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you to pretend something like composure, but the horror was always there, and the disbelief, and the shock. It still amazed Liam to see how much blood there was in the human body. He opened his eyes and looked around him.
    Kulukak was a small village of two hundred, mostly Yupik souls. It sat on the northwest side of Kulukak Bay, a circle of water eight miles across and ten miles north to south, enclosed by rolling hills and thick green vegetation that reminded Liam of Puget Sound without Seattle. It was calm and still, not a ripple marring the surface of the bay, each hill and tree and rock and narrow beach represented on that surface with mirrorlike fidelity. A low-lying mist clung to the tops of the trees, which reflection gave the scene an eerie black and white look, and a still, moody, almost sullen air.
    There was no road to Kulukak, and the bay froze over in winter, so the only means of year-round transportation in and out was by air. As an indication of its importance to the life of the village, a gravel airstrip had been carved out of the center of the tiny settlement. There was an orange wind sock on a pole stuck in the ground at one end, today hanging limp, inert. On the other side of the strip was a hangar, and inside it a road grader equipped with a twelve-foot blade.
    A few of the homes were built of aged logs, the rest of prefabricated materials shipped up from Outside in a kit, green and blue and cream siding beneath shallow-pitched corrugated metal roofs. A big building set apart from the others on a small hill behind the village had dark blue siding and the American and Alaskan flags hanging out front. Probably the school. The building was too big for a post office in a village this size. The Postal Service probably contracted out to one of the locals, who would run the post office out of his or her living room, as was the practice in the smaller Bush villages.
    The boat harbor was a quarter the size of Newenham's, with one dock extending from the narrow strip of gravel and sand that formed Kulukak's waterfront, one gangway descending from the dock and slips enough for forty boats, most of them occupied today. The boat he was on was tied up to the slip farthest from the dock, the closest boat moored three spaces distant. The rest of the fleet seemed to be pressing against the sides of the harbor, keeping as far as they could get from theMarybethia.
    He realized he was stalling. A soft croak came from above and behind him. He whipped around and beheld a raven sitting on top of one of the light poles illuminating the boat slips. “What the hell? Liam said involuntarily. “What are you doing here?
    The raven cocked his gleaming black head. His black beady eyes met Liam's, unblinking, as he let loose with a stream of even softerkuk-kuk-kuks.
    There was a stir behind him and a few muttered phrases. He dropped his hand from the mast and stood erect. It couldn't be. Newenham was fifty miles to the northwest; there was no way that this was the same raven that had been haunting his steps since his arrival at his new posting. He turned his back on the shiny black incubus and tried not to flinch when a long, derisive caw came from the top of the light pole.
    Five men were standing on the slip, waiting, and he turned to meet their eyes, one at a time. All of them bore traces of at least a partial Yupik heritageone had the high, flat cheekbones, another the thick, straight ebony hair, a third the narrow, tilted eyes. Four of them had the seamed faces of elders, age lending them at least the illusion of wisdom and authority. The fifth was younger, a short, thickset man in his mid-forties with steady dark eyes. He didn't look friendly. The other four looked, not unfriendly, exactly, but more like they were reserving judgment.
    Liam doffed his cap and bent his head as a gesture of respect to the authority of the elders. “My name is Liam Campbell, of the Alaska State Troopers, Newenham post. He waited. It never helped to