Kimi sprinted the length of Lone Man’s Walk, back in the direction from which she’d come, toward the sound of the crash and the scream. Her physical agility served her well on the snow-covered, infrequently travelled path, allowing her to keep her balance and hit all the footprints she’d already made on her previous trek. Her body was also adjusting to the trip through The Passage, which, even though it had lasted only seconds, affected the body such that it often took an entire day for full recovery. In certain instances, such as that Warrior who had opened his eyes while travelling through The Passage, recovery never came.
But Kimi was not like that Warrior nor the others who had experienced physical problems travelling through The Passage. Not that she was physically superior to them in the sense of being stronger or faster or in better health. Her superiority was in a different realm altogether. When she was a young girl Kimi had discovered the difference between her and the rest of her tribe.
As she ran, afraid of what she would find at the end of Lone Man’s Walk, her thoughts went back to that cool autumn day when she was seven and the leaves were turning color and falling and the sun had made most of its journey across the sky to its nightly resting place. To the day she’d climbed a tree to escape a bear she’d come across while alone in the forest. Alone in this exact same forest, albeit in a different time. She would never forget that day and what had happened to her when she’d climbed the tree as far up as she dared. She had looked down. Twenty feet below, the bear was climbing the tree. Terrified that she was moments away from being eaten alive, Kimi climbed higher. Without looking, she put her foot onto a dead branch. It broke, and she fell. She bounced off one branch, tried to grab another, she kept falling and she screamed out for help and…and…help came.
For months after that day, Kimi replayed the scene over and over in her mind, sure that she had witnessed something that couldn’t possibly have happened. She revisited the tree many times after that, climbing to the exact spot from where she’d fallen, lowering herself to the spot where she’d stopped falling, and there was no explanation other than what she eventually came to accept. The tree had caught her. It was that simple. As simple as a tree catching a person and saving her life could be. Kimi had fallen from more than forty feet above the ground and had stopped falling half-way down, a couple of feet above the bear waiting for its lunch to fall into its gaping jaws.
The tree caught her. She had tried stopping herself after bouncing off the first branch, but had been unable to grab hold of any of the branches as she kept falling. Her face and arms and hands got scraped and cut and bruised. She’d come close to losing one of her eyes to a smaller branch—it would be nine years later when her left eye would be cut from its socket—that struck a glancing blow to her upper cheek. She hadn’t been able to stop from falling, and that was when the two branches moved. There had been no wind, no one else with her. The bear still below her, no birds or other animals within sight, so it could only have been the tree that snatched her from the air as a little child might snatch a play doll that had been thrown to her. A branch-hand under each arm, twigs curling around her arms and holding on to her hands, her legs dangling between the branches suspending her over open space.
The tree caught Kimi.
Then the tree hit the bear. After she’d been dangling for a few moments, and after she’d regained a sense of what had happened and where she was, she looked down to find the bear. It had still been climbing, was no more than two feet away from her dangling feet, when another branch moved and struck the bear in its side, not hard enough to kill it, but more than enough to knock it out of the tree. It was as if—and this was another thing that Kimi would wrestle with for weeks following that day—the tree wanted to save Kimi without killing the bear. It only swept the bear off the branch, sending it tumbling to the ground. The bear had looked up once at Kimi and roared when a lower branch made a threating move toward it. At that, the bear had lumbered into the forest without looking back.
A tree—a tree!—had moved its branches and caught her and saved her life. One of the most troubling and unexpected outcomes from that incident was the change in her brother. She had gone back to her family that day and spoke nothing to them of what had happened. She told them of the bear chasing her up a tree and her falling—she couldn’t hide all the scars—but she told her parents that she landed on a branch, regained her balance, and sat and waited for the bear to eventually give up and leave. Her mother and father believed her. There was no reason not to. But, Achak…. After hearing her story, his attitude toward her changed. He never asked her about the incident, but in his eyes there was disbelief, suspicion. And…fear? Kimi had never been able to figure out why Achak had those feelings toward her, though she could now sense that she was close to understanding it a little more, once she found him.
She would like nothing more than to stop and soak in the beauty of the falling snow. Let it fall on her, around her—and in ways that she knew but did not understand—through her. Snow was cleansing, impartially blanketing everything in a sea of pure white. Snow was timeless, a lace curtain descending from the sky, settling on the ground, then disappearing back into the sky. Snow was cold, numbing the senses to everything else except itself, not allowing Kimi to focus on anything else outside of the flakes falling on her skin, cold pinpricks that centered her in the present moment.
