From a wooden box at his feet, he draws a pair of floppy boots.
They’re made of brown hide, stitched together with sinew. They haven’t been dyed and decorated, they have no heels or silver buckles, but to me they’re the most beautiful pair of shoes in the world.
“Thank you. I didn’t think anybody noticed.”
“We say: 
ušu·yakšalic.”
“Oo-shoo-yaw—” I stop, shake my head. “I can’t.”
“Yuksh-uhlits. Go ahead.”
“Yuksh-uhlits.” I smile apologetically.
“I hope you’ll be more comfortable outdoors.”
They slide on. My feet feel warmer and drier than any time since we abandoned the brig.
There’s a hush over the house that night. I go to bed believing I’ll sleep deeply. Instead my slumber is broken, coloured by outrageous dreams of a ball in Petersburg that transforms into a shipwreck and then into the crazy, whirling dance of a disembodied mask that sees and speaks.
It snows two days later, huge feathery clumps that thrill the children and melt as soon as they hit the ground. It falls furiously for a few minutes, then is followed by an abrupt downpour of cold rain. Christmas is coming—soon. But when? I lost track of time long ago. I have missed my own name day and Nikolai Isaakovich’s too. Unless I make a plan to mark Christmas Day, I’ll miss it as well. So, I randomly choose a day to have my own Christmas feast.
That day, I harvest one potato and pick the last cabbage. It’s smaller than my fist. I prepare them as always, struggling with the curve of the shell knife, uncertain still of where it’s supposed to fit in my hand, nervous about cutting myself. When the food is ready, I bless myself and remember the clatter of forks and knives, the clinking of glasses, and the irresistible aromas that would signal that start of the Christmas feast in my parents’ home.
I bow my head. It feels wrong to eat alone and I want to share my food with Makee and his family, with Inessa, but I have so little, I’m ashamed. It’s nothing compared to their feasts. I tell myself they wouldn’t like my food anyway, but that argument is a thin veil and I’m pretending when I say I can’t see past it.
I miss my husband. I miss everyone.
Salmon spill from a barrel-sized open-weave basket onto the ground and slither over one another, forming an ever-expanding heap. The women cry out in dismay and call the children to help keep the fish in a more orderly pile.
This week, I’m with the women, deep in the forest on the bank of a stream. It ripples over rocks and gurgles, then turns a corner not far from where we’re working. There’s a hut where we’re hanging salmon to smoke, and there’s a small house where we sleep. Wooden vats as big and round as cabinets squat in a row at the edge of the clearing. A scaffold of thick, straight branches lashed together looms over the vats. This is our camp.
On the first day, Inessa and I naturally fetched many bundles of wood. Late in the morning, when we’d apparently brought back enough, I was given a new job.
Inessa started by indicating that I must choose a fish from the heap. She showed me how to scrub it with ferns, until the coarse leaves removed the slime and scales.
She then gave me a shell knife. It was much larger than any I’d used so far. My whole hand could not cover it. The cutting edge was shiny and freshly sharpened. I wondered if a knife like this had given Inessa the scar on her hand.
Inessa cut into the fish just behind its gills, slicing off its head. Next, she slit open the belly, crooked her finger deep into the cavity, and pulled out shiny entrails.
She then filleted the fish. I could hardly see around her elbows and hunched back. In an instant, she unfolded two boneless halves that remained attached at the tail. She picked it up to show me. Her fish resembled a drooping reticule.
She trimmed the fins and fatty pieces, and then tossed all the scraps into one of the large vats. She called one of the children. He took the fillet from her, scrambled up the drying rack, and threw it over the highest crossbar.
At the end of the process, Inessa said, “
a
a·al, wa·su·q
a·k čabu qwisi·u·?”[34]
My first fish ended up ragged. The edges were rough, the tail that was supposed to hold the halves together had almost been severed, and there were strings of skin and flesh hanging loose. My second was better, and my third fish contained skeins of glossy roe. Inessa showed me how to pull them out without breaking them. She tossed them into a different vat.
Over the days, the fish on the rack accumulate, and they begin to dry. When the women decide they’re dry enough, the fish are slung over the rafters in the small hut. Fires inside the hut are fed green branches that Inessa and I gathered especially for this purpose. The branches create acrid, slow-rising smoke. We attend to the hanging fish, turning it, moving it farther away or closer to the smoke to ensure everything will be ready at the same time.
Whenever it’s my turn to work in the smokehouse, the harsh air irritates my eyes. But the sweet scent of the salmon is comforting, like an old memory.
The women and I work hard, but we are rewarded—some fresh salmon is set aside for our meals. These fish are cut differently, opened like butterfly wings and skewered flat with cedar splints, then propped before a very hot fire until they bake. The taste of the cedar enters right into the flesh.
There was a ceremony for our first meal of baked fish. When it was ready, it was laid on fresh cedar boughs on a mat and sprinkled with down. The women sang a song. After we finished eating, the bones and all the small scraps were gathered, paraded down to the river, and thrown in the water, just like the offerings fishermen make to the vodyanoy.
I try to remember how many days have passed since we came to the smokehouse and how many days since I arrived in Makee’s village and how many days since the brig ran aground. I can’t. I think it’s nearly two months since the wreck, but the passage of time feels fluid here, as fluid as the flow of the little stream we’re working alongside. Two months reminds me that it’s been a long time since my monthlies. I haven’t had one since I was onboard the brig. I pray they won’t return until we’re rescued.
Every day I see Makee. He’s busy speaking with the other men, or joking around with the children. Sometimes I see him outside, down on the beach by the canoes, and other times, he comes out of the forest carrying a bow and arrow. He’s busy but he often speaks with me, asking after my health or telling me about fish they’ve caught or a herd of seals nearby or any other piece of news from the house that he thinks I should know about.
But then a day passes, and I don’t see him. I wonder if he’s gone away—no one seems disturbed. Then, there’s a second day when I don’t see him, and a third, fourth, and fifth. He must have gone to another village up the coast, though I have no one to ask. His wife has stayed in bed since he’s disappeared. She barely moves under her cedar blanket, and no one disturbs her. What if Makee’s dead? No one would be able to tell me. But I refuse to believe it. Wherever he’s gone, he’s coming back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Anna!” Inessa shouts from far ahead. “Anna!”
I drop the firewood I’m carrying. It clatters to the earth. I hurry down the path that leads back to the houses as fast as I can, heading for her voice.