The Raven's Gift by Don Reardon

is in front of them and leave the rest for me.’”
    Tears slipped from the edges of her white eyes and froze to her cheeks.
    “Maybe he knew I would live and you would find me. He told me when everyone was gone to hide in the back room under a flippe-dover mattress in the daytime. ‘Eat just a tiny little bit,’ he said, ‘and use your other way of seeing. You’ll be saved.’ That’s what he told me.”
    “Where did you put them? Their bodies? There were no bodies in your house.”
    More tears. She didn’t say anything for several minutes. He wished he could take the question back, and in his own mind tried not to see the flickering flames on the quilt he had wrapped around Anna. He imagined the blind girl dragging her mother, her father, the brothers and sisters—down the steps and somewhere out on the tundra in the dark of night.
    “He took them out to the cemetery, one by one,” she finally whispered. “Until it was just us. Me and him. Then he said he had to try to keep me safe. He was really sick, and I told him to stay. I would take care of him. Keep him warm and he would be okay. But I could hear him loading his guns and he kissed my forehead and said, ‘ Tangerciqamken ,’ I’ll see you, and he left. I heard a gunshot, not long after he left. Then another. Then another. Then more. One or two shots. Then nothing for a long time. Then three together: pop, pop, pop.”

   7   
    H e opened the backpack and began pulling out the contents while the girl and the old woman watched. He set each item on the floor, thinking about the individual weight and usefulness. He could pull quite a bit in the sled, but if he had to carry the pack, he’d need to really think about what would get left behind.
    “She wants to know if you’re going to leave me with her,” the girl said, licking the end of one long, flat dried stalk of grass.
    “Why would I do that?”
    She turned to the old woman and asked a question and the woman responded with a question.
    “Because the bad months are coming, and she wants to know where you’ll take me.”
    “Where does she think I should take you? Why are you translating for me again?” he asked, and then directed his question to the old woman. “Where should I take her?”
    He pulled a knife from the pack and gently set it on the floor. His grandfather had given him the knife. He had always liked the feel of the moose-antler handle.
    “You think I should leave her here with you?”
    “Why doesn’t she come with us?” the girl asked.
    “Not a chance,” he replied.
    “We’re going to leave her by herself? The man … the hunter,” she said, and set the grass braiding on her lap and sighed.
    He took a water-filter pump from the bag. His wife had given it to him after their run-in with Montezuma’s revenge while backpacking through the Yucatán. With the sickness he’d now been exposed to, he wouldn’t need to carry the filter any further.
    The old woman sucked at her lips again and said, “This is my village. My body should stay here, so my anerneq stay here, too. My spirit belongs here. I’ll take care of this girl if you leave her. We can hide from the hunter, but then no one’s left to take care of you. Without her, you won’t make it very much ways upriver. Even she’s blind, she knows better than you. And besides, that man will find you.” The old woman picked up the girl’s work and inspected it. She took the girl’s hand, said something to her, and the girl began unravelling the grass weaving.
    “Thanks for the optimism,” he muttered. “Why are you undoing all your work?” he asked the girl.
    The old woman spoke to her again in Yup’ik and the girl nodded. She continued to unravel the braids of grass.
    “She said the only imperfections should be intentional. Only the creator can make perfection.”
    “Yeah, well, the creator made a perfectly good mess this time,” John said.
    He emptied the last can of fruit cocktail from the bag and tried