JOURNEY TO THE MIDNIGHT SUN
James Sheldon
LOVE CONQUERS ALL
Book 1 of 3
Chapter 8
Perhaps Indian summers are so special because the days come like unsuspected gifts that never have to be repaid. Or so it seemed for John and Laureal. Whatever the future held, their Indian summer would be cherished forever by both. And what a long Indian summer it had been. One almost had to wonder if winter would come. But of course old man winter had not forgotten that he had a job to do. And so the day arrived when the north wind rose, the sky grew dark, the snow flew, and the river froze over. It was not all bad, though. The cold made the hearth all the warmer. And with ample firewood and food stores, there was cause for celebration. The family had accomplished the critical work necessary to see them through the winter. Blizzards would howl, but they would be safe in their longhouse. And so it was that they gave thanks to their God whom they called, ‘the Great Spirit.’ John celebrated with them even though, being a renaissance man, he understood that every tribe had its own God and, once the Data Block was found, savages everywhere would trade their superstition for enlightenment. On the other hand, the savages believed John to be on a vision quest that would lead him to the Great Spirit. Fortunate for them all and despite their equally fervent and differing beliefs, their juxtaposition had come together like a well-made dovetail joint due to the family’s overriding need for survival and the Seekers' overriding need for the knowledge the family possessed. Like a well-fitted dovetail joint glued with love, they had repaired a tragedy even if somewhat inadvertently. And as Emma would say, that was how the Great Spirit worked. Still, culture clash was not a thing to sneeze at. There would be ramifications. But let us continue with our story for, as we shall see, the following days would bring about one major turn of events after another.
The arrival of snow naturally energized our hero and heroine’s dream of riding in a horse drawn sleigh, especially when their own personal highway in a winter wonderland waited just outside. They already had a horse, all they needed was a sleigh. And so it was that with precious few days remaining before John’s planned departure, they set out to chase their dream and all the wonderful fun they could have even if for only a day or two. Aided by the seemingly inexhaustible energy of youth, our groom and bride-to-be went with horse and packsaddle, walking two miles on the frozen river before arriving at their destination. A fallen ash tree, the source of materials from which they hoped to build a sleigh and bring their dream to life.
Upon arrival, they began by setting up their camp. And this is a good place to note that John no longer wore his wolverine long coat. Instead, he wore a suit of caribou pants, coat, hood, boots, and mitts (clothing made from caribou offered more protection than all other materials including high-tech synthetics of the 21st century). A wardrobe handed down through tragedy, Laureal had talked him into it, that he might have the best protection from the elements on his journey north As a result, husband and wife-to-be appeared a matched set.
Sheltered in their camp by surrounding woods, the pair went to work on the fallen ash tree. Dead but well preserved, the tree lie suspended at an incline like that of a wheelchair ramp. Working up and down its trunk, John used hatchet and knife to strip desired branches of small limbs and bark. Laureal followed with John’s bucksaw, which worked well for square cutting branches of a diameter right for their needs. Once the branches were removed from the tree, Laureal topped them and John stripped any remaining bark. Working together, they had six poles readied by midmorning.
To permanently bend the poles, the couple built a hot water trough by first placing two logs of modest diameter parallel on the ground. They also used rocks selected from a rocky area along the river several stone throws from camp. To haul the rocks, they placed them in a leather hide made from a large grizzly bear and then carried it like a hammock back to camp. They made several trips, as they needed rocks both for completing the trough and also for heating the water. Not easy work but easier than digging a trench in ground frozen like concrete. The completed trough measured about five feet in length.
After building the trough, they lined it with the bear hide, which was thick, strong, and heavily oiled. By midday, being further along than they’d planned, they decided to race the daylight and see if they could get the poles bent before dark. To fill the trough, they chopped ice and drew water from the river. They then heated the water up with rocks from the fire. As rocks cooled in the water, they returned them to the fire to reheat before returning them to the water. Laureal exchanged and managed rocks constantly. John cut firewood constantly and added it to the fire, for they would need a great many hot coals to complete the final leg of their bending and shaping project, as we shall now see.
