Page 2 of The Bone Doll
Syra tilted her head and paused. “I hope there are more fish than last time.”
“The more you worry,” said Raya, “the more unlucky you are.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Syra said.
Raya gave her a wan smile. Like everyone in the Lame Wolf clan, she was thinner than she had been before winter, her cheek bones angling sharply out. “It might be. You never know.”
Syra snorted, shaking her head. “The fish won’t catch themselves. Andnyebyaneeds the food.”
They didn’t discuss their mother’s lingering cough, or how she had lost more weight than anyone else this winter. They had spoken about it enough this past season. So instead, they turned to their fishing. Stepping onto the frozen river, Syra and her siblings broke the ice with their harpoons. Raya picked up shards of ice and flicked them and her older brother and sister. Syra knocked her with the blunt end of her harpoon,while Ngarka ignored them both and pulled the bobber from the narrow hole they’d made. Carefully but quickly, he extracted the net. A half-dozen muksun and a yellow-speckled pike flapped around, trapped.
“See?” Ngarka offered a gap-toothed smile. “More than last time.”
Syra cocked an eyebrow at her sister. “My worrying isn’t unlucky.”
“You got lucky this one time,” Raya protested.
Stripping their gloves, the siblings delicately peeled the fish from the net and then dropped them in a canvas bag. All the while, Raya muttered insults about how slow her siblings were at freeing the fish.
Her bare hands burning from the cold, Syra plucked the final muksun from the net just as her sister whistled low under her breath. “Munku is coming.”
“Someone is in trouble,” Ngarka said.
The Lame Wolf Pathfinder, the clan’s leader, sat in her sled, drawn by a pair of reindeer with bells on their harnesses. Munku tapped her reindeers sides and rumps to steer her sled to the very edge of the river, where she stopped and stood. Munku was a giantess of a woman, who crowned herself with the preserved head of a gray wolf, its hide cascading down her back. All who beheld her paused.
“Syra, come with me,” she demanded.
Syra just stood there. The Pathfinder had better, strongervidutanathan her to serve as advisors. Syra couldn’t think of any good reason that Munku wanted her.
Ngarka elbowed her, muttering from the corner of his mouth, “Go.”
Swallowing, Syra dropped the fish into the bag and then staggered across the river. She opened her mouth to speak, but Munku cut her off.
“I need you at camp.” The Pathfinder gestured to the sled. “Now.”
You asked questions of Munku sparingly, and you argued only in desperate situations. So, Syra sat in the back of the Pathfinder’s sled, pulling her knees to her chest. Munku tapped her reindeers on the rump.
They rode across melting snow and slick mud back to the campsite. About 60 Lame Wolf clan members lived in tenmyas, conical tents made of reindeer fur and wood. They were transportable and easy to set up, perfect residences for following the reindeer herds as they migrated south in the winter and north in the summer. Now, the camp was alive with men and women chipping ice off their belongings, or chopping firewood. A cloud-white dog chased alongside Munku’s sled for a moment, barking at the reindeer, but it eventually ran off.
Munku’smyawas the tallest and widest, marked with wolfskulls that dangled above the doorflap. She had killed at least two of them this winter when the starving beasts tried to eat the clan’s reindeer. Munku had then skinned, boiled, and eaten them. Yet another reason why any Sarnok – Lame Wolf clan or not – thought twice before crossing the woman.
“Inside.” Munku left the sled and crawled into hermya.
Following her into the tent, Syra was greeted by the smell of heavy smoke and boiling fish so strong that her eyes watered. Next, she noticed a man with hair like orangebush lichen, sitting on the wolfskin rug. She bit back a curse. That Ruthenian. Hehadfound them. And went straight to their Pathfinder? She sucked on her teeth. If he had gotten her in trouble with Munku, she would personally blacken both his eyes.
Loosening the top button on her coat, Munku sat on a low, cushioned stool before her hearth. “Sit, Syra. This will take awhile.”
Syra knelt. That man approached her in the middle of the night and asked to share her company. Like a pervert. She should have gutted him. Because now, who knew what he had told Munku? That she had been rude to him – a guest? Well, he deserved it.
“This is Viktor Igorevich.” Munku gestured to the orange-haired Ruthenian, who sat with his legs folded in front of him and wore an entirely innocent expression. “He comes on behalf of a Ruthenian lord, seeking our aid.”
I can’t help him.Syra kept her mouth shut and refused to look at the Ruthenian.Viktor.
“A forest spirit has broken free of its domain and now threatens to destroy human homes,” Munku summarized. “Viktor seeks a means to subdue this spirit and return it to its woods.”
A cold, hard lump settled in Syra’s stomach.
The Pathfinder held up her hand before Syra had a chance to speak. “I’m not asking you to give it up. I’m asking you to help him.”
