2:00. Pitch blackness.
A faint glow from the embers in the little wood stove gave off only a smidgeon of light.
Cory looked at the illuminated face of the clock and saw the p.m. next to the number.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon.
“Bloody hell!”
She clicked on the lamp that sat next to the clock.
“Mum, hurry up!” She yelled, knowing that her mother wasn’t there. She had gone over to Amos Argyle’s. He owned this cabin and the one next door. Cory cringed at the thought of the odd grungy little man, his pasty complexion, bloodshot eyes, yellow teeth and dry cracked lips. A shiver rippled at the memory of meeting him only a day ago.
She unzipped her sleeping bag and reluctantly slipped out. When her feet hit the cold wooden floor, she quickly disappeared back inside the warm bedding. Zipping up the thick thermal fabric, she searched the bottom of the bag with her feet for the heavy slipper socks that she had kicked off. After pulling them on, she searched for her heavy jacket that she laid on top of her when she had crawled in to get warm. It was on the floor. The frigid feel of the fabric made her shiver. She wrestled it in through the narrow opening of her sleeping bag and struggled into it, fastened it up to her chin and then braved leaving the warmth of her bed again.
Teeth chattering, she shuffled across the small room, rubbing her arms to warm herself. First adding a log to the fire in the little pot-belied stove, she then lumbered over to the kitchen that occupied a small portion of the room. There wasn’t much to the space, just a dripping tap at the cracked porcelain sink, a blue stain circled the drain. An ancient hotplate sat on a plywood counter. Heavy shutters, designed to keep the warmth from seeping out and to stave off the sub-zero temperatures outside, covered the window over the sink. She cracked them open. Amos Argyle’s cabin was a few metres away. Light twinkled through his shutters, showing the outline of his windows, nothing more.
She couldn’t see inside the cabin, but using her telepathy, she could see inside her mother’s mind.
“Are you almost done,” she asked telepathically.
“I’ll be there in a minute.” Her mother answered in kind. “Amos let me use his ham radio to contact Dr. Hawthorn in the settlement of Eureka.”
Cory remembered a discussion about having to use this method of communication since there was limited cellular phone service on the island and most people couldn’t use telepathy.
“How can you stand to be alone with that guy?”
“Be nice!”
“Inconceivable.” Cory said out loud, using her mother’s favourite and overused word.
Cory looked past the cabin. There were no flashes of light from the eyes of passing animals, no dark shadowy shapes of trees. There seemed to be nothing at all.
“How are we meant to find anything in this place?” she said out loud.
Cory had never experienced 24-hour darkness. For Ellesmere Island and all the islands that stretched across Nunavut in the far northern territories of Canada, winter was a time when daylight was only a memory; a time when the vibrant blue of the sea and sky was only visible in dreams.
Cory’s mother, Dr. Angela Newhouse, was a famed anthropologist who studied the reality behind myths and fables. The arctic god Maheetek was her current subject because of his likely connection to Athenites. These were people who could take different shapes and use animal strengths and telepathic communication among their many talents.
They were Cory’s ancestors.
As Cory stared out at the nothingness, she thought about how she had begged to travel with her mother to the arctic during winter break from school. Her mother wasn’t sure if it was a good idea but Cory convinced her that it would be worth missing the year nine ski trip so that she could experience something important to her mother’s research. But the real reason she had wanted to go was that she’d be the only one of her friends to have travelled to someplace so remote, exotic, and possibly even dangerous. It would give her bragging rights for years. This trip was her chance to be someone interesting, exciting, maybe even popular. People would look at her with admiration instead of looking past her as if she didn’t exist.
Her parents had insisted that she and her twin brother Matt keep their special abilities a secret: people won’t understand and can’t accept us. Act normal they said. So, she and Matt had to pretend to be just like everyone else. Which was fine until Cory reached year nine and felt like she melted into the scenery…nobody special.
Cory closed her eyes and listened to the lonely sounds of Ellesmere Island. Just like all places, the island has its own symphony, music that emanates from the planet itself. Athenites have long called this Earth’s music. Animals use the subtle melodies in their migrations and Athenites their travels. Just like using the planet’s magnetic pull to determine direction, animals and Athenites can use natural symphonies to find their way. Ellesmere’s was a song of desolation, difficult to discern from the wind as it swept across the frozen landscape.
She turned away from the window, disgustedly glancing around the cabin where she and her mother would stay for several more days. Two old army-style cots for beds with a folding metal table between them, the small wood-burning stove; a rusty metal shower and wobbly toilet were located through a curtained doorway.
“Lovely,” she snarked, counting the days. “One down, five to go.” Squeezing her eyes shut and rocking her head back, she groaned. “If this is all I’m going to see, I better come up with some amazing stories to tell everyone.”
Feeling on edge, she turned back to look at Argyle’s cabin. His front door opened, her mother stepped out and walked briskly towards their little cabin. Cory smiled, and was about to close the shutters but her senses exploded with fear. Something felt terribly wrong. Polar bear? Wolves?
She knocked on the window. “Mum! Hurry!” An instant later, the snow lifted off the ground in a powerful wind, propelled in a circular current like a cyclone.
Cory raced to the door. She pulled. It was stuck…or locked. Had her mother locked her in? She hurried back to the window above the sink and pounded on the glass. “Mum! Hurry up! Unlock the door!”
Her mother didn’t answer as the gale whipped around her. Snow and debris lifted by the powerful force was picking up speed and swirling until her mother was completely hidden inside the funnel.
Cory pounded on the glass with one hand, fumbling for the latch with the other. The latch didn’t budge. The glass didn’t break.
She frantically looked for something to break the window when the cloud dissipated, releasing all that it had carried. Cory’s mouth hung open. The air cleared, leaving traces of fog as ice and snow settled back to the ground. Everything returned to the way that it had been except that her mother was nowhere in sight.
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