Breakaway: Clan of the Ice Mountains by C.S. Bills Read Free Book Online

Ubantu was first to notice a change in the clouds, and the clan got their tents erected just as the first stinging ice fell. As the storm rolled by, Attu, Suka, and some of the other young hunters spent the afternoon playing games in one of the tents as if they were children again. But most of the days were long treks, wearying travel over the flat ice in the never-ending glare of the sun slanting through deep blue sky.
    “I’ve never seen this many nuknuk holes this far from land,” Attu’s father said as the two of them walked carefully amid the several holes within sight, searching for one that looked most recently used. They were hunting ahead of the clan, and Attu’s father had just marked another thin patch of ice near an old nuknuk hole with one of his message stones and string.
    Attu looked down at his own parka. Every Nuvik carried message stones and hide strings. The stones and strings, when set into a small hunk of ice, communicated with other clan members. The message depended on the type of stones used and how the strings were connected to them. Attu had marked so many areas of danger with his round stones in the last few days he had run out and started using flat time stones instead. The clan would understand and avoid these areas of thin ice.
    Attu could see by the gleam in his father’s eyes that dangerous as it was, he was enjoying being out on the ice again with his spear in hand. The coiled rope attached to it bounced as Ubantu walked.
    “The ice is so thin here,” Attu said. He sidestepped an area that his spear butt had tested as weak. “It should be much thicker. We’re still a day’s journey from that ridge of rock we’ve been walking toward.”
    Attu adjusted his slitted goggles and looked out over the ice toward the land they were headed for, a dark outcropping barely visible on the horizon.
    “I’m beginning to think we should believe Elder Tovut-”
    Ubantu motioned with his hand and Attu froze. His father stared at a hole, larger than the rest, a few spear lengths away and off to one side. A bubble broke on the surface. A nuknuk had just raised its snout above the water line to take in a breath, and might still be hovering just below.
    Moving soundlessly across the ice, Attu’s father inched his way closer to the hole, careful to keep his shadow from crossing over the water as he drew near its edge. He slipped into a crablike crouch as he moved still closer. Attu marveled at how his father could move with such stealth even with a bad leg. The walking his father had been forced to do seemed to be strengthening it. Almost without realizing it, Ubantu had become a hunter again. Attu’s breath quickened. He balanced himself, ready to run to his father’s aid if he speared game.
    Ubantu stopped so close to the edge of the hole Attu feared his father might crack the ice and fall in. But Attu kept silent. Ubantu raised his spear so slowly the motion was virtually undetectable. Attu knew that herein lay the real power his father had as a hunter: his patience.
    Time passed. Attu’s legs began to grow cold and his fingers numb, but he didn’t move. He knew the nuknuk below could see the darkness of his shape through the ice in this bright sunlight, and any movement he made would sound below.
    Ubantu held his spear close to his ear, the point aimed at the hole before him, as motionless as the hunks of ice that surrounded him and the rocks far to the distance behind him. Ubantu had become part of the light and shadow of this landscape, and Attu could no longer detect any motion of breathing in the long fur around Ubantu’s parka hood near his mouth. Ubantu had slipped his goggles off, and his eyes were mere slits in his face, steady, blinking only rarely. It was as if his spirit had left his body behind, and it had frozen there.
    Attu, like most of his people, could sense when another living creature was near. But somehow his father could make even his spirit blend into the wind and the sky