The White Artic Owl

Songs of the Ragman…

It wasn’t the rain it was the wind and the low hanging clouds. It was impossible to tell up from down. My instruments were useless, and the radio was out. I had lost the beacon about ten minutes earlier and the wind buffeted my tiny craft and threw itself against the glass with much menace. Snow scooped up like hands and stole my horizon. It felt like I had been wrestling with the craft for hours and my arms and shoulders ached. As I looked out the windshield the world of white was everywhere and as I flew in and out of the sunlight, I was aware of the fact that this was a world of hunters, and stone-cold killers. If you lived in this wasteland, you were either on the run or you were an Inuit Indian born and bred to kill their survival depended on it. These were the people of the ice.

Suddenly the sky dropped, and I disappeared into the clouds. Like smoke, it hung all around me. It was obvious I needed to set my plane down. The problem was that I had left civilization behind except for the mine and that was still a good hour away across the ice.

Dark and cold the clouds hid everything. Contrary to common belief ice is not flat. I flew over a herd of elk making their way north barely missing them as my wheels touched down. With the low ceiling they had just appeared out of nowhere.

I exhaled. I had been holding it in as I missed them by only a hair and suddenly right there in front of me was a mound of ice. I tried to lift again, and I felt my landing gear snap as my plane went end over end, repeatedly snapping both my wings off. I was up and down and then my head hit something and I blacked out.

A cinerous shrew was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes, it was pretty much under my nose. The wind roared like a hungry polar bear, and I treaded lightly on the ice as I pulled myself out and weighed the damage to my plane. What plane? I thought. There was nothing left but junk. “What a fucking mess,” I whispered to myself.

“Pray prayers so strong that not one word can fail.” This was a line from a poem I read in college by Helen Hunt Jackson. It seemed so fitting. The snow was a shredded bridal veil across the ice.

But wait in the distance there were what appeared to be a shrouded funeral pyre. The Inuit wrapped their dead in skins and then burned them on the ice. They were hunters and if they wanted to, they could gut me in an instant and leave me. No one would ever find my frozen corpse. In between there was a glimmer of the deep meaning I would have to be careful because apparently there was open water between them and me.

It was just getting dark, and the crunch of ice and snow underfoot was like thunder. One look at my radio and it was clear it was toast. Every bush pilot knew there was a time when the day could come.

As I got close to the break in the ice, I could see it was a big black swirling cavity of death with no way across. It went as far as I could see in both directions. On the other side I could hear the Inuit squaws singing. “Who, ha, ha. Who, ha, ha. The very breath of life sang.

“The white artic owl

Who,ha,ha!

Slowly stroking by

Who,ha ha!

I want to end me

Who,ha,ha!

It's my time to die.”

The funeral pyre burned high and from where I stood, I could only see silhouettes of the mourners and I wasn’t sure if they saw me at all.

As I walked along the riff trying to find a place to cross, I met many traveling companions. The head of a dog half buried in the snow and a small tent ring on a ridge crest. The bones of a bird circled by a ring of stones. “Witchcraft!” I whispered to myself.

I looked around but the world was everywhere as I walked into the last sunset. The darkness was ladened with stars and I thought what if they weren’t pricks of light but openings to heaven. Millions of candles burning in windows across the sky welcoming me home.

The ice glittered fragile like fine crystal easily broken and sharp to the touch. I was already waiting, no, longing for the return of the sun. The darkness was terrifying on the ice. You couldn’t see the cracks or openings and the nights were so long that even the dead grew restless, and you saw things that could never be.

She invited me in and showed me her lighter side and I fell in love. A garden of ice and for many years she told me I was welcome and then she took everything from me. That was what life in Alaska was. But still she wasn’t satisfied, she wanted my soul.

I walked to my grave until my legs and hands had no feeling in them. That was what walking on the ice was. The old timers said it was like walking to your grave except you never got there you froze to death first and then the ice kept you forever.

