“I’m gonna hurl!”

Five rows away, Travis Lindsay could hear Nish moaning into a pillow. He could hear him over the tinny pound of the Walkman hanging loosely off Data’s bent ears as he dozed in the next seat. He could hear him over the clatter of the serving cart and the shouting coming from Derek and Dmitri as they played a game of hearts in the row behind. He could even hear Nish over the unbelievable roar of the engines.

How could anyone sleep at a time like this? Travis wondered, glancing at Data. This was the first time Travis had flown, and it hadn’t been at all what he had imagined. This was no ten-minute helicopter lift at the fall fair; nor was it like the big, smooth passenger jet his father took once a month to business meetings in Montreal. This was three solid hours of howling engines, air pockets, and broken cloud. They were headed, it seemed, for the North Pole. They had all driven to Val d’Or, Quebec, the day before, and from there it was 1,500 kilometres further north by air to their final destination: Waskaganish, a native village on the shore of James Bay.

They were on a Dash 8, an aircraft that Data–who knew everything about computers and National Hockey League statistics, but nothing whatsoever about life–claimed could take off and land in the palm of your hand. This was an exaggeration, of course, but Travis had felt it wasn’t far off when the cramped fifty-seat plane taxied out onto the runway, revved the engines hard once, and seemed to shoot straight off the ground into the low clouds.

Travis had barely taken a second breath by the time the plane rose through the clouds and into the sunshine hidden beyond. It was as if the cabin of the plane were being painted with melted gold. Blinded by the sudden light, Data lowered the window-shade, but Travis had reached across and raised it again. He wanted to see everything.

The pilot had come on the intercom and warned them that the flight might be bumpy and that he’d be leaving the seatbelt sign on. The flight attendant would have to wait before bringing out the breakfast cart.

The coaches and several parents, Travis’s included, were sitting toward the back of the plane. Data’s and Wilson’s and Fahd’s parents were all there. Perhaps they wanted to make sure nothing went wrong this time the way it had in Toronto.

The three boys hadn’t missed a game or practice since Muck let them come back at the end of a month-long suspension over the unfortunate shoplifting incident at the Hockey Hall of Fame. They’d apologized to the team and they’d missed a key tournament, and eventually Muck figured they’d learned their lesson. Travis knew they had. He’d talked to Data on the telephone almost every night during his suspension, and he knew that several times Data had been in tears.

Jesse Highboy was sitting directly across from Travis. Beside him were his father and mother and his Aunt Theresa, the Chief of Waskaganish. No one called her Theresa or even Mrs. Ottereyes–they all called her “Chief.” She had come down to Val d’Or to welcome the Screech Owls, and now she was bringing them all to Northern Quebec for the First Nations Pee Wee Hockey Tournament, which would feature, for the first time, a non-native peewee hockey team: the Screech Owls.

Jesse’s father had set it up. He had met with the team and parents and talked to them about the chance of a lifetime. The hockey would be a part of the trip, he had stressed, but the real reward would come in getting to experience the North and the native culture. All they had to do was get there. The people of Waskaganish were so pleased with the idea that they’d offered to put everyone up, players and parents, free of charge. No wonder so many hands had gone up when Mr. Highboy asked for a show of interest.

The Owls had held bottle drives and organized car washes, and the parents had worked so many bingos that Mr. Lindsay celebrated the end of them by burying his smoke-filled “bingo clothes” in a deep hole behind the garage. The team had read up on the North and were excited about what they had learned: the northern lights, caribou, traplines, the midnight sun.

“It’s spring, not summer!” Willie Granger, the team trivia expert, had pointed out to those Owls, like Nish, who figured they’d never have to go to bed and could stay up all night long. “Day and night are just about equal this time of year–same as where we live.” But no one expected anything else to be the same. No one.

Perhaps, Travis wondered, this was why Nish had been acting so oddly. In the weeks leading up to the trip, Nish had kidded Jesse mercilessly.

“Should I bring a bow and arrow?” Nish had asked. “Will we be living in teepees?”

Some of it had been pretty funny, Travis had to admit, but it left him feeling a bit uneasy. Travis knew that the general rule of a hockey dressing room was “anything goes,” and certainly Jesse had handled Nish’s cracks easily, laughing and shooting back insults, but Travis still found it intriguing that no one other than Nish took such shots.

No one expected teepees. But beyond that they didn’t really know what to expect.

Chief Ottereyes and Air Creebec, the airline that set up the charter, had put on a special breakfast for the Owls. Once the turbulence had settled enough, the flight attendant handed out a breakfast the likes of which no Screech Owl, Jesse Highboy excepted, had ever seen. There were tiny things like tea biscuits that Chief Ottereyes explained were “bannock–just like we cook up out on the trapline.” And there was fish, but not cooked like anything Travis had ever seen at a fish-and-chip shop. This fish was dry and broke apart easily. At first Travis wasn’t too sure, but when he tasted it he thought it was more like candy than fish. “Smoked whitefish,” Chief Ottereyes said. “Smoked and cured with sugar.”

