The Haunted Igloo

Reviews

(From the hard-cover edition.)

Boys, dogs, and adventure in the frozen
North: classic appeals are served here in a well-told historical
novel.
—BCCB, 10/91

Fans of Gary Paulsen's
Woodsong
will enjoy Turner's fictional portrayal of the challenges of the
harsh region.
—Kay Weisman, Booklist 11/91

Jean-Paul's successful rites of passage
may strike a response in readers who enjoyed Gardiner's
Stone
Fox
... Paulsen's
Dogsong
, and
Woodsong
.
—Kirkus Reviews, 10/91

The empathetic characters provide an
exciting and warm-hearted story. —
The Horn Book Guide,
12/91

From a young fan in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
1992.

Mrs. Turner, I'll give you a million
dollars for that book
!!!

____________

by

Bonnie Turner

Smashwords Edition

This book is also available in print from
online book retailers.

Copyright © 2010 by Bonnie L. Turner

All rights reserved. This book is a work of
fiction, no part of which may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission
from the author. Brief passages may be used in print media for
review purposes.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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respecting this author’s work.

____________

For
Sasha
:

the beautiful husky

who inspired this story.

1975
—
1988

____________

____________

Chapter 1

J
ean-Paul shivered as he hid in the shadows behind the school.
The late afternoon temperature was falling fast, and to make
matters worse, the pup was driving him crazy, wiggling and
squirming inside his parka. It was all he could do to keep her from
falling out the bottom. He opened the coat a little and looked
inside.

“
Shhh,” he whispered. “Someone might
hear you!”

Jean-Paul glanced quickly around the corner
of the schoolhouse to see if anyone was coming, but no one was in
sight. He sighed with relief. How very cold he was getting, with
icy fingers of air creeping inside his hood to freeze his neck. He
wished the plane would hurry and take off so he could seek warm
shelter.

Arctic days were growing
shorter. Soon, darkness would come to the Far North, where
Jean-Paul lived with his mother and father. Of course, it wouldn’t
be pitch black, because of the stars, the moon, and the aurora
borealis, with its colored bands of light waving through the arctic
sky like giant searchlights, but it would be dark.

It was Jean-Paul’s
misfortune that he didn’t like the darkness. In fact, he more than
disliked the dark; actually, he was deathly afraid of
it.

This would begin
Jean-Paul’s second year of living at Aklavik, in the Northwest
Territories. The Ardoin family shared a small cabin some miles to
the west, beyond the native dwellings.

Jean-Paul’s father,
Cordell, was a geologist who had come to study the large deposits
of pitchblende, discovered in 1930 at Great Bear Lake. That
discovery had excited Cordell, for pitchblende contains radium,
which the government wanted.

His running off to the
Arctic had brought Cordell much criticism. His wife’s family had
thought him foolish. But Lise’s response was “So what?” And she
went to the Arctic with her husband.

Cordell spent the dark
winter months writing children’s books, for then it was too cold
for mining, and minerals were frozen beneath the ice and snow. But
Cordell’s thoughts were never far from what lay hidden beneath the
earth. Mixed in with the nouns and verbs and plots for his stories
were the delights of radium, copper, and gold.

Jean-Paul’s mother, Lise,
sometimes helped her husband tan the fur and cure the meat, and she
sewed the family’s clothing. This very morning she had sent eight
beautiful pairs of caribou-fur boots to the Hudson’s Bay trading
post. She hoped Cordell could trade them for some other useful
items. Making the boots had been hard work, but they had turned out
as waterproof as those the Inuit women made.

Jean-Paul had his mother’s
shyness, for Lise kept almost entirely to herself. As the months
passed without a personal friend, and with another baby on the way,
she seemed very sad to Jean-Paul. Of course, Lise had met the other
people who lived in Aklavik, those speaking French, as she did, but
even they seemed out of reach to her. But if the truth were known,
Lise had never been a very social person outside of her own
family.

Now a sudden stinging blast
of wind slapped Jean-Paul full in the face. He turned away and
huddled against the back wall of the Mission school, a one-room
building in which eleven students, mostly Inuits, were taught by
Father Cortier.

Jean-Paul listened closely
for the sound of the plane. He listened so hard that it made his
ears ache. Why didn’t it leave before he turned into a chunk of
ice! He stroked the hidden pup again, but it had gone to sleep. He
knew he couldn’t hide forever, but he had to be sure the trappers,
hunters, and traders had left the settlement for good. He had heard
his father talking with them. He knew they probably wouldn’t come
again until spring. It took a very brave pilot to test the air
currents over the mountains and frozen tundra in winter, especially
since compasses went wild at the higher latitudes when almost every
direction was south.

“
We need supplies,” Cordell had told
Ola Hanson, naming off the staples Lise had listed: “Beans, salt
pork, coffee, canned milk.” He shrugged. “It would be nice if you
had a bag of potatoes.” He looked hopefully at Ola. But Ola shook
his head “no.”

“
We have three mouths to feed,” said
Cordell, “and another on the way. That’s not counting the
dogs.”

One of the traders, a big
man with shaggy red hair and a beard to match, had laughed harshly.
“If you get too hungry, you can always eat a husky! You ever eat
dog meat?”

