EPILOGUE

A FINAL, FAINT ECHO from my Frobisher days was to reach me a few years later on the northern grapevine.

The report said that Innuk had married a good man and that she and Koolee went off somewhere up the east coast with him when he took a job at an early-warning station.

Nikoo and Polly, the reckless pair, had gone from the bay. Rumour had it that they had taken one risk too many. Caught by a sudden winter storm at the floe edge, the story was that they had been blown out to sea, and like Itoodlu, never seen again, but no one knew for certain whether this account was true or not.

Of Rebecca and the others there was no news.

Nyla was right in predicting that, for me, life would go on into old age and my promise has been kept too, for every now and then over the years, the ghosts have slipped out from the past and I have kept brief company with my friends of long ago.