I thought of both the woman and the child. I was the woman and the child who hated and loved my mother. I was always ashamed of her, and I was determined I would never be like

her. I refused to lie down and let some man walk all over me. But like the unborn child in my womb, I craved life.

Suddenly there he was across the huge gap in the ice. It was the man that had been burning in his coat of fire. Out of the night flew the white artic owl with all his wisdom. “You are dying,” it said to me. “You are wandering aimlessly. You must pull yourself together.” But still the man burned in his coat of fire. His white skin flaked off as ash with his eyes charred and blackened, he tried to speak but it only came out as a stream of white feathers.

A howling suddenly came out of the darkness and the grinding sound of teeth on bone. A new wind arose, and I caught the scent of onions, chives, and scattered grasses. It was all the smells of spring. The lights were on in the slaughterhouse and the pigs were squealing. The flesh slid off as the flies arrived. I longed for the sun, but I couldn’t even see the clouds. This was the second day of darkness, and I was blind.

The chanting returned.

“Who, ha, ha! Who, ha, ha!

A bird egg found in winter

Who, ha, ha!

Mask of eyes left to see

Who,ha, ha!

Loved ones crossed over

Who,ha, ha!

Return to me.”

I listened and when they stopped, I cried out. “Help me!” But no one came because the figures I had seen were just frozen mist coming off the ice. I had become bewitched. I looked back at the way I had come, and I couldn’t see the funeral pyre anymore. I was truly lost and not even God could find me. Lost in plain view on thousands of miles of ice. The artic owl spoke to me again. “Death will come quickly, and your grave will not be deep.”

Terrified, I thought where will I carry the dead?

“In your heart,” he said.

“There is food on the table,” my mother announced. There was always food on our table growing up; we never went hungry. It wasn’t fancy. We were poor, but it was good food. My mother would slave over it on the holidays, and no one ever left the table hungry. It was not an easy job, there were six kids in our family. Perhaps I had judged my mother too harshly.

I dropped to my knees and scooped up some snow in my hands and let it melt so I could drink it. It tasted like grieving wine, but it did the job and for that I was thankful. What were these drops frozen on my cheeks? Were they tears of hope or tears of defeat? For the wise old artic owl had promised me my death would be quick.

Holding my belly was the only way I could comfort my baby. “Once a dream did weave a shade over your angel guarded bed,” I sobbed. It was the one line of a William Blake poem I remembered as a child. My mother had always read it to me when I was frightened. She always seemed to be there when us children were frightened. I was so scared and then she was there standing over me. Demanding I get out of the fetal position on the ice and stand up. “Mother I’m so tired and it is peaceful here let me sleep.” I begged.

She looked upon me and smiled. Slowly she turned and pointed back the way I had come. The chants started again as I stumbled to my feet.

“Who, ha, ha!

The fur will keep you warm

“Who, ha, ha!

Until the summer thaw

“Who,ha, ha!

And all the snow is gone.

Who, ha, ha!

All come near and hear my song.

Who,ha,ha! Who,ha, ha! Who, ha, ha!

As I made my way slowly back across the ice, I came across an old Innuit woman wrapped in a fur her body mummified by the ice. I knelt down and prayed over her thanking her for the gift of her fur as I slipped it off her body. It was an ancient custom also practiced by the people of wrapping the dead in fur and setting their bodies adrift on the ice. This woman had been a gift given to me by the spirits. I knew this because it was a practice that was seldom used anymore. There was no doubt in my mind that she had been the one that had captured the spirit of the bird within the ring of stone. She had captured the white artic owl, and I had set it free.

When I looked up, I saw the lit torches coming towards me across the ice. It was an Inuit hunting party and suddenly they were all around me and welcomed me with open arms. Safely within the warmth of the people they took me home.

THE END

Bio: Timothy Wilkie is a local hero in the Hudson Valley. From his music to his art and storytelling. He's an old hippy and a storyteller in the truest sense of the word. He has two grown sons and loves to spend time with them. His writing credits include Aphelion, Horror-zine, Dark Dossier and many more...

E-mail: Timothy Wilkie

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