Dagna Boulderback's Arc

Chapter 4 of 17

Mikhael was still bent over the fresh hides when Dagna felt the air change. She lifted her head. Warm wind slid through the carved doorway of her shelter. It was the same soft wind that had melted the vault in the peaks. Now it had found her. She pressed her palm to the sealed hide on the rack. The fat coating had gone soft. A bead of grease slid down the leather. She rubbed her thumb across a mark. The charcoal smeared under the melted fat. "The wind's turned," she said. "It's ruining the hides." Mikhael dropped his pen. He touched the rack and pulled back sticky fingers. "They're sweating. All of them." Dagna's heart stumbled in her chest. If the wind kept coming, the marks would blur into black smears. Every symbol she had not yet taught him would die on the leather. She had one winter. She could not lose the record too. "We move them," she said. "Away from the door. Deeper in the stone, where the cold holds." Mikhael lifted the whole stack of marked hides. Dagna gathered the loose charcoal pens. She led him toward the back of the shelter, where the rock stayed cold and dry. Her legs shook. She leaned on the wall and kept walking. A low shape rose from the shadows near the rear wall. A wolf, thick with white winter fur, stood and watched them come. It did not growl. Its yellow eyes tracked the swaying hides in Mikhael's arms. Mikhael froze. "Dagna." "Stand still," she said. She had seen the wolf before. It sheltered here on the cold nights and never troubled her. It was calm now. "It won't touch us. Set the hides down. Slow." Mikhael lowered the stack against the cold stone. The wolf stepped closer, sniffed the leather, then turned and lay across the mouth of the little hollow. It faced the warm doorway, ears up. Dagna knelt beside the moved hides. The stone here was dry. The fat had already begun to firm again in the cold. She checked the largest hide. The smeared mark had stopped spreading. She wiped the excess grease with her sleeve. The symbol still held its shape. "We caught it," she said. Her voice cracked. "Most of them are whole." But she made herself look at the top hide. Three marks had run together into one black blot. She could still read them. Mikhael could not, and she had not taught him these yet. She stared at the ruined patch and understood the new count against her. The hides were safe from the wind now. But the wind had shown her the truth. The leather would not last her one winter untouched. Damp, heat, handling—each would eat at the marks faster than she could teach them. "Bring the pens," she told Mikhael. "Tonight you copy. We can't only teach the marks now. We have to make more of them, before these fade."