“I can’t hear you.” He seizes my arms.
I cry out. His hands burn.
“Oh God!” He lets go and turns away. “Do something!”
The old woman is back with the ladle. She offers me medicine, but I won’t open my mouth. I can’t take any more pain.
“Anya—we have a son! Did they tell you?”
Then I notice, for the first time, that my body is different. The lightning pain inside has gone, and my stomach has collapsed. The thunder has left my head, and now it’s so light it could float away.
“The baby is fine, Anya.” I hear tears in his voice. “The baby is fine.”
The baby. I start to shiver.
My husband pulls the cedar blanket up to my chin. “Timofei Osipovich is worried.” He gently tucks it around my neck. “He carried you back here. Did you know that?”
Timofei Osipovich carried me across a beach. I bounced along, his shoulder cutting into my belly, until we saw the koliuzhi. And then he fired a musket to scare them.
“You must not worry anymore.” He lifts my hand but gently this time. He holds it to his chest. “I’ll take care of you.”
“The baby?” I cry. Or try to.
“Just rest, Anya,” he says. “I’m here. I told you I’d come back and I did, and I’m here now.”
I climb for so long I must be on a mountainside. The trees are more spread out. The canopy is thinner. Night is here, but with the forest becoming less dense, the light from the night sky makes my path slightly more visible. What lies ahead, I don’t know yet. A meadow? A lake? A beach?
I quicken my pace. Then, the underbrush thickens. The trees are shorter and even more dispersed. I’m close to the edge of the forest. I can’t see beyond the shrubs. I push aside the branches and step out of the blackness.
A wave rolls from my toes all the way up my body and ends in my head, where it washes back until it reaches my toes again. It’s not water. It’s fear.
“Kolya!”
I’m on a cliff so high above the sea that if the masts of six schooners were stacked one atop the other, they still wouldn’t reach my feet. I grab onto the brittle branches behind me. The wind whips my face.
Moonlight reflects off the surface of the ocean, which builds, then falls in lines of foam that crash against the foot of the cliff I’m balancing on. Far below where I stand, boulders as big as carriages face the waves, but they’re submerged with each upsurge. The sea roars like a monster. Something—a log?—smashes against the base of the cliff with a hollow thud that reaches the soles of my feet. The land shudders.
I desperately want to step back. But the bushes have knit their brittle fingers together and they won’t allow me.
“Kolya!” His name flies into the wind and is lost.
The old woman has changed my medicine. Now it’s warm and sweet like honey. I crave more, but when the ladle is finished, she turns away. She does not offer me another drop.
There are men’s voices at the door. They’re talking. I close my eyes. Trying to understand their words empties me.
Makee. In his beaver hat.
“Anna,” he says, “how are you feeling?”
I meet his eyes for a moment. They’re wide with worry. I quickly close mine. It takes too much effort to be in his gaze. He calls out in his language. I hear the rattling of shells or bones. There’s somebody singing.
“You must rest,” he says. “These are terrible days. You must get better. Your son is counting on you.”
I remember the day I was swept under the wave when the brig ran aground and we were all running to shore. What everything sounded like from beneath the water—the roar of the surf and the people’s voices calling out. Makee’s voice sounds like that—though I know he’s here, he could be in another world.
“I have good news. The ships are coming. There’s an American ship at Mokwinna’s.”
There’s drumming, loud as thunder. My bed shakes, my bones rattle.
“You can go home, babathid. Floating woman, you have a destination.”
“Makee—I’m sorry,” I say. Or at least, I want to say.
“Get better, Anna. The ship is on its way.”
I lean back, pressing into the bushes, and when I do, a curtain is drawn, and the night sky opens. Where is my beloved Polaris?
There. She glimmers. Draco the Keel is sailing a never-ending circle around her. The sea tosses him, but he can depend on her. She is the tip of the mast on the ship that will traverse the northern hemisphere forever.
Of the countless possible combinations of stars, I found this one. My ship.
It’s arrived.
It rocks gently. The sail billows.
“We’re here!” I cry. I wave. I stand on my toes and my arm sweeps the sky. “Can you see me?”
The ship is lifted on a wave and plummets down the other side. A rooster tail of spray splashes its deck. Its sail swells, then flops, once, twice, before filling again. The ship is tacking. They’ve seen me.
The boat swoops down. “Here!” I cry. But it sails past. It missed. A wave of grief washes over me. “Come back!”
The wind drives it away. Then the sail flops once more. It’s tacking again. The ship swoops back down and blackens the sky.
It’s close. Closer. The bulwark is almost out of reach but—I jump. It takes a long time and it takes a short time. Then my hands close around the bulwark. A wave throws itself against the hull and water sprays and soaks me. I throw my leg over. I pull myself onto the deck. I look up.
Polaris glitters.
AFTERWORD
After Anna died in August 1809, the surviving Russians continued to live among the coastal First Nations. The record tells us that her husband, Nikolai Isaakovich, died in February 1810 from a combination of consumption and a broken heart. Kozma Ovchinnikov and two Aleuts also died of unknown causes at unknown dates.
On May 6, 1810, the US vessel Lydia, captained by Thomas Brown, approached the shore near Tsoo-yess. The man known in the novel as Makee immediately took Timofei Osipovich out to the ship where they were surprised to find another of the Russian crew, Afanasii Valgusov. He had been traded to an unidentified First Nation community on the Columbia River and subsequently traded to Captain Brown. Makee then brought to the vessel as many of the Russians as he could and traded for them. The negotiations were not easy. Makee asked a higher price for two men, one of whom was Ivan Kurmachev, fictionalized in this novel as a carpenter to explain the higher asking price. In the end, in return for each person, Makee’s people received five blankets, five sazhens (about 35 feet) of woolen cloth, a locksmith’s file, two steel knives, a mirror, five packets of gun powder, and the same quantity of small shot. In his account, Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov calls this an outrageous sum, but when measured against what would have normally passed hands when trading a slave at that time and the trouble to which the Makahs, Quileutes, and Hoh went to feed, clothe, and house the Russians, it is not so outrageous. Though it took a year and a half, Makee kept his promise. The Lydia took the surviving Russians back to Novo-Arkhangelsk.
Makee is identified in the Russian account as Yutramaki, a name whose pronunciation somehow eludes Anna and the Russians. Furthermore, this intriguing man appears in The Adventures of John Jewitt, Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, During a Captivity of Nearly Three Years Among the Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island, where he is named Machee Ulatilla. In the Jewitt account, Makee plays a key role in Jewitt’s rescue, just as he explains to Anna when he shows her the metal cheetoolth.