Northern Lights

have to wait. I've got to fly. I was just bringing the dogs back, about to shut off my music."
    "Where you going?"
    "I'm taking some supplies into a village in the bush. I've got to move if I want to get there and back before party time." She cocked her head. "Want to ride along?"
    Nate glanced toward the plane and thought: In that? Not even for a chance to sniff at your neck. "I'm on duty. Maybe another time."
    "Sure. Rock, Bull, home! Be right back," she told Nate.
    The dogs raced off, and Nate realized one of the outbuildings was an elaborate doghouse, decorated with totem figures painted in a primitiveart folksy style.
    High life, all right.
    Meg disappeared into the cabin. A moment later, the music shut off.
    She came out again with a pack slung over her shoulder.
    "See you, chief. We'll see about you taking my statement sometime."
    "Looking forward to that. Fly safe."
    She tossed her hair back, hiked down to the plane.
    He stayed, watching her.
    She tossed the pack inside, climbed up.
    He heard the engine catch, the stunning roar of it bursting through the stillness. The prop whirled, and the plane began to skate over the ice, circling it, circling, tipping onto one ski and circling until it lifted off, nosed up and climbed.
    He could see the red of her parka, the black of her hair, through the cockpit window, then she was just a blur.
    He tipped his head back as she circled, in the air now, and dipped a wing in what he assumed was a salute.
    Then she was spearing off, over the white, into the blue.

 
     
     
    FIVE
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    NATE COULD HEAR the celebration getting underway. Music—a kind of jivey honky-tonk—piped up the stairs, even through the floor vents of his room. Voices hummed, seemed to press against the walls and floorboards. Laughter slapped out, as did the occasional thud he took as dancing feet.
    He sat alone, in the dark.
    The depression had crashed down over him, without warning, without a snicker. One minute he'd been sitting at his desk reading through files, and the next the smothering black weight had dropped down on him.
    It had happened that way before, with no vague sense of unease, no creeping sadness. Just that swamping wave of black rolling him under. Just that harsh switch from light to dark.
    It wasn't hopelessness. The concept of hope had to be a factor before you could embrace its absence. It wasn't grief or despair or anger. He could have handled or battled any of those emotions.
    It was a void. Immeasurable, black, airless, and it sucked him in.
    He could function through it; he'd learned how. If you didn't function, people wouldn't leave you alone and their concern and worry only drove you deeper into the pit.
    He could walk, talk, exist. But he couldn't live. That's how it felt to him, when he was in the silky clutches of it. He felt like walking death.
    The way he'd felt in the hospital after Jack, with the pain bubbling up under the drugs, and the awareness of what had happened smearing the path to oblivion.
    But he could function.
    He'd finished the day, locked up. He'd driven back to The Lodge, walked up to his room. He'd spoken to people. He couldn't remember what or who, but he knew his mouth had moved, words had come out.
    He'd gone up to his room, locked the door. And sat in the winter black.
    What the hell was he doing here, in this place? This cold, dark, empty place? Was he so obvious, so pathetic, that he'd chosen this town of perpetual winter because it so perfectly mirrored what was inside him?
    What did he possibly expect to prove by coming here, pinning on a badge and pretending he still cared enough to do a job? Hiding, that was all he was doing. Hiding from what he was, what he'd been, what he'd lost. But you couldn't hide from what was with you, every minute of every day, just waiting to leap out and laugh in your face.
    He had the pills, of course. He'd brought them with him. Pills for depression, pills for anxiety. Pills to help him sleep, down deep where the nightmares couldn't follow.
    Pills he'd stopped taking because they made him feel less of who he was than the depression or anxiety or insomnia.
    He couldn't go back, couldn't go forward, so why not sink here? Deeper and deeper, until eventually he couldn't, wouldn't, crawl out of the void anymore. He knew, a part of him knew, he was comfortable there, all settled into the dark and the empty, wallowing in his own misery.
    Hell, he could set up housekeeping there, like one of the