Free Ice Drift (9780547540610) by Theodore Taylor Page B

die.
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    The third week in January, the sun came out weakly after mostly hiding for more than eighty days. Alika and Sulu celebrated by shouting, "Sikrinaktok! The sun shines!" and hugging each other. The terrible darkness was almost over.
    Sulu shouted, "Oh, how I wish I was home!"
    There would be the annual feasts, and children would go from dwelling to dwelling, snuffing out the old moss wicks in the
qulliqs
and inserting new wicks, lighting them with stones and flints. Everyone would eat until his or her belly couldn't hold another morsel.
    The children would be singing or shouting:
    Â 
"The welcome sun returns!
Amna ajah, ah-huh,

And brings us weather fine and fair,
Amna ajah, ah-hu.
"
    Â 
    The next day, Sulu finished his raven carving. It was ten inches tall. He blackened it with burnt wick moss from the
qulliq.
    "It's beautiful," said Alika.
    "I'll give it to Inu," Sulu said proudly.
    Alika said, "Brother, you're a master carver already."
    Sulu had used the sharp steel knife from the
Reliance
to make the rough-looking throat feathers, the wedge-shaped tail, and the thin but sturdy legs. The replica looked exactly like Punna.
    It was the month of Alika's fifteenth birthday, and he celebrated by making
aalu.
Missing was a bit of ptarmigan intestine. There was no substitute for the bird on the floe. Sulu said the sauce tasted better without it.

    A single bowhead whale could provide Nunatak
with more fuel for cooking, heating, and lighting than
a thousand seals. But the bowheads seldom came
anywhere near the village.

14
    Kussu and Maja had watched the weak return of the sun, and Maja said to herself, "I have to go now. I must!" The sun would become stronger each day. Then she said to her husband, "I've got to find them." She'd constantly talked about going south ever since their boys had disappeared.
    "I forbid it," Kussu replied. He had broken his leg on a recent caribou hunt and couldn't go.
    For more than three months, they had both agonized over their missing sons, each in his or her own way. There had been days and nights of the terrible darkness when they hardly spoke. They'd repeatedly prayed to the spirits. But what had happened—or what was happening—to Alika and Sulu was a torment that could not be relieved by Inu or any of their neighbors.
    And Maja had talked endlessly to old Miak, asking him to try to remember each day of life on his floe, each night. In particular she wanted to know when the floe began to break up and where he had been rescued by hunters in their kayaks.
    "We must wait until my leg is better," said Kussu firmly. He still hobbled around on a homemade crutch. "We must go together." He had made the family a new sledge.
    "No, I cannot wait for you, and you can't ride the sledge, Kussu. You'll tire the dogs," Maja said. She'd made up her mind. Nothing would stop her from going.
    "Do you know what you're doing?" Kussu asked angrily. "Do you have any idea how far you have to go?"
    "Yes, Miak told me where he was rescued. It was off a village called Tarjuaq."
    "And if you don't find them at sea off that village, what do you do?"
    "Miak told me the next one down is Angijuak."
    "Maja, this is crazy. You'll go hundreds and hundreds of miles by yourself."
    "I'll have the dogs. I'll hunt along the way. Kussu, it's the only chance we have before the ice across all the inlets and rivers breaks up. I'll have to cross all of them by sledge. I don't know the ice as well as you do, but I know I can do it."
    Kussu shook his head in despair. There were dozens of inlets, bays, and rivers all the way to the end of Baffin Island and Hudson Bay. She would never find the boys. She might die.
    But Maja had thought about this trip for weeks, well before the sun crept out. She'd even asked ancient Aninga, who could no longer hunt and relied on the good graces of his neighbors for food and seal oil, if she could borrow his rifle and some bullets.
    She said, "Husband, make sure I have everything I'll need