The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: First Snow

Warrick read it over my shoulder.

Then he read it again.

"He can't even write your nickname," he said.

"He doesn't know it."

"Good. Don't let him."

The cook took the letter out of my hand, read it under the floodlight, and gave it back.

"Bunkhouse," she said. "In the morning. Everybody."

By nine on Sunday the camp families had come in on snowmachines, steaming in their parkas.

The trapper sat by the stove. The boy from the strip sat on my boots.

Warrick read the letter out loud.

Then he told them what it meant, because some of the kids didn't know.

A rogue is exiled from every pack in Alaska.

A rogue holds no seat.

"The seat she gave us in Juneau goes with her," he said. "We'd be back to three Gatherings with no Luna. The land goes into his trust that night."

Nobody said anything.

I stood up.

"Then I go before Midwinter," I said. "Unbound pilot, quit the job, gone. He's got nothing to vote on."

"You find another Luna by summer. You keep the seat."

"Every woman in the pack is married, my sister, or the cook," Warrick said.

"Then marry the cook."

"She said no first."

"I said no first," the cook agreed, from the stove.

A few people laughed. Not many.

"I mean it," I said. "I carried him over that pass. I'm not carrying your land into his pocket too."

The trapper stood up with his hat in his hands.

"Sit down, Luna."

"I'm not your Luna. Not on the roll. You can't feel me."

"No," he said. "But I can see you."

He sat back down.

Gussie stood up next, wiping her hands on her coveralls.

"If she goes, I go with her. I'm the only one who can keep that Otter flying."

Then the man from the far camp, the one whose girl I'd flown to Fairbanks.

"My kid's alive. I'll stand up in Juneau and say so."

Then his wife. Then the family with the goat.

One by one they stood, until the whole bunkhouse was on its feet with me.

"You don't carry it alone," Warrick said. "That's what a pack is for. Even one you can't feel."

I sat down.

The boy climbed back onto my boots.

The first real snow came on Wednesday night.

Not the spitting kind. Big flakes, slow, straight down, filling the strip until the gravel disappeared.

I'd spent the day under the Otter's belly with a light, then the Cub's.

My shoulders ached. My knuckles were split.

After dinner I walked back to the cabin with Warrick through the snow.

Neither of us hurried.

On the porch he stopped to knock it off his boots.

I didn't go in.

I took the napkin out of my jacket.

It had been folded and unfolded so many times it was soft as cloth.

His big square letters. My list. The loop and the line.

I can walk any time I want.

"I've been thinking about the river bar," I said.

He went still, one boot on the step.

"I said not as a contract."

"I remember."

"So." I held it up between us.

I tore it in half.

Then in half again, and again, until it was snow-sized pieces in my palm.

I opened my hand and let the wind take them off the porch.

He watched them go.

"That was your way out," he said quietly.

"I know where the door is. I don't need a napkin to find it."

"And the Cub? The pay?"

"Keep your father's plane. I'm not here for a plane."

He looked at me, snow melting in his beard.

"Then what are you here for?"

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