the end of the beach, there’s a tall stump of a rock we can’t see around. With a quick glance back at the others, he pulls me close and kisses me. His kiss grows deeper when the waves break on the shore, and tapers off as the water runs back out. “Let’s go see what’s on the other side,” he says. I know what he’s thinking.

The tide is out. If we pass the rock on the ocean side, and time our steps around the breaking waves, we’ll get wet feet and nothing more. If we choose to pass on the side facing the shore, we’ll need to climb some rock before we get to the other side. But our feet will stay dry. Nikolai Isaakovich releases me from his embrace, but holds tight to my hand. He turns and pulls me toward the water.

I shake loose his hand and laugh. “I’ll race you,” I say, and jump onto the rocks.

The rock is dry and there are many footholds. I scramble up as speedily as I can, knowing he’s got to wait until the time is right. Every second is to my advantage. There’s a pool of sea stars and other creatures, but I don’t stop to look. I climb over this saddle of rock, picking my way across the protuberances and the hollows as quickly as I can, and start my descent to the sand on the other side. I’m going to get to the beach before him.

Then, ahead, movement catches my eye.

A wolf on the beach stares. Its ears lean forward, its neck extends, its head tilts. I hold my breath. I don’t dare move. If I call for help, the wolf may attack. Would anyone even hear me? And what could they do anyway? The wolf is huge, its legs disproportionately long, and no one’s armed.

The wolf also holds its position. Its manner is so reminiscent of Zhuchka’s. Except for the eyes—two cold, polished opals set beneath a heavy brow. I never saw such a predatory expression on my sweet dog’s face.

Old stories recount the risk of being the first to look away from a wild animal. It must not be me. Eventually my husband will come around the rock and see the wolf, too. Let him also have the wherewithal to stand tall before the wolf.

The wolf breaks eye contact. It turns its lanky body to the sea. It trots to the edge of the water, dips its head and laps, its pink tongue lolling out. Then it enters the sea, delicately lifting its heavy paws until it’s slowed in the surf.

Where’s Nikolai Isaakovich? Can’t he see the wolf?

The wolf keeps going. It begins to swim. Its muzzle points into the waves like the prow of a ship, and its tail is a rudder trailing behind.

Where’s it going? There’s nothing but open ocean ahead.

It advances through the first line of surf. It swims and swims. Why isn’t it turning back?

Where’s my husband?

Then the wolf goes under. It bobs up for an instant, then submerges again. Only a ripple on the surface indicates it was ever there before it, too, disappears.

“Kolya?” I call. “Kolya!” Has he seen it? He must have.

Then the sea is slashed open. A dark, glistening object, hard and curved like a scythe, sails along the water’s surface. It’s the fin of a whale. It sails straight for a short time and a long time, before it’s swallowed by the sea.

My heart pounds in my head. I can’t move.

“Anya! Where are you?” My husband appears from around the stump. He looks up at me and beams. “I won!” he cries.

“Did you see that?”

“What?”

“That—wolf,” I say. “There was a wolf here a minute ago.”

He looks around. “Where?”

“It went into the ocean.”

“Oh, Anya,” he cries, “don’t be such a poor loser. I beat you fairly. Now, come on down.”

I climb down, keeping an eye on the sea. What just happened? Did the wolf drown? Did the whale eat the wolf? There was no struggle. As an enlightened woman, I know what’s possible. There is no vodyanoy. No spirits exist in the sea or anywhere else. I also know what I saw. How could a wolf become a whale?

My husband helps me down the last two steps onto the sand. “Now that I’ve won, where’s my reward?”

He pulls me close and kisses me, but I’m distracted. He slides his hands under the hem of my cedar dress and pulls it up around my waist. I watch the sea, I watch the forest. He bends and lowers me to the beach.

I’m afraid the wolf will reappear—and equally afraid it won’t because it’s no longer a wolf.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“What’s wrong?” my husband asks.

I woke feeling ill and uncomfortable. My insides churned, my mouth was dry, and my tongue rose against the back of my throat. It was the second morning. Yesterday, nothing came up. This morning, I retched into the moss behind the bushes, hoping no one would see, knowing that many would hear.

After the nausea had almost passed, I went to the shore and breathed in the salty air. I rinsed my mouth with salt water and then returned to the house refreshed. But by the time I arrived at the edge of our mat, the salty taste had thickened and brought on a new wave of queasiness.

“I don’t feel well again,” I say.

“Are you feverish?” He sits up and pushes away our bedclothes.

“I don’t think so. I don’t know what it is.”

“You should rest.”

I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. Look—everyone’s getting up. Come on. It’s a beautiful morning outside.”

At the wedding feast, Makee brought my husband and me together again. He negotiated with the other toyons, and as soon as they finished distributing the baskets and boxes, the hats and shoes and dresses, the tools and utensils, the whale grease, the fish and food wrapped in fern fronds and cedar boughs, and as soon as the final dances were completed, he called over Nikolai Isaakovich and me to announce the good news. I’m disappointed we’re not part of Makee’s house—I already miss Inessa and the other girl—but at least I’m with my husband.

We’re staying with the Quileutes, in the house of the moustached toyon. This is where I belong. How could it be otherwise? I love Nikolai Isaakovich.

Makee reassured me. “When the ship arrives, you’ll all go. I promise no one will be left behind.”

“Why is it taking so long?”

“Anna, this is not Boston. You must remain patient.”

The negotiations were complicated and, up until the last minute, uncertain. The Tsar wanted nothing to do with us, Makee said, because we’d brought nothing but heartache to the Chalats—we’d stolen their fish, battled them and shot one of them, and then kidnapped three people. The only babathid he’d consider welcoming was Maria. At least she knew the medicine and could care for the sick.

She seemed unconcerned about going by herself.

“Wouldn’t you rather have somebody else from the crew with you?” I asked. “Who are you going to talk to?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps Yakov is still there. Whatever happens, I accept God’s will.”

“We’ll come back for you,” I promised again. “That’s God’s will.”

“I already told you—you needn’t fret. They’re good people,” she said. “Good enough for me.”

I held her hand in both mine. I smoothed the wrinkled skin with my thumbs. I thought of my mother and wondered whether I’d ever hold her hand in mine again. Maria tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t release her. Not until I said what I needed to say.

“Maria—I must ask you something.”

“What is it?” she said suspiciously.

“A few weeks ago, I made a promise to Makee. I said we’d stop fighting, and that we’d try to respect the way the koliuzhi live and help out where we could.” I lowered my voice. “But I don’t feel confident. Sometimes, the promyshlenniki make trouble. Even my own husband.”

“Don’t expect me to do anything about that,” she said. “No one’s going to pay me any heed.”

“Maria—please. You said the koliuzhi were good people. So, do it for their sake. Do it for mine. I’m indebted to Makee. If you have the opportunity, please make sure they don’t hurt the koliuzhi anymore.”

“I don’t know how anybody could stop them.”

“Try to find a way. If you can. Please.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind.

“Will you promise?”

She studied my face then gave a quick nod. When she did, I let go.

She left with the Tsar and the Chalats after the festival.

We’re scattered now among different houses, in different communities. Timofei Osipovich, his devoted Kozma Ovchinnikov, and the Aleuts remained with Makee, and Timofei Osipovich gloated about it.

“I have your Makee right where I want him,” he boasted. “We have a mutual understanding.”

“What understanding? You mean that you take advantage of Makee’s good nature.”

“I’m moving into the hut your husband helped me build. I’m going to live there. Hunt my own game. I’m going to trade with the koliuzhi. Don’t think I can’t do it.”

I thought of my promise to Makee. What could I do to stop this stubborn man? “That’s not the way people do things here. Why should Makee do anything for us if you behave so selfishly?”

“When you want to know how it’s done, let me know. I’d be happy to provide instruction.”

“Please. Think about the rest of us. And what about Makee? Don’t you care for Makee? If you don’t like him, why are you always talking to him?”

He smirks. “I’m gathering information.”

“For what? The chief manager is never going to listen to you after he hears how you’ve behaved.”

“For the book I’m going to write.”

They left the next day in the canoes. I watched them paddle into the fog. Except of course Timofei Osipovich wasn’t paddling.

In the house of the moustached toyon, my husband and I were given a mat, a rare woolen blanket, musty smelling, but thick enough for the Tsarina, and we laid them in a place away from the draughty door. The carpenter Ivan Kurmachev and the American John Williams were to stay with us.

We started work the day after everyone left. The young man who’d lost the rope-climbing competition at the wedding came for us.

“Adidá! Hiolíka. Siyamalawoshísalas x^wόx^wa. … wáki ^wisa ho! idílo awí. Kitaxásdo xabá,”[41] he cried, and gestured dramatically. It would be different living here with neither Makee nor Timofei Osipovich to translate. We’d be on our own to figure out what was being asked of us, and to ask for what it was we needed.

Eventually we understood that he wished us to go somewhere with him. He led us along a trail that wound through the trees, climbing, and then we followed a low ridge until we heard the surf and the gulls. We descended along a muddy path dotted with puddles. Then, light appeared through the trees and we emerged on a stony beach in a sheltered cove.

The sky was exploding with screeching gulls. They looped and dipped around one another, drawing circles and spirals overhead. One plummeted to the surface of the sea, and veered up again with a glittering fish jerking in its beak. The gull swung away, pursued by a dozen members of the flock eager to steal its catch.

Many people were already on the beach, while, out in the cove, canoes bobbed and clattered against one another.

The young man swept his arm across the scene and said, “Asái x^wόx^wa. Wáli adá’dalásalas ti’l.”[42]

Kurmachev offered me his hand and pulled me atop a rock from where I could look down on the scene. The cove was a strange shade of blue—cream and turquoise—and its surface quivered like aspic.

The cove was filled with fish. There were so many, I could have walked on their backs and not even wet my feet.

The canoes, I noticed then, were heavily laden. Their gunwales were barely above the water’s surface. But they weren’t loaded with fish. They were heaped high with white branches. The men in the canoes were pulling the branches out of the ocean.

The deep-sea forest of the vodyanoy is a myth—not even my mother would believe it—and I wasn’t silly enough to think trees grew underwater. What were these branches? They weren’t driftwood. Why were they white? Two loaded canoes separated from the group, and paddled away, back toward the houses. The youth who had led us called to us and waved. We followed him back along the trail through the forest.

Near the houses, we waited on the beach until the two laden canoes appeared from around the point. Before they reached shore, unloading began. Men, who’d walked into the ocean to meet them, filled their arms with branches. Water streamed down their limbs and chests as they waded in. One of them approached me. I opened my arms and he spilled the branches into them.

I staggered under the dropped weight. I licked the drops of seawater off my lips. As I tried to settle the pile comfortably, I looked down at the branches. They glistened with white, nearly translucent globules that were stuck everywhere on the needles of the branches.

Fish roe.

I recognized it. We ate it in Petersburg. It was herring roe.

The Quileutes must have put these branches in the water to give the herring a place to deposit their eggs. The Quileutes must have figured out where and when and how to submerge the branches so they could harvest all the roe without having to kill the fish.

I wondered what they’d say if they saw how we harvest caviar—the monstrous ancient sturgeon we hook or net, then kill for a few spoons of roe—female and male, we kill them both, for there’s no way of knowing for certain until their bellies have been slit open. What would they say if they knew how sometimes the flesh is thrown to the dogs because it’s too tough and it’s only the caviar we want? For all our ingenuity and our enlightened thought, we still haven’t found a way to harvest caviar that comes close to what the Quileutes have developed with the herring.

I turned and, lugging the wet, awkward load, followed the others toward the houses.

We suspended the white branches on the fish-drying racks attached by strong cords to the back walls of the houses. We passed the branches to children who carried them to the highest crossbars. When we’d emptied our arms, we went back to the canoes for another load, and another, until all the branches were hanging from the drying rack. It took most of that day.

After I urge my husband out of bed, he eats, but I don’t. I don’t feel like eating. The food, its aroma—just watching others chew—repulses me.

A woman brings me a huge ladle of liquid cloudy with particles of something. There look to be wood shavings floating on its surface. She says, “Ak^w, tόlilol, hítk^wolt’sa ťaxíit. Yix ťό^wa kiyatilwoxshí i axáa. Híat ^w ibíti choόťs”[43]

I accept the ladle and bring it to my lips. It’s warm and reeks of a bedchamber badly in need of airing out, so I just hold it under my chin and let the steam warm my face.

