Peter Kline ran from home two nights ago. Now he crouched in a stone cave on a frozen tundra, and a shark was hunting him. Not a real shark. A gray bull shark with black eyes, cursed onto him by the witch who caught him in the woods. She had touched his forehead and laughed. "Your worst fear will chase you," she said. Since then the shark swam through the air like water, ready to survive out here. The shark found him at dusk. Its fin cut across the snow outside the cave mouth. Peter pressed his back to the cold wall. His nasty clothes were stiff with frost. He was small, and the shark was longer than three of him. It knew he was inside. It circled the entrance, mouth open, teeth like white saws. Peter knew he could not fight it. He grabbed a heavy stone and hurled it. The rock bounced off the shark's snout and did nothing. The shark surged forward, jaws snapping shut where his leg had been a second before. Peter scrambled deeper into the dark. The cave narrowed. Soon there would be nowhere left to run. Then a small hand grabbed his wrist. A girl pulled him sideways into a crack he had not seen. She was younger than him, barefoot, with leaves tangled in her wild hair. Scratches covered her arms. She smelled like pine and dirt. She was the wild girl he had glimpsed twice near the trees, the one raised by the animals out here. "Quiet," she whispered. She pointed at the shark, then at her own eyes, then made a slow wave with her hand. Peter did not understand. She rolled her eyes and dragged him toward a hollow tree stump wedged in the cave wall. She shoved him inside it. The shark rammed the stump. The wood cracked but held. Peter's heart slammed. The girl crouched in front of the stump and did something strange. She went completely still, like a stone. She stopped breathing loud. She made no fear at all. The shark slowed. Its black eyes searched the cave. Peter understood at last. The curse fed on fear. The shark hunted the smell of it. He forced his breath to slow. He thought of nothing. He made himself empty and calm, the way the girl showed him. The fin drifted. The shark turned in a slow circle. Then it swam out through the cave mouth and vanished into the falling snow. The tundra went silent. Peter climbed out of the stump, shaking. The girl watched him without a smile. She had saved his life, but she had not spoken one real word. Peter now knew the rule of his curse. Feed it fear and it hunts. Stay calm and it leaves. He also knew this could not last forever. Calm would break. And the girl who saved him was a stranger who might leave at dawn.

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.

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.

The rock wall held the storm out and held Peter in. He sat on the cold stone and stared at the small gap the wind whistled through. There was no way past it fast. If the shark came now, he could not run. He could only sit in the dark and wait to be found. That thought made his chest go tight. His breath sped up. He pictured the fin cutting the snow outside. The gap in the rocks was too small for the shark, but not too small for his fear to slip out and call it. Sweat ran cold on his back. He pressed his hands flat on the stone stool and tried to slow down. He could not. The girl watched him from her seat. She had saved him twice now. She had taught him the shark's one weakness. But her eyes were not soft. She looked at the rock wall she had built, then at him, and Peter understood. She was thinking about the gap too. She was thinking she could still take it down and leave him sealed inside alone. "You breathe wrong," she said. Two words, flat. She did not move to help. "I can't," Peter said. His voice shook. "It's coming. I know it's coming." "Then it comes for you," she said. "Not me." She stood and set one hand on a loose rock near the top of the wall. Her meaning was plain. She would open a gap, slide out, and pile the stones behind her. Peter would be bait, and the shark would tear through the wall to reach his fear. Peter looked at her hand on the rock. He understood then that no one would calm him this time. The girl would not slap his chest and breathe for him. If he wanted to live, he had to do it himself, alone, right now. He closed his eyes. He shut out the whistling gap and the girl's hand. He counted his breath the way she had taught him on the tundra. In. Hold. Out. His heart slammed. He did it again. In. Hold. Out. The fin in his mind grew thin. Slower. The cold stone under his hands felt solid and real. In. Hold. Out. The shadow faded. No shape moved beyond the rocks. The wind was only wind. When Peter opened his eyes, the girl still stood by the wall. But her hand had come off the rock. She was watching him breathe, and something in her face had changed. He had beaten the panic himself, in a sealed cave, with no one to lead him. She saw it. "Now you keep yourself," she said. She sat back down. Peter breathed. The shark had not come. He had held the fear alone, in the one place he could not run. He was still trapped in the dark with her. But now he knew a colder thing. She would not save him again. From here, he saved himself.