excerpt
“Come,” Joan said. “I want to show you this place where your story
happened.”
They flew over a network of small lakes, which connected rivers and
tundra where muskoxen and caribou fed, following the massive Kazan
River, which flowed near Yathkid Lake. On a promontory known as Cairn
Point, they spotted a massive Inukshuk at least fourteen feet tall. Past that,
the Kazan River wound north. After about forty minutes, Joan tapped
Tergey on the shoulder and pointed, “Down there. This is the place.”
Tergey banked down, where the river picked up speed before it dropped
away in a series of giant cascades, tumbling over massive boulders into a
deep gorge. Tergey circled over the river again, then put the plane down,
and taxied into a small bay where he threw out a boat anchor.
Ken and Joan walked away from the river and crested a low rise where
a giant Inukshuk, resembling two humans embracing, stood guard. Ken
circled the stone monument, observing how it changed from different
angles as though the figures were locked in an eternal dance. He began
snapping pictures. When he stepped back to take a wide-angle shot, he
stumbled. Looking down, he noticed a human skull bleached white by
the sun and wind. He was standing inside a rectangle outlined by stones.
Inside were more bones. Past the grave he was standing in were more
graves, and past those more. Some contained complete skeletons; some
only scattered bones. Some contained the fragile bones of children and
infants.
Joan said, “This is the place.”
But it couldn’t be the place. Not this place. He didn’t remember a river.
She must be confusing his story with someone else’s. There must have
been other places where people had died during that harsh winter when
the illness struck and the caribou hadn’t come.
“May I photograph this?” he asked her.
She nodded, and he filled many rolls of film with images of the stone
graves. “Tell me the story of this place,” he said, joining her on the rock
where she was sitting.
“You were here,” she said. “You’re the one who can tell me the story.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t here. And how can you know this?”
“I just know it.”
“No – there has to be more to it than that.”
He had a hollow feeling in his stomach. Had he forgotten? Had he
been in such an altered state that he could not remember all that had
occurred?
“It was winter,” Joan said. “It was dark. The river was frozen…
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