After breakfast, Nikolai Isaakovich and the two promyshlenniki are led away from the house. I don’t know where they’re going, but neither do they. For a few minutes after they’ve left, men’s voices rise, fall, and then fade away in the direction of the forest.

Before long, I, too, am led out of the house with a group of women and younger men, including the young man who took us to the cove for the herring roe harvest, the one who climbed the greasy rope at the wedding. We follow a trail upstream for a long time and a short time. It forks, and we leave the main trail and begin to climb. Our path rolls, up and down, but mostly up. My thighs ache and I regret that I didn’t eat before we left. I fall behind, but the youth stays with me. He murmurs, “Hahitsíliks. Piákiliks.”[44] Although I don’t know what he’s saying, I hear encouragement.

Though slow, I maintain a steady pace until we come to a rock fall. The shale that spills down the slope is not stable. I step on a flat, oval rock. It slips. I struggle to stay upright while it clatters down the slope. Once I regain my footing, I try again to focus. By the time we reach the opposite side of the fall, I must rest.

The young man says, “Was yapotala xáxi. Tsádaslo x^wawíki.”[45] I smile and exaggerate panting. He stops and waits. I think he’s understood.

Then he says something else. He repeats it. It sounds vaguely like cotton. He presses his hand on his chest as he says it again. It’s his name.

“Holpokit,” I repeat and nod.

He laughs—I must have mangled it—and he repeats his name. “Holpokit,” I say again, but I can’t say it the way he does.

Then I press my hand to my chest. “Anna,” I say, trying hard to pronounce the “n.”

He sounds just like the Murzik when he repeats, “Ahda.”

“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” I say.

We begin climbing again. We’ll have to speed up if we don’t want to lose the others.

My mother once told the story of a pretty girl she knew when she was young who had long, black hair. Galina was in the forest when she heard her grandfather call. “The problem was,” my mother said, “that her grandfather had died the previous year.” Galina knew it couldn’t really be her grandfather, so she ran home as fast as she could. By the time she got there, her hair had turned to pure silver.

“How?” I cried. “Perhaps she only powdered it to fool everyone.”

“Dear Anya,” my mother said, “may you never come across the leshii yourself. But if you do, you may find out that Galina’s story is true.” She lifted a lock of my own dark hair and let it fall.

In this thick forest, it’s easy to imagine Galina’s story is true. I follow close behind Holpokit, and wonder what it would be like to hear my mother’s voice calling from behind the fallen logs. Would I, despite knowing she couldn’t possibly be here, be driven mad in my search for her? Or would I heed the story of Galina and hurry away?

I wonder what my mother is doing right now. When we meet again, the stories we share will be mine.

We catch up to the others on a slope from which many old trees rise. Their trunks are impossibly straight, and far overhead, their crowns spread like the arms of a chandelier. In Petersburg, a distant cousin of the Tsarina had bolted to her dining hall ceiling an elegant fixture that was the subject of much talk one winter. They said it had a thousand Venetian crystals and two hundred candles set in twelve tiers. It took two servants an hour to light it, and an entire day to dust and polish it. These details spread and earned the chandelier and the Tsarina’s cousin much admiration. No one from Petersburg society will ever see the crowns of these trees swaying overhead, but they are magnificent and just as impressive.

The Quileutes have been waiting. Holpokit and I take places alongside the others, closing up a circle. An old woman whose hair really is all grey, whose voice is low and scratchy, sings. In a moment, she finishes. Then she says, “O yix chik^w ťsiatíťo^w kiyatilashílich ishsi^woya^wáal.”[46]

The group scatters among the trees, laughing, looking overhead. There is a great deal of discussion among them.

The old woman who sang immediately goes to a tree right beside her. Using a sharp stone, she cuts into it. She presses hard and saws back and forth, revealing ropey muscles in her arms. She cuts a straight line, perpendicular to the grain of the bark. Though the incision is only the width of her palm, the bark is thick, and it takes time. Then she pushes the blade underneath the cut until a corner lifts. She jams her fingers under the bark and begins to pull it off the trunk.

She leans back as she pulls, so far back I think her feet will leave the ground. The bark separates from the tree in a strip that ripples up the trunk. The tree releases it with a grudging squeak.

We’re collecting bark—the bark that’s woven into clothing, mats, baskets, hats, rope, and nets. It’s rigid and I don’t know yet how it will transform into the soft material of which dresses and bedclothes are made.

When the strip runs halfway up the trunk, the old woman calls Holpokit. He’s taller. So, when he takes the strip from her and backs away from the tree, he gets extra leverage. He’s also on the uphill side of the tree, so as he climbs the slope, the angle at which he pulls is wider, and therefore, more effective.

When I almost can’t see the top of the strip, it falls, a flopping snake. Everyone jumps back. The newly exposed wood glows like a golden waterfall cascading down the height of the tree.

A woman lifts an end of the bark and, using another tool, begins to peel apart its layers. The outer bark comes off in large chunks and what remains is reddish-brown, like the colour Zhuchka was, and fibrous. It smells of potato. Now I feel hungry.

While the layers of bark are being separated, the old woman cuts the bark of a second tree. After she gets it started, Holpokit pulls it and she goes to a third tree. Around the entire slope, she moves from tree to tree, making only one cut on each tree. Holpokit follows her.

There are many trees here that have had bark harvested on previous visits. The exposed wood is smooth and nestles between outer bark walls that have swollen and closed tightly against the wood to protect it. Far above, the debarked trees look as healthy as any of the others. Are insects boring into the bare wood? I don’t see any. It doesn’t appear the trees are suffering.

The next strip of bark that Holpokit pulls down, he gives to me.

Separating the layers isn’t easy. I chip off little bits looking for the right spot. The tool he gives me seems too blunt for the job, but it hurts the tips of my fingers if I try to do without it. When I finally find the right place, the pieces easily pull apart.

When all the cuts have been made and all the strips separated, the Quileutes fold the swathes over and over into small bundles. Each one is tied with a strand of the outer bark.

Though I carried nothing up to this grove, I have a full basket to carry down. Everyone does. Holpokit helps me position the loaded basket. When we get back, we put the bundles into vats of cold salt water, pressing them down to ensure they’re immersed. By then, I’m starved and ready to eat just about anything.

My husband comes home when night falls. His return is just in time—the sky grew heavy in the late afternoon, and I expect it to rain throughout the night. By the door, he jokes with carpenter Kurmachev and the American, while Holpokit hovers shyly behind them, watching. He acts like he wants them to notice him, though they pay no attention to him whatsoever.

Kurmachev slips away from the group and slumps down by the fire.

“Where did you go?” I ask.

“We were hunting—for reindeer,” says Kurmachev.

“Were you successful?”

“No,” he says. “It was too hard.”

“Hard? How so?”

“We only had bow and arrow—no muskets. And the arrowheads are wooden! They’re sharp but there’s nothing to them! They’re so light! We had to chase the reindeer first into a kind of channel the koliuzhi cut into the forest. When they were in the channel, then we could get a shot at them.” He shakes his head. “That was clever—having the channel—but the bow and arrow are so impractical. That’s the old way—and the old way is so backward.”

“Perhaps hunters were more cunning back then,” I say.

For old Kurmachev, the shift from carpenter to hunter has been awkward. He’d be much better at making bowls or boxes or handles for tools than he is at waiting in the cold and rain on the slim chance that his arrow reaches its target.

“Perhaps you should show the koliuzhi what you do. All this wood—” I say encouragingly.

“They have some good wood,” he says. “I saw it in another house. It looks like they’re drying it. I’m sure they intend to make something with it.”

“You should try to get a piece.”

His eyes slide sideways and back again. He fumbles in his pocket. “Look.”

He shows me a lump of wood and, in the dim light, it takes a minute, but I soon realize what it is.

“It’s a doll!” I laugh. “Did you make it?”

“A few days ago,” he says. He’s etched a little face on her, two dots for eyes and a crooked smile. Her belly is round and as big as her head. “I found the wood on the beach, and I used one of their tools. Just a piece of stone, but with a really sharp edge. I was slow.” He turns the doll over, examining it. “But the wood is good. It’s softer than birch, and I don’t think it’ll break easily.”

He holds the doll to his nose. “It has a happy smell, this wood here. It’s not like the smell of birch.” He passes the doll to me.

Cold and wet, my husband and John Williams join us by the fire. I see dried blood from the hunt on the American’s hands.

“What’s that?” my husband says.

“Ivan Kurmachev made it,” I say, as I show him. He takes it from me and rubs his thumb along its smooth back.

“Now you’ve got to make the others,” I say.

“What others?”

“The rest of the family.”

“Ah, I hope I’ll get around to that. I’m slow without my own tools.”

“You should make a bowl instead,” says my husband. He hands the doll back to me. “The koliuzhi would be impressed if you made them a bowl. All they have are trays. Trays and these baskets.”

He’s talking about the woven bowls. We use them every day. I didn’t think the Quileutes had any problems with them.

“If you make a really good one, then maybe you won’t have to go hunting anymore,” he continues.

“I need a much bigger piece of wood for a bowl,” Kurmachev says sadly. Then, “You can keep it,” to me.

“Keep it?”

“The doll.”

“No.” I try to pass it back.

“Then you don’t want it?”

“No! It’s not that! It’s just—don’t you want to finish it?”

He scrutinizes it. “It’s finished. In any case, I’ll make another.”

I turn the little doll over in my hands. “I hope you do make another,” I say. I tie it onto the end of my sash like I’m a peasant woman with a coin or a key.

As I had predicted, it rained throughout the night, pounding on the roof like the devil at the door. Morning brings no relief. The storm isn’t finished with us yet. People fidget under their bedclothes, and talk in low voices, delaying the start of the day. Only a few push themselves out of bed to brave the cold air. They stir the fire and throw more wood onto it.

I close my eyes. Nausea washes over me. I pull the blanket up to my chin. My husband makes a weak effort to pull the cover back to his side, but when I won’t relent, he rises and leaves the house. I seize the blanket and pull it up over my head wishing the day were over.

After a long time and a short time, I sense movement and when I peer out from under the blanket, a thick forest of legs encircles me.

“abaiόaksh,”[47] says one woman.

“Tsixá a, dáki!”[48] replies another.

I wish they’d go away and leave me alone.

What could be making me so ill? I can barely rise again today. The smoke, the cold, the women—everything makes me nauseous. The tonics the women have given me are doing no good.

Maybe I’m dying. Maybe I’m—

I let the blanket fall back over my face. It can’t be. Can it? How could it? And yet—why shouldn’t I be pregnant? I’m already eighteen and a married woman—young married women have babies. It happens all the time.

I inch the blanket down my face and slowly look up. I scan the circle of faces, half of them upside down from my perspective on the floor, on my back. The women convey a strange mix of concern and delight, confirming my conclusion.

Nikolai Isaakovich and I had spoken often about starting a family. Back in Novo-Arkhangelsk, and in our cozy quarters on the brig, we’d have idle conversations about the son who’d distinguish himself in the Imperial Navy, about the daughter who’d have a natural talent for mathematics. I’d only ever seen it as a possibility—distant and not pressing. The absence of my monthlies had been a blessing, and the way time had unevenly stretched and compressed meant I’d lost track of how many I’d missed. Beneath the blanket, my fingers lace together over my belly. Have I become more stout? Impossible to believe a child is only a layer of skin away from my touch.

“Haćháachid?”[49] a woman asks.

I smile, nod, and hope it’s the correct response.

My husband returns from outdoors. The women scatter when he draws near. He shakes his wet head. Water dots the earthen floor.

“It’s going to storm all day,” he says. “The path’s already deep with mud. Look at my feet.” He stomps and more water sprays around. Then he looks at me bundled up on the mat. “Come on, Anya, get up.”

I must tell him my news, but this isn’t how I thought it would be. When we spoke about starting our family, I had imagined this moment. We’d be before a roaring fireplace or pressed against each other in our bed at home, or maybe even sharing our morning tea, the sun slanting in the window and cutting across the polished wood floor when I told him. I imagined the surprise, then delight flooding his face. How he’d scoop me into his arms, maybe even twirl me around in a little dance before he realized he’d need to be more careful with me.

I see myself right now—huddled beneath a stained and smoke-scented blanket, surrounded by the quiet morning chatter of the many people with whom we share a house, rain thundering overhead, a small smoky fire valiantly trying to catch in the chilly air.

“What’s wrong?” He kneels at the mat’s edge. “What is it?”

