Way of the Wolf (20 page)

Beck looked out at the sea of faces in Anakat’s meeting hall. The building was packed. About two hundred heads were turned towards him and Tikaani, their distinctly Inuit features somehow both impassive and eager.

‘Couldn’t we just put up a notice?’ Beck murmured to his friend. This wasn’t going to be the first time they had told their story and would quite probably not be the last. But it would certainly be their largest audience.

‘No,’ Tikaani murmured back. ‘And guess what, we can’t just post it on a blog either . . .’

The wooden hall was a curious mix of old and new. It had electric light – though the bulbs flickered, and Beck remembered what Tikaani had once said about the slightly dodgy state of the generator. The floor of the hall was dry, packed earth. This was another example of their partial accommodation with the modern world.

They still kept to the old forms in many ways. Once, Beck presumed, the people of Anakat would have gathered around a large fire for these meetings. Right now they all sat in circular rows, all staring towards the centre of the room where Tikaani’s dad, the headman of Anakat, was speaking. Beck and Tikaani sat behind him.

There had been time to eat and shower and change into fresh clothes of Tikaani’s. There had
not
been time to do what Beck wanted to do most: sleep.

It had all happened very quickly after they’d arrived at Tikaani’s home. It had taken thirty seconds to deliver the gist of the message: Al hurt, needing help, at these coordinates. Tikaani’s dad had got onto the satellite phone – Anakat’s best way of staying in touch with the outside world, apart from a dodgy radio link – before they finished. He was talking to someone in Bethel, which Beck remembered was the nearest large town, about a hundred miles further up the coast.

Tikaani was hugged to death by his mother while Beck stood by and wondered vaguely what it must be like to have parents to come home to. He got some idea when she let go of her son and pulled him into an embrace that squeezed the breath out of him. Meanwhile Tikaani was being smothered by a much older woman. She was shorter than him. Her long hair was white and her face was mostly smoothed-out wrinkles. She was introduced as Tikaani’s grandmother. She shook Beck’s hand and her features were split by a wide smile.

The satellite phone beeped while Tikaani’s mum was fixing a quick meal of hot soup and rolls.

‘That was Bethel,’ said Tikaani’s dad when he hung up. ‘There’s a helicopter with a doctor on board on its way to pick up your uncle.’

And with those words, Beck felt the adrenaline that had powered him ever since the crash . . . just go.

But they still needed to eat, so Beck and Tikaani described their adventures between mouthfuls of rolls and soup.

They described fording the river, and Tikaani’s misadventure in the frozen lake, and crossing the crevasse. At that point Tikaani’s mum interrupted.

‘The elders will have to hear of this,’ she told his father.

He nodded proudly. ‘Of course. But not before I’ve heard it first.’

Elders? Beck thought. He took it to mean they would have to repeat the whole thing to a bunch of boring old pensioners. At the time he hadn’t known about the full town meeting. He had glanced wryly at Tikaani.

And Tikaani had just shrugged.
He
had known. ‘You’ll see . . .’ he had said.

The boys continued their story, telling Tikaani’s family about their increasing frustration at not being able to find the pass.

Tikaani’s grandmother sat up straight and spoke for the first time. ‘White Wolf Pass,’ she said knowingly. Then, not asking but stating, ‘It was Tikaani who found it.’

‘Well, yes, he did,’ Beck confirmed.

She nodded, and beamed. ‘The wolves are the guardians of the mountains, Beck Granger. In the winter and spring when the snows are heavy, White Wolf Pass is the only way through, but only those favoured by the wolves find the way, for it is well hidden.’

‘Um . . . yes. Right,’ Beck agreed.

He remembered the wolf – wolves? – he had glimpsed, or thought he had glimpsed, on their journey. Yes, he could believe the wolves had favoured them. And escorted them, just to make sure.

He glanced again at Tikaani; Tikaani shot him a shy smile. Beck knew that, once – and only a few days ago at that – his friend would have scoffed at his grandmother’s belief in the old ways and the old spirits. Only a few months ago, so would he. But he had learned the hard way about the spirits in Colombia, and now it had come home to Tikaani too. His friend had learned respect for the practicalities of his ancestors’ traditional ways – the things that could keep you
alive – and with them he had also absorbed a little of their faith.

But the biggest surprise was yet to come.

‘Didn’t I tell you, my son?’ Now the old lady was talking to Tikaani’s dad. ‘When you named the boy, you asked who should be his guardian and I said—’

‘Yes, Mother,’ the man agreed with a patient smile. ‘Yes, you did.’

Beck looked from one to the other, not understanding. Finally he looked at Tikaani for clarification.

‘Tikaani means “wolf”,’ his friend mumbled round a mouthful of roll. ‘Didn’t I say?’

Beck gaped, then closed his mouth. ‘No,’ he managed eventually. ‘You didn’t.’

Tikaani shrugged and swallowed his roll. Then he leaned forward. ‘In fact,’ he added confidentially, ‘a couple of times I swear that I saw a wolf, but I figured you had enough to worry about, so I didn’t say a word . . .’

Tikaani’s dad was addressing the people inside the hall in a mixture of Anak and English. Finally he turned to the boys with a wide smile, and gestured that they should step forward and begin their telling. Tikaani put a hand on Beck’s arm.

‘It’s OK. Let me.’

There was a strange note in Beck’s friend’s voice. Intrigued, Beck watched Tikaani step forward and raise his arms up.

