Peter Kline's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Dawn came, and the girl did not leave. Peter had feared she would vanish with the light. Instead she crouched at the cave mouth, chewing a strip of dried root. She was the wild girl who had saved him, the one raised by the animals out here. She tossed him a piece of the root without a word. Peter caught it. He understood the lesson before she showed it. The shark left when he stayed calm. But calm did not fill his belly. If he starved, fear would come, and the shark would find him. The girl led him onto the tundra. She moved like she owned the snow. She stopped at a low ridge and dug with her fingers. She pulled up frozen stems and dark berries and handed them to Peter. He copied her. His fingers went numb, but he filled his arms with green stalks and ripe fruit. He learned which leaves to take and which to leave. For the first time in two days, he was not only running. Then the girl froze. She pressed Peter flat into the snow. A pale cat stepped from behind the ridge. Thick fur, black rings, yellow eyes. A snow leopard, close enough to touch. Peter's heart slammed. Fear rose in his chest like cold water. He knew what that meant. Fear called the shark. The girl gripped his wrist hard. She stared at him, still as stone. She was telling him without words. Calm. Now. Peter closed his eyes. He breathed slow. He thought of the root in his hands, the dull ache in his fingers, nothing more. He made himself empty. The leopard watched them both. Then it turned and padded away across the snow, unhurried. No fin cut the white behind it. The shark had not come. Peter opened his eyes. He had held his calm with the leopard's breath on his face. He had done it alone, without the stump, without her showing him first. Something in him settled. He could survive out here. He could keep the fear down long enough to live. The girl gathered their food. She led him back toward the trees, where a hammock of woven leaves hung in a sheltered hollow. She climbed into it and pulled her knees up. She looked at Peter for a long moment. Then she pointed at him, at the tundra, and shook her head. Peter understood the new problem. She had taught him to survive here. But surviving was not escaping. Calm and food would keep him alive a season, no more. The curse would still hunt him every day of it. Staying calm forever was not a life. He had learned to live with the shark. Now he had to find a way to end it. And the girl who had saved him could not tell him how.