Breathing clouds of steam, John brought an armload of firewood with a smile. And dumping it beside the fire, he turned back to the surrounding woods.
“Stay and warm yourself, darling,” worrying because he had removed his coat.
Obeying, John removed his mitts and held his hands towards the flames, “How’s our sleigh runners coming along?”
“There’s so much steam, I can’t see them, but at least the water is good and hot.” As she spoke, Laureal used John’s small camp shovel to scoop a blistering hot rock the size of a softball from the fire. Then, lowering the shovel into the trough, she let the rock into the water even as she kept the shovel between it and the leather liner. The rock hissed loudly, sending up a plume of steam.
Six ash poles, each about 2 ½ inches in diameter, each roughly ten feet in length, lie with half their length submerged in the steaming trough. Neither John or Laureal had experience shaping wood poles, although Laureal had seen the men of her clan employ the process while making frames for snowshoes.
Putting his mitts back on, John grasped one of the poles by its dry end and withdrew it from the water. He then put his weight on it. “Well, would you look at that!” surprised that it bent with ease.
“That didn’t take long!”
Looking up from the pole, “Are you ready, sweetheart?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s hope for beginners luck,” carrying the pole to the fallen ash tree.
“There’s no such thing as luck,” following along with a roll of twine.
“Well then, we’ll just hope for the best,” kneeling down, positioning himself to bend the pole around the tree trunk.
“You’re a good man for putting up with us, John,” referring to the difference in their beliefs and the way in which winter had cloistered them together in the longhouse.
“I don’t know about that. Maybe it’s the other way around.”
“No, it’s not the other way around. After yesterday, there can be no doubt. I know it wasn’t easy for you, what with my family getting in the spirit, and you never having seen anything like that before.”
“Thank you for being my protector,” and jokingly he added, “in the spirit realm.”
“The Great Spirit is our protector in all realms,” with a corrective air, sorting out the twine. “I’d like to think he used me yesterday, not as a protecter but as a buffer, but I don’t mean to go there. Not today. You deserve a break.”
“I’d love a break,” stopping what he was doing to look up at her, “but first I want to know why your ‘Great Spirit’ would use you to buffer me from himself?”
“Did I say that?”
“I don’t know. Is there a difference between buffering me from your family and buffering me from him?”
Shifting her eyes away, Laureal pursed her lips in thought. Then returning her eyes to John, “Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I meant to say He used me to facilitate things so you would not be overwhelmed, like a parent guides a child when they are learning to walk, so they don’t stumble and fall. You know, like the way he brought us to where we are today, together beside this tree, building our sleigh.”
For all of his lover’s great beauty and natural persuasion; her reference to him as a child being guided by her, and her acting on behalf of a superior being, but alas, it was perhaps a bridge too far.
“Tell me,” John asked, his tone more irritated than amused, “exactly how did he bring us here, together, by this tree?”
Having quarreled with John before, rarely, but a time or two, Laureal lost her smile, “Darling, maybe we should take that break I spoke of.”
“No,” John said adamantly, “I want to know.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. You have me curious,” flexing the pole against the tree trunk, bending it to see if it would hold together or crack.
Holding half of the how-and-why in her heart and mind already, and then seeing the rest fall into place as if meant to be; Laureal put aside her reservations because, deep down, she very much wanted to share it with John.
“Well…darling, it’s like, on that wonderful day when we went on our picnic above the big river, and the Great Spirit was watching over us. He saw our love was true, and he was pleased. So when he heard us dreaming about having a horse drawn sleigh and taking our future family for rides, he was of a mind to help. And so he led you to this tree and he spoke to your heart. I don’t know what he said exactly but something like, ‘I heard your dream. Here is one of my trees. I’m giving it to you, to build your dream.’”