‘Tikaani, son of Kunuk, son of Panigoniak. Forgive me that I only speak the tongue of the Yankees.’

He said that last bit to the very front row, where the oldest men and women of the village sat. They had long grey hair, women and men alike, and flat
faces deeply carved with wrinkles. Some of them gave the faintest impassive nod back at Tikaani, as if reluctantly allowing him this one concession.
He’s young
, they seemed to be saying.
Of course he only speaks English. There’s plenty of time for him to learn to do this properly.

Tikaani launched into the story of their journey, from the moment the plane’s engine had failed. Beck settled back in his chair. Tikaani had a clear gift for story-telling. He could convey the moment, the emotion of each situation they had faced together. There was a rhythm to his speech, a natural patter that just carried you along. It was like . . . Beck tried to think . . . it was like a song.

And suddenly Beck realized what was going on. Way back at the start of all this, the pilot had mentioned Anakat’s oral tradition. This was it! Tikaani was reciting the latest instalment in the village’s history. Their adventures were the latest chapter in an organic audio book that went back hundreds of years. This wasn’t just a talk, it was a podcast; and those old people in the front row weren’t just respected elders, they were the village’s iPods.

Now Beck was captivated. He wondered if Tikaani had ever known he could do this. Born and bred in Anakat, and once determined to turn his back on the place; now he had fallen back into it as easily as a duck takes to water. This was their obligation to Anakat. The story had just happened around them as they left the plane and climbed the mountains and rafted down the river. Now it had to be spoken into the village’s memory.

Then
, maybe, Beck thought, they could sleep . . .

Tikaani finished his straight account of their journey, reaching the point where the boys had arrived at the front door of his house, but he didn’t sit down. He stood for a moment longer, looking at the floor, then he lifted his head to deliver his closing words. ‘Thanks to Beck, I learned how the land can feed and shelter me. I learned to give respect to the powers I cannot control and to use the powers that I can. I learned that if you fight the land, it can kill you – but if you work with it and understand it, the land will sustain you.’

His smile was bashful and wry. ‘None of this will be news to you. It should not have been news to me. Now I know.’

And with that he sat down, to an outbreak of
approving murmurs and nods from the villagers. By Anak standards, Beck reckoned, this was a wave of rapturous applause. He leaned over to Tikaani.

‘Well done,’ he whispered.

Tikaani looked up at him, with glistening eyes. ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

Afterwards, Tikaani’s family and the two boys walked slowly back to the house. It took a while because people kept coming up and shaking Beck and Tikaani’s hands. Beck’s feet were dragging on the gravel roads.

Sleep now!
He thought.
Sleep, sleep, sleep
. . .

But first Tikaani’s dad called Bethel again to check on the helicopter. He hung up and beamed at Beck.

‘They’ve got Al and he’s fine,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘In fact, he’s so fine they’ve got time to swing by here and pick you up. They’ll be here in about half an hour.’

The helicopter flew low over Anakat, hanging in the air like a giant metal wasp. Its engine rattled the windows in their frames.

Beck, Tikaani, Tikaani’s parents and about half of Anakat made their way down to the foreshore where the helicopter was landing. The blast of its rotor whipped up sand and spray into a cloud that stung Beck’s eyes. He hung back until he heard the change in pitch of its engine which meant that it was powering down. The rotor still scythed the air overhead but he ran forward, head lowered, and pulled open the cabin door.

And there was Uncle Al! He lay on a stretcher on the floor of the cabin, covered with blankets, and a paramedic fussed over him. A saline drip fed fluid into his arm and his face was pale, but there was no hiding the warmth of his smile.

‘Beck!’ His voice was barely loud enough to hear over the dying sound of the engine, but it didn’t quaver. ‘Tikaani too, of course. Thank you, boys, so much . . .’

But Beck was already hugging him, as best you can when a man is strapped into a stretcher.

The medic spoke. ‘Two minutes.’ He scowled at the boys. ‘
I
wanted to take him straight to hospital. He only got this diversion at all because he’s paying for it.’

Two minutes! The boys looked at each other. They had gone through so much together to get here. Now Beck was about to be whisked away, just like that. It felt odd. It felt wrong. You shouldn’t just disappear from a friend’s life like that.

But of course . . .

‘You’ll be back.’ Tikaani’s smile was brave.

‘Yeah.’ Beck smiled wryly. ‘Of course. I mean, we’ve still got to make that documentary, haven’t we?’

‘And those are my clothes you’re wearing.’

‘True. No other reason for coming back, really.’

Tikaani grinned. ‘None at all!’

He squeezed Beck’s hand and then backed out of the cabin and hurried away to join his parents. Beck strapped himself into a seat and peered out of the window. The pilot hopped out of the cockpit to slam the cabin door shut and check it was fastened. Then he clambered back in and the engine began to gather power again. Beck waved to his friend as the machine rose into the air and turned away from Anakat, over the inlet.

The land fell away beneath them. Village and
inlet merged into the endless cover of fir trees. The mountains that had done their best to kill Beck and Tikaani were just a picturesque backdrop. Everything gleamed in the golden sun and Beck felt his eyes grow heavy.

He didn’t want to see Anakat go, but he blinked, and suddenly he had lost it. Where had it gone? It took a moment to locate the inlet again. The cluster of buildings was suddenly tiny. It must have been a long blink, he thought, and he could feel another coming on. Well, Beck told himself, you’ve got to blink, but make it a quick one . . .

And so he closed his eyes, and the next time he opened them they were circling the landing pad of Bethel’s hospital.