“I got no knife and fork!” Nish had shouted from his seat.

Chief Ottereyes laughed: “You’ve got hands, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Clamp ’em over your mouth, then!” Wilson had called from the other side of the plane.

“This is traditional Cree food!” Chief Ottereyes had leaned forward and told Nish.

“I’ll take a traditional Egg McMuffin, thank you!” Nish called back.

He wouldn’t try the food. Instead, he’d dug down into the carry-on bag he had stuffed beneath his seat and hauled out three chocolate bars and sat stuffing his face with one hand while he used the other to hold his nose as though he couldn’t stand the smell of the smoked fish.

They had just been finishing up this unusual breakfast when the plane rattled as if it had just hit a pothole. The “fasten your seatbelt” light flashed and the pilot had come on the intercom to tell the attendant to stop picking up the trays and hang on, they were about the enter some more choppy air.

 

“I’M GONNA HURL!”

With the plane starting to buck, the attendant was unable to move forward to help Nish in case he was, in fact, going to be sick. Instead, she passed ahead a couple of Gravol air-sickness pills, a juice to wash them down, and a barf bag in case the worst happened. Nish took the pills and soon began moaning.

After a while, when the plane began to settle again, Nish called out, “Can I get a blanket?”

Travis thought Nish was acting like a baby. The attendant handed over a blanket, and the players behind Nish tossed theirs over, too. He wrapped himself tight and pressed his face into the pillow, then closed his eyes and continued to moan.

The pilot took the plane to a higher altitude, and the flight once again smoothed out. Derek and Dmitri’s card game started up again, the attendant completed her collection of the breakfast trays, and Nish moaned on.

Data stood up in the aisle. “I think he needs a few more blankets!” he called out, grinning mischievously. “I can still hear him.”

Blankets and pillows by the dozen headed in Data’s direction. Even Muck, shaking his head in mock disgust, handed his over. Data, now helped by Wilson, stacked them on poor Nish until he could be neither seen nor heard.

“There,” Data announced. “That ought to hold him.”

Nish never budged. Travis figured he must have gone to sleep. He hoped he was able to breathe all right through the blankets, but it was nice not to have to listen to him any longer. Travis turned toward the window and thought about the tournament and how he would play. He felt great these days. Hockey was a funny game: sometimes when you didn’t feel well but played anyway, you had the most wonderful game; sometimes when you felt fantastic, you played terribly.

He tried to imagine himself playing in Waskaganish, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t picture the rink. He couldn’t imagine the village. He could not, for the first time in his life, even imagine the players on the other side. Would they be good players? Rough? Smart? Would they have different rules up here? No, they couldn’t have. He was getting tired, too tired to think…

“…put your seats in the upright position, fasten your tables back, and ensure that all carry-on luggage is safely stowed under the seat in front of you. Thank you.”

The announcement and the sudden sense that something was happening woke Travis with a start. He could hear seats being moved, tables being fastened, excitement rising.

“I can see the village!” Derek shouted from behind.

Travis leaned toward the window. He could see James Bay stretching away like an ocean, the ice along the shore giving way to water that was steel grey and then silver where the sun bounced on the waves.

The plane was beginning to rock again. The plane came down low over the water, then began to bank back toward the village. Travis could see a hundred or more houses. He could see a church, and a large yellow building like a huge machine shed. The rink? He could see the landing strip on the right: one long stretch of ploughed ground.

Just then, they hit a huge air pocket. The plane banked sharply and seemed to slide through the air sideways before righting itself with a second tremendous jolt.

“HELP MEEEEEEEE!!”

Travis could hear Nish screaming over the roar of the engines and the landing gear grinding down into position. No one could go to him. They were landing.

“I’M DYINNNGGG!” Nish screamed from beneath his blankets.

The big plane came down and hammered into the ground, bounced twice, and settled, the engines roaring as the pilot immediately began to brake. The howl was extraordinary.

Nish moaned and cried until the plane slowed and turned abruptly off the landing strip toward an overgrown shed that had a sign, WASKAGANISH, over the doorway. There was a big crowd gathered. It seemed the whole town was out to greet the Screech Owls.

“HELP MEEEE!!” Nish moaned. Travis had never heard such a pathetic sound.

Finally, as the plane came to a halt, the attendant got up and began pulling off Nish’s blankets, digging him out, until his big, red-eyed face was blinking up at her in surprise.

“I thought we’d crashed,” he said, “and I was the only survivor.” Everyone on the plane broke up.

The attendant just shook her head. Travis couldn’t tell if she was amused or disgusted.

“You wouldn’t want to survive,” the Chief told him. “You’d never make it out of the bush alive, my friend.”

Nish looked up, blinking. “I wouldn’t?”

“Of course not,” she said, then reached over and pinched Nish’s big cheek.

“The Trickster eats fat little boys like you!”

Nish looked blank. What was she talking about?