Dogsong Read online

  And now, where the land had been open and barren, there was much game for the man. He passed herds of caribou, once another mammoth which had died and was frozen, with giant wolves tearing at it.

  The wolves watched him pass. Two of them made a small sweep toward the sled and the man—there were times when they would have killed and eaten both the man and the dogs—but there was much easy meat on the mammoth. They turned away without making an open threat but it wouldn’t have mattered.

  The man almost did not see them. He had one purpose now, driving the lined-out team in front of him. Down to four stiff dogs, but loosening by the mile, he ran them out. The whip cracked and cracked again, reaching out to flick meat from their backs, meat and tufts of hair that flew into the cold, and they ran for him.

  They ran for home.

  Across the white land they ran, across the whiteness that was so bright in the dream it turned at last into light. Whitelight with the dogs churning through the brightness, legs slamming forward and down, feet kicking up snow, day into night into day into night into day …

  The dreamdogs ran in the dreamworld across the whitelight until finally in the great distance they disappeared and out in front of what they were, what they had become, Russel could see the space where the tent was in the dream.

  But it was the tent space only.

  Torn leather, ripped skins that flew and flapped, tattered banners in the never-ending arctic dreamwind.

  Where there had been a place of life, a place of laughter and round fat faces, where there had been a place of things that meant home and living, there was only the bleak shreds of flapping leather and the signs of death.

  An end to things.

  No, Russel thought—out of the dream but still in it in some way he did not understand. No, that cannot be.

  But it was. In the dream it was. There was an end that came in the north, an end that came to all things, the same end that came to Oogruk. The wolves had come, and when they were done, the small white foxes had come, and where there had been a woman and two children, where they had ended their lives, there was nothing.

  Two bones.

  Neither of them was identifiable except as bones, but they were human because they had not been cracked for the marrow and if they had been left from meat the woman would have cracked them to eat of the marrow—one small and the other large and long.

  Two bones.

  They were in the space that used to be tent but they were all. Everything else, every little thing that would have meant life and home was gone.

  Even the lamp.

  But only a small distance to the north, under an overhanging ledge, the lamp lay. Russel saw it. A fox had taken it there; drawn by the smell of fat that for years had soaked into the stone, it had taken the lamp under the ledge to get away from the other foxes and had licked the fat-smell until even that smell was gone.

  Then it had left the lamp and trotted away.

  It was a shallow stone lamp, with a flat bottom and a groove in the edge where the moss wick would lie.

  The dreamlamp lay where the fox had dropped it, lay until the blowing wind would cover it with snow and the snow would make grass and the grass would cover it still more, and then the snow and grass would, each after the other, time after time, mat the lamp down where it would lie forever. Or until somebody came to move it.

  The lamp, Russel dreamthought. Not all that was left …

  Another shift came; the dream moved sideways once more and he saw the man. Into the night and back to day the man had driven the sled until the dogs were staggering, falling. They were run down so far they would die surely. There would not be a team when the man was done—there would be only dead dogs.

  Nothing but the man would be left.

  They had run through the light, through the dreamlight the dreamdogs had run until they were no more.

  Until there was only the man and the sled and where the tent had been flapping in the wind, only tattered pieces of tent.

  And the man was Russel and Russel was the man. He knew that the woman and two children were no more and that the dogs would be no more and that’s when Russel awakened in his own tent and saw the lamp.

  Saw the flickering lamp and felt himself bathed in the stink-sweat of fear and knew, knew in his center, that it was the same lamp and that it was all there was left of what had been.

  That’s when Russel awakened in his own tent and knew that there was not a line any longer between the dream and the run.

  That’s when Russel awakened in his own tent stinking of fear and sweat, knowing that the dream had become his life and his life and the run had become the dream and the woman was looking at him.

  The woman-girl, girl-woman sat staring at him past the flickering yellow of the lamp.

  And she was the same woman as the woman in the dream. The same round face of the girl-woman in the dream, the same hair, the same even mouth of the dream-woman-girl, with the same wide nose and clear eyes staring at him through the flamelight.

  The dreamflame.

  From the dreamlamp.

  14

  The Dreamrun

  At the other end of the dreamrun nothing was the same as when he started. At the other end. Russel was no longer young but he wasn’t old, either. He wasn’t afraid, but he wasn’t brave. He wasn’t smart, but he wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t as strong as he would be, but he wasn’t ever going to be as weak as he was.

  When he thought of what happened, later, when he wasn’t what he would be but wasn’t what he had been, he thought that in some mysterious way a great folding had happened.

  The dream had folded into his life and his life had folded back into the dream so many times that it was not possible for him to find which was real and which was dream.

  Nor did he feel that it was important to decide. In its way the dream was more real than the run, than his life.

