Time passed strangely on Meighen Island.
How much of it, Sam had no idea.
The sun never seemed to fully leave. It only drifted, dimmed, vanished behind cloud, then returned again as if nothing had happened. There was no proper morning, no proper evening, no normal rhythm for her mind to hold onto. There was only waking, sleeping, hunger, cold, and the long white emptiness around her.
So she stopped counting.
Not that she had much to count with.
After her first miserable meal by the shore, the days became less like days and more like fragments. She slept when her body gave out. She woke when her stomach hurt badly enough to drag her back. Sometimes the seals were there, warm and heavy around her. Sometimes they were gone, slipped back into the dark water to hunt, leaving her alone with the sound of ice shifting and the endless pale sky.
By some miracle, she survived.
Not well.
Not comfortably.
But she survived.
Her first shelter was little more than a shallow hollow between stones near the coastline, close enough to the seals that they sometimes returned to her, and close enough to the water that food might occasionally appear. It was barely a home. A ring of small rocks, a wall against the worst of the wind, and above it a crooked roof made from driftwood she found trapped in the broken ice.
Driftwood.
Actual wood.
The first time she saw it, she nearly cried.
There wasn't much, and most of it was old, warped, and half-rotted from who knew how many years locked in ice and sea. But it was wood. Something that was not stone, snow, moss, or seal vomit. Something she could use.
Piece by piece, with mittened hands and far too much effort, she dragged what she could find back to her little hollow and laid it across the top. It didn't make a proper roof. It didn't keep out all the wind. It certainly didn't make the place comfortable.
But it made a shadow.
It made a space.
It made something that was almost hers.
Inside, she curled up on herself and held Neo close in her right mitten, the little Lightstone pulsing gently against her hand. It kept the worst of the cold away. Not all of it. Never all of it. But enough that she didn't slip back into that terrible numbness every time she slept.
Neo became her first rule.
Don't lose Neo.
Don't drop Neo.
Don't let Neo go dark.
Everything else came after.
Food was worse.
The seals helped, in their own disgusting way. Sometimes one of them brought up fish. Sometimes scraps. Sometimes things Sam preferred not to identify. She learned not to ask questions. She learned to eat slowly, to swallow what she could, and to stop thinking about where it had been before it reached her.
It was awful.
It kept her alive.
Barely.
She drank melted snow and water warmed by Neo. She tried moss once, decided immediately that desperation had limits, and did not try again. Once, after watching a seal nurse its pup, she stared for a long time, considered the full horror of her situation, and eventually accepted that survival had already taken most of her dignity anyway.
She hated that it helped.
She hated more that she needed it.
Her body did not grow.
Not in any way she could see.
She remained small, fragile, and weak, a baby-shaped thing with Sam's memories trapped inside it. Every day she worried that this was it. That the lack of real food, the cold, the energy she kept spending, all of it was quietly ruining whatever future body she was supposed to have.
The thought scared her.
So she avoided it.
Instead, she studied the light.
There was nothing else to do.
At first, her power seemed impossible to understand. It was not like moving a muscle. Not like breathing. Not like anything she had known before. But with time, stillness, and too much loneliness, she began to find patterns.
If she closed her eyes and focused inward, she could feel it.
The second heart.
The core of white light wrapped around her real heart, beating with a rhythm that was almost hers, but not quite. When she calmed herself, she could draw from it. Carefully. Slowly. She could let that warmth move through her chest, down her arm, into her hand, and into Neo.
The first time she moved it into her eyes, the world changed.
Only for a moment.
Only barely.
But enough.
The air filled with faint threads of light, most too weak to see clearly. One stretched from her chest to Neo, thin and white and alive, like a strand of glowing spider silk. It trembled whenever Neo pulsed, and when she reached toward it with her mind, she could feel the little stone answer.
Then her vision blurred, her head spun, and she nearly passed out.
After that, she used the eye trick carefully.
Mostly.
The seals became her practice.
