THE CRY OF A CHILD By Dana L. Solomon 
"LOOK into the face of a monster." Wheeler pointed across the tiny courtroom at LeClaire's forehead and waited while the jury followed the line of his forefinger. "The face of evil on a human body."
He stared into LeClaire's eyes, cold and dead in the gas lamps' flicker. Outside the windows, the brief noonday twilight had already faded over the snow that covered Baffin Island like a still, gray ocean. The last sun had set over Rangnisting six weeks ago, after a day that lasted half an hour. It wouldn't rise until March.
"It would be unjust to call him an animal," Wheeler continued. "Animals kill for food, to defend themselves or their young, with no malice, out of simple instinct for survival.
"Nor is he a common murderer. Murderers kill for revenge, for gain, out of rage or hatred. This man killed purely for pleasure. And who did he choose as his victim?" Wheeler stopped again and let out a heavy breath.
"A little girl. Not a Christian, as his lawyer has pointed out, but a little girl nonetheless." He punctuated this sentence with a contemptuous glance at the barrister on LeClaire's right. "Her name was Naja. She was ten years old.
"All this morning, you heard the medical examiner, come all the way up from Yellowknife, just to tell you, in vivid detail, what this man did to her. For hours. For pleasure. Just to hear the cry of a child.
"The cry of a child," Wheeler repeated. "A sound designed by God and Nature to trouble the human heart, inspiring it to assuage the suffering of the most vulnerable among us." Again he pointed at LeClaire. "That same sound inspired in him only joy, sheer delight at her terror and her suffering.
"Now that child cries out again. Her father cries out with her." He scanned the far rear left section of the courtroom, reserved for the Esquimaux, for Juat's pudgy form. "For Justice.
"We may live at the furthest reaches of civilization, the northernmost boundaries of Christendom, but we are still civilized, still Christians. This child's life was no less worthy than a Christian's, and her murder no less terrible. And her murderer deserves no less punishment."
Wheeler stepped back to his desk and sat down, looking impassively at the floor while the judge charged the jury. The usher escorted them out the back door of the courtroom to the small Inn that served as the deliberation chamber. Two Mounties fastened irons around LeClaire's wrists and started leading him out to the jail.
"You wrong about one t'ing, boss," said a voice behind him. Wheeler turned and looked up into Juat's flat face.
"What's that?"
"De polar bear. Especially de old one. He like to give pain, give fear. Sometimes more den to eat." Juat sat down next to him.
"I once seen de polar bear find a caribou. He could kill it, one wap of his paw. Instead, he just break de back leg. But he no kill it. He make it run. I seen him chase dat poor caribou five miles, on de cripple leg, bleeding all across de snow. Once, twice he hang back, he hide, make de caribou t'ink it finally get away, then he come hit it again. After dat, he keep hit it, give it more pain, every time it slow up, but he no kill it. When it finally fall down and die, he almost look sad, you know?"
"I didn't know that. I thought we were the only animals that tortured."
"Nah. You get a polar bear on you tail, you in for a world of pain."
"Fortunately, I never had the pleasure. Have you?"
"Once. Wid de qamutik, de dog sled, all the way nort', to Nanisivik. He track me for miles. De dogs, dey don't outrun him, he go easy faster than dey go hard. I no got de rifle, I lose my spear and all I had were de skinning knife."
"How did you get away?"
"I leave him de offering."
"Offering?"
Juat nodded. "I stop de qamutik and take one of de dogs--de oldest. I hate like anyt'ing to do it, he been wid me for years. I take him a few feet away where de oder dogs don' see, and I cut him throat. I leave him as de offering and de bear he eat de dead dog and stop chasing me and de rest."
"Helluva story." Wheeler shuddered. "Good thing I never go outside without my hunting rifle."
"De rifle, dat's best. You got de rifle when you meet de polar bear, you get de good skin and a lot of meat to bring to de family. De knife, it don't help."
"What if that's all you have?"
"Dat's when you die. Slow and painful. Better you cut you own t'roat and save you de misery."
Both waited in silence, staring out the window at the blackness of the day. "Since my wife die, my daughter been de most precious t'ing in my life, Juat said at last. "Dey no convict him, no?"
"They might." Wheeler tried to make his voice sound reassuring.
