Soul Eater by Michelle Paver Read Free Book Online Page A

a bearable throb."Who are you?" mumbled Torak."Later," grunted the man, "when the wind's anger is spent.""How long will that be?" said Renn."One sleep, many, who knows? Now no more talk!"Torak is twelve summers old, and Fa has been dead for nearly half a moon.Torak has just killed his first roe buck, and to keep Wolf quiet while he's skinning it, he's given him the hooves; but the cub has tired of playing with them, and trots over to poke his muzzle into what Torak is doing.Torak is washing deer gut in the stream. Wolf grabs the other end in his jaws and tugs. Torak tugs back. Wolf goes down on his forepaws and lashes his tail. A game!Torak bites back a smile. "No, it isn't a game." Wolf persists. Torak tells him firmly in wolf talk to let go--and the cub obeys so promptly that Torak topples backward75into the water. Wolf pounces, and now they're splashing about, and Torak is laughing. His father is still dead, but he's no longer alone. He's found a pack-brother.When he gets to his feet, the stream is frozen. Winter has the Forest in its grip. Wolf is full-grown, and trotting off through the glittering trees--trotting off with Fa."Come back!" shouts Torak, but the north wind carries his voice away. The wind is so strong that he can hardly stand, but it has no power to touch Wolf or Fa. Not a breath stirs Fa's long black hair; not a whisper ruffles Wolf's silver fur."Come back!" he cries. They can't hear him. Helplessly he watches them walk away through the trees.He woke with a start. His chest ached with loss. His cheeks were stiff with frozen tears.He was huddled in his sleeping-sack. His clothes were damp inside, and he was so cold that he was beyond shivering. Sitting up, he saw that he was no longer in the snow hole, but in a domed shelter made of blocks of snow. On a flat stone lamp, a sludge of pounded blubber burned with a low orange flame. Above it hung a seal's bladder of melting ice. Judging from the stillness outside, the storm had blown over. The strange man had gone."I had a terrible dream," muttered Renn beside him. Her face was scabbed and blistered; there were dark smudges under her eyes.76"Me too," he said. His face felt sore, and it hurt to talk. "I dreamed that Wolf--"The strange man crawled into the shelter. He was short and stocky, and his seal-hide parka made him look even stockier. Throwing back his hood, he revealed a flat face framed by short dark hair, with bangs across his brow. His eyes were black slits of distrust. "You're from the Far South," he said accusingly."Who are you?" countered Torak."Inuktiluk. White Fox Clan. I was sent to find you.""Why?" said Renn.The White Fox man tossed his head. "Look at you! Your clothes are sopping wet! Don't you know it's not snow that kills, but wet? Here. Get out of them and into these." He tossed them two hide bundles.They were so cold that they didn't argue. Their limbs were as useless as sticks, and it took forever to get undressed. The bundles turned out to be sleeping-sacks of silvery seal fur, each lined with an inner sack of soft birdskin, with the feathers on the inside. These were so warm that they felt better almost at once; but Torak realized with alarm that the White Fox man had disappeared, taking their clothes with him. Now they were completely in his power."He left us some food," said Renn. She sniffed a strip of frozen seal meat.Still in his sleeping-sack, Torak shuffled to the wall,77and peered through a crack.What he'd taken for the roof of the snow hole in which they'd sheltered overnight was in fact a large sled, which now stood upright. Its runners were the jawbones of a whale, its crossbars the antlers of reindeer. A tangled harness disappeared into a smooth white hillock, and into five other hillocks a little farther off. From the middle of each came a thin wisp of steam.Inuktiluk whistled, and the hillocks erupted into six large dogs. They yawned and wagged their tails as they shook off the snow, and Inuktiluk batted away their noses as