Something About Alaska by J.A. Cooper

Author:J.A. Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MidnightSun Publishing

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

At first I think I must be dead.

I can’t see. Or hear. Or feel a thing. And yet, my mind appears to be working. Only, there’s no telling where I am. Or even when. Or how I got here.

Everything is still black.

Maybe I’ve been left for dead in the woods, frozen solid and covered in snow. Or butchered in pieces and packed into the tray of the Yellow Dodge.

Or have I woken up inside my own coffin? The worst nightmare of all. There doesn’t seem to be any way to tell. Perhaps, this is all death is – eternity alone with your darkest fears.

Then a voice breaks the silence:

They say you don’t know your friends from your enemies until the ice begins to break.

The voice comes from nowhere, addressing no one in particular. The words spill into the darkness and slip into my head, but just as quickly fade away – like a fragment of conversation overheard.

I struggle to make sense of the words, though I feel I know the voice, somehow strong and calm at the same time. Like a wide river flowing over stones. But I can’t put a face to it.

For a long while, I’m left waiting, confused. Until I start to wonder if it was just my mind playing tricks. Just as I’m starting to doubt, the voice returns:

There was once a boy called Kautjajuq, who went out hunting one day with his family. The game was plentiful and they caught many fish, and enough seals for fur and meat to last all winter.

When the hunt was over, they began the journey home. Just then, the ice started to break up all around them, and Kautjajuq became separated from his family. The strong ocean current took him further and further away, until he lost sight of them altogether.

That boy never saw his family again.

Kautjajuq drifted for many days on the ice, until he came within sight of a village. He cried out, ‘Hey! Help! I’ve been separated from my family. Now I need your help.’

The people in the village took him in, but only because they were afraid an evil spirit might come and curse them if they didn’t.

Kautjajuq was adopted by a hunter from the village, a proud man who was very cruel and made the young boy sleep with the dogs in the entrance to the house. Kautjajuq was never allowed inside the main room, and was forced to work like a slave.

The man’s wife also resented the boy, keeping all the best meat for her own children, and throwing Kautjajuq the scraps of walrus hide and fish bones left over for the dogs.

At night, it was bitterly cold. Sometimes Kautjajuq would try to sneak further inside the house, to within reach of a warm fur or a slice of whale meat. If he got caught, the man or his wife would pick Kautjajuq up by his nostrils and hurl him back outside. His nostrils were always torn and bleeding, and his nose became red and swollen so that everyone in the village would laugh and make fun of him.

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