The Bone Seeker Read Free

they’d not had the money.
    At 3.30, Edie thought the hell with the geography of British Columbia, set some homework and let the class out early. She was rubbing the whiteboard clean when Martha’s father, Charlie Salliaq, appeared.
    â€˜Martha here?’ The old man swung about, scoping out the class as if his daughter might be found among the empty desks and vacant chairs.
    â€˜No, and she hasn’t been in all day,’ Edie said. The faint, distant shimmer of unease which had accompanied her most of the day suddenly condensed into a dark, forbidding cloud.
    Charlie leaned back and pinched his chin between his fingers. ‘Wewere expecting her over at the camp on Saturday afternoon. I figured maybe she’d got tied up with schoolwork. I had to come into town anyway. Ran into that friend of hers at lunchtime, Lisa. She told me Martha hadn’t shown up for the morning session.’
    Derek had warned Edie about Charlie the moment she stepped off the plane. As one of the oldest men in town he felt entitled to respect and, for the most part, got it. Unlike most Inuit, Charlie could be as blunt as a duck’s beak. Most folks respected his achievements. For more than a decade he’d lobbied the Defence Department to cede land at a Cold War era Distant Early Warning radar station back to the people of Kuujuaq. When the department had finally given in to his demands five years ago, he’d begun another campaign to force them to pay for a full decontamination and clean-up of the site, known as Glacier Ridge, a battle he’d won only last year. All that fighting had made him uncompromising and ill-tempered and most people preferred to keep him at arm’s length.
    â€˜You checked the house?’ Edie asked.
    â€˜Do I look senile to you?’ Salliaq’s brow knitted. ‘I don’t know what could have gotten into her,’ he went on. ‘She hangs out with her uncle Markoosie when we’re out of town and he hasn’t seen her since Saturday morning. She picked up a schoolbook she’d left at his house. Her ATV’s still parked outside.’
    â€˜I’m sure she’ll turn up,’ Edie said, to reassure herself as much as anything. The dream came to mind again but she decided not to mention it. She realized that Martha hadn’t talked much about her life out of school. ‘Is there anywhere else she’d be likely to visit?’
    â€˜The bird cliffs up by Glacier Ridge, but I went by there on my way here.’ Salliq’s face locked into a series of frowns and lines like some glacier-scoured rock. ‘I’ll go over to the town hall and put out a message on the red radio.’ The local CB network was always the first port of call for any urgent requests or news. ‘But I don’t like it,’ Salliaq went on. He was leaning against the desk now, as though having to steady himself. ‘Not with all those
unataqti
just outside of town.’
    The thought had already occurred to Edie. For the past week,several hundred soldiers, Marines and Rangers, had stationed themselves at Camp Nanook, a temporary encampment a few kilometres from the settlement. This year the Sovereignty Patrol, or SOVPAT, forces were headquartered in Resolute, a few hundred kilometres to the south of Kuujuaq, on Cornwallis Island. It was the first year they’d deployed on Ellesmere. Camp Nanook was their farthest flung satellite and something of an experiment.
    The sudden influx of
qalunaat
into an otherwise quiet and remote Inuit settlement had, unsurprisingly, created a few problems. In the week since they’d arrived, several dozen
unataqti
had made their way into town in the evenings, looking to drink and gamble and meet young women. There had been a few insignificant cases of harassment, a couple of minor brawls. Many local families had decided to take no chances and moved off to their summer camps on the coast earlier than usual. Others were happily