Laureal then concluded, “That’s how I know this is going to work, because he brought us here. This is part of his plan for us. He wants us to have a happy life together.”
Still kneeling at his work with pole in hand, John turned his head down to the fallen tree trunk like a knight of old that prays with his lance at an altar. But he was not praying. As he saw it, the divine plan of which his wife spoke excluded the mission he’d trained his entire life for. The very meaning of his life had fallen into a stream of spiritualism where his actions came back like reflections, weighed, measured, and defined in an alternate dimension overseen by a clan of zealots deep in the sticks with whom he had somehow become bonded beyond any hope of escape honorable or otherwise because, reason as he may, he was too much in love with Laureal to ever leave her.
“John?” Laureal asked. And fearing he might be weeping, she drew close to his side, “Darling, are you all right?”
As an alternative to weeping, John laughed quietly, “This is just crazy.”
“John?” in an injured tone.
Leaving the pole lean against the fallen tree, John stood up and, looking pained, he tried to take Laureal in his arms but she stepped back and away. Still, he stepped towards her, and she backed further away. Then, with a burst of speed, he caught her even as she spun quick as a cat to get away, “You are the prettiest little poison I’ve ever known!”
“John! What a terrible thing to say!”
“Okay, you’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever known, and the rest is what it is.”
“I am who I am!” trying to break free.
“Oh! I know that!” getting her fully wrapped up in his arms, “I don’t know where you come up with half this stuff, but you live and breathe it.” And holding her as she struggled, “Until yesterday I was slow to see where all of this ‘Great Spirit’ stuff was going, but now, well, it appears I’m either going to get used to it or go insane.”
“It’s not insane!” Laureal chided, struggling, feeling hurt, and obviously more than a little annoyed about being held against her will.
“If you really want me to, I’ll let you go.”
“Yes please! Let - me - go!”
Set free, Laureal spun round, took a quick step back, and pointed her finger at John, “You said it yourself! You said you saw this tree and you instantly knew it was our sleigh!” And taking a breath, composing herself, she continued, “John, the Great Spirit obviously led you here and spoke to your heart.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“John, you asked me how he brought us here. And I gave you my answer. I told you how I see it. It’s how I was brought up to see it. It’s who I am!”
“I understand that! I’m not saying you’re bad, or even wrong.”
“Really?” suspicious, but also hopeful.
“Yes, really…I mean, it’s not easy putting my mission off. I get frustrated, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like what you said about how we got here. I do like what you said. At least, I mean, its wonderfully sweet but, Laureal, I need a break. I feel like I’m being pulled into an alternate universe and, it’s looking like the end of my world. We need to make an arrangement. You lighten up, and I won’t laugh, or cry, or go out of my mind.”
“John—,” pleadingly. “I wasn’t pushing! You asked, and I answered! And I know yesterday wasn’t easy for you but…I did all I could.”
“I know you did,” and taking a more conciliatory tone, “Sweetheart, I appreciated that, I really do. But yesterday your family seems to have gone crazy to me, especially your mom. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s been good reason for celebration, and I know she was only being kind…but still!”
“John,” stepping to him and taking his hand, “Mom wouldn’t have bothered if she didn’t really love you and want you to feel a part of our family.” Caressing his hand, Laureal gazed up with soft eyes beseeching, “Please John, let’s not fight.”
Glancing away to avoid her eyes, John pursed his lips and thought of how Jessie seemed a window-in-time through which he could see Laureal twenty years into their future. He could not imagine her or any of them fitting into the renaissance world he had known, except perhaps as quaint novelties to be shown off in the parlors of the rich and powerful. Perhaps in the beginning he had been drawn to them by his great desire for information, second only to the guilt he felt on hearing their cries coming through the woods the day of the disaster. And maybe on their part, their acceptance of him had started as a matter of basic survival. But regardless of what seeded their relationship, it had sprouted into something only a fool would throw away. His eyes came back to Laureal, “You are not poison. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“And you’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” and seeing his surprise that she would actually say such a thing, “Yes John, it’s true because, if we are to be together, I cannot feel any other way. Like grandmother says, the Great Spirit wills it.”
