Then she lies on her back, opens her legs, and pulls him over her with her hand strong on his shoulder.

There is no sunrise, so Crozier will never know if they have made love all that long arctic night – perhaps it has been entire days and nights without sleeping or stopping (it feels this way to him by the time they sleep) – but sleep they eventually do. Moisture from their sweat and breathing drips from the exposed parts of the snow-house walls and it is so warm in their home that for the first half hour or so after they fall off into sleep, they leave the top sleeping robe off.

64 CROZIER

After he made land,

when the world was still dark,

Tulunigraq, Raven, heard the Two Men dream about light.

›But there was no light.

Everything was dark, as it had always been.

No sun. No moon. No stars. No fires.

Raven flew inland until he found a snow-house

where an old man lived with a daughter.

He knew they were hiding light,

hoarding a bit of light,

so he entered.

He crawled up through the passage.

He looked up through the katak.

Two skin-bags were hanging there,

one holding darkness,

and the other holding light.

The man’s daughter sat there awake

while her father slept.

She was blind.

Tulunigraq used his thought-sending

to make the daughter want to play.

“Let me play with the ball!” the daughter cried,

waking the old man.

The man awoke and took down the bag that held

the daylight.

The light was wrapped in caribou skin which was

made warm by the daylight inside

wanting to get out.

Raven used his thought-sending to make

The girl push the daylight-ball toward the katak.

“No!” cried the father.

Too late.

The ball went down the katak, bounced down

the passage.

Tulunigraq was waiting.

He caught the ball.

He ran out the passage,

ran with the daylight ball.

Raven used his bill.

He tore the skin-ball.

Tore at daylight.

The man from the snow-house was

chasing him through willows

and ice, but the daylight-man was no man.

The man was a falcon.

“Pitqiktuak!” screamed Peregrine, “I will

kill you, Trickster!”

He flew down on Raven,

but not before Raven tore the skin-ball open.

Dawn rose.

Light spilled everywhere.

Quagaa Sila! Dawn rose!

“Uunukpuaq! Uunukpuagmun! Darkness!”

shrieked the Falcon.

“Quagaa! Light everywhere!”

cried Raven.

“Night!”

“Daylight!”

“Darkness!”

“Daylight!”

“Night!”

“Light!”

They went on shouting.

Raven cried -

“Daylight for the earth!”

“Daylight for the Real People!”

It will be no good

if we have one but not the other.

So Raven brought daylight to some places.

And Peregrine kept darkness fast in other places.

But the animals fought.

The Two Men fought.

They threw light and darkness at one another.

Daylight and night came into balance.

Winter follows summer.

Two halves.

Light and darkness complete one another.

Life and death complete one another.

You and I complete one another.

Outside, the Tuunbaq walks in night.

Where we touch,

there is light.

Everything is in balance.

65 CROZIER

They leave on their long sledge trip shortly after the sun makes its first hesitant, midday, and only-minutes-long appearance on the southern horizon.

But Crozier understands that it is not the return of the sun that has determined their time for action and his own time of decision; it is the violence in the skies the other twenty-three and a half hours each day that has decided Silence that the time has come. As they sledge away from their snow-house forever, shimmering bands of colored light coil and uncoil above them like fingers opening out from a fist. The aurora grows stronger in the dark sky every day and night.

The sledge is a more serious device for this longer trip. Almost twice as long as the jury-rigged fish-runnered six-foot sled Silence had used to transport him when he could not walk, this vehicle has runners made up of small and carefully shaped pieces of scavenged wood interlinked with walrus ivory. It uses shoes of whalebone and flattened ivory rather than just a layer of peat paste on its runners, although Silence and Crozier still reapply a layer of ice to the runners several times a day. The cross sections are made up of antlers and the last bits of wood they had, including the sleeping-shelf slat; the rising rear posts are composed of heavily lashed antlers and walrus ivory.

The leather straps are now rigged for both of them to pull – neither will ride unless there is an injury or illness – but Crozier knows that Silence has built this sledge with great care in the hopes that it may be pulled by a dog team before this year is over.

She is with child. She has not told Crozier this – by the strings or by a glance or by any other visible means – but he knows it and she knows he does. If all goes well, he estimates that the baby will be born in the month he used to think of as July.

The sledge carries all of their robes and skins and cooking gear and tools and skin-sealed Goldner tins to hold water once thawed and a supply of frozen fish, seal, walrus, fox, hare, and ptarmigan. But Crozier knows that some of this food is for a time that may not come – at least for him. And some of it may be for presents, depending upon what he decides and what then happens out on the ice. He knows that, depending upon what he decides, they will both be fasting soon in preparation – although, as he understands it, he is the only one who must fast. Silence will join him in the fast simply because she is his wife now and will not eat when he doesn’t. But if he dies, she will take the food and the sledge and come back to land to live her life and continue her duties here.

For days they travel north along a coastline, skirting cliffs and too-steep hills. A few times the severe topography forces them out onto the ice, but they do not want to be out there for long. Not yet.

The ice is breaking up here and there, but only into small leads. They do not stop to fish at these leads or to pause at polynyas, but press on, pulling ten hours a day or more, moving back to land as soon as they can to continue the hauling there even though it means much more frequent refreshening of the ice on the runners.

On the evening of the eighth night, they pause on a hill and look down at a cluster of lighted snow-domes.

Silence has been careful to approach this little village from the downwind side, but still one of the dogs staked into the ice or earth below begins to bark madly. But the others do not join him.

Crozier stares at the lighted structures – one is a multiple dome made up of at least one large and four small snow-houses connected by common passageways. Just the thought, much less the sight, of such community makes Crozier ache inside.

From far below, muffled by snow blocks and caribou skin, comes the sound of human laughter.

He could go down there now, he knows, and ask this group to help him find his way to Rescue Camp and then to find his men; Crozier knows this is the village of the band belonging to the shaman who escaped the massacre of eight Esquimaux on the other side of King William Island and it is also Silence’s extended family, as were the eight murdered men and women.