Juat shook his head. "De French trappers, dey no convict another French trapper, not for killing de Inuk kid."
"We'll just have to hope they're people, not polar bears."
* * * *
LECLAIRE rubbed his wrists where the shackles had chafed him and glared back at the courthouse. The whole business had been a lot of trouble. He'd lost at least a hundred pounds sterling worth of skins from spending six weeks in jail instead of tending his traps, and he'd had to pay the barrister another fifty.
No matter. They'd given everything back, his knife, his keys, his hunting rifle. He could make up most of his losses in one good fur season. He just had to wait, a good long while before the next kid. Either that or move again. Folk'd told of good trapping over at Igloolik, across the Foxe Basin. He'd moved so many times in the past ten years, he'd lost track.
He turned his snow shoes in a careful maneuver and stomped along the roadway, barely visible beneath five feet of snow, toward his shack on the outskirts of town.
Was it worth it? He shrugged. It had certainly been a delicious night. Wheeler, that bastard who tried to get him hung, was right. There was something he loved about that sound, the cry of a child. The pain and fear on the little 'nuk brat's face had made it even sweeter. He'd certainly felt enough pain and fear, enough times in his life, starting when he was no older than she was. Now it was over, and he was still free. Maybe there was a greater justice at work.
A dozen dogs yelped behind him and a sled whooshed past. It slowed for a moment and the 'nuk on the back turned and stared at him. LeClaire flipped his rifle into his hands, and the sled sped up and disappeared over the next rise. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder. Maybe it was the father, maybe a friend of his, but who cared. And who could tell them apart, even in sunlight?
The moonrise eased the darkness of the day, a bright sickle riding low on the horizon, and by its light, he made his way over the snow fields. Wherever he'd lived, starting in the old days on the St. Lawrence River, just north of Quebec, he always had his place far outside the city, the town, the settlement, far away from the nearest neighbor, white, redskin or 'nuk. He liked privacy. And those few special times, he'd been lucky there was no one around to hear the screams.
He reached the upper door to his shack, since the lower had been buried since November, unlocked it and stepped inside, steering by memory rather than sight toward the oil lamp on the back table. The matches were still dry, and he struck one and lit the lamp.
The snow had blown in past the threshold, leaving a powdery layer across the floor, like frozen dust, and even with sealskins over the clapboards to break the wind it felt colder inside than out.
He shut the door, slipped off his snowshoes and lay down on his cot. One more fur season, then it was definitely time to move again.
He started at a sudden crash, an ice chunk smashing through his one window. He snatched up his rifle and threw the door open, but all he could see was the moon's reflection on the snow. He fired a round into the cold air, and over the echo, a dozen dogs yelped in answer.
Before he could reload, a bola whizzed through the night and smashed the rifle from his hands. Short, squat shadows appeared as if rising from the snow. Another whizz and the three bones of a second bola wrapped around his wrists. One of the shadows closed in from his right side and he turned in time to see a club lower onto his head. His eyes closed and the moonlight and shadows faded.
* * * *
LECLAIRE woke up flat on his back in the snow. He sat up and looked around in a panic. A cloud bank had passed overhead, and he could see only an endless darkness. It was two months until next sunrise. He could be minutes or miles away from town, and with nothing to guide him, he might wander in the wrong direction, toward the uninhabited heart of Baffin Island or off an ice sheet into the freezing waters of the Cumberland Sound.
Then the clouds parted and the sickle moon shone down on a familiar landscape, the hills overlooking the Pangnirtung Fjord. The lazy little bastards had only taken him a few miles South along its banks. He felt around him. He had on his heavy coat, hat and gloves, all caribou skin lined with thick fur, and his scarf was tied around his nose and mouth. His mucklucks were laced above his knees, his hunting knife hung from his belt, and his snowshoes lay underneath him, keeping him from sinking down into the five foot drifts.
Alone this far from Rangnisting, a prissy Brit like Wheeler would be frozen dead by morning, even with a crate of gear and supplies. To an old trapper like him, the nuks' idea of revenge was no more than a school-boy's prank. With a steady pace, the North Star ahead of him, and enough moon and starlight, he could make it back to town before the darkness of the next day. He'd lay low for a few months, then get a dozen trappers into a little posse, and what he did to the 'nuk girl'd be nothing compared to he'd do to papa. Then he smelled the blood.