Gazing steadily into her lover’s eyes, Laureal continued, “John, I cannot deny my pain, but I cannot relieve my pain by blaming you. Not when you were fighting for your life. But please darling, don’t ever grab me like that again.”
“I won’t…I promise,” visibly moved.
Laureal placed her hand on John’s heart, her eyes to his, “I apologize for being a pushy girl and for not acknowledging what’s important to you. And I didn’t mean to be arrogant but, if I was, I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.”
With a sheepish little smile, “What you said about sweet poison…grandma says we have to take the bad to get the good.”
John chuckled.
“Are we okay?”
“Yes,” giving her a kiss on the lips.
“Good,” kissing him back.
The lovers shared kisses, kisses that brought reassurance, kisses that brought smiles of happiness and joy until at last, John stopped kissing and said, “We’re burning daylight.”
Opening her mouth to speak, Laureal abruptly paused, then said, “I guess we’d better get back to it.” She had originally intended to say, “That pair of hands that is ever working in the dark tried to get us, but fortunately for us, the Great Spirit...”
Returning to the business at hand, John took the pole that had cooled and exchanged it for a hot one. Laureal shoveled a few cooled rocks from trough to fire, and a few hot rocks from fire to trough. Then with twine in hand, she stepped to the ash’s trunk to assist her partner.
With steaming pole in hand, John knelt down at a point where the fallen tree trunk lay approx eighteen inches above the ground. Laureal gave John the twine, then stepped over the trunk and turned so that she faced him with the tree trunk between them. John then tied the cord to a small notch at the hot end of the pole. Next he passed the cool dry end of the pole under the tree trunk to Laureal’s side so that it lay on the ground there. John then pulled his end of the pole straight up with his hands, using his strength to bend the pliable wood, whereupon he pinned it against the tree trunk with his body. Laureal then squatted and, grasping the dry end of the pole with both hands, used her leg strength to pull it up off the ground and into John’s reach. John then reached over the trunk and grasped the dry end of the pole with both hands while simultaneously using his hip and stomach to keep the opposite end of the pole pinned to the tree trunk. He then used his considerable upper body strength to pull the dry end of the pole towards him, all the while anchoring his body against the trunk. Once he had bent the pole halfway around the tree trunk, Laureal took the twine and looped it around the pole on her side, then stepped over to John’s side, put her foot against the tree trunk and pulled the twine tight while looping in around the notch on John's side. She then took the string back to the opposite side and tied it to the dry end of the pole. She then put her mitts back on. The once straight pole, now wrapped around the trunk, had the shape of a candy cane standing straight up somewhat like the letter, J.
On his hands and knees, John craned to see under the trunk of the fallen ash tree. By such means, he inspected the wet section of the pole, now wrapped around the bottom of the tree trunk and still yet steaming in the cold air.
On the other side of the trunk, Laureal also looked to see how the pole had fared.
“Looks good so far!” looking under the trunk at his lover, her face framed in fur.
In short order, John and Laureal secured all six poles side-by-side around the fallen tree trunk. Small notches cut in either side of the trunk restrained the poles from slipping and angling sideways.
John next used a large wooden shovel with a broad flat blade to shovel a copious amount of coals under the trunk. Not to catch the trunk on fire or to burn the poles but rather to radiate heat up and around the trunk and slowly dry the bent poles. He and Laureal then draped the tree trunk with fir boughs which trapped in the heat even as it allowed the fire coals to breathe. John then went to gather more firewood.
While John gathered firewood, Laureal built a small fire ring of rocks and used a shovel full of coals to begin a cookfire. She then used John’s steel grill and other cooking gear to prepare their supper, the main entree, top sirloin of elk. Before she put the steaks on, she melted snow in a pair of pots on the grill, one pot for a hot vegetable stew made from tubers and herbs, the other pot for hot wintergreen tea to be drunk after their meal. Also on the menu were bread cakes, to be lightly toasted over the coals.