I take his hand. He tries to pull it away, but I won’t let go. “I know what’s wrong with me. Why I feel so sick.”

“Well—tell me. What is it?”

I should be planning a nursery. New furniture. I should be stitching blouses, knitting small mittens, slippers, and caps. Blankets as soft as fur. I should be calling the midwife. Preparing for my confinement. Looking for a nursemaid. And my mother should be at my side, her hand brushing back the hair on my forehead; she’s the only one with the power to make this right.

“Anya?” He pales. “What?”

“Remember how you said you wanted a family?”

His hand tightens. He’s not breathing. “It’s impossible,” he says. “It can’t be.”

I nod and shrug.

“Oh my God,” he says. He tears his hand from mine. “Oh God.”

I think Nikolai Isaakovich has never really considered a family beyond it being something he would like to have one day. He never expected to receive this news in a place like this. He never expected he’d have to consider the future of a child when his own future is so beyond his control. Now everything has changed. His abstract idea has transformed into a reality. I put my hand back under the blanket.

“Anya—are you sure?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “You’re happy—aren’t you?”

“Yes! Very happy! Of course,” he cries. “I just—”

I close my eyes and feel the swell of tears.

“No,” he cries. “No, Anya, don’t. That’s wrong.” He grabs the blanket and finds the shape of my hand. He squeezes hard. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Anya, I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of everything.”

The place inside that desperately needs reassurance accepts his words. Though I still long for my mother, he’s here now and whatever needs to be done, we’ll do it together.

That afternoon, I finally learn how bark is transformed into the soft fibres the koliuzhi weave into clothing and blankets. The folded slabs that have been soaking in salt water have been laid out on flat stones. The cord that held them in place has been discarded and each one is partially unfolded.

I work with a group of women from my house. Each of us has a little hammer that’s made from the porous inner bones of the whale—just as Makee had told me several weeks ago. My hammer is very light, but when I run my thumb along the ridges carved into its head, I feel how sturdy it is. With the hammers, we pound the bark against the flat rock. It grows flatter and flatter, and the ridges cut and separate it into strands. I don’t look up for fear I’ll strike my own fingers.

The pounding warms the bark, releasing the scent of potatoes and salt water. The strands become as supple as silk. I watch how the women position their bark, and I do the same. The strands fall away from my hammer onto my lap. I work my way up the strip of bark, and create threads as long as my hair, and then much longer. When I reach the top of my slab, and all the strands are detached, I follow the other women and twist the threads into skeins by winding them around my outstretched fingers until they are transformed into fibrous loops.

More than any other job the koliuzhi have given me, I’m able to perform this one well. The threads I’ve created feel just like silk embroidery threads, and the way they respond to the winding and tying is no different.

The women converse, voices raised so they may be heard above the sound of the pounding. I grow alert when from the corner of my eye I notice one woman glance in my direction as she’s speaking. Is she talking about me? Many of the women look, then go back to pounding the bark.

After a short time and a long time, my head aches with the constant thud of the hammers and the nearly shouted conversation. The nausea grows intense. I have to go. I drop my hammer and run.

Afterward, I stay on my knees behind the bushes, not sure if I’m finished. I lick some drops of water off a broad leaf and savour the sensation of the cool liquid in my sour mouth. What were the women saying about me? Did they understand why I ran away?

Then I hear shouting. One of the voices is my husband’s. I run back along the trail.

Outside the houses, my husband is in the centre of a circle of men, screaming at all of them. His arms are wrapped around a woolen blanket. It drags in the dirt. Nearby, the new bride—the moustached toyon’s daughter—is weeping while the women with whom I was shredding bark are trying to console her.

“Kolya,” I call, “what’s going on?”

“These savages,” he cries. “They’re trying to take my blanket.”

I look at the blanket. It’s white and has lines of blue and black trim running through it. There’s a pretty fringe along the edges. I’ve never seen it before. The eyebrow man tries to snatch it, but my husband turns his shoulder to the man and pulls it away.

“Where did you get it?”

“She gave it to me,” he cries, and points at the crying bride.

“What happened to our old blanket?”

“Nothing happened to our old blanket. But it’s old. It’s worn out. We need a new one.”

I look at the bride, leaning into the women, and sobbing. “But I think it’s her blanket.”

“Whose side are you on?” he spits. “I asked her. I told her I needed the blanket. For you. In your condition. She has lots of blankets.”

“Kolya—no,” I cry.

There’s been a terrible misunderstanding. Obviously, she has lots of blankets. She just married. The blanket’s a wedding present. Maybe it’s part of her dowry.

“She said yes,” he insists.

“She didn’t understand.”

“We need a new blanket. They have to give us a new blanket.”

He’s got to give it back. “Kolya—I don’t need a new blanket. I’m fine.”

He looks as if I’ve slapped him. “Well, what about the baby then? Are you thinking about the baby?”

I haven’t stopped thinking about the baby. Not for one second.

“Kolya, please. Give her back the blanket.”

The men have backed off, but they’re watching every move. The eyebrow man is breathing heavily. He’s coiled and could spring with the least provocation.

“Kolya!” I cry harshly.

He drops the blanket, and it flops into the dirt. “I did it for you, Anya,” he cries. “For you and the baby.” He pushes his way out of the circle and disappears down the trail into the forest.

It’s dark now. I haven’t seen my husband or the promyshlenniki since this afternoon’s disaster. The bride took her blanket from the dirt and disappeared into the house, with the other women trailing behind her. I ran back into the forest, swept up in another wave of nausea. I vomited again and sat on an old log for a long time.

When I finally dared to venture back to the houses, I looked for my husband. I could find no sign of him, but also no sign of old Kurmachev or John Williams. I thought this was hopeful. Perhaps everything had blown over. Perhaps they’d gone to work.

As the hours passed, my theory made less sense. And now it’s far too dark for anybody to be working. Where could they have gone? The house is subdued. As I sit in my usual place, people glance over at me, then look away.

The evening meal is served. There are two chunks of fish and some tiny roasted roots. I feel hungry for the first time today. The roots are fibrous, and their edges are charred. They’re bitter, but I find that taste appealing.

I eat all I can and still my husband and the promyshlenniki haven’t returned. When everyone settles for the night, Nikolai Isaakovich is still not back. If only I knew a few words in the Quileute’s language. If I knew how to say, “where,” and “husband,”that would be enough. What words might appear in their answers? I’d need to know those as well. Fine—maybe. Coming back—likely. Home soon—that’s what I’d like to hear.

I go to our mat and curl into a ball trying to warm up before I fall asleep. I clutch the old blanket, the good-enough old blanket around my throat and close my eyes. The fire whines, then pops and exhales.

A crowd has gathered on the beach. Three canoes with long silver trails are heading for shore. Is it Nikolai Isaakovich and the others returning? I throw aside the firewood I’m carrying and run to the beach.

The first canoe pulls up to shore. He’s not in it. But it’s loaded. There are baskets, boxes, bladders, and packages wrapped in leaves and branches. The Quileutes begin unloading the cargo. My husband is not in the second canoe either. But the American is. His red hair always makes it easy to identify him, even from a distance. As the canoe lands, he wraps his arms around a box that, from the way he lifts it, must be full. He wades through the water bringing the box to shore.

I look to the third canoe. He’s not there either. But one of the koliuzhi men is wearing a black-green greatcoat with no buttons. It droops off his shoulders.

“Where’s my husband?” I cry to John Williams.

He squirms and shifts the heavy box. “Alas—”

“He’s dead?”

“No, no, no,” drawls the American. “He’s alive—God willing.”

The carpenter Kurmachev has climbed out of the third canoe. He pushes through the surf toward us. “Madame Bulygina—the koliuzhi took him away.” He pants like he’s been climbing mountains.

“Where?”

“We went north.”

“Why?”

The American’s box is carved and painted. The shells set into the wood glitter like chips of ice. The face on my side has sharp teeth and a heavy brow. “We don’t know,” he says in his flat voice. “It was many versts from here—on a huge sandy beach. Some other koliuzhi were waiting for us.”

“Is he hurt?”

Kurmachev says, “No one’s hurt. The koliuzhi gave us these things.” He nods to indicate the box and all the other goods being ferried up the beach. “And they took away the commander.”

“It was a trade,” the American says.

I look from the face of one to the face of another. I hope to see something I’ve missed—an explanation, some qualification—he’s coming back, isn’t he? I find only what their words stated. My husband is gone—again.

“They kept his coat,” John Williams adds.

“Madame Bulygina?” Kurmachev says, and he reaches his tired old hand toward me.

“Leave me alone,” I say, and I brush him aside, knowing, even as I say the word, that alone is exactly what I am, and I certainly don’t need to ask for it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As the night noises of the house diminish, I try to understand my husband. I can’t discount his intentions, his concern for me and our child. But has he learned nothing in the months since we’ve been living with the koliuzhi? Sometimes he exhausts me. He’s enlightened, yes, but when it comes to the koliuzhi, he’s senseless. Some block stands in the way of his understanding of our situation and the people who’ve taken us in. Would he, in Petersburg, open the cupboard doors in a home to which he’d been invited, help himself to the contents—and be angry when the hostess objected? Does he think so little of the koliuzhi that he believes such outrageous behaviour would be acceptable here?

Now what will I do? I need him. Without Makee, without Timofei Osipovich, there is no one I can ask to bring him back. To take me to him.

The months ahead stretch out like a serpent in the grass. I pray that a ship will arrive soon. And if it doesn’t? I’ll be the mother of a new baby here. Who will be the nurse? The women here nurse their own children. Can I? What do babies do all day? What if mine cries all the time? The koliuzhi will help me—won’t they?

What if they hate my baby? And what if it gets sick? What if the baby is born sick?

How will I ever work? Without a mother, a sister, who will take care of my baby while I’m away? Will I be one of those women forced to juggle my child and basket over the fallen logs and buckled tree roots as I follow trails that lead to where I must collect shellfish or cut shoots or separate bark? Those women move like ancient tortoises, slow, deliberate, indifferent to their burdens. Will the moustached toyon lower his expectations of me?

I fold my hands across my belly. The fire whistles and pops. Smoke hovers over the mat.

Maybe the baby won’t be born here. Surely a ship will arrive first. The season is right. We could be home in Novo-Arkhangelsk long before the birth.

That fills me with an equal measure of dread. For who will help me there? The promyshlenniki? And what if the baby is born on the ship? At least the koliuzhi houses are filled with women like me, women older than me, and girls younger than me, all eager to wrap their arms around the new babies, to shower kisses and caresses on the children.

Without my husband, my nausea grows worse and when it does, I go to the sea. Cold ocean air makes me forget my queasiness. It has a quality that contradicts its physical form. It feels dense and pliant, as though you could cup your hands around it and shape it into something you could keep in your pocket. It feels strong, and yet I know its physical properties. It’s nothing.

I’m on the beach, near the place where the river and sea meet, seeking respite in that air when I hear my name.

“Ahda!” A man’s voice surfaces through the air and finds me.

It’s Holpokit. He’s walking from the houses toward me, waving his arm to catch my attention. A woman is with him.

The stones that lie high up the beach crunch as they cross over. Their faint voices grow stronger as they come closer. Holpokit beams.

But I’m hardly conscious of him. It’s the woman who’s attracted all my attention.

Koliuzhi Klara.

She wears a cedar dress so new that it blouses around the belt. Her hair’s been cut. It now falls to her shoulders, barely long enough to tie back. One stubborn strand whips across her face. She’s wearing soft brown shoes made of animal hide. When they arrive, she smirks and says, “Wacush.”

I attempt my own smirk. “Wacush,” I answer back. She laughs.

“What are you doing here?” I say. She should be with the Tsar and the Chalats. And Maria.

“Ahda,” she says, and then begins to speak. When she’s finished, I smile, but she’s knows I haven’t understood anything.

Holpokit says, “Kitaxásdo, wiwisaťsόpat. Tix^walísdo^wálo lobáa.”[50] Then, he turns and heads back toward the houses. After he takes a few steps, Koliuzhi Klara grabs my arm and pulls. “Where are we going?”

She says something, and it’s not “wacush.” I go with her.

Digging roots is as repetitive as hauling water and collecting firewood. Squatting on the damp earth with a slender tool, I work my way across meadows in the pale sunshine of early summer, overturning lumps of soil. Despite having the digging tool, I follow the ways of Koliuzhi Klara and the other women and finish extracting each root with my fingers. Dirt lodges beneath my fingernails and when they split, I return to the digging tool. By midday, it’s already hot. The grass sways and the insects buzz and the air doesn’t move. The glare off the bright green meadow makes me long for the sombre shade of the forest. The baskets fill slowly.