They didn't mind. In fact, most of them seemed perfectly happy to lie there while she placed her tiny mittened hands against their sides and stared with glowing eyes she couldn't see herself.
Their bodies appeared to her in colors.
At first she didn't understand what the colors meant. Some parts were bright and rich, others duller, stained, or shadowed. But after enough touching and watching, she began to understand.
Bright meant healthy.
Dim meant old hurt.
Dark meant something worse.
The large seal—the one she had mentally named Big Guy because she was too tired to be creative—carried scars all along one side. Something had bitten him long ago, tearing into the flesh near his tail. The wound had healed badly. Not infected, not fresh, but wrong. The shape of him there was uneven, the colors muted and damaged compared to the rest of his body.
Sam tried to fix it.
The first attempt did almost nothing and left her dizzy for hours.
The second did a little more.
By what she guessed was two days later, she had managed to restore maybe two centimeters of damaged tissue. Skin. Fat. Muscle. A tiny amount, barely enough to matter on a creature that large.
But it had worked.
That changed everything.
She could heal.
Not just warm.
Not just comfort.
Heal.
The knowledge should have made her excited. Instead, it frightened her, because every time she did it, she felt the cost. The light did not come from nowhere. It came from her. From something inside her that recovered slowly, fed by rest and food and whatever life her small body could spare.
And her body did not have much to spare.
Still, she kept doing it.
A little at a time.
For Big Guy. For the smaller seals. For Neo.
Later, she made another stone.
It was an accident at first, then a project, then almost a disaster.
She chose a tiny pebble from the shore, smaller than Neo had been, smooth and pale beneath a crust of frost. The moment she tried to push light into it, she understood the problem. Size mattered. The larger the stone, the more energy it needed, and she had almost none to give. Even this pebble resisted her like a cup too small and too brittle to hold what she was pouring.
It took a whole day.
By the end, her head throbbed, her limbs felt hollow, and her thoughts had gone slow and strange. But the pebble changed. Its dull gray presence brightened, whitened, and formed a tiny pulsing core of its own.
A second Lightstone.
Sam held it in both hands, swaying with exhaustion.
"…okay," she whispered. "Neo means one, so you…"
She blinked at the little crystal, trying to think through the fog.
"Duo," she decided at last. "You're Duo."
Duo gave one faint pulse.
Then Sam fainted.
She dropped it.
The sound it made when it hit stone was tiny and awful.
A sharp little crack.
Sam woke only moments later, heart hammering, and found the new stone split by a hairline fracture. For a second, she thought she had killed it. The thought hit harder than it should have.
"No, no, no…"
But Duo did not go dark.
Its little core trembled, then pulsed weakly. Light gathered along the crack, thin and careful, and over the next several hours the fracture slowly closed. Not perfectly at first, but steadily, as if the stone was healing itself from the inside out.
Sam watched the entire time.
After that, she kept Duo tucked close inside her suit, near her belly, while Neo stayed in her right mitten.
Two stones.
Two little heartbeats besides her own.
It was not enough.
But it was more than nothing.
As the days passed, she fed them whenever she could. After eating. After sleeping. After lying still long enough for the hollow feeling in her body to ease. She poured most of her energy into Neo, because Neo was stronger, older, and warmer. Duo received less, but enough to grow.
Not much in size.
That changed slowly.
But their presence expanded.
At first, Neo's warmth held close around her body. Then around the hollow. Then farther. The snow near her shelter softened and retreated. The gravel appeared beneath it. Frost vanished from stones that should have been locked in ice.
The bubble grew.
Ten meters.
Twenty.
Then more.
By the time she realized what was happening, the shoreline around her shelter had become a strange little pocket of impossible weather. The air there still felt cold, but not deadly. The ground remained mostly clear. Moss spread between stones. Tiny green things pushed up where nothing green should have been growing in winter.
Small flowers appeared one day.
Sam stared at them for a very long time.
"…that's probably not normal."
The seals loved it.
More came.