  These things happened. Either in the dream or the run, either in one fold or another fold, these things happened:

  He came to know the woman-girl. She was named Nancy. She had become pregnant without meaning to, without being married, and because the missionaries had told her that it was a sin she had been driven by her mind, driven out into the tundra to die on the snowmachine.

  But fear had taken her. She had been afraid to die and she had turned to go back—she did not know how far she had come—and she had run out of gas. She had started to walk, had gone down with the cold, was going to die and Russel saved her.

  She had gone first out to sea and then turned inland so they would think she’d gone through the ice and would not look for her inland. She did not have parents to worry for her. Her baby was not due for four months but she had pain in the tent that first night and Russel worried, though there was nothing he could do for her.

  They could not leave. The storm was too strong for them to leave. He fed her meat and fat from a caribou carcass, watching her eat and talk between mouthfuls, heating the pieces of meat and putting them in her mouth, holding back when she winced with pain as she came back from freezing, handing her the next piece when she was ready for it. He let her talk and talk, now that he was rested.

  When at last she had settled and had stopped talking about herself she stared at him.

  “What is the matter?” Russel asked. “Have you never seen people before?”

  Nancy looked down, suddenly shy. “It isn’t that. It just came to me that you were out here with a dog team. There is nothing out here. How did you come to be here?”

  Russel thought of telling her of Oogruk, of the dream, of the run, but held back. That was part of his song and it wouldn’t be good to talk about it before it was ready to sing.

  Then he thought he might tell her of the lamp, but decided against that for the same reason. Finally he shrugged. “I am a person who is running north and came upon your machine. That is all.” He did not tell her about following the tracks for so long.

  “How far north?”

  I
t was an impertinent question but he ignored the discourtesy. “Until I run to the end of where I am going.”

  And then she did a strange thing. She nodded, almost wisely. “I understand. But tell me, is it possible for a person to be with you when you run north to the end?”

  It was a hard question to answer. In this run, Russel thought, in this run I thought I would be alone but it was perhaps not supposed to be so. It may be that is what the dream is telling me. That I am not supposed to be alone. If the dream is telling me anything.

  Or another way of thinking: Is it possible to leave her out here? No. And still a third way: Would it be possible to take her home?

  “There is nothing for me there,” she said, shaking her head when he asked. “I have done wrong. There is not a way to live there. I will stay out here.”

  “And die,” Russel finished for her.

  “Yes.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “You tried that and it didn’t work. You became afraid and tried to get home.”

  “Not home,” she corrected. “Back. I have no home.”

  “So.”

  “So.”

  “What am I to do?”

  “Take me with you. I will earn my way. I can scrape the skins and sew them. I can make camp. I can feed dogs.”

  “Do you know dogs?”

  “No. There were none left in my village. But I can learn.”

  And in that way she came to be with him when his life folded into the dream and the dream folded into his life.

  In that way she came to be with him on the run.

  Again during that long storm-night she slept and he dozed, but did not dream, and when he awakened this time there was light outside the tent and the wind had stopped. He reached outside and brought his parka in, scraped the ice off, slid it over his under-parka and stood outside. He was stiff, worse than he’d ever been, so he stretched, felt his bones crack and creak.

  The woman-girl put her anorak on and came out.

  “It is cold,” she said.

  “Cold is our friend.”

  “I know. But I am not dressed as you. I feel it more.”

  “We will wrap you in skins in the sled. You will be all right.”

  She said nothing but nodded and began taking the tent down while he hacked meat off the carcass for the dogs. She put one skin on the bottom of the sled, curved up on the sides, with the hair in. The other three she put on top as a kind of blanket, with the fur inside. When it came time to go—after he had fed and brought the dogs up—she got in between the hides.

  “There is comfort here.”

  He misunderstood. “I have never hauled anybody who is going to have a baby.”

  “I meant it is warm. There is nothing comfortable about having a baby.”

  “Ahh. I see.”

  The dogs were rested but stiff and it took them a mile or so to loosen up. But they settled into the routine of running; the leader knew that Russel wanted to cover distance and they ran.

  The land was new. White-new with snow from the storm and drifts from the wind and after a time the dogs were running up the sides of a white saucer into the light, running out and out until their legs vanished in light and the steam came back to Russel across their backs and turned them into part of the wind, turned them into ghost-dogs.

  He stood the sled loosely, proud of the team, and he could tell that the woman-girl thought highly of them.

  Out, he thought. Out before me they go. Out before me I go, they go …

  They ran north, now two where there was one, ran north for the mother of wind and the father of ice.

  And these things happened when Russel’s life folded into the dream and the dream folded into his life:

  It came that they ran past their food.

  It was true that he perhaps fed the dogs a bit too much, but they were working hard and it took meat and fat to drive them. Three, four, seven more days of running north, stopping at night in the skins with the lamp and the chips of fat and the yellow glow while they ate much and talked little; sat in their own minds until they dozed and he came to know the woman-girl—eight, nine, ten days and nights they ran north toward the mother of wind, and they ran past their food.

