Page 43 of Bear My Heart

They disembarked into a small airport, and Peter headed for one of the windows to smile at black, snow-laden mountains backlit by twilight-blue clouds and sky. "Not as nice a morning as I'd like to show off to you, but pretty normal for winter here."

Shanti yawned violently, having slept a little on the flight between New York and Seattle, but not at all between Seattle and Juneau, and came to lean against Peter's side. "They're really right on top of us, aren't they? The mountains, I mean."

"Yeah. There's about fifty feet of shore and a boardwalk between the mountains and the water, and that's what Juneau's built on." He was exaggerating slightly, but as Shanti laughed, he added, "Don't worry, though, Shkalnik has like sixty feet of shore, it's very impressive."

"I really don't know what I'm getting myself into, do I," Shanti said happily. It was an extraordinary feeling to not know, though. It was as if she'd been uncaged, and if it took her a while to learn to stretch her legs, that was okay, because not only did she have Peter with her, she'd done the thing she'd felt was impossible: she'd left Virtue behind. She couldn't get back in less than a day if she wanted to, and somehow that felt like the apron strings had been cut. Shanti was pretty sure she could fly now. Maybe literally, and the idea made her smile.

The plane they went to for the next flight did not make her smile, though. In fact, she stopped so abruptly in the airport doorway that the people behind her nearly ran into her. Peter glanced down at her in concern, and she stepped to the side so the passengers behind them could go by, but she kept staring at the plane. "We're not getting in that, are we?"

"Um?" Peter shot a look at the plane, then back at her. "Yes?"

"It's…!" Shanti made a series of frantic motions, trying to encompass the fact that the plane was…tiny. It had a propeller on the nose, for God's sake. It had wing struts. It had little square windows that looked like a kid's idea of airplane windows, and a chunky-looking belly that somebody was loading luggage into. "We'll die in that thing!"

Peter rolled his lips together, obviously trying not to laugh. "Probably not? It's almost the biggest plane that can land in Shkalnik. All the private planes are smaller."

"Private planes?"

"Alaska has more personal planes than anywhere else in the States, but most of them are two to four seaters. Six, maybe. This one carries twelve, plus the pilots." Peter really was trying not to laugh at her, while the airline employees were trying to get them to move along.

Shanti did, reluctantly, still staring in dismay at the airplane. She hadn't realized there were airlines that actually flew planes that small. "What have I gotten myself into?"

"An adventure?" Peter asked hopefully.

That made her laugh, some of the tension brought on by seeing the plane fading away. "Right, yes, I suppose so. I just didn't know it would involve a plane only slightly taller than I am…"

"I won't let anything happen to you," Peter murmured, and her absolute confidence that he was telling the truth calmed Shanti's erratic heartbeat. And, a little while later when they were in the air, she discovered that a small plane flying closer to the ground was more astonishing and beautiful than she could have imagined. They flew over silver water and snow-laden mountains to more sparkling seas with a horizon of mountains glowing with morning light, and suddenly it seemed as if the whole world was a quiet, waiting, welcoming place. Shanti took a deep breath without meaning to, and let it out on a slow exhalation like all of her worries were fading away.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay, yes, I see why people live here. Even if I haven't gotten there yet, I understand now."

Peter nuzzled her hair and tucked her closer, both of them leaning a little to look out the window as the plane banked and a little community came into view.

It was instantly clear that although Virtue wasn’t a big town, by comparison it was a metropolis. Shkalnik spilled down toward the water from the narrow glacial valley it sat against, with a shallow plain stretching off one direction, and mountains soaring directly up from the water in the other. At least a dozen massive blue and white glacier tongues poked out of the mountains which surrounded the little town, and there were more little rivers and creeks running through the tidal flats than Shanti could count at a glance. As the plane banked, she realized the airport was miles away from the village proper, up on a valley floor nearly on the other side of a mountain. The runway looked about twenty feet long as they came in for a landing. All of a sudden she understood why only tiny planes could land there at all.

They were on the ground within minutes, and though it had only been a short flight, Shanti felt the need to stretch her legs and give herself a shake when they disembarked. Maybe, she thought, because she was in Alaska. And maybe it was just that it looked almost nothing like she'd expected.

The runway was more or less clear of snow, but made a startling black slash across the brightness. From the ground, the mountains, too, seemed black: black and white, with gentle, indirect light unable to really even pick out grey. A little airport building looked like an afterthought, poking up out of the snow like a mistake. Despite the interior lights, it also seemed mostly black and white under the cloudy skies. "I thought it'd be more colorful?" Shanti breathed as they headed through the airport.

Peter glanced around, curiosity in his gaze before he smiled crookedly. "It is sort of greyscale, isn't it? I don't think I ever really noticed that. The town is…" He paused, pursed his lips, and finally gestured at the heavy clouds. "Well, maybe they make everything kind of black and white, now that you mention it. I kind of think of it as…quiet, not dull, though."

Shanti pulled in a breath of cold air as they went out to the parking lot, and held it as she watched snow fall and melt against vehicles. There were voices, and the sounds of cars starting up, but Peter was right: it was quiet. Virtue wasn't exactly a noisy town, but Shanti thought if they stayed there until all the cars had left, she would be in the most complete silence she'd ever experienced.

It was wonderful. She let her breath out in a soft laugh and smiled up at Peter. "Let's go see what quiet, not dull, looks like in Alaska."

CHAPTER 22

Pete was considerably more nervous about bringing Shanti home now that they were home than he'd been before. It wasn't that he didn't know how small and quiet Shkalnik was: that had struck him the first time he'd come back after leaving town at all, and he'd only gone to Anchorage, then. Anchorage was a big city by Alaskan standards, but with just over a quarter of a million people, a lot of Outsiders would regard it as a large town, not a city at all.

Either way, Shkalnik was tiny, and even if Virtue wasn't big, you could get to places from Virtue. You could drive out. Shkalnik, not so much. And it wasn't as if Pete hadn't known that before. He'd even warned Shanti about it. But watching her experience it was a whole different thing, and his heart kept knocking around his chest worriedly as they drove into town in a truck his brother had dropped off at the airport yesterday. Pete obviously intended to introduce Shanti to his family. He just didn't want to do it literally the moment they landed in Shkalnik, not when he wasn't sure how she'd respond to the town at all.

It really was very black and white, now that he was trying to see it through her eyes. The mountain trees were mostly evergreens, but in late December, there wasn't really enough light to make the green shine through, so they looked pretty much black, if laced with snow. And the mountain face where the snow couldn't hold on was black, and the skies were grey. Quiet, yeah. But maybe also dismal. He hadn't quite thought of that before.

His bear felt sort of offended at dismal, but couldn't defend it. The gravel road was a grey and black streak through the snow, and they bumped along with Peter trying desperately to think of something positive to say about the remote mountain location. Then he glanced at Shanti, who almost had her nose pressed against the window and was smiling widely, and most of his fears disappeared in a heartbeat. They faded even more as they reached town and the enormous whale-jaw gate that stretched above the only road in, and Shanti gasped in sheer delight.

"Is that—that's whalebone, isn't it? What's that about?"

"It's a traditional marker for a village entrance," Peter murmured. "Shkalnik's original gates were taken away by Russian traders hundreds of years ago, but Old Richard—he was Mayor for a while, years ago—he had them reinstated before I was even born. I honestly think his grandparents remembered the originals."

Shanti shot him an uncertain, amused glance. "He must be really old, then."