Peter Kline's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The wind changed while Peter still held the food. He looked up. A gray wall of cloud rolled across the tundra. Snow came sideways, thin at first, then thick. The girl dropped from her leaf hammock and grabbed his sleeve. She pointed at the sky, then at the open ground, and shook her head hard. Peter knew that look. This storm would kill them if they stayed in the open. The wild girl who had saved him ran ahead. She knew this land the way Peter knew his own hands. He followed her tracks through the whiteout. His arms were full of berries and green stalks, the food they had spent all morning gathering. He would not drop it. If they lost the food, hunger would come, and hunger would bring fear, and fear would bring the shark. The cold bit through his nasty clothes. His panic rose with it. He pictured the shark's fin cutting the snow behind him. His breath went fast and shallow. The girl spun and slapped his chest, hard. Her brown eyes locked on his. She did not speak. She only breathed slow, in and out, showing him. Calm. Now. Peter matched her breath. The fin in his mind faded. No shadow moved in the snow. She pulled him toward a dark shape in the rock. A cave, low and hidden, its mouth half-buried in drift. They ducked inside. The wind howled behind them and could not reach them. Peter sank against the cold stone wall, gasping. He had held his fear through the storm. He had kept the shark blind. The cave was not empty. Rough stone stools stood in a circle near the back, worn smooth by someone's hands long ago. A loose pile of weathered rocks blocked most of the entrance. Someone had lived here. Peter set his food down on the nearest stool. Berries and green stalks and one bent orange root spilled across the stone. It was enough for days. The girl worked fast. She dragged more rocks across the cave mouth until only a small gap let the wind whistle through. Peter helped her. The stones were heavy and his fingers screamed, but the wall grew. Soon the storm was a sound, not a threat. They had shelter. They had food. They would live through the blizzard. Peter caught his breath and looked at the girl. She sat on a stone stool, chewing a berry, watching him. She had led him here. She had known the cave was waiting. But he saw something new in her face. She glanced at the rock wall, then at him, and her eyes narrowed. She had blocked the entrance to keep the storm out. Now they were sealed in together, in the dark, for as long as the blizzard lasted. And she did not look like someone at ease. She looked like someone deciding whether she still wanted him here.