Free Kit's Wilderness by David Almond Page A

river. “You’re closer to me than you think,” he said.
    “I know that. I’ve said I know that. So we should get together more, eh?”
    “Together! Aye, mebbe we will. But it’ll be me that chooses the time and chooses the place and we’ll see if Kit Watson’s brave enough to really get together with John Askew.” Askew spat and turned away.
    “It’ll be in deep darkness,” he muttered. “It’ll be where there’s nobody, just John Askew, Kit Watson, and many many of the dead.”
    I watched him fade into the dark. I walked home, heard the distant whispering behind me. The snow crackled under my feet. The little ones had gone, the glowing embers of their fires left behind.
    A shooting star streaked toward Stoneygate’s heart.

 

    H is name was Lak. He was fourteen. He wore the skin of the bear he’d killed. Deerskin was wrapped around his fret. He gripped a stone axe that had once belonged to his grandfather. The baby Dal was wrapped against his chest. The dog Kali lay at his side. He squatted on the crag and gazed down to the river of ice below him. Ice was everywhere, in the valleys, in the cracks of stones, in fissures of the rock, in his hair, in his eyebrows. It covered the world: bare rock above, ice beneath. It glistened and gleamed in the morning sun. Lak narrowed his eyes against the glare. He peered across the world, searching for smoke rising, for a sign of humanity, of his lost family. He saw nothing, just the white ice, the dark rock, the great blue sky, the low yellow sun.
    He called out: “Ayeeeee!”
    His voice came back to him from the ice and rock, it echoed and died away as it traveled down the valley:
    “Ayeeeee! Ayeeeee! Ayeeeee!”
    The dog lifted its head, stared out, ears pricked.
    Lak laughed. “It’s only me,” he said. “Me echoing forever on the ice.”
    He reached into the bearskin, touched the baby, felt her swaddled close against his skin, felt her warm lips, her warm cheek.
    “It will be fine,” he whispered. “Keep calm, my love. It will all be fine.”
    He crawled on the crag. He found the tiny thorny plants that grew sparsely there, the only things that grew now. He picked them, shoved them into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, twisted his face, spat. Bitter-tasting things. Sharp on the tongue, acid in the belly. He took a tiny blossom, the only sweet part of the plant, moistened it with saliva, held it to the baby’s tongue. He felt her lick.
    “Keep calm,” he whispered. “Perhaps there will be berries this day.”
    He held a plant on his palm for the dog. It licked, didn’t eat, turned its hungry eyes forlornly to its master. Lak grunted, stroked the dog. “Perhaps there will be meat for us this day, Kali.”
    He moved on, holding the bearskin close around him, heading south, sheltering the baby, holding the memory of his family within him, feeling the ice in his bones.
    It had happened at night, days back, weeks back. They were in the cave, a shallow defenseless place above a frozen river. It was a stopping-off point, a night’s shelter in the endless journey south. They were all in there, his mother, his father, his brothers, his sisters, crouched together against the wall. They had a meager fire, built from logs he’d helped his father to wrench out of the ice. Lak leaned against his mother, stared at the entrance. His father snored, pale moonlight trickled in. His brothers and sisters slept silent, innocent.
    “What is the bitterness he holds for me?” he whispered.
    “Hush,” his mother whispered.
    “What is it?” he whispered. “As I pulled the timber out I saw such anger gleaming in his eye. And when I stumbled as I carried it he hit me. He took my throat. There was the glare of a beast in him. I saw it again when I sparked the flint, again as the first flames flickered.”
    She stroked his brow. “Hush,” she whispered.
    “What is it?”
    “He was once like you, but the perils of our world have changed him. He sees in you the strength