The roots we dig are from the same brown lilies that grew all around my house in Novo-Arkhangelsk last summer. Their heads nodded so beguilingly in the breeze that blew onshore, and I tried to encourage their growth, pulling back the weeds that grew over them, adding a cup of water when the earth seemed dry—though that wasn’t often, thanks to the rain. Their season seemed so short.

I hadn’t known the roots were edible. If I had, we’d have been eating them. I could have put them in my piroshki. They’re white clusters smaller than the Spanish potatoes I ate at Makee’s and they break apart into little fragments like the dough of pastry.

While we’re in the meadow, we dig another root as well. Koliuzhi Klara shows me a plant with long roots that are thin and straight, like nails that have been hammered into the earth. They take much longer to dig out.

As she’s showing me, a little girl jumps all over her, playing with her hair, tickling her, stealing her tools, until Koliuzhi Klara leaps at her with a roar, trying to grab her. The girl dashes away with a squeal. But she returns a few moments later and helps dig up the long roots. She flicks the freshly dug earth at Koliuzhi Klara, making sure each handful stops just short of hitting her. Koliuzhi Klara ignores her.

Back at the houses, we wash the roots and lay them in firepits for a long time and a short time. As they roast, they give off a nutty aroma that renews my nausea. I go away from the firepit to where some children are playing.

They sit in a circle around a heap of fern fronds. A boy inhales deeply then picks up one of the ferns. He says, “Pila,” and pulls one leaf from the frond. “Pila,” he says again, and plucks another leaf. “Pila. Pila. Pila,” he repeats, pulling off one leaf each time he says the word. The children lean in and count as he plucks. When he finishes one frond, he picks up another. When he’s running out of breath, his plucking grows furious. “Pila. Pila. Pila!” he gasps. He throws what’s left of the frond down and falls backward, gulping in mouthfuls of air. The children cheer and laugh, then recount the leaves he’s torn off. I try to keep up. I think they reach forty-seven.

Next, a little girl gets a turn. It’s the same girl who was digging roots with me—the one who jumped all over Koliuzhi Klara. “Pila. Pila. Pila. Pila,” she cries, wisely keeping her voice soft and her head down. Her fingers fly, and the leaves collect in front of her. “Pila. Pila. Pila,” she continues. The pile grows. The boy whose turn is finished leads the count. Finally, she gasps her last “pila,” and with a flourish, throws down the nearly bare stem.

Fifty-two.

The children cheer. The boy leaps up.

“Wacush!” I blurt. The children turn, some surprised to see me. They laugh and tease the girl. The boy holds out a frond to me.

They make room for me in the circle. I sit and look over the heap of fronds. I smile. Perhaps one is my mother’s fiery fern. She’d be disappointed, I think, to discover that her rare and divine fern did not require a journey across the thrice ninth land, but was so easy to find and pick, it was part of a children’s game, and that they treated it no differently than any other fern frond.

I choose one and slide it from the pile. I twirl it in my fingers. It will do.

Finally, I inhale, and I pluck a leaf. “Pila,” I say. And I pluck and pluck, quietly repeating, “Pila. Pila. Pila.” When I think I won’t be able to go another second without breathing, I cry my last “pila” and throw down all that’s left of my frond.

Twenty-nine.

“Wacush,” says the girl and everyone laughs.

When evening comes, and the meal is ready, I’m still repelled by the smell of the roasted roots, so I offer my share to the carpenter Kurmachev.

He divides it in two, and tosses some to the American.

“You’ve taken the biggest serving for yourself,” cries John Williams.

“What are you talking about? I have not.”

“Yes you did—you swine!”

“I did not! Madame Bulygina—you saw, didn’t you?”

“Hush,” I say, before their voices grow any louder. “There’s enough for both of you. Stop behaving like children.”

Before there can be any further debate, Kurmachev pops all his roots into his mouth and chews. The nutty aroma wafts over, and I turn away.

When I do, I find Koliuzhi Klara watching us. She’s kneeled before the tray she shares with the others. Her eyes flit from me to Kurmachev to John Williams. They stay there. Focused on the American. She stares for so long that, if he was aware of it, he’d be uncomfortable. She’s not yet become accustomed to his red hair, or his pale eyes and skin. No one has.

John Williams runs his fingers around the section of the tray in front of him, picking up whatever fragments of fish are left. He chews while he goes back again in case he missed something. He’s blind to Koliuzhi Klara’s intense scrutiny.

Then the little girl pops up out of nowhere, and with a shriek, leaps on Koliuzhi Klara. Koliuzhi Klara cries out and reaches for the tray to steady it and prevent it from spilling. The girl rolls to the ground, then curls into and presses her body tight against Koliuzhi Klara, who looks bemused. She finally nudges the girl away—but not far away—and only then she begins eating.

Jumpy and doe-eyed, the little girl is just like a rabbit. I name her Zaika.

Koliuzhi Klara comes for me after the morning meal. She has no baskets or tools. We head toward the sea, accompanied by five young women, all carrying paddles. The women chatter as we head toward the canoes.

Two young men are already there. They give paddles to Koliuzhi Klara and me.

We push our canoe out to sea. The bow points down the coast. We are heading south.

In Petersburg, I once rowed a little boat across a pond in the park. I pestered my father until he relented and allowed me. My parents sat at the stern, my father instructing me to keep us on course. “Pull on the right. More. Now straight ahead. Hard.” I didn’t dip one oar deep enough and it skimmed the surface. Water sprayed my parents. “Anya!” they shrieked, and we all laughed.

But I’ve never paddled anything before. I dip the blade into the water and pull. We push against the waves that break on the beach and try to force us back. I try to time my stroke to match that of Koliuzhi Klara, but she’s fast. We pass the headland and on the other side lies a long sandy beach and more rocks. It takes a long time and a short time before we arrive at an island I’ve never seen before.

It’s much bigger than it looked when we were approaching. The helmsman steers toward a shelf on the inland side where the water is calmer, the waves are not breaking, and we can pull up the canoe. We all climb out.

The gulls shriek. Their yellow beaks are fiery slashes against the grey sky. They dive at us. Some women bend their arms to protect their heads. The gulls are so close, I hear the huff-huff-huff of their beating wings and feel the air they stir against my cheek.

I follow Koliuzhi Klara over the rocks. They’re slippery near the water and I’m slower than usual; my new small belly has already unbalanced me in a way that’s disproportionate to its size. The old peasant women would watch me and say I’m going to have a boy.

We arrive before a steep face of rock. The women grab onto it and begin to climb.

The first woman disappears over the top. She comes back an instant later and pokes her head over the edge. “Isha^wá k^walílho. K^wό ax^wό!”[51] she says, barely raising her voice, as though she’s conveying a secret.

The small plateau up here is scattered with nests of twisted grass and grey feathers. Each one contains two or three green-brown speckled eggs. No doubt they belong to the gulls whose cries have become even angrier, whose diving is so close now, I could touch them if I dared.

The woman who arrived first on the plateau steps on a nest. There’s a pitiful crunch. Then everyone joins in. The gulls scream and dive as the women move across the plateau, breaking the eggs and flattening the nests. The women say not a single word.

I’m baffled. This is not the way the koliuzhi do anything.

Koliuzhi Klara stops her stomping and peers at me. At my feet is a nest with only a single egg. She stomps her foot to show me what I must do.

I shake my head no. She frowns, then steps over to the nest and crushes the egg herself.

When all the eggs have been broken, we climb back down the rock and go home. Every stroke of the paddle, I hear the thud of Koliuzhi Klara’s foot and the crunch of the one egg that lay before me. I can’t reconcile what she did, what they all did, with what I know of the koliuzhi.

Two days later, Koliuzhi Klara hands me a paddle and leads me to the beach again. This time, there are two canoes waiting for us—one quite deep but much shorter. The young men tie the small canoe to our large canoe. Only two women climb into the smaller vessel. They are towed behind us, but paddle to lessen our load. The bow is pointed, once again, out to sea, and once we pass the headland, I’m certain we’re returning to the gull island.

We destroyed everything there. There are no eggs left. I don’t know why we’re going back. When the canoe bumps up against the rock, the gulls are once again furious.

I follow Koliuzhi Klara and the others. I pull myself up the steep part of our path. I’m the last to reach the top. When I do, I look around. Every nest is once again fluffed up, lined with feathers, and filled with eggs. It’s as though we were never here.

Koliuzhi Klara bends over and picks up an egg. Then she turns to another nest and takes a second egg. The other girls join in. Quietly, they move from nest to nest, ignoring the gulls, and removing only a single egg from each nest. The eggs are placed in small baskets they’ve brought. They stuff dried lichen around the eggs to cushion them.

Every egg is fresh. We know that because we destroyed all the eggs three days ago. The gulls had no problem laying more eggs—they’re no different from hens in Russia—and when we leave they’ll lay again to replace the ones we’re taking. When we eat the ones we’ve taken, we’ll know with certainty that they’re not spoiled.

The gulls will hatch their young in a few weeks and after they get their feathers, they’ll fly away, and then they’ll come back here next year and do it all over again. The survival of this bird is tied to the survival of the koliuzhi. Just as it was with the mussels and the herring roe and just about everything the koliuzhi gather from the land and sea, a cycle of give and take governs their actions. What I’d judged to be wanton destruction is part of a system that stretches out like a spider web, and just like a spider web, unless seen from the right angle, it’s invisible.

I bend before a nest. The egg is as smooth as porcelain and warm. I gently place it in my basket before moving on to the next nest.

When we return to the canoes, our baskets full, there’s a fire blazing on the rock shelf near where we disembarked. The men are tending it. The women show off the eggs, then gather around the fire. The wind gusts and pushes smoke into my face. I cough and rub my eyes. I wonder why we’re not yet going home.

Then the women rise and retrieve their cooking tongs from the bottom of the big canoe. They dig stones from the orange coals and carry them to the small canoe. Plumes of steam rise when the rocks tumble into the boats. I hadn’t realized there was water in the small canoe.

Koliuzhi Klara takes her basket of eggs and gestures to show me that I should take mine as well and follow her to the canoe. We place the eggs alongside the rocks in the hot water. Once all the eggs have been placed in the small canoe, we all climb into the large canoe and turn our bow to shore.

When we land, we remove the eggs from the water and put them back into the baskets. Then, we go house to house, giving the eggs to the oldest people. They receive them with open hands, and broad smiles that crinkle the skin around their eyes. When we get to the moustached toyon’s house, the women gesture to show me that I should give an egg to old Ivan Kurmachev.

He takes it so gingerly the women laugh. “What is it?”

“It’s a gull egg. It’s cooked.”

“What about me?” says the American.

“They’re only for the old people. You’re too young.” Then I say to Kurmachev, “Go ahead. Try it.”

He cracks the egg against his leg and peels the shell. Everyone’s watching. With his thumb, he digs into the white and slides a bit into his mouth. After a moment, he grins. “It’s good,” he says.

“What does it taste like?”

“Here.” He offers me a morsel.

“That’s not fair,” the American says. “You’re not old enough either.” I hesitate. What I said was true.

Koliuzhi Klara catches my eye and gestures, putting her fingers to her mouth. So, I take the piece of egg and put it in my mouth.

It’s fishy and greasy and a bit chewy, but warm as it is, it’s also pleasingly rich. It reminds me of turkey eggs, but only if they were eaten with dollops of caviar and sour cream.

The women watch me expectantly. When I smile and nod, still chewing, they laugh. I swallow and say, “Oo-shoo-yuksh-uhlits.” I know it’s Makee’s language, not theirs, but it’s the only word I know for “thank you.” The women shriek with laughter, but from their expressions I believe I’ve done something that has pleased them.

As our group moves to the next old man in the house, I see Koliuzhi Klara slip a gull egg to the American when no one’s looking. His face is surely as shocked as mine. He rolls the egg into his sleeve before anybody notices.

One afternoon, as I head to shore to wash my hands, I find the beach crowded with children, Holpokit is in the centre of their high-spirited play.

“Ahda!” he calls when he sees me. He says something to the children and they laugh. Zaika, the little girl who clings to Koliuzhi Klara, runs over and grabs my hand.

“Wait,” I cry. “Where are you taking me?”

Holpokit laughs at me. She’s just a child—why should I resist? I let her pull me to the others. Holpokit leads them in a kind of a chant or rhyme that they all know. When he finishes, everyone except him—and me and Zaika—runs away.