At first it was only the original five, then a few more, drawn from the water by warmth, safety, or whatever strange feeling Neo and Duo gave off. They gathered along the shore, basked in the light, slept in lazy piles, argued loudly, hunted, returned, and slowly turned Sam's little stretch of coastline into something like a colony.
They were healthier near the stones.
She could see it when she used her light-sight. Their colors brightened. Old hurts softened. Their bodies carried warmth better. Even the pups seemed stronger, louder, more curious.
Sometimes Sam felt proud.
Not in a grand way.
Not like some chosen hero.
More like someone who had managed to keep a campfire alive through a storm.
It was small.
It mattered.
But winter did not stop.
Beyond the growing circle of warmth, Meighen Island remained brutal. Snow fell and hardened. Ice closed back around the coast. The wind returned in long, bitter waves, scraping across the island and piling white against every stone. The world outside her little radius became harsher, not gentler, as if the Arctic had noticed the insult and pressed harder in response.
Sam mostly watched.
She had little strength for anything else.
She slept on hard stone beneath her bad driftwood roof. She woke to hunger. She ate what the seals gave her. She drank melted snow. She practiced. She healed. She fed the stones. Then she slept again.
Some sleeps were so deep that, when Sam woke, she wondered if she had crossed the line between living and dying without noticing.
Still, each time, Neo pulsed in her right hand.
Duo answered faintly against her left.
And Sam opened her eyes.
So she kept going.
Until the day the seals screamed.
She woke all at once, her small body jerking under the driftwood roof as the peaceful sounds of the shore exploded into panic. Seals barked and cried outside, heavy bodies slapping against gravel as they scrambled for the water. Flippers scraped stone. Somewhere nearby, one of them let out a sharp, awful wail that cut straight through the fog of sleep.
Sam's eyes snapped open.
"What—?"
Another sound answered.
Not a seal.
A dog.
It barked close enough to make the roof tremble.
For half a second, Sam's mind refused to understand it. Then something shoved against the driftwood above her, and frost, dust, and old splinters rained down across her face.
A furry muzzle pushed into the entrance of her little hollow. A black nose twitched. Teeth flashed. Then the dog barked directly at her, loud and excited, its paws scraping against the stones as it tried to force its way inside.
Sam scrambled backward as far as the shelter allowed.
"Whoa—hey—!"
The dog barked again, tail lashing somewhere outside. It was thick-furred and broad-faced, built for the cold, but not like any pet she knew. It looked rougher than that. Leaner. Wilder. Something between a sled dog and a wolf, with dark alert eyes and hunger under its ribs.
Another dog appeared behind it.
Then a third.
Their shadows shifted over the cracks in her little roof as they circled the shelter, sniffing, whining, scratching, barking over each other in wild confusion.
Sam clutched both mittened hands close to her chest.
Neo warmed in her right palm.
Duo pulsed faintly in her left.
The first dog hesitated.
It sniffed harder, then whined, as if whatever it smelled did not fit any rule it knew.
Before Sam could move, the roof was pulled away.
Light poured in.
Cold air spilled over her, and she flinched, blinking up through the sudden brightness. Above her stood a huge figure wrapped in furs, one hand gripping the edge of the driftwood roof, the other holding a spear tipped with stone or bone.
For one impossible moment, Sam only stared.
A person.
An actual person.
The figure stared back.
Then he reached down, caught the back of her bunny suit by the collar, and lifted her out of the hollow.
Sam squeaked.
She dangled in the air, tiny and stiff, both hands tucked against herself as Neo and Duo pulsed unseen inside her mittens. The man brought her closer, and she saw him properly: a broad, weather-darkened face, narrow dark eyes, black hair mostly hidden beneath a fur hood, and a short, rough beard clinging to his chin. His cheeks were hollow, his lips cracked, his expression hard from cold and hunger.
Then his eyes focused on her face.
On the pale skin.
The violet eyes.
The white suit.
The strands of platinum hair slipping from beneath her hood.
The man gasped.
He shouted something sharp and panicked, then dropped her.
Sam hit the floor of her broken shelter with a painful thump.
