Free Far North by Marcel Theroux Page B

round-eyed man.
    I couldn’t answer him. In my mind, I didn’t gave it a name at all. I wasn’t like the Tungus, who had been there so long that all the places meant something to them. To me it was just the city, the land, the snow, the sky, the bears. If it was any place, to me it was the Far North.
    My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He’d say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north, I was beginning to learn.
    Our way turned off the road and onto a narrow track through the forest. We’d been going for about fifteen minutes. I said, ‘You gentlemen are awful choosy about the wood you cut.’
    The man with the gun knew what I was getting at, so at least he wasn’t simple. ‘We don’t like to fell it too near the town. We live quiet and we don’t like to be bothered none.’
    That made sense to me. I’d been lucky so far, but that road could bring you no end of trouble.
    We picked our way a little further through the forest until finally we drew near to the place they called Horeb.
    It wasn’t anything like I’d been expecting. They had put a lot of work into her, no doubt, but it wasn’t a settlement our parents would have thought too highly of.
    The narrow path wound into a clearing about an acre square, and smack in the middle was a five-sided stockade with a gateway let in to it. It must have enclosed about a quarter of an acre of land. I guessed there were a number of buildings inside it, because there were separate plumes of smoke rising up.
    The men asked me to wait and then disappeared inside with their logs.
    They were a long time coming out, and I could see eyes peering at me through chinks in the palings, so that I began to wonder if some kind of ambush was being set for me. It must have been close to twenty minutes that passed before the front gate was raised up, and out came half a dozen men, led by one in a long black robe, and what was stranger, beside him a woman of about my own age, who laid a basket at my feet that had some grey salt in it, and the smallest loaf of bread I had ever seen.
    It was a strange little welcoming party, and a couple of the faces in it were not exactly friendly. The man in black who led them stared at me with a holy look that made me want to giggle.
    He embraced me, and I stiffened in spite of myself, because I didn’t like to be touched that way by a man, and I noticed that he had some kind of perfume on. ‘Welcome, brother,’said. ‘Our remnant. Remnant of a remnant.’
    And before I could think of anything to reply to him, they were all on their knees and he was leading them in a prayer of thanksgiving. I stood there, feeling foolish, but knowing I’d feel more foolish if I joined them, so I snatched off my hat as a mark of respect, and waited for them to finish. And now instead of just feeling foolish, I felt foolish and my ears were beginning to freeze.
    When the prayer was over, they stood up again and there was a pause as if they were expecting something from me. It reminded me that for all the hardships I put up with in my life, awkward silences weren’t generally one of them. I looked at them all and recognized the faces of the three men I’d encountered in the forest, and they were all of them waiting for me to speak.
    I cleared my throat and told them my name, and where I’d come from, and thanked them for their kindness. They still seemed to want more, so I added that, though I had never heard of a settlement called Horeb until just this day, they were a credit to their folk.
    ‘Amen,’ said the perfumed man in black, and he took my arm to lead me in, nodding at the woman to gather up the bread and salt.
    ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘we can stable your horses with ours. But, as a sign of peace,