The Raven's Gift Read Free Page A

quiet. As if she would see the gesture. But she heard the hinges squeak and the footsteps on the stairs and she pressed herself down in an effort to sink into the frozen dirt and to never be seen. She took several quick stabs of breath. Her nose searched the air.
    He followed the man down the steps. The red bead on the metal sight at the end of his barrel slowly moved across the stained and tattered tan Carhartt jacket that covered the man’s chest. He knew this man was not the skier. The man paused at the bottom of thestairs, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and looked out at the village and then the river. He thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and began walking in their direction.
    “What’s he doing?” she whispered.
    “Coming this way.”
    “Don’t shoot yet. Wait,” she said.
    She took short, shallow breaths through her nose. He wondered how she could smell anything there, under that house, surrounded by the skeletons of old broken sleds, bike parts, and three half-flattened basketballs. His nose couldn’t get past his own smell. The stink of sweat and hunger. Of a body eating itself.
    She took another breath and held it. She reached over, grabbed his forearm and squeezed. John didn’t need to see her face, but he looked, and the sadness that pulled at her cheeks said enough.
    “Cover your ears,” he whispered.
    He waited until the man was only twenty yards from them. The tan jacket hung open, his brown chest a thin line of ribs, the stomach wasted and stretched drum tight. His black hair hung along his face in greasy strands, his brown eyes hiding somewhere in the shadows of his skull.
    The girl screamed with the concussion. The shot reverberated against the hollow shell of a house above them and the man crumpled into the snow. She held her hands over her ears and buried her face in her chest.
    He chambered another round as he swung the rifle back toward the house with the smoking chimney and waited.
    “Quiet,” he said.
    “But my ears hurt.”
    “I know. I know,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
    THEIR UNSIGNED CONTRACTS and the other papers were spread out on the floor. Anna rested on her stomach, her naked body across thebed, with her feet dangling off. Her head and arms hung over the edge. She was enthralled at the contents before her.
    “It’s almost like they want to scare us away. That’s fascinating to me, don’t you think? All this fuss about no running water, the brutal weather, the National Guard deployed—who cares if the nearest Starbucks is over four hundred miles away? Isn’t that the point?”
    He propped himself up on his elbow. “I’m sure they just don’t want to have some yahoos who think they’re going to be teaching in, what was the name of that stupid TV show? The one with the doctor in Alaska from New York?”
    “I can’t think of it. I know what show you’re talking about. Northern Exposure! ”
    He nodded. “That show was ridiculous.”
    She sat up. “Are you staring at my crotch?”
    “That’s such a harsh word for something so divine. Plus, isn’t crotch staring a rare privilege of my role as husband?”
    She sat up and pulled a sheet over her body.
    “You can take the girl from the Catholics, but you can’t take the Catholic from the girl,” he joked.
    “Funny. I’m going to shower, and then we’ll call Gary and sign those babies. We’ll go eat somewhere nice, to celebrate our new jobs!”
    “I’ll join you,” he said. “We better start practising those short military showers. If the only water supply is at the school, this could be our last shower together for a while.” He paused, and then said, suddenly serious, “Anna?”
    She stopped halfway in the door to the bathroom. “Yeah?”
    “No more about me, okay? People don’t need to know everything,” he said.
    “If you’re part Eskimo then you’re part Eskimo, John. It’s okay to be a half-breed,” she said in a weak attempt at humour.
    John looked down at one of the