She couldn’t let her mind wander anymore. She usually wasn’t this wayward with her thoughts. Kimi never had a problem focusing on—and finishing—whatever it was she was doing. Today, it was difficult to keep her mind on what she needed to do. The Passage. It did strange things to people, and maybe for her it was mixing up her thinking. Concentrate! she scolded herself. Find Achak. Find the Totem. That is what is important right now.
Kimi came to the end of Lone Man’s Walk and arrived at Indian Head Lake. Again, she felt the Fear. It crept inside her. It taunted her. It warned her. Her heart started beating faster. Her breath came in shorter gasps. Calm, she thought. Peace. The Great Spirit is with you. There is nothing to fear. Calm. Peace. After a few moments, her heart rate slowed and her breathing became steady.
Through the falling snow, Kimi approached the tree that was different from the pines. A beech tree, if she remem—
The pile of clothing crumpled at the foot of the tree cut off her thoughts. Winter coat, snow pants, boots, and a lone glove separated from the pile. Kimi stood motionless, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She stepped toward the clothing. She stopped. Knelt next to them. Extended a hand, but stopped herself before touching it, withdrawing her hand. What if…? You have to do this, Kimi told herself. You can do this. She reached across the clothing. She tugged at a coat sleeve and lurched back when the body rolled toward her.
It was the face that caused Kimi to scream and bury her face in her hands and turn away. Minutes passed before she could uncover her eye and open it. She was still turned away from what had frightened her. She was looking at the trees surrounding the lake, at the white snow and the dark silver clouds and all she could think of was it couldn’t be Achak she had just looked at. It just couldn’t be. But it was his face she’d seen. As out of place as it had looked, as unexpected as it had been, it was her brother’s face nestled within the hood of the coat, his head tilted at a disturbing, unnatural angle that told her everything she needed to know about whether her brother was alive or dead.
But how could it be? How had Achak come to wear such clothing? And how had he…. No. something was not right. Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, Kimi turned to face her brother. She exhaled, opened her eyes, and didn’t know whether she should be relieved or more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.
The face was not that of Achak. She did not recognize the boy—a boy, not much older than her—but it certainly was not her brother. But it had been Achak. She was certain of it. Even though she’d looked away, she would know her brother’s face and it had been Achak she had seen. And now it wasn’t. It was someone else, and Kimi did not know what that meant for her. How could she have mistakenly thought it was Achak? Had she hallucinated? Maybe she was getting too hungry and tired and thirsty and it was affecting her senses. She always relied on her hearing more than any of her other senses, and she knew having only one eye limited her, but for certain she had seen Achak and now it was not Achak and that meant she was seeing things that weren’t there and no matter what the reason that was definitely not a good thing.
Kimi turned away from the boy, and it was then that she saw the machine. A snowmobile. She’d learned about such machines—and many others—from the Elders and Warriors who had travelled through The Passage over the years and had shared with the tribe what they had learned. The front snow skis of this particular machine were twisted and mangled, metal pieces scattered beyond the tree with larger pieces rammed against it, and it didn’t take long for Kimi to figure out what had happened. The snowmobile’s tracks came from across the lake and seemed to aim straight for the tree until they stopped and simply were no more. She looked closer. Where the tracks ended was a slight incline where the frozen lake met the snow-covered shore. The snowmobile had got airborne. But…why? Why would the boy have aimed straight for the tree? He must have seen it.
A gust of wind blew hair and snow into Kimi’s face. She brushed the strands of hair away and wiped the wetness from her cheeks. She turned toward the tree. It stood, unmoving against the wind and the snow and the machine that had crashed into it. Its lower branches still held inches of frozen snow. It had been unshaken by the crash. Studying the tree, something about it bothered Kimi, something…unseen that crept into her thoughts, a sense that she was seeing something that wasn’t right, or…or not seeing something that should be there, or that was there.
She shook her head. First seeing Achak’s face, now this. It’s a tree, Kimi told herself. There’s nothing about it that’s out of place. A huge, strong tree, nothing more. And yet, Kimi felt compelled to step toward it. Her foot crunched into the crusted snow. What is it that—
A rustling noise. Kimi swiveled and raised her hands to shield her face and ward off an attack. She set her feet as firmly as she could on the crusty snow. She scanned the surroundings and tuned her hearing. Open space in front of her, snow-covered trees on the left and right and behind her, gray clouds marching onward above her. She saw nothing threatening, heard nothing out of the ordinary. But there had been a sound. A—
There it was again, but this time it was different. It sounded like…like someone groaning. It came from the other side of the tree. Hands still raised, Kimi turned. She stepped around the tree. A dozen feet away, near the edge of the forest, was another set of clothing, although not crumpled like the other. A black pile that Kimi had been blind to earlier when she had been too focused on the boy and too intent on trying to figure out what had happened. She hadn’t completely taken in her entire surroundings. She would be wise to not let that happen again.
