'I don't know.'

'You must know where your home is.'

'Down there.'

'Fine.'

The plane dipped, then banked around again. The city lights came into view, but only a scattering, too few for Vancouver. This wasn't Vancouver. There were ice floes drifting on dark water, and a marble mountain range beyond the town.

They were landing in Cape Dorset.

Suddenly he was in his childhood home, and there was a celebration – his birthday. Some of the local kids had been invited, and his father suggested a race in the snow. He gave Anawak an enormous package tied clumsily together. It was his only present, and it was precious, he said. 'You'll find everything in there that you'll need in life,' he explained. 'But you must carry it with you while we're running.'

Anawak tried to balance the enormous parcel on his head, steadying it with both hands. They went outside, and as the white snow glistened in the darkness, a voice whispered to him that he had to win the race or the others would kill him. At night they were wolves and would rip him to pieces. He had to reach the water first, had to run before they caught him.

Anawak began to weep. He cursed his birthday, because he knew that soon he would grow up, and he didn't want to grow up and be torn to pieces. Digging his fingers into the parcel, he started to run. The snow was deep and he sank into it. It reached his hips, scarcely allowing him to move. He glanced back but no one was running with him. He was on his own. Only his parents' house was visible behind him, with the door closed and the lights out. A cold moon shone down from above, and suddenly it was deathly still.

Anawak wondered whether he should return to the house, but everyone seemed to have left. It looked eerie and forbidding-. There was no one to be seen in the frozen moonlit night, and not a sound. He remembered the wolves, waiting to eat him alive. Were they in the house? Had the party ended in a bloodbath? It didn't seem possible. In a mysterious way Cape Dorset and the house seemed to defy the laws of nature. This was where they had gathered for his birthday; but now it was a distant future or an even more distant past. Or maybe time had stood still and he was looking at a frozen universe hostile to life.

Fear won out. He turned away from the house and trudged towards the water. The wharf belonging to the real Cape Dorset had vanished, and the ice led directly to the sea. His parcel was getting smaller all the time, so small that he could carry it in one hand, and in a few steps he was at the edge.

Rays of moonlight shimmered on the dark waves and the drifting slabs of ice. The sky was studded with stars. Someone was calling his name. The faint voice was coming from a snowdrift, and Anawak moved forward until he was close enough to see. Two bodies, dusted with snow, lay side by side. His parents. They were staring at the sky with empty eyes.

I'm a grown-up now, he thought. It's time to open the parcel.

He examined it on the palm of his hand.

It was tiny. He began to unwrap it, but there was nothing inside, only paper. He tore away the crinkled sheets, discarding layer after layer, until the parcel was gone and so were the fallen bodies of his parents, leaving him alone on the edge of the ice, with the dark waves beyond.

A mighty hump parted the water and sank down.

Anawak turned his head slowly. He saw a small, shabby house, a shack made of corrugated iron. The door was open.

His home.

No, he thought. No! Tears came to his eyes. This wasn't right. This couldn't be his life. It wasn't where he belonged. It couldn't end like this.

He crouched in the snow and stared at the hut, weeping uncontrollably, in the grip of a nameless misery. His sobs almost burst his chest, echoing in the sky, filling the world with lamentation, a world in which no one existed but him.

No. No!

Then the light.

ANAWAK SAT UPRIGHT IN BED. The display on his alarm clock read 2:30 a.m. His tongue was sticking to his palate so he got up and went to the mini-bar. He reached for a Coke, opened it and drank. Then, clutching the can, he went to the window, opened the curtains and looked out.

The hotel was on a hill overlooking Kinngait and parts of the neighbouring hamlets. It was a clear and cloudless night and a nocturnal half-light steeped the houses, tundra, snowfields and sea in an improbable shade of reddish-gold. It was never truly dark at this time of year: the contours just softened and the colours mellowed.

All of a sudden he saw its beauty. He looked in wonder at the sky, then let his eyes roam over the mountains and the bay. The frozen seascape of Tellik Inlet shimmered like molten silver, while Mallikjuaq Island rose up from the water like a slumbering whale.

What now?

He remembered how he had felt at the Station with Shoemaker and Delaware, his sense of alienation, from Davie's, Tofino, and everything around him. How he had seemed to be missing some inner space to protect him from the world. Something decisive had been on the horizon, of that he had been certain. He had waited, elated and fearful, as though an extraordinary change would sweep over him.

Instead his father had died.

Was that it, then? The event that would change everything? His return to the Arctic to bury his father?

He had far greater challenges to deal with. Right now he was facing one of the greatest that mankind had ever seen. Just him and a few other people. Yet it had nothing to do with his life. His life had a different framework, in which tsunamis, climate disasters and plagues had no place. His father's death had pushed his own life into the foreground and now Anawak felt, in Nunavut, a chance to reclaim it.

After a while he got dressed, pulled a fur-lined hat down over his ears and walked into the moonlit night. He had the streets to himself He roamed the town until a wave of tiredness engulfed him, then returned to the warmth of the hotel room, and was asleep before his head had hit the pillow.

THE NEXT MORNING he called Akesuk. 'How about breakfast?' he asked.

His uncle seemed surprised. 'We've just sat down here. I thought you'd be busy.'

'OK. No problem.'

'Hold on – we've only just started. Why don't you come over? There's scrambled eggs and bacon.'

'Great.'

The plateful with which Mary-Ann presented him was so large that Anawak felt full before he started, but he still dug in. A smile spread across her face, and he wondered what Akesuk had told her. He must have found a good reason for Anawak to have turned down their offer of supper last night. She didn't seem in the least offended.

It felt odd to grasp the hand that Akesuk and his wife had extended to him. It pulled him back into the family. Anawak wondered whether it was a good thing. The magic of the moonlit night had vanished now and he was far from making peace with Nunavut.

After breakfast Mary-Ann cleared the table and went shopping. Akesuk twiddled with the dials on his transistor radio, listened for a while and said, 'IBC is forecasting mild weather for the next few days. You can't rely on it entirely, of course, but even if it's only half true, it'll be good enough for us to go out on the land.'

'You've got a trip planned?'

'We're leaving tomorrow. The two of us could do something today, though, if you like. Are you sticking to your plans – or were you thinking of flying back early?'

The old fox had guessed.

Anawak stirred his coffee. 'Last night I was on the point of leaving.'

'I guessed as much,' Akesuk said drily. 'And now?'

'I don't know. I thought maybe I'd take a trip to Mallikjuaq or Inuksuk Point – I don't feel comfortable in Cape Dorset. I don't mean to offend you, Iji, but good memories are hard to come by with a… well, with a …'