The Tenth Circle Read online

“I knew all along that Wass wasn’t the one who killed Cane. Cane would have done that, no matter what, all by himself. Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can’t figure out what to hold on to.”

  And some people, Laura thought, make the choice to let go.

  Although it was only two o’clock, the sun was already sagging against the horizon. Charles headed back up the steps. “I know this place must seem like Mars to you. And that you and me, we’re about as different as different could be. But I also know what it feels like to lose a child.” He turned at the top landing. “Don’t freeze to death. Wassilie’d never forgive me.”

  He left Laura outside, watching the night sky bloom. She found herself lulled by the lack of sound. It was easier than you’d think to grow accustomed to silence.

  When the Jesuit Volunteers tried to raise Kingurauten Joseph’s body temperature by cutting off his frozen clothes and covering him with blankets, they found a dove fashioned delicately out of bone, a carving knife, and three hundred dollars in his boot. This was a cash economy, Carl told Trixie. That was Joseph’s health insurance, wadded up in his sock.

  Trixie had just come in from her rotation on the riverbank, and she was still frozen to the core. “Why don’t you two warm up together?” Carl suggested, and he left her watching over the old man.

  She didn’t mind, actually. While the mushers raced from Tuluksak to Kalskag and Aniak and back, the volunteers were mostly catching some sleep. But Trixie was wide awake; she’d slept on the trail with Willie, and her body was all mixed up with jet lag. She remembered how every year when it was time to turn the clocks back, her father would insist that he was going to stay on daylight saving time and keep the extra hour, so that he’d get more work done. The problem was, when he took the additional minutes every morning, he’d conk out in front of the television earlier at night. Finally he’d give in and live on the same schedule as the rest of the world.

  She wished her father was here right now.

  “I’ve missed you,” he answered, and Trixie whirled around in the dark classroom. Her heart was pounding, but she couldn’t see anyone there.

  She looked down at Joseph. He had the broad, chiseled features of a Yup’ik and white hair that was matted down in whorls. His beard stubble glinted silver in the moonlight. His hands were folded over his chest, and Trixie thought they couldn’t have looked more different from her father’s-Joseph’s were blunt and calloused, the tools of a laborer; her father’s were smooth and long fingered and ink stained, an artist’s.

  “Aw, Nettie,” he murmured, opening his eyes. “I came back.”

  “I’m not Nettie,” Trixie said, moving away.

  Joseph blinked. “Where am I?”

  “Tuluksak. You nearly froze to death.” Trixie hesitated. “You got really drunk and passed out on the K300 trail, and a musher quit the race to bring you in here. He saved your life.”

  “Shouldn’t have bothered,” Joseph muttered.

  There was something about Joseph that seemed familiar to Trixie, something that made her want to take a second look at the lines around his eyes and the way his eyebrows arched. “You one of those juveniles for Jesus?”

  “They’re Jesuit Volunteers,” Trixie corrected. “And no. I’m not.”

  “Then who are you?”

  Well, wasn’t that the $64,000 question. Trixie couldn’t have answered that if Joseph had held a gun to her head. It wasn’t even a matter of giving her name, because that didn’t explain anything. She could remember who she used to be-that picture was like an image sealed into a snow globe, one that went fuzzy when she shook it too hard but then, if she held her breath, might see clearly. She could look down at herself now and tell you how surprised she was that she had come this distance, how strange it was to discover that lying came as easily as breathing. What she couldn’t put into words was what had happened in between to change her from one person into the other.

  Her father used to tell her the story of how, when she was eight, she’d awakened in the middle of the night with her arms and legs burning, as if they’d been tugged from their sockets. It’s growing pains, he’d told her sympathetically, and she’d burst into tears, certain that when she woke up in the morning, she’d be as big as him.

  The amazing thing was, it did happen that quickly. All those mornings in middle school she’d spent scrutinizing her chest to see if it had budded the slightest bit, all the practice kisses she’d given her bathroom mirror to make sure her nose didn’t get in the way on D-day; all the waiting for a boy to notice her-and as it turned out, growing up was just as she’d feared. One day when your alarm clock rang, you got up and realized you had someone else’s thoughts in your head…or maybe just your old ones, minus the hope.

  “Are you sure you’re not Nettie?” Joseph said when Trixie didn’t answer.

  It was the name he’d called her before. “Who is she?”

  “Well.” He turned his face to the wall. “She’s dead.”

  “Then chances are pretty good I’m not her.”

  Joseph seemed surprised. “Didn’t you ever hear about the girl who came back from the dead?”

  Trixie rolled her eyes. “You’re still trashed.”

  “A young girl died,” Joseph replied, as if she hadn’t spoken at all, “but she didn’t know it. All she knew is that she went on a journey and reached a village. Her grandmother was at the village, too, and they lived together there. Every now and then, they went to another village, where the girl’s father would give her fur parkas. What she didn’t know was that he was really giving them to her namesake, the girl who’d been born just after his daughter had died.”

  Joseph sat up gingerly, sending a potent wave of alcohol fumes toward Trixie. “One day, they were going home from that other village, and the girl’s grandmother said she’d forgotten some things. She asked the girl to go get them. She told her that if she came to a fallen evergreen tree, even though it might look like she could go under it or around it, she had to go over it instead.”

  Trixie folded her arms, listening in spite of her best intentions.

  “The girl backtracked to the village, and sure enough, she came to a fallen tree. She tried to do what her grandmother had told her, but when she climbed over it she tripped, and that was the last thing she remembered. She couldn’t figure out the way back to her grandmother, and she started to cry. Just then, a man from the village came out of the qasgiq and heard weeping. He followed the noise and saw the girl who had died years ago. He tried to grab on to her, but it was like holding only air.”

  Of course, Trixie thought. Because the more you changed, the less of you there was.

  “The man rubbed his arms with food, and then he could grab her, even when the girl fought him. He carried her into the qasgiq, but they kept rising off the floorboards. An elder rubbed the girl with drippings from a seal oil lamp, and then she was able to stand without floating away. They all saw that this girl was the same one who had died. She was wearing the parkas her father had given to her namesake, all those years. And wouldn’t you know it, after she came back, her namesake died not long after that.” Joseph pulled the blanket up to his chest. “She lived to be an old woman,” he said. “She told people what it had been like in Pamaalirugmiut-the place back there, obscured from their view.”

  “Oh really,” Trixie said, not buying a word of the story. “Let me guess: There was a white light and harp music?”

  Joseph looked at her, puzzled. “No, she used to say it was dry. People who die are always thirsty. That’s why we send the dead on their way with fresh water. And why, maybe, I’m always looking for a little something to wet my throat.”

  Trixie drew her knees into her chest, shivering as she thought of Jason. “You’re not dead.”

  Joseph sank back down on the mat. “You’d be surprised,” he said.

  “It’s not too cold to keep me from going for a walk,” Aurora Johnson said to Laura in perfect, unaccented English, and she stood there, waiting for Laura to respond, as if she’d asked her a question.

  Maybe Aurora wanted someone to talk to and didn’t know how to ask. Laura could understand that. She got to h