Zaika pulls on my hand and shouts desperately.

I look to Holpokit for guidance. “What’s going on here?”

Holpokit says, “Hiiláalo kakadiyásal. Alitítaas cha lítiksh híat kadiyásaliksh. Dáki hi’adasákalawόli.”[52] He points to the forest.

I look at Zaika. We run.

Zaika and I slip into the forest. We follow a narrow vale until she pulls me up its other side. We head deeper into the forest. I hope she knows where she’s going—we’re no longer on the path. We dart among the tallest trees, avoiding the fallen logs and the thickets of berry bushes. Wet foliage sparkles like jewels. The shrubs must have dressed for an evening out.

I hear rustling near my feet. The boy who won the fern game squats beneath a moss-covered log. When our eyes meet, he puts his hands on the back of his head and pulls his face down until his hair falls like a curtain and he’s nearly invisible in the shadows.

Zaika says something in a low voice.

We arrive at what looks to be a sheer drop. The underbrush is thick, and it’s impossible to judge how deep this chasm is. There may be a path down. I see a narrow ledge that disappears into the foliage. I shake my head. It’s too dangerous.

Still, Zaika urges me forward.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I say, attempting to extract my hand from hers. But she squeezes my fingers until they hurt. Then she jumps. “No!” I cry. She lands on that narrow ledge. Only by bending awkwardly am I able to stay on the edge and hold onto her.

“You’re going to pull me over.” I slide down until I’m beside her. We share a tiny space that has barely enough room for our feet. Then she leans over and parts a wall of ferns. There’s a cave.

She pulls me inside. The ferns bend back into place.

“What is this?” I say, incredulous, and my voice echoes. The cave is cool and dark—but not entirely black. It must be deep. She tugs my hand, hard, and I think she wants me to be quiet.

This is a serious game of Cache-Cache, and Zaika has a perfect hiding spot. How she ever found it is a mystery. Whoever is looking for us—it must be Holpokit—will never find us.

She squats against a wall and pulls me down next to her. The wall is cool. She shivers.

We wait. After a few minutes, my eyes adjust. The floor of the cave is earth and toothy rocks that force their way up through the ground. It’s very wet and there’s a slow plop-plop-plop of dripping water. The little light that filters through the ferns at the cave’s mouth is not enough to enable me to see much more.

Is the girl scared? She turns her head, and I see her eyes and her smile flash white in the sparse light. She’s been here so many times she’s not afraid.

We wait. I try to imagine what’s happening outside. Has Holpokit found the boy hiding under the log? Who else has he found? Do the children set boundaries on how far away they can hide? Unless Holpokit knows all the secret places, we might be waiting a long time.

I shift to get more comfortable for the tedious wait ahead and I feel a jab in my hip. It’s the small wooden doll that the carpenter Ivan Kurmachev made and gave me. It’s still tied to the end of my sash because I have nowhere else to keep it. I reel in the belt.

Zaika watches me unknot it. When I show her what’s there, she’s surprised. I offer her the doll. At first, I only mean for her to hold the doll, but when I see her expression, I want her to keep it forever.

She turns the doll over and over in her hands. She whispers, “Waax^w x^wόx^wa aachidáal. K^wotaasichíd. ^wόpat^wali.”[53]

She gazes into the doll’s plain face then touches it to her forehead, her eyes closed. Then she pulls the doll away and tries to give it back. I shake my head, no. “I want to give this to you,” I whisper. “I hope you like it.”

She cups both her hands around the little doll. Again, her teeth are a flash of white.

Suddenly, from the back of the cave, there’s rustling—and then it stops. Zaika is rigid. Is it an animal? It could be a mouse. But it could be a wolf. Or a bear.

Should we run? Would we have time to get through the narrow opening and climb up the ledge? Perhaps we’re better off staying very still. The creature may go away.

I carefully put my arm around Zaika. Her fear seeps into me like I’m a sponge.

What if it’s not an animal? What else could it be? In all my mother’s stories, did she say anything about a cave?

Something bangs. I jump and yank Zaika by the arm so hard she cries out. I drag her to the mouth of the cave. I duck between the ferns. I barely look at the narrow ledge as I fling myself up to the earth above. I swing Zaika by the arm in a way that makes no sense. Where we’re safely on top, I scoop her up and run.

I dodge between two tall trees. I slip on moss but use the motion to push myself in a new direction. I can’t look back. My head is filled with noise: my breathing, Zaika’s breath, the pounding of my feet, and the rustle of whatever is after us. I force myself to go faster. I scrape my leg against something. It hurts.

I come up against a wide tree trunk. I dart around it.

I slam into Holpokit. He grabs me by the shoulders. Zaika’s wedged between us.

“Let go! We have to get out of here,” I cry. Pain shoots through my leg.

I twist. But Holpokit won’t let go.

“No! Stop it!” I push against him, squeezing Zaika. She cries out.

“The game’s over!” What’s wrong with him? He still won’t release me.

Zaika pushes herself out of my arms and slides to the ground. She wraps her arms around my legs and won’t let go. And then there’s rustling all around. I scream. A child appears. Then another. Then a third. They pop out from behind the trees and bushes. They smile. Some laugh.

“No,” I cry, “there’s a bear—or a wolf—I don’t know—” I’m crying. No one knows what I’m saying.

Holpokit peers into my face and when he has my attention, he points.

The smiling face of a boy is poking up out of the ground. His arms appear. He boosts himself up and squirms out of a deep hole concealed by foliage. Another boy pops out of the same hole. They stand side by side before the hole, waiting. Then the second boy slowly extends his arm and opens his hand. In his palm rests the little wooden doll.

And I understand. The cave has two entrances.

“What’s going on?” I ask Zaika.

She laughs but she’s nervous. Holpokit says, “Kidatlíswali dixá tich bayaá. Hitk^wotaítilili.”[54] In his face there’s the same combination of humour and contrition.

He probably initiated the prank. All the children were in on it.

When they see that I’ve finally understood, everyone laughs and shrieks. They jump into the knot that’s me, Holpokit, and Zaika. There’s no bear, no wolf. No creature from my mother’s stories. Of course not. It was only ever us.

That night, I go to the beach to look for my Polaris. The ocean sighs softly; I think the last of the winter storms has blown itself to exhaustion. The sky is clearer than it’s been in a long time, and I easily find her, perched in the arms of Draco. My ship constellation. Surely, it’s a portent. When we’re back in Novo-Arkhangelsk, I’ll write to my father and tell him about the constellation, but when I write to my mother, I’ll tell her about how it foretold our rescue.

Corona Borealis, the northern crown, is a little to the south. Many think it’s the crown that Theseus used to light his way through the labyrinth, and that he wouldn’t have found his way home without it. I have often wondered about its shape, which I see not as a crown, but as an unfinished circle.

How perfect its arc, how tempting to try to identify stars that could complete the circle. But they are not there. They are not where one would hope to find them.

If I were on the brig right now, I would hear my husband’s footfall. From behind, he would call out, “Anya!” And before I could lower my telescope, I’d feel his arm slip around my waist and pull me toward him. I’d lean back into his solid form. Right away, I’d be warmer. His beard would scratch against the side of my face as he nuzzled into my neck. Those short moments when we stood like that, quiet, together, our faces pointed to the sky, those were the bright moments that held the possibility of making that circle complete.

I will find a way to bring us together again.

The berries are at their prime. Because of last night’s rain, they’re plump and with the slightest touch, they tumble into my fingers. The berries are as orange as salmon, each one a tiny cluster of jewels worthy of the Tsarina’s collection of jewels. The ripest dangle from high above, forcing me to stretch if I can or, if I can’t, to bend the thorny branches toward me. The canes arc, making incomplete circles that mirror Corona Borealis.

Koliuzhi Klara is here, Zaika, too, and many other women. This is the largest group with whom I’ve ever gone into the forest. Three men have come: two Quileutes, our guards, and John Williams. He tells me he’s only here to carry back one of the large baskets—there are three—all of which we aim to fill today.

The Quileute men have their bows in hand, and talk softly to one another as we weave through the bushes picking berries. John Williams, on the other hand, seems at a loss for what to do. He wanders around, stopping every once in a while to eat a berry. His hair is a brighter colour than the berries.

The dappled sun reaches through the forest canopy and warms both us and the berries. The insects hover and buzz around my ears looking for opportunities to land and bite. I swat them away, but they’re back in an instant. I pop a berry into my mouth. It bursts with a sharp sourness that slides over my tongue and turns sweet before I swallow.

Tonight, we’ll eat berries—of this I’m certain—but most of what we’ll pick today will be preserved. All winter long, we ate last summer’s berries. I’ll see how they press the berries into loaves, and how they keep birds, rodents, and insects from eating them while they dry. The children will be involved. I can imagine their delight, flinging sticks and stones and shouting at the birds who, being very clever, will dodge whatever they throw and still manage to steal a few berries.

Some of the fruit are very hard to reach without getting scratched. But the reward of a particularly plump berry or a branch that droops with the weight of many berries makes us all endure a few prickles. It seems we must risk the thorns if we want the sweetness.

Koliuzhi Klara and I move to opposite sides of a bush, picking, picking, picking as we go. We drift farther and farther away from the group. The rustling, the conversation, and the low laughter tell me we’re not alone. Eventually we lose sight of Zaika. Then we can’t see the watchmen.

I spot a heavily laden branch, and I pull it toward me. I hear a soft laugh nearby. The branch I’ve pulled aside reveals Koliuzhi Klara and John Williams. They’re not speaking but the way they’re looking at each another makes me blush. They’re so attentive to one another they don’t even notice me. I let the branch spring back up again.

I turn away from them and pick from another bush. I keep my head down and tread softly. I don’t want them to know anybody’s spotted them. I pick and pick without looking behind. The signs have been there all along. I’ve been slow to see the truth. I’d told myself that his red hair and pale skin were the only reasons anybody here would stare at him, and I thought giving him the gull egg was simple kindness. But I knew in my heart that there was nothing simple about it.

She’s so preoccupied with him, and he with her. I have no time to think about that. Putting aside their feelings, the possibilities and impossibilities, I see they’ve presented me with a chance. I take two steps back. Three more. They’re not coming. They’re not calling. No one is. I edge farther away until all the berry bushes are behind me. I pause at the lip of a slight depression, set down my basket, and slip over the edge.

I’m going to find my husband.

I try to keep my step light as I run through this vale. I climb the other side of the depression and head straight. I aim to find a path. And if I’m lucky, it’ll be a path that leads to the sea. From there, I need only turn right to go north.

I can’t think beyond that.

I stumble upon an old, rutted trail. Judging by the overgrown branches, it’s rarely used. I hope I’m not misreading the thick brush. If the trail’s been abandoned for long, it may lead nowhere, and I may get lost. Ahead, the thick undergrowth ripples in a slight breeze. I choose to take my chances with the trail.

The minutes slip away. Have they noticed I’m missing? Are the watchmen looking for me? Has anybody run back to the village to alert the others? I force myself to go faster. I must get as far away as I can before they notice.

Finally, my overgrown path meets another. This new path is wide and clear. I run. I step on a branch and it cracks. The sound echoes off the trees. I stop—but there’s nothing more.

Off to the side, the forest thins a little. I see sunlight. I head toward it.

I find a clearing, scented with an indescribable perfume, blanketed with wildflowers. There are the purple ones whose roots we eat. There are the tiny pale clusters of blossoms at the top of fragile stems, looking like candlesticks. There are the starry white ones with butter and sunshine in their centres. They lead my eye around as I find shapes and see the constellations they form.

But I’ve no time. I plunge back into the forest.

Using the light and shadows to guide me, I try to head in the same direction. At times, I’m blocked by the land or a fallen tree or one of countless streams. The little creeks are as tangled up as yarn, and I wish I could give one end a good, strong tug and turn them into a single long, powerful river. The kind of river that leads to the ocean.

As dusk approaches, I hear running water. I head toward it and find a fast-flowing creek. The water is glossy where it curls around the logs and rocks. It flows to my right. This is it—my path to the coast.

A shadow falls across the little stream.

One of the guards? A bear? My mother’s leshii?

No.

Koliuzhi Klara on the opposite bank. Alone.

It’s over. I’m going back. “Please,” I say. “I just want to be with my husband.”

She smiles. Her eyes glitter. “Wacush,” she says. She raises her head and swivels away. She merges into the shadows of the forest.

