He was upon me in two strides. His hand went back. I tensed myself to receive the blow. I did not flee. I did not cower. I froze, and waited for him to hit me.
The hand dropped to his side.
“You disgust me,” he said. He turned on his heel and strode to the pitiful pile of sticks. He sent them flying with a violent kick.
“You disgust me!” he repeated. “Only the intelligent can afford to be so judgmental. Who are you to question my decisions? You thickheaded sycophantic piece of snot. I’ve dissected worms with larger brains than yours! You’ve been nothing but a burden to me, an albatross around my neck. . . . God damn your parents for dying and foisting your despicable carcass upon me. ‘It’s all right, sir! I’ll make the fire now, sir.’ You make me sick. Everything about you is repulsive, you nauseating, worthless mealymouthed half-wit!”
Now he was but a lighter shadow among darker ones, a maddened wraith.
“The only use left for you . . . the one useful thing you could do is die. We could live a week off your miserable hide, couldn’t we, John? You would like that, wouldn’t you, Chanler? Tastier than moss. It’s what you really crave, isn’t it? The Outiko has called you. The Outiko has you now. Isn’t that so? Will Henry, be a dear and give him another taste!”
He fell down. One moment he was standing, railing as loudly as the wind that whipped his long, unkempt hair. The next he was on his knees in the snow. His voice fell with him.
“Snap to now, Will Henry. Snap to.”
I did—with the tent. I drove the stakes, tied off the lines, flung the weathered canvas over the poles. Then I dragged Chanler inside while the monstrumologist wallowed in his own malaise, in the spot where he’d collapsed. It was slow work in the dark—and absolute was that dark—slow work with senseless hands and freezing feet. Chanler was so still that I placed my hand beneath his nose to make sure he breathed. I remained inside the tent with him for some time, shivering uncontrollably, huddled against his filthy and stinking blanket, breathing shallowly the foul atmosphere of a dying man. I must have dozed off, for the next thing I knew Warthrop was sitting beside me. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to sleep. I was not afraid of him. I was too hungry, too cold, too empty to feel anything. Terror had given way to a soul-numbing lassitude. I felt nothing—nothing at all.
Gently he pulled my hands into his. His warm lips touched my knuckles. He blew onto my dead flesh. He vigorously rubbed my na**d hand between his. Feeling began to return, and with it a measure of pain, the proof of life. He crossed my hands over my chest and pushed his body against mine, wrapping his long arms around me. I felt the delicious warmth of his breath against my neck.
He’s just using you, I told myself. He’s just using you to keep from freezing.
My parents had died in a fire. They had burned alive. Now I would die of cold. They by fire, I by ice. In the arms of the man who was responsible for both. A man to whom I was nothing but a burden.
You are young, he had told me. You have yet to hear it call your name.
I think now he was wrong. I think it had already called my name.
And now it lay with its arms enfolding me.
THIRTEEN
“The Real Danger”
We awoke to a world of dazzling white. The clouds that had lingered for untold days were torn away by the relentless wind, and dawn arrived on the wings of a sapphire sky. Our few fitful hours of rest had done little to relieve our exhaustion; we stumbled from the tent and surveyed this new world with dead expressions, like scarecrows contemplating the immense autumnal firmament.
Warthrop pointed off to his left. “Do you know what that is, Will Henry?” he asked in a raw voice.
I squinted along the line of his finger. “What?”
“Unless I am very much mistaken, that is what men call the sun. Which rises in the east, Will Henry, which means that way is west, that north, and that south!”
He clapped his hands. The sound was very loud in the sanctuary stillness of the forest.
“Here we go! It’s much colder, but much brighter, isn’t it? We’ll make good time now, and no going in circles this day! Snap to and let’s pack up, Will Henry.” He noticed my staring at him. “What is it? What’s the matter? Don’t you see? We’re going to make it!”
“We’re still lost,” I pointed out.
“No, we are not,” he insisted. “We’ve merely misplaced ourselves!” He forced himself to laugh—a ludicrous mimic of a laugh. “I don’t see you smiling. It is so rare that I attempt witticism, Will Henry—smiling might encourage it.”
“I don’t want to encourage it,” I replied. I kneeled to pull a stake from the ground.
“I see. You’re still smarting from last night. You know I don’t really mean those things I said. I have always attested to your usefulness, Will Henry. You have ever been indispensable to me.”
“It’s what I live for, sir.”
“Now you are being facetious.”
I shook my head. I was sincere.
It was not the carefree stroll the monstrumologist had envisioned. The snow was piled five feet deep in places, drifts as high as my head, into which I would drop to my waist, and I’d be forced to wait helplessly for the doctor to set down Chanler and pull me out. We stopped at midday, shoveling handfuls of snow into our parched mouths, and I endured twenty minutes of Warthrop whining on about snowshoes, wondering if, without doing anything about it, we might be able to fashion some from sticks. The sunlight hardly alleviated the cold; the deep snow made every step more a matter of willpower than strength. We were headed in the right direction, but could still have been scores of miles from civilization. I stopped caring. By midafternoon an enormous lethargy overwhelmed me. All I wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep. I even stopped feeling cold. Indeed, I began to sweat beneath my layers.
I was considering pulling off my heavy wool overcoat when Warthrop called to me, “Look over there, Will Henry.”
Several black specks floated high over the treetops, rotating majestically on the updrafts. Buteos, Sergeant Hawk had called them.
“Snap to now!” said the doctor, making straight for them. “Where there are scavengers, there is carrion, Will Henry, or soon-to-be carrion! We may dine like kings tonight if we hurry!”
And hurry we did, pushing our way through the stubborn snow, our protesting muscles fighting against the creepers and scrub that lay buried beneath the snowpack. We were out of breath and near the end of all endurance when we reached the spot over which the scavengers patrolled—a towering white pine, upon whose upper branches several of their fellows perched, as serene as church deacons clustered about their afternoon repast.