Jean-Paul would never
forget his father’s angry reply. “Certainly not! And I hope to God
I never have to!”

“
Oh ho!” laughed the trader slapping
Cordell on the shoulder. “Ah, sure you will! Someday when your
beans and biscuits run out. When it’s ninety-five below, and snow
up to your ears! Then you’ll eat dog. Roasted over a bed of hot
coals, there’s nothing better when you’re starving. Wash it down
with whisky or strong coffee! But you haven’t lived up here that
long. You might have to learn the hard way!”

That’s when Jean-Paul had
made up his mind to hide a pup. He had taken it away from its
litter-mates and had run off to hide. He was lucky no one had seen
him, but he was scared to death he would be caught and punished. He
felt that, since the pup was probably too small for sled pulling, a
buyer might want it for only one thing: dinner. He could
not
let that happen! His
stomach flipped and flopped now as he recalled how that man had
spoken so horribly about eating dogs.

There was another reason Jean-Paul had saved
the puppy. Larger, more aggressive, animals tended to pick on
smaller ones, just as Jean-Paul himself was bullied by some of his
bigger classmates.

Cordell had almost not
brought Jean-Paul to the village this time, and Jean-Paul wondered
if it was because of the way he limped. Surely his father didn’t
want to be slowed down by a
cripple
. Cordell had never said as
much, but Jean-Paul wondered if he really felt that way. How could
any father love a son who was thin, lame, and smaller than most
ten-year-olds?

His mother had remained at
the cabin this time, for trading could take all day. And besides,
with both Jean-Paul and Lise, there wouldn’t have been enough room
on the freight sled for all the supplies they hoped to
buy.

The trapping season would
be better a couple of months later, when the fur-bearers’ pelts had
grown thick and soft. Late winter would see Cordell bringing
bundles of furs to trade. But today he and Jean-Paul had brought
with them the nine husky pups from a litter Lishta had whelped
three months before. The animals would bring good money. One of the
pups was smaller than the others. This was the one Jean-Paul chose
for himself.

Now, Jean-Paul’s breath
puffed out in a misty cloud as he opened his parka a little and
reached inside. He removed a thick mitten and sank his fingers into
the silvery fur. The pup peeked out of one blue eye, then went back
to sleep.

“
They can’t have you!” Jean-Paul
whispered. “They’ll never roast you over a campfire!”

A sudden sound made
Jean-Paul close the parka fast. He held his breath and
listened.
Oh no! Someone was
coming
!
He pressed
himself into the schoolhouse wall, hoping he wouldn’t be
seen.

But it was too late. Around
the corner came Chinook and Aiverk and Nanuk, the three boys who
teased Jean-Paul the most. They spied him at once.

Their hoods were thrown
back, even though it was cold and windy. Jean-Paul knew they were
hardier than a boy from lower Canada who had once lived in a nice,
warm house in town. The Inuit boys were bigger than Jean-Paul,
especially Chinook, and they looked bigger than ever as they
stopped in front of him.

“
It’s
Okalerk
!
” said
Aiverk. “Why is
Okalerk
hiding behind the school?”

The other boys laughed, and
Jean-Paul shrank back as Aiverk stooped down to stare into his
face. Jean-Paul knew that
okalerk
was the Inuit word for
hare
, and that the way he sort of
hopped while walking made them think of a rabbit!

Chinook also came closer.
Light snow sparkled in his short dark hair. At thirteen, the Inuit
boy was the oldest in Jean-Paul’s class, not to mention the most
daring. His voice was musical and full of laughter as he questioned
Jean-Paul.

“
Why are you here little
okalerk
Jean-Paul Ardoin?”
He turned to Nanuk and Aiverk. “He must like school so much that he
comes on Saturday and hides behind it!”

“
Maybe he’s waiting for a girl,” said
Nanuk, who had a girl of his own. Thin like Jean-Paul, Nanuk
sometimes had a nasty temper. He squatted before Jean-Paul. “Why
are you hiding,
Okalerk
?
If you’re waiting for a girl, you
might have to wait forever!”

The others burst out
laughing. Jean-Paul’s parka wiggled suddenly and he put his hand up
to make it stop. But the boys had already seen. Nanuk turned to
Chinook and Aiverk.

“
Hey, he’s hiding something in
his
attigi
!
”

Chinook said, “What have
you got in there Jean-Paul
Okalerk
?
”

“
N–nothing…”

Aiverk reached for
Jean-Paul’s parka. Jean-Paul was cornered.

“
No!” He pushed Aiverk’s hand away.
“Let me go!”

“
Come on,” said Aiverk. “Let’s see
what you’ve got!” Aiverk’s black eyes snapped with
excitement.

Jean-Paul was frightened as
he looked from one boy to the other. “I’m just waiting for
Pa.”

“
He’s waiting for his old man!”
Chinook laughed. “Well, I saw
Monsieur
Ardoin just a few minutes
ago, and he wasn’t looking for any
okalerk
s!
”

There was that word again!
Jean-Paul shouted, “I’m not an
okalerk
, Chinook!” The pup wiggled
again at the sound of his voice, and Jean-Paul hoped it didn’t wet
inside his parka. “You stop calling me an
okalerk
!”