In a moment, I don’t hear her at all.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I shelter under a low overhang at the foot of a cliff. I pull my knees up to my chin and wait for sleep to come. Mosquitoes pester me and some bite before I’m able to swat them away. I try not to think too much about what I’m doing. What matters is that I’ll soon be back with Nikolai Isaakovich.

The night air sags with moisture, but the ledge above prevents it from settling on me. In a few hours, before the sun rises and erases the stars, I’ll leave. Polaris will point me in the right direction. When she fades away, I’ll find a stream, and eventually, following Polaris by night and water by day, I will reach the ocean. From there, I’ll go north until I find him.

Is my child cold? I hum one of my mother’s lullabies, one about a crying duck, careful to keep my voice low in case the Quileutes are looking for me. I don’t know why Koliuzhi Klara let me go—whether it was pity or kindness or whether her own new feelings guided her decision—but I will remain indebted to her for all my life. I drift in and out of sleep, and then, when I think enough hours have passed, but the sky is still dark, I go back to the creek where I might get a better look at the sky.

The trickling water seems louder in the dark. I take a drink, then look up. Mercifully there are no clouds.

In a break in the treetops, through a hole that’s as round as the opening of a telescope, I spot Polaris. I stretch out my arm and I measure fist by fist as my father showed me, arriving at a number somewhere between forty-five and fifty. That’s my latitude. Then I line up Alpha Cassiopeia—the brightest star in the Queen of Ethiopia—with two branches sticking out high overhead, and I wait. When the star sinks out of alignment, I know I’m facing west.

It’s difficult enough to walk in the dark, and even harder to walk along the riverbank. Shrubs with sharp branches compete with grasses and reeds for water and light. This is why so few koliuzhi trails follow the waterways. I walk a few sazhens into the trees where there’s less undergrowth. I can’t see the water any longer, but its sound is not far. It’s a friend who’s agreed to accompany me on my voyage. There’s no path, but there’s more space. Eventually, I’ll find a trail.

Are the Quileutes looking for me? I wonder what Koliuzhi Klara told them. That she couldn’t find me? Would she be audacious enough to tell them that she saw me running away—in a southerly direction? If she gets caught in a lie, they’ll punish her. Should I go back to prevent that? What if she told them that I’d gone back to my people on a ship? Or that she’d seen a wolf or a bear dragging my corpse away to its den? My sudden return could make things worse for her.

I must get much farther away, for her sake, too.

When the sun starts to rise, I’m hungry. I snap off spruce buds as I go and eat them. I stop to pick some tiny scarlet berries that I recognize. They grow in a spray and pop like fish roe when I bite them. Only half are ripe, and I don’t have time to pick very many anyway. I must carry on. I scratch gum off a tree and chew as I walk, remembering the day I did the same thing with Inessa and the other girl.

When the brig ran aground, and we first stepped into the forest, I had no notion there was anything here to eat. It was empty wilderness—nothing more. But the koliuzhi live in a kind of Eden with an abundance of berries, roots, mushrooms, and shoots. It has ponds and rivers stocked with fish, and an ocean full of seals, whales, halibut, clams, mussels—and more. Thanks to the koliuzhi—and the night sky, and the good sense my father nurtured in me—I know I can survive until I find my husband.

When the mud is deep, and when I have to walk a long way to circumvent a heap of fallen trees, and when I come up against a stream too wide and deep to cross, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake. Sometimes, I think I should turn back. Then the landscape changes, and my path grows easier, and every time, I decide I must not give up.

Late this afternoon, a gorge that’s gradually grown deeper forces me farther into the forest, distant from any stream. I miss the company of the flowing water, but I must go where the land permits. When the light starts to fade, and I know evening is not far, I look up. The clouds are moving in.

By the time night falls, there’s no sense continuing. There’s no stream to follow. I can’t see the stars. I might be walking back to the Quileutes.

I pray it doesn’t rain.

I look for shelter. The land is flat, and there’s no overhang that I can hide under until the sky clears. I remember the boy in the game of Cache-Cache—the one who hid beneath a fallen log—and I try to locate a log of my own, one that’s big enough and dry underneath. When I see one that’s suitable, I crawl under and prepare for another night in the forest.

I’m so exhausted I fall asleep right away. But mosquitoes wake me—and I decide to check the sky, but it’s even worse—so I crawl back under the log. I bend a bough toward me and wedge it into place, thinking it might deter some mosquitoes and maybe even keep my burrow warm. I don’t fall asleep again.

In the early morning, I decide there’s no sense staying. Even if I don’t know exactly where I’m heading, at least walking will keep me warm, and eventually I will find another stream. If I’m lucky, the sky will clear and tonight I will have the stars to guide me once again.

I stop to eat a few berries, but otherwise, I walk and walk, for a long time and a short time. Then I hear water. I follow the sound until I come across a slow-moving, murky creek. I walk downstream, along its mucky banks, until it widens, and the water is clear enough to drink. I gulp handfuls of it and head back into the forest.

On a hump of land in a clearing, I find some leaves that I recognize. They’re pale green pliant bowls that grow low to the ground, each no bigger than a fingertip, and each one with a speck of a white flower in its centre. I pick the leaves as the koliuzhi taught me, pinching them from their stems so the roots remain intact, and when I have a handful, I eat them.

I walk on. For a while I think the clouds are lifting. A few minutes later, I look again and find the grey as thick as yesterday.

I’m far from water. Hours have passed since the murky stream and while it’s been muddy in places along my route, I’ve seen no other flowing water. The land starts to flatten; ahead, the forest canopy is a little lighter. I walk in that direction, pushing branches aside. And then I find the devastating sight of the log under which I spent last night and the bough I bent to close off my burrow. “What have I done now?” I whisper and hold my head in my hands. I’ve been walking all day, and here I am, back where I started.

What is the sense of this? What foolishness made me think I could find my husband in this wilderness? I’m so lost, I couldn’t even go back.

Then I hear the crunch of a rotten branch that’s been stepped on.

They can’t have seen me—otherwise they’d be calling out. I lean into the fallen tree beside me. I put my hands on its moss-covered bark and creep down until I’m on my knees. Slowly, I lie down.

When I’m as low as I can go, I try to look around. I keep my movements slow and slight. I listen so hard my head roars.

Then a dry branch cracks right behind me. I leap up and turn around.

It’s a wolf.

Its eyes lock onto mine. Its nostrils flare, and its sides quiver. Its sharp ears point forward.

Should I run? If I do, it will chase. Its legs are long, its paws huge saucers. It knows this place and I don’t. I wait for it to move. If it attacks, I’ll stand no chance. Go away, I urge the beast. There’s nothing here for you. I’m a girl looking for a trail to the sea. I mean you no harm.

Its eyes are impossible to read.

Let me go, I urge. Please. I just want to find my husband.

It breaks off its stare. It turns its head and trots away.

I exhale. I don’t move. I’ll wait until there’s enough distance between us. And then I must move far, far away from here. Any direction will do.

When the wolf is only nine or ten paces away, it stops. It looks back.

Keep going, I again urge. You have to keep going. Somewhere far from here you have unfinished wolf duties.

It turns around and faces me again. It tilts its head and watches. Like it’s listening.

Like Zhuchka.

I nearly laugh. She held her head at exactly that angle when she wanted something. When she wanted me to follow.

But that’s lunacy. This is not Zhuchka—it’s a wolf. I can’t follow a wolf into a forest. The old stories tell me everything I need to know about allowing a wolf to lead me into the forest. Those who have been foolish enough to follow wolves were eaten or doomed to another painful fate. Go away. I have no business with you.

But it doesn’t go anywhere.

So, I take a hesitant step forward. And when I do, the beast turns, and steps ahead. Should I run now? The wolf turns back and, again, watches me.

What do you want? What do you want, my Madame Zhuchka?

The wolf tilts its head.

Warily, I step toward it. The wolf turns and also advances one step.

I can hardly stop myself from fleeing but I’m equally scared to not follow. So, I decide to go against the old stories, to do what this Zhuchka seems to want, praying this creature is more Zhuchka and less wolf. Leaving a safe distance between us, I follow.

The beast leads me through the imposing trees. It finds ways that are clear of the thorniest brush and the spongiest bog. It leads me along ridges, circumventing rocky, uneven ground. When we must cross a stream, the wolf finds a place where it’s shallow and calm. This is its land, and the creature knows it well. It never gets so far ahead that we become separated. When I fall behind, it waits patiently.

As night reveals its face again, I’m exhausted and terrified. We’ve made unbelievable progress—much more than I ever could have made on my own. I’ve put so much trust in this wolf, but I still don’t really know what it wants. As the shadows grew, I began to wonder if I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Was this wolf leading me to its den? What other motive could it have?

My mother’s friend Yelizaveta recounted a story told by a strange man at a party. A few years before, he’d attended a wedding and even though the host had properly assembled the requisite twelve-member wedding party, still some ritual had not been carried out properly, and the entire party was transformed into wolves. “The sources of human vice are idleness and superstition!” my father had cried. “You’re excelling at both.” He left the room. My mother quietly asked Yelizaveta to continue. The transformed wolves ran with the real wolves for seven years and over that time, one by one, they were killed and eaten because the real wolves could tell by their scent that they were really human. One man survived—the man Yelizaveta met. He’d always lie downwind from the pack so they could never smell his humanness. And after the seventh year, he returned to his village. The villagers were terrified and threw rocks and sticks to drive him away. But he persisted. Finally, somebody in his family thought it could be him and that he might have been enchanted. So, they left a heel of bread out for him. He ate it. And every night afterward, they left more bread, and every night he ate it all, until he’d eaten so much bread, his pelt opened like a cloak and fell from his shoulders and he transformed back into a person. All that remained of his years as a wolf was a long tuft of grey hair that grew on his chest and never went away.

Yelizaveta swore the tale was true. At a dinner party, he’d told his story, then boldly unfastened his jacket and his shirt. He showed everyone in the room the tuft of grey hair. Until that moment, Yelizaveta herself had doubted.

I was ten years old, and I didn’t believe her. My mother’s friend tended to embellish, and, besides, I agreed with my father. Her story was impossible. It was exactly the type of superstitious nattering that spread among the peasants, which the Tsar was so anxious to purge from our society. It had only been a couple of years since my illness and that strange blindess that had afflicted me. The visions of that night were still fresh. And my mother listened so earnestly I could tell that in her heart, she believed Yelizaveta.

In this forest, where everything seems possible, I wonder if my mother heard something in Yelizaveta’s story that she’d caught and I’d missed.

When it’s so dark that we can no longer see very well, the wolf stops. It’s dry, and the mosquitoes seem less numerous here. I sit with my back against a tree while the wolf curls next to a nearby log. We stay within sight and watch each other. When sleep overcomes the creature and it settles its head on its paws, I allow my own eyes to close. Just for a minute I tell myself. One minute is all.

When the birds wake me in the morning I’m astonished to find myself alive. The wolf sits by its log and watches me. It’s been waiting for me to wake up.

Good morning. Where are you taking me today?

The wolf’s ears are cocked. Very carefully I walk away and relieve myself without taking my eyes off it. Its ears twitch at the sound of my water hitting the earth.

When I’ve risen, it trots ahead, and, having little choice, I follow.

We stop to drink from streams but otherwise continue for a long time and a short time. Then, just ahead, I see expansive light and wonder if we’re near the sea. I don’t smell salt water, but this amount of bright light is unusual.

When we emerge through the trees, we come upon a huge lake. It’s the biggest lake I’ve seen in the koliuzhi territory. The wolf trots to its edge and wades in. It laps at the water. I walk across the spongy ground until I’m a short distance down the shore. I hear the plop of a frog, but it’s gone before I see it. Water ripples out in rings marking the place where it vanished. I splash cool water on my face and neck and arms. I drizzle some on my head. I hear the krya-krya of a duck; a flock bobs near shore. I’m surprised the wolf pays it no attention—Zhuchka would have been off on a chase—but this creature’s only waiting for me.

You’ve missed your chance for a big breakfast. I wouldn’t have stopped you.

The shore of the lake is too boggy and overgrown to follow, so the wolf leads me back into the trees. Still, I’m sure, from the marshy smell, that the lake’s not far. The path the wolf chooses is flat and only slightly moist, so we cover much distance. The sky remains grey throughout though I sense that it’s lightening and perhaps by tonight, I’ll be able to find Polaris again.

Where is the seashore? Show me the seashore so I can head north. But the wolf only continues through the forest.

