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warning.”
    The seal only blinked once at me. Then it submerged, and when it did not come up again, I shook my head and followed my trail of strings back to camp.
    I dreamed of fish. I dreamed that the Seal King came to bless us, that he turned into my father, and that when I woke and headed to the lake, the waters were teeming with fish. I grabbed at them as they leaped out of the water, their scales glittering in the sun. They piled along the shore in rows.
    I woke with a start. The sun was very low today. A new chill in the wind reminded me of the approaching blizzard, and I looked to the horizon. The clouds were close enough this morning for me to see their bumps and bruises, their angry curves. Overhead, a lone tern glided, separated from its flock.
    We had to move faster.
    I rode my dogs hard, even as the sky turned darker and the clouds grew thicker behind us. Only when Ataneq slowed in protest, his panting heavy, did I finally snap out of my stupor and let the team rest. I inspected their bright eyes, their frosty noses, and their ice-crusted coats; I watched them chew snow off of their paws.
There are no boundaries between the animals’ spirits and ours,
my father had told me. I had no right to treat them so.
    Still, we had no choice. I pushed them on.
    The second day ended, and the third day began. I set snares in the snow. They caught a few fat lemmings, and I divided the fresh meat among the dogs, saving only a little for myself. Our
maktak
had to last, and the dogs were ravenous. The third day bled into the fourth. The days turned darker, and the nearing storm promised snow. The dogs ran more slowly.
    That night, I watched the dogs shift uneasily in their sleep. Ataneq looked exhausted, but we could rest only a few hours before I had to force the team onward again. I stared up at the night sky, followed the line of the constellations, and tried to believe that I could find our way if the stars disappeared behind the storm.
    I didn’t sleep that night.
    An hour before dawn, I looked up into a gray sky. The sun was gone, hidden behind the clouds. A few fat flurries drifted onto my face. The storm had arrived, shrouding the guiding sky, and the snow was already starting to come fast. I jumped up and started folding my furs away.
    My eyes paused on giant paw prints circling our camp.
    They were enormous, a dozen times larger than Ataneq’s prints, larger than any wolf’s, pushed deeply into the snow and frozen in sculpture. I stared, startled, into the darkness of the open tundra.
    The Great White Bear? Nanuk has come to warn us about the storm.
I squinted and tried to imagine my mother’s spirit looking back, but all I saw was emptiness. I shook my head. Believing in old folktales. I was deluding myself, trying to take comfort in anything. I walked over to Ataneq, who did not want to rise.
    “
Aahali
, poor thing,” I whispered, stroking his head. “We have to keep going.” He looked at me but did not uncurl himself. The other dogs did not want to stir either. I went down the line, checking each of them with a sinking heart. They were exhausted. Even though I knew that they would run if I commanded it of them, they would not be able to go much farther. They would run themselves to death out of loyalty.
    Suddenly, Ataneq’s ears pricked up. He lifted his head and pointed it in the direction of the bleak tundra, and the hackles on his neck rose. A low growl rumbled from his throat.
    “Ataneq?” I whispered.
    Then he leaped to his feet. He began to bark. The other dogs lifted their heads too.
    My eyes followed Ataneq’s line of sight. There, from the mist of falling snowflakes, came a flash of light. Then the howling of other dogs.
    A faint shout drifted over to us.
    It was a language I did not know.
    The memory of the
gusaks
came back to me.
They have come to finish me off.
    I rushed to the sled and grabbed the handlebar. The dogs were already restless, anxious to be on the move. I called out a command