The Boy Who Walked To the Arctic – Claire Shearman

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Once upon a time, long ago, there was a young boy who had travelled a thousand nights across desert sands, dangerous seas and ice-capped mountains to the land of tundras and reindeer where the ground was frozen and there were no trees. Why he had started on his journey and where he was bound for, he did not know. He remembered walking barefoot in the sweltering sun and hanging on to the mast of a wooden sailing boat in perilous winds. When he got to the mountains they gave him shoes, a spear and animal skin coat and sent him over the mountain top. When he got to the mountain top he looked down and saw a huge flat plain and in the distance the sea again with icebergs poking out like jagged teeth.

Every day as he made his way down the mountain to the tundra below the wind blew against his face so hard he could hardly breathe and his chest felt tight. But still he walked on following the trails of reindeer. Every night he wrapped his arms around his knees so that he was as small as he could possibly be under his animal skin coat and fell asleep to the sound of wolves howling. Sometimes the wolves would come to his side, curious to know what this boy was doing in such a bleak and desolate landscape. They listened to his breathing as he slept and heard the whispers of his story on the wind blowing across the frozen ground, and lay down close beside him to keep him warm and protected until the pale sun began to rise in the sky above.

One day the boy woke up with a sense of foreboding. The wolves had gone and the harsh wind was battering against his face so that he found it hard to open his eyes. He felt like he was carrying the ghosts of his past on his back. He pulled his animal skin coat tighter around himself, and too tired to get up and continue walking, he fell asleep and dreamed a deep dark dream. He was back in the desert sands and sweltering sun, beads of sweat laced across his forehead, frightened and running because he had lost his mother. He could not find her, and like everyone else, just kept running until he saw the boat on the water.  Every day he scanned the horizon in case he could spot her. Every night his spirit traversed the universe looking for her but he never found her. But last night the wolves had called out and her spirit had come to him. Now he felt the imprint of her bones pressing against his back and he knew then that she had not abandoned him and that she would be with him until he reached his destination.

Because of that he breathed in deeply and took his strength from the wind and started walking with the weight of her bones imprinted on his back. Winter turned into Spring and still he was walking but the wind had lessened and the arctic hares had come out of hibernation. The frozen land turned soggy making it harder for the boy to struggle across it, but he did not give up. The grey skies lifted and ribbons of blue stretched across the horizon and patches of brown green marsh were flecked with small white flowers. Still the wolves protected him, understanding now the purpose of his journey. They left him food when the weight of his mother’s ghost made it too hard for him to do his own hunting. And the wolves howled at night with a different voice, telling the Yupik nomads in the lands below of the boy’s story and his imminent arrival. And the nomads’ hearts swelled with sadness for the boy.

And because of that the nomads spent the summer making a special tent lined with thick reindeer skins for the boy to live in and hunted for extra seals so that he would never be hungry over the coming winter. Then they built a sacred pile of stones for the boy’s mother to rest in so that the boy and his mother would know that they had finally reached their new home.

Until finally one late summer morning, waiting on a windswept hill, two reindeer herders spotted the boy with the weight of his mother’s bones imprinted on his back slowly walking his way towards them, and they rode with their sledge to meet and welcome him. The boy thought it was a dream when he saw them coming, and had to pinch himself as the sleigh flew across the landscape to the tent village where everyone was waiting for him. And when he saw the special tent and the sacred pile of stones, and the rainbow arc across the sky, he knew he was finally home and the weight of his mother’s bones fell off him and for the first time in a thousand nights, he smiled.

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