Dusk eventually arrives, and the birds frolic, then settle. I’m very tired, and the more tired I feel, the more I can’t cast away my doubt. I’ve been foolish to come this far with a creature all because the tilt of its head reminded me of a dog I once loved. I’ve trusted this beast for two days, but I still I don’t know where the ocean is.

I stop walking.

The wolf pauses and looks over its shoulder.

Why can’t we stop?

It trots ahead a few paces, then turns and tilts its head.

All right.

I follow. It makes no sense to give up now. I’ve trusted this wolf. Maybe it’s trying to take me to shelter for the night.

The mosquitoes come out. Dusk crosses the threshold and becomes night. The sky is not clear. The way ahead is obscured.

Let’s stop. Please. That’s enough.

What I’d give now for a warm fire. I’d dry my feet. Put some boughs next to it and sleep. I’d wake up periodically to stoke it. I’d keep it going all night for the warmth and for the comfort. I can almost smell the smoke.

No.

I can smell the smoke.

“Zhuchka?” I cry. “Where are we?”

Ahead there’s a flicker. Light. A fire.

I go forward cautiously. Whose fire is this?

When I finally come to the edge of the trees and peer into the clearing, I see a row of about a dozen houses, whale bones gleaming around their perimeter, a wall of tall drying racks, stacks of firewood, canoes pulled up on the shore, and four totem poles facing the ocean, one, with wings stretched out, that resembles the Holy Cross. I understand. I understand, but I don’t believe it.

It’s Tsoo-yess. I’m back at Makee’s.

And the wolf is gone.

I stumble toward Makee’s house. When I almost reach the threshold, a figure is silhouetted against the door. It’s a woman. She screams.

It’s Inessa. She screams again.

“It’s me,” I cry. “It’s only me.”

She runs back inside, still screaming. I hear shouts—from both her and the other Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts.

I enter the house. I’m nearly blinded by the light from the fires. Everyone’s moving. Some are clustering around Inessa, others around their children, and still others have turned to the doorway or climbed the benches, so they can see. My vision returns to normal. In people’s faces, I see shock and fear.

And there he is. Nikolai Isaakovich.

Disbelief fills my heart and his eyes. I run, my arms stretched out, and throw myself against him. He enfolds me in an embrace, and only then do I believe it’s him. I let my body sink into his.

“Anya?” he says. “Where—how did you—?”

To respond is impossible. I don’t know the words to explain what happened these past four days.

I cling to him and remember all the times I’ve pressed up against him. None has been before so many people. There’s the brooding Kozma Ovchinnikov who’s almost smiling. There’s Makee’s wife. There’s the old woman who saw me unclothed and washed me in the pond. I feel far more exposed to her now. There’s the man with the scar on his chest; he has his arm around Inessa. On her left, the other girl is stroking Inessa’s hair and the instant she removes her hand and lays it against Inessa’s belly, I realize Inessa is pregnant, too.

“Where are the others?” I ask.

“Gone to the mountains to hunt,” Nikolai Isaakovich says.

“And Makee?”

“He took them. He’s with them.” He shifts and peers into my face. “Anya—I don’t understand. How did you get here?”

“Kolya—I’m exhausted.” I bury my face in his shoulder and try to shut out everyone who’s watching us. I let him lead me to our sleeping mat. He lies down with me, tucks the cedar blanket around us, curls into my back, and holds me. Mercifully, he stops talking and leaves me alone.

The next morning, I’m left alone to wander the beach. Everyone—including Nikolai Isaakovich—has eaten and gone to work. How will I explain my sudden appearance? I know what happened, but, even to me, it sounds like a fiction as dubious as any of Timofei Osipovich’s stories. Have I gone mad? Maybe. But even with Polaris, even with all the enlightened good sense in the world, I never could have found my way here on my own. That wolf was real.

The hunting party returns near midday with a commotion. The Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts rush to meet them and cry out in excitement and real pleasure. The hunters have brought back two reindeer that have been butchered into haunches and shoulders, barrels of ribs still attached to the backbone, legs with black stony hooves that look like elegant boot heels, and two heads with their antlers splayed like the crown of an oak tree.

Timofei Osipovich gapes when he sees me. But his shock flits away in an instant. He smiles and calls out, “Madame Bulygina! What a delightful surprise! It’s a good thing I brought dinner.” He raises his hands, which are caked with dried blood. “I hope you’re hungry.”

Makee doesn’t see me right away. He’s dealing with the meat. He points and gives instructions. One set of ribs is carried into his house. A man kneels beside one set of antlers and begins to saw it apart.

Finished, Makee turns toward his house. Before he reaches the door, I run up to face him.

“Anna? What are you doing here?”

“I came back last night.” I’ve said nothing false, but I already feel as guilty as if I had.

“Who brought you?”

“No one.” I redden. “Makee—I want to stay. Please let me.”

Until now, I’ve never seen him lost for words. “Give me a few minutes,” he says finally. “We shall talk.”

I pace along the length of the village while I wait, back and forth, the totem poles on one side, and the line of houses on the other. Timofei Osipovich slides into step beside me. “Congratulations!” he cries heartily.

“For what?”

“You’ve succeeded in surprising everyone.”

“That was not my intent.” I start to walk faster, but he matches my pace.

“They say it’s only seven versts to heaven, but the path is all forest. Have you arrived in your heaven?”

“They also say that a fool’s tongue runs before his feet,” I reply, and he laughs. “You haven’t moved into your hut, I see.”

“We’re waiting for our furniture to arrive from Petersburg. You must know what that’s like. It could take a while.”

A boy comes from the doorway of Makee’s house. His feet slap the earth. He stops before me and says, “Šuuk. da·sa·idic a.”[55]

“What misfortune,” says Timofei Osipovich, “Your toyon is calling.”

“He’s not my toyon.” His laugh follows me and the boy inside.

Makee’s on the bench, holding his metal cheetoolth on his lap. He’s washed and put on fresh clothing. I approach, slowed by the weight of a hundred thoughts of what’s going to happen to me now.

“I am surprised to see you,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to find my husband.”

“You knew he was here?”

“Not exactly. I only knew he was somewhere to the north.”

I tell him most of the truth. What the promyshlenniki told me about the trade. How I ran away, hid in the forest, found Polaris, pointed myself in the right direction, followed streams—and how I stumbled upon Tsoo-yess by chance.

I say nothing about the wolf.

A silence stretches out between us. He shifts his hands on the cheetoolth, and it glints in the firelight.

“Makee—please—we’re expecting a child.” I redden.

His eyes flicker for an instant. Then, he purses his lips thoughtfully, and gives a short nod. “A child! I wish you and the commander great happiness.”

“Could I stay?” My voice comes out small and helpless, like I’m a little girl again.

“The Quileutes will be looking for you. They must be worried.”

“I’m sorry. I have to think about the baby now,” I say softly. “Try to understand.”

“A child is such happy news,” he says. “And happy news is hard to reconcile with what the toyons are saying.” He sighs deeply and says, “I will talk with them. But they won’t be pleased with me. I keep telling them the situation will improve. They don’t believe me anymore.”

“I’m very sorry, Makee. I promised you, and now all I’ve done is make more trouble.”

He sighs and sets aside the cheetoolth. “For the child’s sake, I’ll try. But the disruption your people are causing is nearly insupportable now. Order must be restored.”

After everyone’s back from work—my husband was near the rocks all day with some men harpooning octopus that they’ll use for bait tomorrow—we share the evening meal: there’s reindeer, naturally, that was roasted in a pit near the beach. I saw the smoke spiralling gently upward and bending over the forest, and smelled the cooking meat. The bones are splintered and I suck out the marrow. We eat berries with it—the same orange berries I was picking when I escaped.

Timofei Osipovich blusters through the whole meal. He tells stories about the hunt that make it sound as though he tracked, cornered, killed, and slaughtered both animals by himself. The Aleuts don’t contradict him, and, as usual, Ovchinnikov only laughs. My husband sits so close to me I can feel him chewing. He says little.

Then Timofei Osipovich says, “Well, speedily a tale is spun but with much less speed a deed is done! Congratulations are in order. I ought to have said something earlier, but I wanted to wait until we were all together. To the glory of offspring!” He raises an imaginary goblet.

Ovchinnikov nods and cries, “To your health and happiness.”

I look across the house. Inessa and the other girl are watching. Inessa’s belly is big enough that it must be uncomfortable for her to get down and up from the floor. I smile at her, and she gives me a little smile before turning and saying something to the other girl. After that, they both focus on their meals. There’s no sign of the man with the scar on his chest, but I’m certain now he’s become Inessa’s husband.

Well before the sun rises, my husband is stirred from sleep to go fishing. The octopus bait awaits.

“Why so early?” I whisper sleepily.

“We have to get out to the halibut banks before dawn,” he says.

“Who’s we?”

“The koliuzhi. Ovchinnikov is coming, too, but not Timofei Osipovich.”

“They’ll be heartbroken without one another,” I murmur and stretch, and he laughs. “I wish you were staying instead of him.”

“I can tell them I won’t go.”

“No!” I cry, fully awake, thinking of Makee.

He laughs softly. “I’ll be back early. Don’t worry.”

“Kolya—before you leave—would you find Polaris and wish her good morning from me?”

“I will.” He kisses me.

Two men start digging up the earth. We’re a long way from the houses, in a huge meadow. The grass is as dry as tinder, and it ripples when a breeze catches it. But the breezes are slight today. It’s the hottest it’s been since we arrived on this coast. I’m sweating after our long walk, most of which was uphill. Women, children, and men all carried something: long-handled tools, large baskets for carrying water, and a meal. And it’s because of that meal I know we’ll be here awhile.

Timofei Osipovich and the Aleuts are here, too.

The meadow is warm and smells of the dried grass and the freshly turned earth. Copper-coloured butterflies with gold flecks on their wings flit about. Small black flies cluster around us. I brush them away as best as I can, but each one is replaced by another three.

Many of the people hover and talk while the two men dig. They overturn the dark earth in clumps, and in one, there’s a startlingly pink earthworm that squirms until it finds its way back to the cool underground.

“What are they doing?” I ask Timofei Osipovich.

“They’re going to burn the field.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know? Even old serfs like me know,” he scoffs. “It’s ancient practice.”

“So, what’s it supposed to do?”

“It makes the soil richer. The ash goes into the dirt. Whatever is growing here will grow stronger next year because of it.”

“Won’t they burn down the forest?”

“I doubt it.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you think it makes sense. It works. People figured it out a long time ago. Long before your Tsar started preaching about the Enlightenment, and stopped listening to the people.”

He sounds like my mother when my parents would disagree.

The men who are digging create a narrow ditch as long as a koliuzhi house. Then they start to curve the ends of the trench inward. Two men join them, starting a parallel ditch some distance away. They eventually curve the ends of their trench inward as well, until the two meet and form a large circle.

The Aleuts and a couple of Kwih-dihch-chuh-aht men are sent away for water. The baskets bounce on their backs until they disappear into the woods.

The women clear away dead grass. We comb with our fingers like we’re brushing hair and make a pile. When our heap grows tall, the youngest children stomp it down. They throw themselves into their task, rolling, laughing, and pushing one another. A girl shrieks when she uncovers a snake. It slithers away, children chasing it until they lose sight of it.

While they’re picking dry grass from their hair and clothing, and throwing it at one another, the water bearers return.

Then I smell smoke. An older man with a hide breechclout rises from a crouch. He’s just lit the heap of dry grass. The children cluster around the tiny flames and tease one another. How did the old man manage to light a fire? Did he bring an ember?

Does he have a tinderbox?

Smoke billows toward my face. I back away, and circle around until I come to the other side. The flames are spreading rapidly toward me, but the smoke flies in the opposite direction. People poke the fire with sticks, not stirring it up, but containing it. They stay one step ahead of the fire’s leading edge. Whenever a wayward flame extends like a tongue beyond the outside of the trench, it’s doused with water. The burning edges sizzle and black smoke rises.

The flames are cleverly shepherded into a circle that burns in on itself.

Everyone’s drawn to the fire. It’s easy to come close because it’s so contained. Right at my feet, a fern catches and flares, as copper as the butterflies’ wings, and it remains copper-coloured while everything around it turns black and grey. What strange alchemy. It should have fallen as ash. But it continues to hold its feathery shape, glowing like it’s being forged at the blacksmith’s.

I haven’t seen a calendar in many months. It’s not spring. But I know.