More groaning. Movement. A bare hand raised itself, a shaky pale finger extending toward the gray clouds. Kimi lifted her head in the direction of the raised finger. Circling no more than a hundred feet above her was a bird. A large bird, big enough to be seen through the falling snow. A vulture, maybe an eagle.
Kimi lowered her eye to the hand. Then she looked at the face. Another boy’s face, this time not Achak’s. This face younger than the other one. The eyes opened. Kimi stepped toward the boy and leaned over him. The eyes blinked. He was alive. Thank The Great Spirit he was alive. She started to kneel so she could ask him how badly he was hurt when she saw his eyes widen and his mouth start to open. His finger still pointed up.
Kimi turned her attention to the sky. Definitely an eagle, albeit one of tremendous size. And it was diving straight for her. With no time to think, her reflexes taking over, Kimi fell on the boy and cradled his head into her shoulder. She ducked barely in time as it swept thunderously over her head. A second later there was searing pain in her left shoulder. Resisting the impulse to lift her head to see how badly she was wounded, Kimi curled herself around the boy to give the eagle as small a target as possible and yet keep as much of the boy protected as she could. Again, she heard the massive wings. Another slash of the talons, this time on the arm of her already injured shoulder. Kimi flinched and clenched her teeth, wanting desperately to grab at the hot pain burning her arm, yet knowing she could not. She had to protect the boy and not concern herself with her own injuries. But her resolve did nothing to prevent the cold wind and stinging snow from intensifying the pain on her exposed flesh.
She could not keep this up for long. The eagle would eventually strike her neck or head, and from the force of the blows already inflicted on her, Kimi knew she would not be able to withstand that. She had to move. In the open, Kimi was powerless.
The trees. She needed to get to the trees. They were only a dozen feet away. She could do it. She’d have to lift the boy and carry him, but she could do it. My wrist, she thought. How can I lift him with my wrist and now my shoulder injured? Not seeing or hearing the eagle bearing down on her, Kimi raised her head and whispered a prayer to The Great Spirit. She rolled to her knees and wedged her good hand under the boy’s limp body. She inhaled, worked the hand of her injured arm under the other side of the boy—Oh, Great Spirit it hurts, it hurts so much, help me to endure—and grimaced and braced herself. She heaved the boy up and over her shoulder, and screamed as searing pain shot through her shoulder and arm and wrist.
Kimi steadied the boy against her shoulder and stood. The boy shifted, and she fell backward. The snow crunched beneath her. She opened her eye, blinked at the falling snow, focused. The eagle swooped into view. It turned, aimed, and dove for her. She had enough time to wriggle out from under the boy, and that was all. She couldn’t get on top of him to shield him from the attack. His entire backside lay exposed to the extended talons swooping toward him. At the next to last second the talons shifted toward her head. At the last second Kimi turned away from certain death. The talons stabbed at the snow where her head had been, leaving a deep, blood-stained slash mark.
Shoving her hands under the boy and ignoring the pain that engulfed her entire arm, Kimi hefted him over her shoulder again and stood. This time, she did not fall. She ran toward the cover of the trees, stumbled, but kept her balance. She ran a few more steps, caught her foot on a rock or chunk of frozen snow, and fell forward. The eagle swept over her head, its talons slashing at empty air. She twisted her head, looked up and behind her, and there it was, not more than fifty feet away, turning sharply in the air and coming back for her. She rose for the third time and ran. The trees were within reach, only a few feet away. She could make it. Almost there, almost—
Kimi felt the force of the blow, though it wasn’t a direct hit on her body. She turned her head. The boy’s hood was gone, torn from the coat. His hair was matted to his head by a dark, wet splotch. Kimi kept running. The wind howled at her, throwing snow in her face.
WHUMP!
Three more steps. She closed her eyes against the pinpricks of the snow assaulting her.
WHUMP! WHUMP!
She could do it. She would do it. Two more steps. More pain. More wind. More snow. The elements attacking her, working in tandem with the eagle. Everything working against her.
WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!!
One more step. One more breath.
Kimi lunged forward into the dense forest, not bothering to find the clear path that was Lone Man’s Walk, not needing to. She didn’t worry about getting slashed by the protruding branches that pointed their razor edges at her. She didn’t have to. The branches parted as she ran, creating a clear path, closing in behind her as they settled back to their original positions as if they hadn’t moved at all.
In the open, Kimi was powerless to defend herself against such an adversary as this eagle. But, surrounded by trees? That, fortunately for Kimi and the boy, was an entirely different matter.