The bear scene vanished as the canoe rounded a point and Leif returned to paddling. He was getting better, stronger. Not there yet, not back to normal, but with the sun hitting his back and the water flat and calm, he took deep strokes with the paddle and felt the strength come into his shoulders and back and arms. Heat from the sun, rest from his dream sleep, and muscle from the salmon grease and berries flowed into him as he swung out of the inlet and headed north, the canoe moving because it was connected to his arms, his arms to his shoulders, his shoulders to his back, and all of it to his mind, his thinking . . .

Not there yet.

But coming, coming.

For just that moment, looking ahead up the main channel with thick woods on the east and more forest far off across the channel to the west on the big island, for just that moment in the sun and the good weight of digging the paddle deep in the water, feeling the canoe slip forwards with each stroke . . .

For just that moment he only thought ahead. Only saw and felt and smelled the beauty, the joy of what was coming and not the grey, not the darkness and horror of what he had left behind.

For just that moment he thought ahead, wondered ahead, smiled in his thoughts ahead.

Then the grey seemed to close in, come back again, cloud his thinking once more like a sullen mind-storm, and he had to stop it, stop the grey thinking, and the only way he knew to stop it was to think of what came next.

He didn’t think he could just move from this spot to the next spot without thinking, without knowing . . .

He had to have some kind of thought for action.

Move north, Old Carl had said, move north where the death sickness couldn’t follow them. Only now it was just him.

But north was a direction, not a place.

You could, he thought, go north forever and not get to a place.

And there it was – maybe that’s what Old Carl meant.

Don’t go to a place. Go to be. Just to be.

And he chanted with the sweep-pull of the paddle:

GO NORTH FOREVER.

LIKE THE WIND.

THE NORTHWIND.

GO TO BE THE WIND.

THE NORTHWIND.

THE NORTHWIND.

The smooth chant helped, settled him in some way, made him less frustrated and he was just becoming accustomed to it, to himself.

When he was suddenly not alone.

Whales

Orcas.