“Timofei Osipovich!” I call.

It’s my mother’s fiery fern. I’m certain of it.

“It shows itself only one day a year,” she’d told me. “The one who finds it will become rich.”

I hadn’t believed her. There were many ways to become rich and none of them involved finding a fern in a forest. But she’d told me to stop thinking of wealth so narrowly. “These days, that’s what they’ll tell you, but the old, old peasants, they know better. And they all say the fiery fern promises prosperity in wisdom and grace.”

Everything about the koliuzhi’s place has surprised and confounded me. I was told this land was barren and desolate and sometimes it is, but mostly it’s not. I was also told the people are brutal and unforgiving—perhaps some are but I’ve seen generosity that I’ll never be able to repay. Our Enlightenment has given us knowledge and harmony, but perhaps it’s just a raindrop falling into an ocean. Why shouldn’t the fiery fern show itself here?

“Timofei Osipovich!” I cry again. I look around, trying to locate him.

Smoke envelopes me. Ash fills my throat. I cough and choke. The smoke billows up again, a grey wall, and all I can see through it is the glow of the fiery fern. I must not lose sight of it. This thought sticks with me as I tumble through the smoke and into the fire.

Light. Smoke. Crackling. A jerk on my arm so strong it could tear me apart. I’m thrown like an old sack. I roll and roll and roll and roll. Then I stop.

“Madame Bulygina!” Timofei Osipovich bends over me. He leans so close his hair brushes my face and each strand feels like he’s plunged a knife into my cheek. “Are you all right?”

Pain radiates everywhere in my body. My knee. My elbow. My belly is being torn out. Shadows surround me.

Timofei Osipovich grits his teeth and shouts, “Say something!”

Then he disappears. Everything goes black.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

An old woman with a face like wrinkled velvet gently pulls my lower lip open. She hums a song I’ve never heard. With a mussel shell ladle, she dribbles liquid into my mouth. I’m dying of thirst, but what she feeds me burns my throat. I cry out, and make no sound. Only a hiss of air escapes.

It’s silent here, wherever I am. It smells of smoke and cedar. I can’t recall coming here. The old woman’s face swims into focus. It’s so large it fills my field of vision. Her eyes are like bright stars that pierce the velvet.

“Help me,” I try to say, but nothing comes out. The old woman watches me. I try to sit up, but the mere thought exhausts me. I reach for her, but my arm won’t move.

“What happened?” I want to say but my throat is as dry as sand and my words are nothing more than puffs of air.

Despite this, the old woman answers. “You fell into the fire—or perhaps the children pushed you. Do you remember? They were playing and they may have knocked you down by accident. Now rest. Everything will be just fine.”

Pain undulates through my body, a cat’s paw scuttling across the surface of the ocean, a serpent with two heads pulling in opposite directions.

The old woman with the ladle disappears.

The path is so wide and clear that I begin to doubt the certainty with which I set off on this journey. It’s unnatural. The trees, the undergrowth, the moss, the mud—they’re here—but they’re far off the path, a distant shadow that means nothing. But then all trails change with the seasons, don’t they? Perhaps I just can’t recognize this path yet.

The trail begins to climb. It’s easy at first, just a slight incline, but then it becomes steeper. Rocks have forced themselves through the earth. They’re teeth that chew up the path. Still I follow, setting one foot in front of the other, trusting that this is the way to go. Then the path turns sharply and climbs in the opposite direction, and I doubt myself once more.

For a long time and a short time, I keep walking. My feet are cut and bruised. They’re on fire. What happened to my boots? My bones ache and press against my skin as though trying to break free just like the rocks on the trail.

I turn with the footpath again. Something ahead glitters.

It’s my silver cross. I should be surprised, but I’m not.

I must recite the incantation first. I picture my mother’s face, her rosy lips. I don’t really need them. Ever since I promised, I’ve never forgotten.

“Earth, earth, close the door

One necklace, nothing more.

Earth, earth, I command

One necklace in my hand.”

I open the clasp and once more fasten the chain around my neck.

The pain comes in waves like the surf, roaring up my body, then falling back down again in a rush of sand and stone. The old woman’s hand is like my mother’s—cool against my forehead and light as a feather. I don’t need the medicine in the ladle. Her hand will cure everything, and as long as she leaves it there, I can bear this pain.

“Where’s Kolya?” I ask. Or, I want to ask.

“It’s too soon,” she says. “Relax. Don’t be afraid. You’re doing very well.” She resumes humming.

She drips more medicine into my mouth. There’s always more, and each time, it sets my mouth on fire. Sometimes, she gives me water so cold I think my teeth will crack. She rubs a salve into my hands. She’s trying to be careful, but my skin will peel like I’m an overripe peach if she doesn’t stop.

The pain in my abdomen is like lightning. It cuts from side to side, top to bottom. My spine is going to break. My head, too heavy for me to move, is filled with thunder.

The old woman faces the thunder with me. “No, no, no,” she says gently. “No. You’re too early.”

Who is she talking to? There’s no one here but me.

The old woman’s face disappears. I can’t see her anymore but her hands flutter over my body, the wings of butterflies in a sunny meadow. Another hand—it’s made of iron and it belongs to no one—is squeezing me out of my own body. The old woman pushes apart my knees. The pain explodes.

She touches my woman parts. I should be ashamed, but I feel only desperately afraid that she’ll leave me. “No, my child,” she coaxes, “there’s lots of time.”

“Kolya!” I scream. Or, I want to scream.

Her hands clamp around my legs. She’s stopped humming.

“Are you so determined, then?” she says softly. “Is there no talking sense to you, little one?”

How is it that I can understand what she’s saying?

The old woman pulls. It’s me and it’s not me.

The western horizon grows dusky. The path enters a dried-up meadow. As darkness creeps in, the stars leap out one by one. Sirius. Arcturus. They’re the brightest stars this evening. Pretty blue Venus sparkles near the horizon and the faint light of Jupiter flickers on and off. Eventually, it will be dark enough that Jupiter will remain alight for the rest of the night. If I had my telescope, I could count his moons. My Polaris isn’t visible yet, but she will be soon.

I see Vega, Altair, and Deneb. These stars form a perfect triangle. When we were married only a few days, Nikolai Isaakovich pointed it out to me. “All the navigators know it. Don’t you?” I knew the names of the stars, but I’d never seen the triangle they formed, never heard a name for it. There are so many possible combinations of stars in the night sky, they could never all be seen, never all be named.

“Then I shall name it,” he declared, “and I shall name it after you, Anna Petrovna.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me close. All summer long, the starry triangle revolved overhead and with each degree of rotation, I fell more deeply in love with my husband.

It takes only a few more minutes in the meadow before my Polaris reveals her beautiful face. She’s clear and especially strong tonight, as if she knows I need her. As soon as I see her, I feel the tiredness slip off my shoulders like a too-old mantle.

I stretch out my arms and make fists, and then count. I line up Deneb with two distant trees, and as soon as it falls out of alignment, I turn north and walk.

It takes a long time and a short time to cross the meadow. The grass is stubbly, but my feet feel nothing. When I reach the edge of the meadow, there’s no choice but to enter the forest again. I look through the bushes for a path, but I can’t find one. Eventually, I give up and just push my way through, and then I’m among the trees.

High overhead, the wind plays music in the canopy. There are the usual heaps of mossy, fallen logs, grey shadows whose outlines I can still see. Some of the ground is boggy, and my feet sink into the muck. But the way forward feels easier now that I know my direction.

I stop and look up every once in a while. If there’s enough of a gap in the trees, I see dear Polaris shining down. She gives me courage.

“Anya!”

Nikolai Isaakovich bends over me. His face, like the old woman’s, fills my field of vision. I can’t see anything else. His eyes fill. “Anya, what happened?”

“I don’t know,” I try to say, but the words are nothing but a hiss. “Where were you?”

“I can’t hear you.” He seizes my arms.

I cry out. His hands burn.

“Oh God!” He lets go and turns away. “Do something!”

The old woman is back with the ladle. She offers me medicine, but I won’t open my mouth. I can’t take any more pain.

“Anya—we have a son! Did they tell you?”

Then I notice, for the first time, that my body is different. The lightning pain inside has gone, and my stomach has collapsed. The thunder has left my head, and now it’s so light it could float away.

“The baby is fine, Anya.” I hear tears in his voice. “The baby is fine.”

The baby. I start to shiver.

My husband pulls the cedar blanket up to my chin. “Timofei Osipovich is worried.” He gently tucks it around my neck. “He carried you back here. Did you know that?”

Timofei Osipovich carried me across a beach. I bounced along, his shoulder cutting into my belly, until we saw the koliuzhi. And then he fired a musket to scare them.

“You must not worry anymore.” He lifts my hand but gently this time. He holds it to his chest. “I’ll take care of you.”

“The baby?” I cry. Or try to.

“Just rest, Anya,” he says. “I’m here. I told you I’d come back and I did, and I’m here now.”

I climb for so long I must be on a mountainside. The trees are more spread out. The canopy is thinner. Night is here, but with the forest becoming less dense, the light from the night sky makes my path slightly more visible. What lies ahead, I don’t know yet. A meadow? A lake? A beach?

I quicken my pace. Then, the underbrush thickens. The trees are shorter and even more dispersed. I’m close to the edge of the forest. I can’t see beyond the shrubs. I push aside the branches and step out of the blackness.

A wave rolls from my toes all the way up my body and ends in my head, where it washes back until it reaches my toes again. It’s not water. It’s fear.

“Kolya!”

I’m on a cliff so high above the sea that if the masts of six schooners were stacked one atop the other, they still wouldn’t reach my feet. I grab onto the brittle branches behind me. The wind whips my face.

Moonlight reflects off the surface of the ocean, which builds, then falls in lines of foam that crash against the foot of the cliff I’m balancing on. Far below where I stand, boulders as big as carriages face the waves, but they’re submerged with each upsurge. The sea roars like a monster. Something—a log?—smashes against the base of the cliff with a hollow thud that reaches the soles of my feet. The land shudders.

I desperately want to step back. But the bushes have knit their brittle fingers together and they won’t allow me.

“Kolya!” His name flies into the wind and is lost.

The old woman has changed my medicine. Now it’s warm and sweet like honey. I crave more, but when the ladle is finished, she turns away. She does not offer me another drop.

There are men’s voices at the door. They’re talking. I close my eyes. Trying to understand their words empties me.

Makee. In his beaver hat.

“Anna,” he says, “how are you feeling?”

I meet his eyes for a moment. They’re wide with worry. I quickly close mine. It takes too much effort to be in his gaze. He calls out in his language. I hear the rattling of shells or bones. There’s somebody singing.

“You must rest,” he says. “These are terrible days. You must get better. Your son is counting on you.”

I remember the day I was swept under the wave when the brig ran aground and we were all running to shore. What everything sounded like from beneath the water—the roar of the surf and the people’s voices calling out. Makee’s voice sounds like that—though I know he’s here, he could be in another world.

“I have good news. The ships are coming. There’s an American ship at Mokwinna’s.”

There’s drumming, loud as thunder. My bed shakes, my bones rattle.

“You can go home, babathid. Floating woman, you have a destination.”

“Makee—I’m sorry,” I say. Or at least, I want to say.

“Get better, Anna. The ship is on its way.”

I lean back, pressing into the bushes, and when I do, a curtain is drawn, and the night sky opens. Where is my beloved Polaris?

There. She glimmers. Draco the Keel is sailing a never-ending circle around her. The sea tosses him, but he can depend on her. She is the tip of the mast on the ship that will traverse the northern hemisphere forever.

Of the countless possible combinations of stars, I found this one. My ship.

It’s arrived.

It rocks gently. The sail billows.

“We’re here!” I cry. I wave. I stand on my toes and my arm sweeps the sky. “Can you see me?”

The ship is lifted on a wave and plummets down the other side. A rooster tail of spray splashes its deck. Its sail swells, then flops, once, twice, before filling again. The ship is tacking. They’ve seen me.

The boat swoops down. “Here!” I cry. But it sails past. It missed. A wave of grief washes over me. “Come back!”

The wind drives it away. Then the sail flops once more. It’s tacking again. The ship swoops back down and blackens the sky.

It’s close. Closer. The bulwark is almost out of reach but—I jump. It takes a long time and it takes a short time. Then my hands close around the bulwark. A wave throws itself against the hull and water sprays and soaks me. I throw my leg over. I pull myself onto the deck. I look up.

Polaris glitters.