  The first and second day without food there was no trouble. The dogs grew weak, but when they didn’t get fed they went back to work and began to use of the stored fat and meat of their bodies.

  “They will run to death,” Oogruk had said. “You must not let them.”

  At the end of the second day Russel’s stomach demanded food and when he didn’t feed it and ignored it his body finally quit asking for food and he went to work and began using the meat and fat of his body.

  The woman-girl grew weak rapidly because her body fed the baby within. Russel saved the last of the food for her and when that was gone and it was obvious that the dogs could not go much further he stopped.

  There had been no game. No sign. They had seen nothing and he was worried. No, more than worried—he had been worried when the first two days with no game sighted had come. Now he was afraid.

  He had to make meat.

  “I will leave you in the tent and take the team for meat. They will run lighter with only one person.”

  Nancy agreed, nodding. She got slowly out of the sled and pulled the skins out to make the shelter. They were near the side of a cut bank where a creek had long ago run. They used the dirt bank for one wall and made a lean-to.

  There were some chips for the lamp, and a long strip of fat that he had been saving for fuel—pictures from the dream haunted him and he did not want to leave her without heat.

  When the shelter was up he returned to the sled. “I’ll be back.”

  It was as close as he would come to a goodbye and he made the dogs leave. They did not want to go. They thought they should sleep in camp and eat and saw no reason to go out again. But he forced them and when they were away from camp he made them run to the east, up the old creekbed. If there is game, he thought, it will be up the creek run.

  But they went all of that day into the dark and he saw nothing. No hare, no ptarmigan, no tracks of anything.

  With dark he stopped and lay on the sled in his parka. There was light wind, but not the vicious cold of the previous days of running. He tried to sleep but it did not come.

  Instead he lay awake all night thinking of the woman-girl back in the tent. If he did not find game she would die.

  She would die.

  He would die.

  The dogs would die.

  Perhaps I ought to run back to her and kill and eat the dogs, he thought, over and over. If he kept running away from the shelter until the dogs went down he would not get back to her. If there was not game out ahead of him he would not get back to her. If he saw game but his mind was not true and the arrow flew wrong he would not get back. She would die.

  She would die.

  He would die.

  The dogs would die.

  But if he went back and they ate the dogs they would not be able to leave and they would die anyway.

  And now when he thought, there was nothing from the ghost of Oogruk. No help. Nothing. Nothing from the trance or the time when they turned to yellow smoke.

  Whatever decision he made, when the light came back, it was his decision, just as going back to live the old way must have been his decision.

  And when the light came across the snow he made the decision to go ahead to find game, knowing that if he was wrong they would all be wrong, the woman-girl, the dogs and all would be wrong and gone. Gone and gone.

  In the second day he found nothing. Nor did he on the third day and now they had gone six days without eating and he felt weak. His eyes worked poorly and he ate snow so often that his lips were sore. Twice, then several more times, he thought he saw deer but when he got to where they had been there was nothing. Never had been anything. It was the hunger in his eyes, he found, that made him see things.

  Finally the dogs stopped. They could pull no mo
re, or so they thought. But now he remembered one more thing from Oogruk.

  “The dogs run because they want to run,” the old man had told him, “or because they think they want to run, or because you make them think they want to run. That is how to drive dogs.”

  And so now Russel drove them. He cut a whip from some willows in the old streambed and he laid it on their backs and they ran for him but it was wrong, wrong to drive them down that way and he knew that when he had whipped them and made them run and they went down there would be nothing left.

  He would not get back to Nancy. His mind took that and made it part of him—he was failing. He would not get back. As in the dream, he would not get back and there would be only two bones left by the foxes.

  Two bones.

  And so he drove the dogs down, drove them the way the man in the dream had driven them and when his mind was gone, when there was nothing left of his thinking and nothing left of the dogs, he came around a bend in the old streambed and saw tracks.

  At first he didn’t believe them. They came off the left side of the bank and tore down into the snow at the bottom, breaking through the hard pack that had held the dogs and sled. He thought they were from the hunger in his eyes but when he got closer they did not go away.

  They were huge.

  And when he got still closer he saw that they were tracks of a great polar bear and that he did not believe, either, because the bear were hunted out for their white fur. Men used snowmachines and hunted them out and there were no bears.

  But there were the tracks. And they were tracks of a great bear. And they had to be real because now the dogs caught the smell and took excitement. They increased speed but he knew that they could not last now.

  And how to kill a bear?

  Oogruk had said nothing.

  The arrow would not be enough. He had the killing lance on the sled and he would have to use that somehow. He would have to catch the bear and use the lance to kill it.

  A polar bear that was bigger than he, the team, the sled, the woman-girl and the tent combined—he had to take it with the small killing lance in the old way that nobody had used for so long that he didn’t think there was a memory of it. Oogruk had never done it, or he would have told him.