John returned and put another load of wood on the fire so that it might burn down into another batch of coals that could be shoveled under the tree trunk just prior to their departure for the night.
“Mr Summerfield,” said Laureal.
“At your service, Miss Emerson,” turning to her.
“Would you please split two large shingles, for dinner plates.”
“You got it.”
With daylight waning and fire blazing, groom and bride-to-be supped side-by-side on a log, speaking few words, for both were exhausted, but also thoroughly relaxed and pleased with the excellent progress they had made. Finishing their supper, they cleaned their pots, piled all remaining coals under the bent poles and, with plans to return in the morning, trekked home on the frozen river.
Back at the compound, John took care of Ellie while Laureal kindled a fire in his hut. The two lovers then met in the courtyard formed by the walls they had built, presently under a fantastic star dome.
“Darling, would you like to come in the longhouse until your hut warms up?” her lovely face turned up to his, her soft eyes shining in starlight.
“They’re asleep,” he whispered.
“Wait here and I’ll check.”
“Laureal, wait,” he called lowly after her. She paused at the door and glanced back with a smile, “I’ll be right back.”
John waited, his every breath a thick cloud of steam. Soon the big door creaked open just enough for a shadow to slip out. Down the steps and directly to him she came. “Mom said it would be okay for you to come in and get warmed up, but they're all in bed now so we have to be quiet.”
“Laureal…I feel strange about this.”
“It’s not strange, it’s my home. And it’s your home too. And besides, I told mom that we’d been in the cold all day and we were tired, and I was worried for you because your hut is ice cold and we had only just got the fire going in there and it needed time to warm up.”
“Your mom put a stack of caribou blankets in my hut…she knows I’m not going to suffer.”
“Well, if you don’t want to come in, okay, but now she’s going to think something’s gone wrong.”
“I didn’t say I don’t want to come in.”
“Do you want to come in?”
“Yes. It just feels, well…weird.”
“Darling, it’s alright. There’s a perfectly good reason for it.” And tugging on him, “Come on, everything will be fine.”
Try as they may, it was impossible to open the big door without it creaking. Fortunately, the noise was masked by the crackling fire, which having been stoked just prior to bedtime, threw dancing shadows all about.
Laureal left John standing sheepishly by the hearth, only to return directly with an armload of caribou blankets. Then, with coats and outer layers removed, they made a bed of blankets before the hearth and were soon snug as a pair of bugs in a rug.
“Sweetheart?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Are you warm enough?” he whispered low and soft.
“I’m good,” snug against him, spooned up in his excellent form.
“What about you?” turning her head back to his, sensing the closeness of his lips in the pitch of their tiny cocoon. “Are you warm enough, darling?”
“Yes, I’m good,” and moving his lips but an inch, he found hers and they joined in a gentle kiss, “If you get cold, just say so.”
“As long as you’re here with me, I’ll be fine,” caressing his cheek, pushing her fingers into his thick mane.
Knowing how she held her head turned back and up to him, John put his hand behind her, that she might have his palm as a pillow to rest her head. And as she relaxed into it, they shared a few more kisses.
“I’m excited about our sleigh,” said she, rallying, albeit only a step ahead of sleep.
“So am I,” tenderly kissing her brows, “It’s going to be so much fun.”
Half asleep, half kissing him back, “I can hardly wait,” her voice fading as if traveling away, her eyelids closing for the night. Then, as she opened sleep’s door in his arms and the tangible world melted away, her body twitched, then relaxed as a faraway whisper escaped her lips, softly beckoned as if calling him through an ethereal passage to another realm, “John, I will love you forever.”
“I love you too,” he whispered, unaware that she’d spoken from a dream. And within the minute he joined her in deep restful sleep.
