Without moving, the girls seemed to draw tighter together in their circle, intent, absorbed, almost hypnotized, acolytes hanging on the words of their priestess.
"When killer whales come to a bay with a village,"
Olga chanted, "they come hungry for someone's spirit.
"When the killer whales come
"To a bay with a village
"Someone is going to die.
"When the killer whales come
"To a bay with a village
"The people know.
"When the killer whales come
"To a bay with a village
"It won't be long.
"Maybe one month.
"Maybe two.
"When the killer whales come
"Someone dies in that bay.
"When the killer whales come.
"That's all.'"
As she spoke the last words, Olga looked straight at Kate. She held her gaze for a long moment, before her eyes dropped to the scar on Kate's throat. The skin there began to itch beneath that intent gaze. Kate held perfectly still. "That was a beautiful story, Auntie," she said. "You're a poet."
Olga laughed, a loud robust laugh, and the priestess was gone and her acolytes, too, on the gust of merriment.
"It's just an old legend," she said, dropping back into prose. "I'm a good Christian missionary's daughter, myself. I don't believe any of that stuff."
Kate burst out laughing, and the girls joined in again.
As she rose to leave, Kate hesitated, not wanting to trespass but the memory of those graceful, swooping sand drawings haunting her. "About Sasha."
Olga's face was expressionless. "What about her?"
"Has she seen a doctor? There might be-"
"There is nothing," Olga said flatly. "Her mother drank too much."
"Where does Sasha live?" Kate asked Becky outside.
"With family, parents, what?" She was determined to do something, anything. Anyone who could draw like Sasha was not, could not be entirely beyond help, fetal alcohol syndrome baby or not.
She turned her head to find Becky looking at her with surprise. "What?"
Becky jerked a thumb over her shoulder, at the house behind them. "Sasha lives right here, Kate, Auntie is Sasha's mom."
SIX
THE harbor's dock space was so limited that the Avilda was again third in a row of boats rafted four deep. The next morning the tide was at slack and it was a long way down to the first boat tied to the dock. There are worse things in life than hanging in the pitch-dark from a forty-foot ladder, trying to find a foothold on the icy railing of a boat being tossed up and down in the enthusiastic embrace of a spirited groundswell. Offhand, Kate couldn't think of one.
She shut her ears to the rush of water, the smack of the swell on the bottom of a hundred hulls, the murmur of idling engines, the shout of impatient skippers. Moving one limb at a time, she felt her cautious way down to the next rung on the ladder and extended a foot in what she prayed was the general direction of the boat. A barnacle crunched beneath the foot still on the ladder, the sole of her boot slid across the rung, her balance shifted and one hand pulled free. She made a wild grab for the ladder and by a miracle caught it.
She pressed her forehead against cold metal and scratchy barnacle, her heart pounding in her ears, gasping for breath. Water rushed in among the pilings with a chuckling sound. Her mouth tightened into an unseen snarl and she swiveled on the rung, bent her knees, let go and jumped blind. For a moment she was suspended in midair, and then she hit the deck awkwardly. Instinct took over and she tucked her head and rolled forward in a somersault. Her butt hit something hard and she stopped rolling, her feet failing forward with a thump.
For a moment she just lay there, panting. She heard a noise from the boat's cabin like someone was about to come on deck and she shot to her feet and made for the opposite railing. The rest of the journey was by comparison a piece of cake; all she had to do was straddle the tied-together railings of the two boats with one leg and swing her other leg over. Always supposing the boats were of equal size, which they often weren't, in which case she had to either climb up or jump down or both. When she slithered onto the Avilda's heaving deck she knew a moment of pure triumph.
She was making breakfast when Andy emerged from their stateroom, rumpled and yawning. He peered over her shoulder at the eggs scrambled with cheese and onions and green chile and bits of shredded tortilla.
"Looks good. Smells great."
"You eat eggs?" she said, eyes wide. "Eggs come from chickens. Come to think of it, eggs are chickens, before they hatch. You might be chowing down on something's soul here, messing up their prana all to hell and gone. Maybe you should reconsider." She gave him a big smile. "I could pour you a bowl of cereal."
Ignoring her, he poured himself a cup of coffee.
"Thought it was Ned's turn to cook."
"He's not back on board yet."
Andy looked surprised. "I thought we were taking this tide."
"So did I " Kate sprinkled in some garlic powder and gave the eggs a final stir before turning off the burner and removing the skillet from the stove.
"Harry'll be pissed," Andy said, sounding satisfied at the prospect.
"He's not back yet, either." The toast popped out and Kate buttered it with a lavish hand.
Andy stopped with his cup halfway to his mouth.
"Seth?"
"Nope.
There was a short silence. Into his coffee mug Andy said, "This isn't a very well-run boat, is it, Kate?"
"Nope.
"I mean it, I'm getting off, soon as I find something else."
Kate shrugged. "You should have been on my last boat." And only, she thought but didn't say. "The skipper had a loudspeaker mounted on the foredeck and wired into a microphone on the bridge so he could talk to the crew on deck whenever he wanted to, and he wanted to all the time. Yap, yap, yap, from how to grab a buoy with a boat hook to how to chop bait to how to fill a bait jar to how to tie door ties to how to sort crab. This guy never but never shut up." Kate ladled eggs onto a plate and paused, remembering. "He had this real high, squeaky voice that sounded ten times worse amplified.
It drove everybody crazy."
"What happened?"
Kate shrugged again. "One day the speaker didn't work. For a while the skipper didn't notice it. We'd look up at the bridge and he'd be standing at the wheel, yapping away into the mike, but we couldn't hear a word. It was like the difference between heaven and hell. Then he gave somebody an order and of course nobody heard him and he realized something was wrong.
He traced the wires to the speaker and found somebody'd cut them."
Andy grinned. "How much do you know about electronics, Kate?"
Kate handed him a heaping plate. "Shut up and eat your breakfast." She made herself a plate, scraped the remaining eggs to one side of the frying pan and stacked the rest of the toast next to them, She covered the whole thing to keep it warm and sat down to eat. She, too, wondered where the rest of the crew was, and what they were doing. If Harry old buddy and his two chosen sons were going to make this vanishing act a habit, she was going to have to figure out how to tail them through Dutch Harbor 's immense metropolitan district without getting spotted. The prospect did not delight her. She was good, but she wasn't that good.
They were on their second cup of coffee when Harry, Ned and Seth finally showed up. Ned and Seth were carrying suitcases, one each, the shiny silver kind that photographers use to pack their lenses into.
Kate eyed the suitcases. "Been Christmas shopping?"
"You could say that," Ned said, almost pleasantly, which made Kate wonder if there was something wrong with her hearing.