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His clothes, a fatigue jacket over a cotton shirt in faded blue plaid and jeans, were grubby. His boots were shiny with fish scales. He smelled like woodsmoke, sweat and salmon, like Moses did when he came back from Old Man Creek.
It looked like fish camp had been a success and that Leonard wanted to tell his wife all about it. “Opal? Opal, where are you?”
“Sir,” Liam said, and something in the single, forceful syllable got through the way nothing else had before.
Realization came hard to Leonard Nunapitchuk’s eyes, but it came, followed by shock and the awful need to know, to see, to make sure there hadn’t been some dreadful mistake, because of course there must have been some mistake, this couldn’t be happening, not to him. Liam had seen the reaction before, and he stepped to one side so that Leonard could go through the door.
Prince looked around from lighting the Coleman lantern hanging from a bracket next to the kitchen door and saw Leonard. “Sir, I-”
Liam held up a hand and she stopped.
Leonard saw Opal in the same moment, and a terrible groan ripped out of his chest. “No,” he said. “No, Opal, no.” He dropped to his knees. “Opal. My Opal.”
He was weeping now, and when he dropped forward to crawl toward her Liam had to restrain him. “I’m sorry, sir. You can’t touch her yet.”
“She’s my wife!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Nunapitchuk wrapped his arms around his body and rocked back and forth on his knees. “Opal. Why? Why, why why why?”
Liam heard voices, and Wy’s voice responding. Before he could turn, Nunapitchuk was on his feet. “The children can’t see this, they can’t see this.” He ran his sleeve across his face and went outside, Liam following.
There were five more people in the yard, two young men no taller or slimmer than their father and their wives, one a young woman who looked like Opal must have thirty years before, with a plump baby perched on her hip doing his best to snag a dragonfly as it buzzed past. His mother caught him just before he took flight after it.
All of them stared at Liam, at Leonard. It was obvious by their shocked faces that Wy had told them of Opal’s death. He knew a faint guilt that she should have assumed this burden, but it was very faint, and he adjusted the duck-billed hat with the seal of the Alaska State Troopers on it and stepped forward to put the necessary questions to the bereaved.
Down the shingly scaur he plunged, in search of his Elaine. Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, Elaine, the lily maid of his Astolat. She had left him before, his wandering love, but never for long, and she was always glad when he found her again, glad to return to her chamber up a tower to the east.
Long years had they lived there, and would abide together there again soon. He missed her presence during the day and her warmth during the night. She knew so little at first, but he taught her, and taught her well, so that she kept his shield and tended his wounds with skill and love.
He wished that like Lancelot he had a diamond to give his Elaine for her loyalty, her faithfulness. He trusted her as he trusted no other, to tend his hearth, his clothes, his home, to cook his meals, to warm his bed, to stand beside him summer and winter, his companion, his lover, his friend. She surrounded him with grace and beauty.
Yes, a diamond to give.
He quickened his step over a fallen log and ducked beneath a low-hanging branch. A ptarmigan exploded out of the brush, catching him by surprise. He unshouldered his shotgun. Ptarmigan was good eating. Elaine baked them in a butter-wine sauce that turned brown in the oven, crisping the skin of the birds and marinating the flesh with a flavor that was at once sweet and sour. When they had it, Elaine would mix in a little evaporated milk to turn it into a cream sauce, and serve it over flat noodles.
Elaine. Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. His lady, his love, his queen. Children together, teenagers together, married the day after high school graduation. There had never been anyone else for him or for her.
They didn’t need anyone else, he told her when she had come back from the doctor with the news that they could never have children of their own. They had each other, and their cabin in the wilderness. They ran their trapline in the winter, planted their garden in the summer, lived life the way it ought to be lived, day by day, year by year, seeing the seasons in and out together.
In winter the wolves might howl, but they had stout log walls and a thick door between them and the hungry pack. The temperatures might drop to forty below zero, but they had six cords of wood stacked in a pile beneath its own shelter, and thick parkas and mukluks Elaine had made from furs gathered from their own trapline. They had a cache filled with moose and caribou and ptarmigan and goose and salmon and berries, a root cellar beneath the house filled with carrots and potatoes, and a pantry filled with ca
In summer, they had fourteen hours of daylight and never wasted a moment of it, working all day, loving all night. He closed his eyes for a moment to revel in the deep delight the thought brought him. Elaine, gazing up at him with serious brown eyes, dark hair falling back from her smooth skin, mouth open a little to catch her breath, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, her heels digging into the base of his spine, reaching for the sun, the moon and the stars. He gave them all to her, and she gave them back again.
He had promises to keep, and miles to go before he slept. He abandoned the too-heavy jade by the side of the creek, adjusting the lighter pack on his shoulders as he headed south by ways known only to the wild things of forest and stream. What other treasures would he find to lay at her feet?
Elaine, my Elaine. I’m coming home, my lady, my love, my queen. How will you reward me this time, my own, my lady, my love?
FIVE
Nenevok Creek, September 1
Mark couldn’t understand why she was so angry. In seven years of marriage, he hadn’t known she could get this angry. He’d never known silence could be so loud, either; this one was thunderous, reverberating off the steep sides of the three peaks and tumbling down the mountainsides until it filled the valley down to the very surface of the creek.
One moment she had been in his arms, and the next he was on his ass, his chest still smarting from the foot she had used to push him away. The silence began as she made him corned beef sandwiches with mustard and lettuce, just how he liked them, on bread out of the Dutch oven the night before. Nothing interfered with Mark’s appetite, so he wolfed them down with the macaroni salad and the large dill pickle Rebecca produced to go with them. He’d made the effort, holding up his end by carrying his plate to the wash tin on the counter, but when he tried to pull her into his arms again, she had slipped free, sat down and used the bead tray to block any further attempt at embraces.
In seven years of marriage, he had never once been incapable of seducing her into seeing things his way.
Now, clad once again in hip waders, he bent over the creek to wash dirt out of a pan in pursuit of that elusive gleam of color. An eagle cried overhead, and he raised his head to look, shading his eyes against the sun. A rustle of brush warned that some wild thing was nearby, how sharp of teeth or long of claw he had no idea. He ignored it, as he always did. “Come on, honey,” he’d said to Rebecca, “we’ll leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Pity about that bear charging them the first week. It had only been a fake charge, the sow had skidded to a halt fifty feet away, bellowed out a roar of defiance and then turned abruptly on the space of a dime and lit out for the hills like she had been shot from a catapult. They had come to no harm, but the experience had unsettled Rebecca. Well, that and the moose eating all the broccoli and cauliflower out of the garden and then approaching the cabin to nibble at the bark of the logs. “They’re eating the house!” she’d said when he had come home that evening.