The Bone Seeker Read Online Free PDF Page A

sometimes do when you least expect it, or perhaps when you need it most. This one was from when she was seven or eight, a year or two after her father had left. Every year the annual supply ship brought up two or three films in cans. People sat in the church and watched them projected onto a roll-up screen. One year they showed
The Red Balloon
. The dazzling, crimson purity of the balloon against the stark black and white of the film. How often she’d seen its equivalent. The dark winter sky, blood sitting on snow. Nature red in tooth and claw. Years later, she read that a newborn baby recognizes red before any other colour. This came as no surprise. Somewhere inside her the child was still reaching for that red balloon.
    After Pol dropped them at the landing strip, they drove their ATVs to the nursing station and picked up Luc Fabienne, the nurse, and the gurney trailer and headed out along the muddy track towards Lake Turngaluk. For long stretches on either side of them the rock was bare, or loosely laced with brilliant red and yellow lichens, but as they moved further from the coast and the ground dipped, the slick rock was replaced by pucks of muskeg tufted with cotton grass and mountain sorrel and eventually they found themselves on a desert pavement which stretched all the way to the mountains. In the past week, the summer heat had alchemized the tundra, transforming the cold, dark, peaty substrate into a bright, living carpet. The high sun, shining from the south in the day, from the north during the bright night, had exposedthe carcasses of half-eaten animals entombed by the ice through the long winter and brought them to the attention of foxes and ravens. All around them there were freeze-dried body parts, racks of antlers, remnants of fur and hoof. Before the summer was out, whatever remained of the flesh would be picked clean and new plants would spring up: snow buttercup, polar chickweed and moss campion, blooming around the bleached bones like grave flowers.
    For all that, though, the tundra smelled sweet and freshly vegetal and from time to time the scent of Arctic heather blew up on the prevailing northwesterly breeze. It was only as they moved out of a hollow and up a slight incline that the unmistakably abrasive, sour tang of decomposition hit her and Edie felt herself slowing, a feeling of hollow dread holding her back. Derek came up alongside, pointing to his nose.
    â€˜What’s up?’ This from Luc.
    Edie swallowed. ‘Blood.’ A scent as individual as the grooves in a fingerprint.
    There was nothing for it but to press on. Bumping across rocky scree, they descended into a soggy hollow then up another low incline. The smell grew stronger and they found themselves on a patch of slick rock overlooking the pool where the bear had been. They keyed off their engines and sat for a moment looking out. In her mind’s eye Edie could see Martha Salliaq, sunny-faced and smiling, chatting in the breaks between classes, the flash in her eyes suggesting that there was more to know. She thought back to that Friday afternoon, to the girl she’d half hoped to recruit as a friend. Then she heard herself whisper,
If it has to be someone, don’t let it be Martha.
    She was right about the mosquitoes. They were dancing and dipping, trying to work their way further in towards the water. Derek and Edie exchanged glances. Mosquitoes didn’t usually bother cadavers, which meant that the blood must be in the water, along with whatever had supplied it. They walked on, more carefully this time, their progress slowed by the curtains of mosquitoes which flared up from the muskeg beside them and by a heaviness of heart that made each step drag. They descended to the water’s edge in silence. The liquid lappingat their feet was greasy and terracotta-coloured, a bloody soup. Edie glanced at Derek who blinked grimly in return.
    A body was floating in dark water not far from the bank, naked, face down