"Agh!"
She landed on her backside, eyes watering as the three dogs sprang back and barked in confusion. The man stumbled away too, spear lifting between them as if he had just pulled a spirit out of the ground by mistake.
Sam sat there, stunned and sore, in the open ruin of her shelter.
Then she saw the others.
Three men stood directly in front of her with the dogs, all wrapped in heavy furs patched together from hide and sinew. Their hoods framed dark hair, wind-burned skin, and oval faces with narrow eyes and high cheekbones. Two had thin mustaches. One had only a sparse line of dark hair above his lip. All of them looked hungry.
Not normal hungry.
Old hungry.
The kind that had lived in their bones for a while.
Their clothing was well-made for what it was, layered against the Arctic cold, but everything else about them looked painfully bare. Spears. Clubs. Stone blades. Packs made from wood, hide, bone, and cord, some still on their backs, others dropped in the snow nearby as if abandoned in the rush of the hunt.
No sleds.
No bows.
No metal.
No plastic.
No radios.
No rescue gear.
Nothing modern.
Sam stared at them, and for one absurd second her mind supplied the only comparison it could manage.
A gang of homeless Genghis Khans with spears and starving dogs.
The thought was so ridiculous she almost laughed.
Then the seal screamed again.
Her head snapped right.
Not far away, near the edge of the warm clearing, two more hunters stood over one of the seals. One held a spear already driven into its body. The other had a club raised.
The seal thrashed weakly on the gravel.
Sam's breath caught.
"No—!"
The club came down.
Once.
Hard.
The seal went still.
For a moment, Sam couldn't move at all.
Then she was already climbing, scrambling out over the low stones of her broken shelter with clumsy, desperate movements. The three men shouted. One of the dogs barked. Someone stepped toward her.
She ignored all of it.
"No! Stop!"
Her voice broke high and small as she stumbled across the gravel toward the seal. The two hunters near the body recoiled the moment they saw her coming, both stepping back with weapons raised but uncertain.
Sam threw herself over the seal.
It was still warm.
Heavy.
Familiar.
One of the grumpy ones.
One of the seals that had always barked and argued with the others as if every small inconvenience was a personal insult. Sam knew that sound. Knew that shape. Knew the way it used to flop down near Neo's warmth and pretend not to enjoy it.
Her hands pressed into the seal's side.
Neo pulsed in her right mitten.
Duo answered weakly in her left.
Sam forced light into her eyes without thinking.
The world shifted.
For a heartbeat, colors flickered across the seal's body.
Then they vanished.
What remained was black.
Not dim. Not wounded. Not sick.
Black.
A thick, sickening darkness where color should have been, absolute and empty in a way her mind understood before she did.
Death.
The sight hit her like a hand around the throat.
Sam's mouth opened, but no sound came. Her hands trembled against the seal's body, uselessly searching for something to heal, something to hold onto, but there was nothing left for her light to answer.
"No…"
The word cracked.
Then the tears came.
Hot and helpless and furious, spilling down her cheeks as she folded over the seal's body and hugged it as best her small arms could manage.
"Why?" she whispered.
Then she looked up at the hunters through the blur of tears.
"Why would you do that?" Her voice rose, shaking with anger she could barely carry. "He didn't do anything to you. He was my friend."
The men did not answer.
They couldn't.
They only stared.
All five had gathered now, though none came too close. They stood with spears and clubs ready, their dogs behind them, their packs scattered in the snow where they had dropped them. The men spoke to each other in short, tense bursts, a language of hard sounds and quick breath that meant nothing to Sam.
At first, all she saw was the seal blood.
The weapons.
The fear in the dogs.
The dead weight beneath her arms.
Then she looked at the men again.
Really looked.
Their faces were rough and dark from wind. Their eyes were deep-set, dark brown, narrow beneath frost-stiff brows. Their cheeks were too sharp. Their mouths too tight. One of the younger ones had hands that shook around his spear, not from cruelty but from exhaustion. Even the largest, the one who had lifted her out of the shelter, looked less like a warrior now and more like a man holding himself upright by stubbornness alone.
