Edie Kiglatuk's Christmas Read Free Page A

the old man, try to get out of him whatever else it was he knew. Maybe he’d take pity on Nancy and Alice, want to help them find their little girl. He was an ornery old walrus but it was Christmas and somewhere inside that raddled skin there was a heart that beat same as everyone else’s.
    â€˜You again,’ Koperkuj said at the door. He lowered his shotgun. ‘Well, you better come in.’
    â€˜Your boy’s in trouble, elder.’ She told him about the abducted girl and the search team who would find the boy sooner or later. ‘How’s about you let me help him?’
    Koperkuj went over to the table, picked up an old pipe and lit it. The smell of cheap tobacco drifted by. He didn’t seem in any hurry but Edie could tell by the worried look on his face that he was thinking. She moved across the floor. As she pulled out the chair opposite him his expression changed.
    â€˜Young Willie, he’s not gonna hurt that little girl,’ the old man said.
    â€˜Listen old man, you and I both know the truth of that. Aggie Muttuk is Willie’s daughter. I’m guessing that’s no surprise to you. But the fellas in the search party don’t know that, and you should have seen them, they got their hunting blood up.’
    Something passed across the old man’s face. Concern. A little anxiety, maybe.
    â€˜Now’s the time to talk, elder,’ Edie said.
    Koperkuj nodded. ‘Not long after you left, Willie came by for his komatik, hitched it up behind his snowmobile. Honestly, I don’t know where he went,’ the old man said.
    Edie shot him an icy look.
    Koperkuj shrugged. ‘Really, lady, I don’t. You might follow his tracks a while.’
    â€˜I might, if the wind wasn’t acting like a giant broom today. No tracks to speak of left. Which is just as well for Willie, because I wouldn’t like to think what’ll happen to him if I don’t get to him first.’
    The old man was biting his lip now, genuinely worried. ‘All I know, he took his baby and his komatik.’
    Edie thought about this for a moment. Then an idea bubbled up. She stood up, pulling on her mittens, snapping her snow goggles back over her eyes.
    â€˜I’m gonna give it my best guess,’ she said. ‘For Willie’s sake, you better hope I’m right.’
    â–  ■ ■
    The cabin was on the lee side of a bluff, out of the wind, which was a bit of luck, since the remnants of snowmobile and komatik tracks were just visible leading away from the outhouse to the east. This too was a good sign. The prevailing winds were north-westerly. Travelling east meant going in the same direction as the wind and snow, which wasn’t just faster but made visibility much better too. She set off, the tracks quickly giving out as she rounded the bluff and moved out onto the windswept tundra, but now she had more of an idea where she was heading. She navigated around the bluff towards the coastline, keeping a steady speed, then turned in at the headland beside the glacier, making her way up a steep slope. Far, far into the distance, the pinprick taillights of the mayor’s search party were bobbing along low, like stars kicked from the sky, in what she hoped was the wrong direction.
    She went on, driving steadily across the tundra, up the ridge, then down, across a wide-spaced plateau which was a sedge meadow in the summer, up and over another bluff until finally she came to a long finger fiord, lined one side by cliffs, the other by low sloping foothills, which gave out eventually to the deep forever winter of the interior icecaps. She came to a halt just shy of the cliff-edge, walked along and looked out across the ice rubble of the fiord to the slopes on the other side. In the faint light of the moon she thought she could make out a handful of shapes moving slowly along the far margin of the fiord. Further away was another, longer shape that looked as though it