Talking at the Woodpile Read Online Free Page A

silent. The wind had stopped. He kicked a hole through the snow and crawled out. The sun was rising, and the sky was clear. A cloud of warm air followed him out of the cave and hung over the willows. He inhaled deeply and nearly doubled over in pain; the cold burned his lungs and his face and hands stung with frostbite.
    â€œThis is very cold,” he said out loud. “This isn’t good.”
    Angunatchiuk had half a mind to step back into his shelter but he knew his family would be worrying about him. With the wind down, he was confident he could make it home. He strapped on the snowshoes and moved down the valley. He crossed a frozen creek, climbed the far bank and headed across the tundra. He quickly realized that he’d underestimated the situation. The cold had him shivering. After three days in the shelter, his clothes were damp and insulated him less.
    Looking around he saw a single strand of warm air rise above the ground about twenty feet in front of him. The wisp floated up, lit by the pale sun, and then dissipated into the air. Angunatchiuk knew what the warm air was: a bear hibernating in a den.
    He removed his snowshoes and crept to the air hole. He smelled the bear a few yards below. It was a grizzly; black bears smelled like dogs. Carefully he chipped open the entrance and slid headfirst down to where the bear lay. The animal’s back faced the tunnel, and its bulk was nestled into a space that it had carved out with its powerful claws. Angunatchiuk moved closer, confident that it wouldn’t awaken, and closed his eyes as exhausted sleep overcame him.
    In a split second he was wide awake, fear racing down his spine. The urge to flee strained every fibre of his body, but his mind slowly took control.
    He heard whimpering. The bear cubs weren’t hibernating. They lay with their mother, suckling and waiting for spring. A cub was making its way over its mother’s body toward Angunatchiuk. It crawled with the unsteady bumping motion of the young, and its breath smelled of sour milk. The cub ran its cold nose over Angunatchiuk’s face, bumping his eye, and then latched its toothless gums onto his nose. It began to suckle.
    He turned his head slowly from side to side, trying to detach the cub. The animal growled and hung on, placing both paws over Angunatchiuk’s eyelids to maintain its grip. Angunatchiuk stopped resisting, and when the cub sensed this, it began flexing its claws in contentment. The pain of having his frostbitten nose suckled and five needles poked rhythmically into each eyelid was overwhelming. Angunatchiuk grasped the cub by its fat stomach and pulled it from his face. The cub detached without protest, probably because it was at a dry station, and climbed back over its mother to join its sibling. Angunatchiuk closed his eyes and fell asleep.
    He dreamed that he had crawled out of the den and was standing on the tundra. The sky was robin’s egg blue, and the sun shone brightly. The Blackstone River valley and the plains below the mountains glowed with light. There was not a sound. He looked to his left, then to his right. The bear stood upright beside him, but Angunatchiuk wasn’t afraid. The bear looked around, and its nostrils moved as it sniffed the air. It lifted its right foreleg with paw outstretched and claws exposed. The claws were the colours of a rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green and blue—and sparkled in the sunlight. Angunatchiuk realized that it was a shaman’s spirit bear. Then the bear dropped to all fours and headed back into the den.
    Angunatchiuk woke with a start. Everything was as it had been when he entered, and the bear had not moved. The cubs whined. He could tell from the smell of the den that the outside temperature had risen. The bear stirred, groaned, shifted its weight and settled again. Angunatchiuk crawled out. The sky was clear, and the sun blazed as it had in his dream. Angunatchiuk covered the entrance behind him