Their dogs were not much better.
Thick-coated, yes.
Hardy, yes.
But too lean. Ribs not visible through fur, but suggested in the way they moved, in the restless hunger of their noses as they kept glancing toward the dead seal.
Sam's anger did not vanish.
It simply found context.
These were not rescuers.
Not coast guard.
Not people with radios, food, blankets, and a helicopter waiting somewhere beyond the ridge.
They were hunters.
Primitive Arctic hunters, or something close enough that her mind reached for the only word it had: Inuit. Though even that felt wrong. Older, maybe. Rougher. A people living before the world had learned to soften anything.
And they were starving.
Of course they had killed the seal.
That was why they had come.
Not to be cruel.
To live.
Sam looked down at the seal beneath her.
Her throat tightened.
She hated it.
She hated them a little.
She hated herself too, because the truth was obvious. If she had been stronger, if she had proper teeth, if she had weapons or hands that worked or a body capable of surviving on its own, she might have killed one of the seals herself by now.
Survival was not clean here.
Her little warm circle, her seal friends, the moss growing where it shouldn't—that was the unnatural thing.
Not this.
This was the world as it had always been.
Slowly, Sam wiped her face with one mitten and shifted back from the body. The hunters stiffened immediately, but she only sat there, breathing through the ache in her chest.
"All right," she said quietly, knowing they didn't understand. "I get it."
Her voice shook.
"I don't like it. But I get it."
She touched the seal once more, gently, then moved aside and pointed toward the body.
The hunters hesitated.
Sam swallowed and pointed again, clearer this time.
"You can have it."
For several long seconds, none of them moved.
Then the largest hunter lowered his spear slightly. His eyes stayed fixed on Sam as he bent his head, not fully, not deeply, but enough that the meaning was unmistakable.
A bow.
The others followed, stiff and uncertain, murmuring words she did not understand.
A younger hunter stepped forward carefully and dragged the seal back by its tail, moving fast the moment his hand closed around it, as if afraid she might change her mind.
Sam stayed where she was.
She watched them open the carcass.
At first she thought they would carry it away. Prepare it somewhere. Cut it properly. Do something that made the whole thing feel less immediate.
They didn't.
Stone blades came out. A sharp cut opened the hide. Blood steamed faintly in the cold air.
Then all five men and the three dogs descended on it.
Sam stared in quiet horror.
They ate like starving animals.
No fire. No cooking. No ceremony beyond hunger. They cut pieces loose and swallowed them raw, hands red, mouths working, shoulders hunched over the carcass as if afraid the world itself might take it back. The dogs snapped up scraps thrown aside, growling softly at one another before the hunters barked commands and shoved them back.
"Oh God…" Sam whispered.
Her stomach twisted.
Not from hunger this time.
From pity.
From disgust.
From understanding.
"You really are starving…"
She looked away, then forced herself to look back.
That seal had been her friend.
Sort of.
A grumpy, fat, ridiculous friend who argued with the others and basked near Neo's warmth like an old woman claiming the best seat by the fire.
Now she was food.
Sam closed her eyes for a moment.
At least it means something.
That was the only comfort she could find.
At least her death was not wasted. At least it fed people who looked like they had been walking on the edge of dying for days. And maybe the seal had lived well enough before this. Maybe she had pups somewhere. Maybe she had lazed in the warm circle and known a few strangely gentle days before the end.
It wasn't enough.
But it was something.
When the hunters finished, little remained but bloodied gravel, stripped bone, hide, and the parts even hunger had not made easy. They worked quickly after eating, skinning and cutting with practiced efficiency, packing away what they could into the hide-and-bone bags they had dropped in the snow. Nothing useful was left behind.
Then their attention returned to Sam.
She sat near the ruined shelter, exhausted, grief-heavy, and very aware of Big Guy's head peeking from the water beyond them.
The large seal watched from a distance, only his dark eyes and whiskered face above the surface. Other seals hovered farther out, nervous shapes in the water, waiting to see whether it was safe to return.