His coat, gloves and mucklucks were covered in frozen blood, and a light stench hovered around him like a salty soup, faint to his senses, but a dinner bell to every polar bear within twenty miles.
He dived into a snowbank and rolled in it until his hands and feet felt numb. He pulled himself upright, and in the dim light he could see dark stains on the white powder, and the scent was almost gone. The air was still, and if he made it down to the fjord, fifty feet below the surrounding snow fields, the scent would stay low, and he might get back to town before a bear got wind of him. He slipped his feet into the snowshoes and headed west.
Another cloud bank moved overhead, dimming the moonlight. He shrugged off a flash of fear. As long as he kept moving, he wouldn't freeze, and as long as he stayed straight, he'd hit the fjord sooner or later. Then a sharp right, and an easy walk to town across the ice.
The clouds thickened and the white panorama darkened to gray. A light snowfall danced around him. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure he hadn't turned off course. A year after he first came to Rangnisting, a French trapper named Chapelin had gotten lost in the same terrain. When they'd found his body, his tracks showed he'd been about to close a circle five miles wide. He was kneeling in the snow and his hands were frozen together in prayer.
LeClaire started forward again, squinting against the sting of the snowflakes. The phantom image of a silent bear danced in front of him. It charged, then disappeared just before it struck.
LeClaire kept walking. By the angle of his showshoes and the outline of the hills rising ahead he could tell he was moving downwards, and he remembered the shallow valley just before the last bluff overlooking the fjord.
Another image, a shadow the same gray as the snow, flashed in the corner of his eye, this time leaving the sound of a low rumble as it vanished.
He pulled out his knife, no weapon against a polar bear, but better than nothing. He tried to walk faster, but the clumsy snowshoes kept him at a slow waddle. The growl sounded closer, louder, first behind him, then right, then left. He brandished his knife and slashed at the whirling snow. Suddenly, it was quiet. The terrain turned upward again, the falling snow tapered off and his steady footfalls brought him within a few yards of the rise.
In a thin sliver of a second, before he could breathe to scream, the shadow flashed again. A paw whipped out and slashed through his breeches above his left muckluck, into the flesh of his thigh.
A new sound echoed across the wasteland, ringing for a full five seconds before he realized it was his own voice, howling in agony. He lashed out with the knife, but the shadow slipped away. Twin coals glowed in the distance, the ghosts of two black eyes, and the growl sounded like laughter.
LeClaire bit off his glove and reached his hand down to the wound. It came back up cold, red and sticky with slushy, freezing blood. The bear charged again, a big boar male, lashing out at the same leg and this strike cut clear through to the bone.
Almost blind with agony, LeClaire tried to stab back, but bear pulled away as easily as a child playing tag and the knife glance off its shoulder. With a predator's easy calm, it cut an arc at a lazy trot, then turned to face LeClaire, a flash of moonlight glinting off its white teeth. Panic overpowering pain, LeClaire pulled himself to the top of the rise. The bear padded behind him at an easy pace like a giant, faithful dog, not charging, not falling back, pausing only to lap up the droplets of blood that spattered on the snow.
Keeping the creature at bay with the knife and ignoring the agony from his left leg, LeClaire slipped off his snow shoes, picked them up and cradled them to his chest. He knelt down in the snow to keep himself from sinking in, while the bear dropped to his haunches for a third charge. Before it could strike again, LeClaire hurled himself sideways off the bluff. His momentum sent him rolling faster than the bear could follow, shoulder over shoulder down the embankment, faster and faster until the slope leveled off and dumped him with a crunch on the ice of the Pangnirtung Fjord.
He crawled back to the snow bank by the side of the fjord, hoisted himself upright with one of the snowshoes, and glanced up at the bluff. At full gallop, the bear could make up the half a furlong between them in seconds. Blind as a bat, deaf as a post, it could still track him by the smell of his blood from many times that distance.
He untied his scarf, a yard long and half again as wide, and lay it down on the ice. Biting his lip to keep from screaming, he bent down, scooped up a few handfuls of snow and poured them into the scarf, then tied the frozen bandage around the gash in his leg.
