Excerpt: Qallunaaq

"Like I said, I'd already thought it wasn't a tree. But a ghost tree didn't make any more sense than a tree did. Well, not unless you're on Axel Heiburg. I started thinking. Maybe it was a ghost of a man who wanted to be around trees so much that he just couldn't let go of that feeling. I know I've heard southerners tell me that it's the smell of trees that they notice first when they come home. I've been down to Ottawa once or twice myself, and there certainly are a lot of different smells, but I don't know if I'd specifically miss the trees... but, this was me and that was them. So, I thought that maybe a ghost could get hung up on trees. Who knew?

"I went up to where I thought I saw the tree, right up to it. The moon disappeared behind the clouds for a third time, and I saw... nothing. I couldn't see anything different about the ice, even though the dogs were starting to whine a bit. I pulled them to a stop, and got my pack out. I had instant coffee, some bannock, some dried meat, some raisins, some lard, but nothing that was really tree-related. The raisins were a gorp mix, so there were some almonds and walnuts in the bag as well, but they'd already been shelled and salted. Finally, I found a lemon in my side pack."

Harry didn't agree with that. "Why are you bringing lemons with you, Darryl? Country food isn't enough?"

The southerners looked a bit confused by this, so Darryl explained. "Country food is what we call the food we Inuk hunt for ourselves, and it's high enough in Vitamin C that Inuit never had to worry about scurvy the same way that Europeans did. However, that doesn't change the fact that I like my char with a bit of fresh lemon juice, so if I managed to catch one while I was out hunting, I'd be prepared.

"But, I can do without a little extra flavour if I have to. So, I pulled out the ice drill, and gouged out a small hole in the ice. Not too deep, or else it'd fall right through. Then, I pushed the ice shavings back on top, and sang a song for the tree."

"A song? What sort of song?"

"Well, there aren't many Inuit songs about trees, so I wasn't able to sing anything too traditional. We have songs about the sun, but singing them in the middle of the winter night didn't feel right to me. So, I sang a song that my nephew learned when he was in school. It was called "Lemon", by a band called You Too. It was a high, sweeping song, speaking of dreams and goals and dangers and visions. The lady's voice soared over the high notes, and my dogs joined in the chorus. When we were done, I gave some water to the tree, and patted it down.

"At that moment, a felt a glow on the horizon. Out there, on the water, there was a ship. A tall wooden ship, like the ones that sailed these waters hundreds of years, and it must have been at least that old. The sails were tattered and their scuppers in jags. The boards were rotted, and the decks were sagging. But the sails that weren't there were still billowing out, and where the canvas should have been, there was a green light like St. Elmo's fire. All around it, in fact, there was a blue haze, radiating and shifting, like the Aurora Borealis was bubbling up from the bottom of the sea, picking up the rock flour on the bottom, and sending it up into the sky, charged with electricity. It lit up the bottoms of all the clouds in the air, reflecting upon them from below. And then, the moon came out for the third time, and it was higher and more brilliant than I'd seen it in months. With the moon lighting the clouds from above, and the ship lighting the clouds from below, and the dark, dark sky everywhere else, it looked like that ship had cracked the night open like a geode, and that it was sheathed and surrounded by the spirits of hundreds of men. They didn't dance or swim about, like clouds or northern lights usually do. Instead, they stood there, lined up between the ship and the moon, standing at attention, like they were paying their respects as the ship slowly turned around and sailed away from me. It was sailing straight for the east, like it was leaving on a course that it had finally remembered after being lost in memory, frozen in time. I stayed there for an hour, keeping the dogs quiet, keeping a vigil for this ship that had finally found its way home. I stayed there, providing a place for departure, someone who could say that it had left. The moon stayed high in the sky the whole time I waited there. And when the ship dipped below the horizon, and the blue and green glow faded out of sight, the stil night began to move again, starting with a soft, warm breeze that drifted off the sea towards me. A warm breeze.

"And it smelled like lemon blossoms."