“What did you do with the butt?” she asked.
Maratse tapped the chest pocket on his jacket. “In the packet.”
“Good,” she said. “We need to be better at this. Hiding everything. Not leaving a trail.”
Maratse reached out to tease a tuft of her hair between his fingers.
“Yeah.” Kamiila cast a glance back to the radio shack at the top of the mountain. “I may have left something behind.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Maratse said. “We’re not there now.”
Kamiila took his hand and tugged him along the path. “This is harder than I thought.”
“You’re thinking of Nukappi? It’s only been a few days.”
“I know. But it’s more than that. Thinking of him is hard, but thinking of Greenland, of what we’re doing. That’s harder.”
Maratse let go of Kamiila’s hand and pointed to the next summit. “We keep moving. We keep talking.”
“For how long?”
Maratse shrugged. “I don’t know. Until something happens, maybe.”
“What’s going to happen?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know.”
Kamiila said nothing until the slope narrowed, forcing them to pick their way up, around, and between boulders in their path. She took the lead, reaching for Maratse’s hand as he slowed, tugging him up the steeper sections, teasing him about getting in shape and giving up smoking.
“I thought you were a hunter?”
“Iiji,” he said. “With dogs.”
“Never in the mountains?”
Maratse shook his head. “Not high in the mountains.”
“So, this new life…” Kamiila waited for Maratse to join her at the top of a boulder. “Are you going to cope?”
“With a different life?” Maratse tapped the ptarmigan hanging from his belt and took a long breath of clean mountain air. “I like it,” he said.
“Well, all right then.” Kamiila dropped half a metre to the path below the boulder. “As long as you like it, I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”
The path narrowed and Kamiila took the lead, checking the map twice, adjusting course once, then stopping at the base of a massive boulder with a shallow cave beneath it.
“We’ll stop here,” she said, removing her rifle and dumping her pack on the ground.
“Iiji.”
Kamiila took the ptarmigan from Maratse, sat on the ground, and began plucking the feathers. Maratse scoured the area for tough, dry Arctic roots, taking enough to supplement the roots they had collected along the way. He lit a fire beneath a flat stone, protecting it from the wind with larger rocks on three sides, while kneeling to feed the flames with twigs and roots. Kamiila gutted the bird, then pared the breast with a knife. She passed them to Maratse, along with what little fat she could find on the lean bird. The meat sizzled on the stone. Maratse smiled. Kamiila sighed, then moved closer to the fire to enjoy some of its heat.
“This new life,” she said, plucking a piece of meat from Maratse’s fingers. “It reminds me of the old one.”
“Iiji,” he said.
“It’s a life worth fighting for.”
Maratse paused, a chunk of breast just a hair’s breadth from his lips. “You think we’re going to have to fight?”
“Don’t you?”
Maratse drew a deep breath into his lungs, nodding as he exhaled. He popped the meat into his mouth, licked his fingers, and said, “Iiji. One way or another. I think we might.”
The fire crackled beneath the stone as the late summer sun circled around the peaks. Maratse leaned his back against a boulder, watching the sun dip behind one peak only to rise behind another. Kamiila snuggled into his side. She snored as he smoked, and the fire crackled into embers.
Denmark
Part 3
________________________________
The cobbles of Nyhavn, rounded and smooth beneath Inniki Rasmussen’s feet, shone in the early summer rain. Inniki tugged at the collar of her winter coat, turning it up to protect her neck as she weaved through the steam of tourists flooding the cobbled street. The canal was choked with barges – long and lined with benches. Inniki wrinkled her nose at the briny water below her, then caught a whiff of sausage from the hot dog stand. But the smell of the water wasn’t as tart as the sea in the fjords and along the coast of Greenland, and the sausage fat was processed, not creamy like the fat on the ribs of a seal. The tourists loved the Danish canals and the red pølser and brown frankfurters. But they don’t know what they’re missing, Inniki thought, as she pushed on, through the crowds, and into a slim side street where the soft clack of her comfortable shoes echoed between the pastel-coloured walls. Inniki walked deeper and further into a maze of buildings, leaving the sea and sausage for the tourists.
She stopped beside a narrow staircase, curling her wrinkled hands around the black iron rails as she took the steps down to the old wine cellar. She knocked on the heavy hardwood door hanging deep inside an arch cut into the stone foundations. The door creaked open on thick hinges and Inniki slipped inside.
“Were you seen?”
“Naamik,” Inniki said, peering into the dark, searching for a face to attach to the woman’s voice.
“Over here.”
Inniki turned, heard the hollow click of an old Bakelite plastic switch, then blinked in the yellow light of a naked bulb. She smiled as a young woman with long black hair and thick black eyebrows blinked back at her.
“Petra Jensen,” Inniki said. She reached out to grasp the woman’s hands in her own, drawing her close, hugging her tight.
“So thin,” Petra said. “You haven’t been eating.”
“I haven’t been hungry.”
Petra locked the cellar door, then waved for Inniki to follow. “Come,” she said. “I’ve got leftovers.”
“I’m really not hungry.”
“We’ll see,” Petra said.
The light lit