The pain subsided to numbness. He cut the ends off the knot and used them to staunch the blood flow, then picked up another handful of snow, rolled the bloody cloths into a snowball and hurled it twenty yards southward.
He tested his left leg with a ginger step. It buckled beneath him and he pitched forward face first. He pulled himself upright again, this time using both snowshoes, and tested the footing. A twelve-mile inlet from the Cumberland Sound, the fjord had frozen late, and only a thin layer of snow coated the ice sheet. He took another step with his right leg, then caught himself on both snowshoes, like twin crutches. The snow compacted on the ice beneath him, and after a few careful steps, he fell into a steady rhythm.
An easy hundred yard hobble north toward Rangnisting allowed the hope that the bear had not followed him down the bank. Perhaps he had even lost the scent, or the bloody snowball had sent him in the wrong direction.
A distant sound reached his ears, a low growl, the purr of a giant contented cat. Without glancing back, LeClaire forced himself to hobble faster.
The growl sounded again. Suddenly, LeClaire's head snapped toward another sound, a thrashing noise coming from the snow-covered hills above him. He dropped one snowshoe and pulled out his knife.
The thrashing continued, not closing on him, not pulling away. He held his breath and hobbled on one crutch to the edge of the bank. On a low rise just above him, at the base of a snow-cliff, he saw a dark circle of metal, a trap, black against the gray snow. He drew closer until he could make out a flash of gray fur inside it.
His knife in his teeth, LeClaire threw himself on the bank and belly-crawled up to the trap. It was tied with thin rope to the top of a pole, and its jagged metal jaws held the left hind leg of an arctic hare.
"Ah, my friend," he told it. "I'd be happy to see you any time but especially tonight. I'd cook your meat and get two shillings for your skin. Now, you save my life."
The hare stared up at him, its eyes begging rescue, respite from its pain. In answer, LeClaire took the knife and cut a gash down its back, deep into the fur. He pinched the sides of the cut together and sipped at the blood that seeped from the wound.
"My friend, you give me strength, you keep me going," he said. "Now, maybe you save me another way."
LeClaire wrapped the rope in two loops around the hare's neck. With his knife, he pried the trap open, enough to pull out the hare's leg, and let the empty jaws snap shut again.
He rubbed the hare's clean sides against his own bloody leg, and squeezed the cut on its back again. When the gray fur was soaked with red frost, he unlooped the rope from its neck.
Instead of running, the hare sat, motionless, trembling. LeClaire stabbed its wounded hind leg with the tip of his knife and the hare limped off through the snow, leaving a bloody trail.
On an instinct, LeClaire took the top of the pole and shook it. It felt loose in his hand, not buried in the permafrost but stuck into the snow just far enough to keep a small animal from escaping with the trap still around its leg. With two more shakes and a sharp tug, it came out in his hand, a wooden dowel the length and heft of a heavy broom handle.
He knelt down and, using the snowshoes as a shovel, dug a snow cave into the side of the cliff. He dumped in the snow shoes, the pole, the rope and trap, then eased himself in feet first.
He waited, ignoring the biting, burning cold. The shadow of the bear approached, and LeCalire held his breath. It stood on its hind legs, almost ten feet high and sniffed at the air while LecLaire whispered silent curses. Finally, it turned and galloped away, following the scent of the hare.
Numb with cold, LeClaire clawed out of the cave and rubbed at himself frantically, trying to bring the life back to his freezing limbs and body. He crawled back to the flat surface of the fjord and pulled himself back upright on his makeshift crutches. Then he cut the pole and trap off the rope, and cut the rope into three lengths to tie the pole around his left leg, at the ankle, knee, and hip.
Again, he tested his left leg with a single step. The pole held long enough for him to swing his right around and catch his weight. He tied the short length of rope still attached to the trap around his belt in a slip knot. A good trap would always come in handy. With a whispered blessing, he thanked the trapper who had left it, for the hare, the rope and especially the pole. Once he reached Rangnisting, he could limp the last mile from the fjord to town on the pole and his snowshoes. In the clear sky, the North star beckoned, an inviting twinkle, and he headed for it at a good clip toward Rangnisting. Then he saw the second shadow.
He blinked at the ice and it was gone--perhaps no more than a sliver of cloud eclipsing the moonlight. It appeared again, the tapered silhouette of a ghost flitting beneath him, more than eight feet long.
