Free Melt by Robbi McCoy Page A

been before today. Everything seemed cold and sinister now.
    She continued walking, her feet wet and her boots heavy. Then she caught a flash of color further along, near the shore. She stopped and focused on the spot. There was something orange in the distance, solid bright orange, like fabric or plastic. It wasn’t a natural looking color or shape, but it was too far away to identify. Whatever it was, it was likely a rare sign of human habitation. What if it was a piece of fabric or plastic? It was probably some debris that had washed up on shore. Some careless person’s trash, likely nothing of interest to her.
    She let her gaze wander in that direction as she dipped and climbed along a ridge. The orange object went in and out of view, coming gradually closer.
    On the other hand, she thought, it might not be trash. It might be a sign of a campsite or even a homestead. She stopped walking again, trying to decide what to do. If she went to investigate the mysterious orange blob, she’d take up a lot of extra time on the detour. She’d have to find a way to get down there and, if it turned out to be nothing, get back up again. After her march through the bog, she was in no hurry to leave the comfort of the ridge. But if there was someone there, if she could get help… If there was any chance at all that there was someone there, how could she pass up the possibility?
    She reluctantly altered her plan, looking for a navigable path down to shore and keeping the orange blob in view, hoping it would reveal itself in more detail before she had wasted a trip down to investigate. Unfortunately, she lost sight of it completely while she forged a nonlinear path through the rugged landscape.
    It seemed to take forever to get down to sea level and by the time she was almost there, she was afraid she’d overshot Orange Blob. She looked north and south, trying to get a glimpse of it. Instead, she saw something wonderful up ahead. On the sloping gravel shore stood a house! A yellow house! Wood siding, pitched roof, white-framed windows. Like the houses in Ilulissat. Like the houses in Rodebay. She closed her eyes and reopened them, urgently hoping she wasn’t hallucinating. The house was still there. The sound of barking dogs reached her ears, sounding like the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
    She knew she was nowhere near Ilulissat, that this was merely one isolated dwelling and that many such houses and even towns stood abandoned on the Greenland coast, but the fact of the dogs meant this house was inhabited. Her pulse raced with excitement as she scrambled down the last stretch of rocky slope, feeling a huge sense of relief that she had finally found help for Pippa.

Chapter Eight
     
    Everything had happened so fast: a blur of bodies, blood spattering, screams, a jumble of horrific images that Asa could make only partial sense of. She had seen Bjarni go down, felled by a powerful blow to the head from one of the Skrælings. But she hadn’t been able to get to him before she herself was caught up in the rough arms of one of the attackers. She was flung over a broad shoulder and held fast. She struggled, but made no impression on the mute savage who ran with her to the frozen bay, his feet silent, his breath labored, the musky smell of him flooding her nostrils. She screamed to attract the attention of her friends, but they were in the midst of their own battle and unable to assist.
    The buildings of her village sank behind a hill until she saw nothing but the black smoke rising from the burning chapel. Her kidnapper tied her to the back of his sled with leather straps, then covered her with a heavy bearskin, blocking her view. Amid his yells and the terrifying barking of dogs, the sled jerked and took off across the ice as Asa lay silent and petrified in the womb of her bearskin.
    That had been two days ago. She and her abductor had eventually arrived at a Skræling village where she had been put in a dark and stuffy