Ashore and exposed to the wind, drowning seemed kinder. And now Ta-se-ho was like a madman, driving them on, making them run, walk, and run again, over and over, along the exposed shore. To their left, the inland sea went on, apparently forever, in an unbroken snowfield. To their right, atop bluffs that lowered over them, were snow-covered trees and naked black spruce that went on to the horizon, a wilderness of trees that seemed to cover all the earth.

When Nita Qwan thought he must be near death, the old man stopped them in a cove that offered some protection from the wind and pulled the cover off his own sled. He took the pot from his sled and carried it to an exposed rock at the base of the tall sand and stone bluffs and placed it gently there.

Almost instantly, it began to give more heat. Nita Qwan fell to his knees.

“Strip him,” Ta-se-ho said gruffly.

“My hands are still warm!” said Gas-a-ho in wonder.

“The greatest gift the Lady could give.” Ta-se-ho did not smile. “He’s far gone. He went all the way in.”

Nita Qwan heard them only from a distance.

He merely knelt and worshipped the warmth.

The wind rose, and icy rain began to fall. They stripped him and only then did the two Outwallers begin to collect materials for a shelter.

Unbelievably, as soon as Nita Qwan was naked, he was warmer—much warmer. He began to wake up.

Ta-se-ho was tying gut to a stake. He looked over. “Did you see the spirit world?” he asked.

Nita Qwan was having trouble speaking. But he nodded.

Ta-se-ho shook his head. “I dreamed all this. You do not die.”

Nita Qwan looked at the old man. “Do you?” he asked.

The old man looked away.

But by sunset, all three of them were warm enough, and dry. A roaring fire lit the edge of the coast and the bluffs behind them, and they made a chimney of hides and the fire came up through it, drying Nita Qwan’s clothes and moccasins.

The next day they killed a deer. Ta-se-ho tracked the buck, and Nita Qwan put an arrow into him at a good distance, earning him much praise from the other two. The old hunter nodded.

“In this snow, I couldn’t run down any of the deer’s children,” he said. He walked with a spear in his hand, but he never seemed to use it as anything but a walking staff. It was a fine spear, made far away by a skilled smith, and the old man had taken it as a war prize in his youth.

Like the spear, the deer was thin, but the meat was delicious, and they ate and ate and ate.

“How much farther to the People?” Gas-a-ho asked.