In six weeks, the ice would be thick enough to hold a horse and wagon, but now only three inches separated him from the water. He started for the shoreline where the ice was thickest.
The shadow flew past him and with a crunch and a crackle, the head of a hooded seal punched its way through the ice and let out a welcoming roar--a happy hunter greeting his meal just before the kill.
It disappeared back into the water, then rammed up again until its full body squeezed through the hole. Sliding, slithering like a fat brown snake, the seal made up the distance between them in a second.
LeClaire braced himself on his right leg and swung his left snowshoe full force, connecting with the creature's head. For a moment, the seal backed off, then it lunged forward with fangs bared. Again, LeClaire struck out with the snowshoe, this time striking the fleshy hood of its nose. The creature turned and dived back under the ice.
LeClaire started forward a few more paces. Another crunch and he hurled himself forward to keep from sinking into the water as the seal punched a hole up under his feet. For a hundred yards they continued this frantic dance, LeClaire hobbling serpentine on his crutches while the seal broke hole after hole in the ice, trying to pitch him into waters cold enough to suck the heart's warmth from his body in a second.
In a sudden variation, LeClaire curved out twenty yards from the shore and the seal followed. With a pivot, he doubled back as quickly as he could, slipped on the snowshoes and hobbled on his splinted leg, up onto the bank, a curving hill of deep snow where a seal was too clumsy too fight a man with snowshoes and a knife.
The seal's head popped out of one of the holes, black eyes fixed on him. "Good hunter," LeClaire called over his shoulder. "But not clever like the bear. No patience, no memory. I go away a few minutes and you forget all about me. Then some day we meet again, maybe you, maybe some babies, and I have my rifle and a good heavy club." The seal answered with a single roar. Suddenly, its gaze shifted to the crest of the hill, just above LeClaire's head. It roared again, then vanished under the ice.
The black inside of a paw flashed in the corner of LeClaire's eye. Before he could turn or duck, the bear struck him in a full body blow. The heavy coat turned the claws, but the force sent him reeling back down onto the ice, where he landed on the side of his face. He tried to pull himself up, but the instant's contact froze his cheek to the surface. Will all his strength he ripped it free, leaving behind a layer of beard and flesh. He hand clutched what felt like a broken jaw and he spat out a wad of blood and teeth.
His head spun around in a quick scan. The seal was staring at him from a hole some forty yards away, yielding the field to the stronger predator. The bear stood looking down at him from the top of the hill and if it had a human face, LeClaire would've thought it was smiling.
"Batard," LeClaire shouted up at it. "Just like me, you go for the pain, the fear before the kill. But maybe I'm smarter, maybe I have a little trick you don't know."
He reached down with his knife and cut the rope that bound the dowel to his leg and lashed the knife by its handle to the end of the dowel, wrapping a length of rope around it three times to secure it in place. Then he drew himself upright with the makeshift spear. The snow inside the scarf had blended with the sheath of blood, freezing into a cast around his leg, and it felt stronger beneath him.
The bear began moving toward him down the hill in a slow, stalking prowl. LeClaire stood his ground. The bear stopped for a moment, its smile darkening to a puzzled look.
"Ah, not so sure now, you wonder why LeClaire just stands here," said LeClaire. "You like your prey to run. If I don't move, maybe you back away, wait and when I expect nothing, then you strike. No, better for me you come now."
LeClaire turned away and started along the ice at his fastest limp, his head cocked back to watch the bear. With an angry snarl, it charged forward. LeClaire pivoted and fixed the base of the spear against the ice with the knife pointed at the bear's heart.
It reached him in six galloping strides and LeClaire tensed every muscle in his face, neck, shoulders and torso. At the last second, a flash of moonlight caught the knife-point. The bear veered off at a slight angle, and the knife caught him in the side, not full in the chest, but still straight enough to cut through the heavy fur and into the flesh.
The force cracked the dowel in half and sent LeClaire flying back onto the ice. The bear let out a strangled shriek, higher pitched than it customary growl and it backed off in a writhing three-legged lope, its front paw trying to bat away the half-spear still sticking out of its body.
Another bat, another writhe and it came free, landing point down in the snow. Still shrieking in pain, the bear galloped away and vanished behind the hill.
Painfully, tentatively, LeClaire climbed to his feet. The seal's head disappeared beneath the ice and the shadow of its body started moving toward him at a slow, purposeful swim. LeClaire started limping toward the bank, but the seal sped forward and cut him off just before he reached it. He heard a crunch, and felt a shudder as its head rammed upwards underneath his feet. The thicker ice at the edge of the fjord resisted the impact and an angry growl sounded from the freezing water.
The seal doubled thirty yards back and punched its way up onto the ice. LeClaire glanced around him. The shattered end of the broken spear jutted up from a white hillock some twenty yards above him. The snowshoes lay scattered across the ice. Again, the seal started slithering toward him, and he collapsed into a mound of snow. For a moment, he thought of Chapelin, and for another moment, he tried to remember a prayer.
Instead, he let out an angry curse, reached under his coat, and pulled out the trap. Ignoring the pain of the metal teeth that gouged his hands through the gloves, he pressed the steel jaws apart. With a last agonizing shove, it clicked open, just as the seal reached him, teeth bared under its hooded nose. LeClaire lifted up his left arm and the seal's mouth closed around it. The skin and fur of his coat sleeve resisted the bite for the single second it took him to swing the trap around with all his strength and snap it closed around the creature's throat. The seal began thrashing and rolling over the ice, its growling roar strangled low in its chest. Finally, its death throes eased, its head flopped over like a rag doll's and its body stretched out, wriggling and twitching on the ice.
LeClaire staggered across the ice to retrieve the snowshoes, then limped up the bank for the shattered shards of his spear. He doubled back to the seal, pressed down with knife blade and lashed open the creature's belly while it still twitched and writhed. A fountain of stinking steam billowed up from the carcass, and he reached through it cut out the gall bladder. He pierced it with a single thrust and held the dripping organ over his head, fighting the urge to vomit while the bile poured over him.
He set out at a slow walk while his nose adjusted to his own stench. The ice trembled under his feet and he glanced back. The bear was standing on its hind legs over the seal, flailing its forepaws at him.
LeClaire turned and held up the front half of the spear. "What do you choose, Monsieur Bear?" he whispered. "Me, stinking with bile, still with the spear that cut you? No, better you take the fresh-killed seal I leave you."
The bear sniffed the air, glanced back and forth from LeClaire to the seal, then lowered his head into the open belly to enjoy the offering.
* * * *
THE moon began its slow descent. LeClaire stopped to tie the broken bottom of the pole around his leg, then started walking on his snowshoes, up the bank toward Rangnisting. The lights of the city broke through the darkness of the new day, the hunters and trappers up early to start work. At this pace, he would be back inside an hour. First, he'd find a doctor to save his leg and some of his teeth. Then he'd get his rifle and pay papa a little visit.
The wind picked up again. Snowflakes swirled around him and ghost bears menaced him on every side. A sound echoed from over a small rise of snow. LeClaire only quickened his pace. The sound repeated, first a soft sob, then growing louder, into a delicious wail of fear and helplessness, the plaintive whimper of a child crying in terror. For a moment, he resisted, then he turned, lured by the siren song to a small ditch just beyond the rise.
The last of the moonlight shined on a flash of movement in the ditch, a flicker around two weeping eyes. Before his own eyes could focus, the claws of a padded paw snaked out and ripped them from his face. He screamed out into the blind darkness, and kept screaming even as he felt the hot breath on his bloody cheek and the massive jaws, twice the size and many times the power of the steel trap, close around his neck, severing his jugular and spine in a single snap.
* * * *
JUAT stopped the qamutik a dozen yards from the scene. The mother bear eyed him and the dogs suspiciously and the cub ran behind her. With a quick command, he pulled the sled a few yards away.
"No, mama bear," he called out in a soothing voice. "I no here to hurt you or you bebe. But I no understand. Ol' French trapper, so smart he make it all de way back home covered wid blood, wid all de bears around. Still he don' know, or maybe he no remember. When de bear cub calls out to him mama, it sound just like de cry of a child."
At the sound of Juat's voice, the bear looked up and snarled at him in answer. He let out another cry and the dogs steered the qamutik in a quick half circle toward town, and after a few mistrustful sniffs, she lowered her head back to the body to enjoy the rest of her meal.