Sam met Big Guy's gaze.
For a moment, guilt pressed down hard.
She could try to drive the hunters away.
Maybe Neo and Duo would scare them. Maybe the dogs would listen to her. Maybe the hunters already thought she was some kind of spirit, and maybe that would be enough.
But then what?
The seals could keep her warm sometimes. They could feed her scraps. They could be company.
But they could not answer her questions. They could not tell her where she was. They could not take her back to the stone circle, or explain the world, or help her understand what had happened.
These men on the other hand just might, not easily, but they were people. And right now, people were the most useful, most dangerous thing she had found.
Sam let out a slow breath.
"Sorry, Big Guy," she murmured.
The seal blinked from the water.
She turned back to the hunters.
They were watching her with the same wary awe as before. Not relaxed. Not hostile either. Waiting.
Sam pointed at herself.
"Sam."
The hunters stared.
She tried again, tapping her chest.
"Sam."
One of the younger men repeated something under his breath. It was not her name. Not even close.
Sam sighed.
"Yeah, okay. We'll work on it."
She pointed toward the center of the island, toward the distant rise where the stone circle waited beneath snow.
"I need to go there."
Blank faces.
She tried again, making a walking motion with her fingers, then pointing inland.
"There, up there. Stone circle. Big spooky rocks. You know, the place where the whole 'giant sky light' thing came down at."
The hunters exchanged confused looks.
One spoke sharply to the leader. The leader answered without taking his eyes from Sam.
The dogs crept closer.
One sniffed her hood. Another pushed its nose against her side. Sam flinched, then relaxed as the largest of the three dogs sniffed her mitten.
Neo pulsed.
The dog stopped, it's ears lifted. Then, very carefully, it licked her face.
Sam froze.
The hunters made startled sounds.
The dog wagged its tail.
Sam blinked, then let out a small laugh despite herself.
"Oh, okay. Hi to you too."
She raised her right mitten and touched the dog's thick fur. It leaned into her hand almost immediately, eyes half-closing as Neo's warmth pulsed through the fabric.
The other two dogs came closer after that, sniffing and whining, less afraid now, though still uncertain. Sam patted them as best she could, tiny hands disappearing into coarse fur.
A strange thought passed through her.
First the seals.
Now the dogs.
She looked at her mittens, then at the hunters, then at the animals gathering near her like she had some invisible sign over her head.
"Am I seriously becoming some kind of nature spirit?"
The idea should have sounded insane.
It did sound insane, but unfortunately, so did everything else.
She looked down at herself: white bunny suit, glowing stones hidden in her mittens, violet eyes, baby face, animals deciding she was acceptable for reasons known only to magic.
"Great," she muttered. "I'm like the Greek Goddess Artemis, but portable."
She almost smiled.
Then she remembered what she needed to do.
Duo.
Sam looked at her left mitten.
If she left, the warmth here would weaken. The seals might not return. The ice might close fully over the water. The little moss and flowers might vanish under the cold again.
She couldn't take both stones.
Not if she wanted this place to remain alive.
Carefully, she pulled Duo from her left mitten.
The hunters gasped.
All of them.
Even the leader took a step back.
Duo rested in her small hand like a piece of captured moonlight, pale and crystal-clear, with a tiny white core beating faintly at its center. Its glow was weaker than Neo's, but in that cold, hungry world, it looked impossible.
Holy.
The men lowered their heads, whispering urgently. One touched his forehead. Another made a sign over his chest. The dogs whined and crouched lower.
Sam ignored most of it.
She crawled into the remains of her little shelter and placed Duo at the center, tucked between the stones where she had slept. Then she covered it lightly with small sticks and bits of driftwood, enough to hide it from the open air while still letting its warmth breathe into the hollow.
"You stay here," she whispered.
Duo pulsed.
"Keep the place warm, okay? For the seals. For the moss. For… whatever this is."
Another soft pulse answered her.
Sam felt the thread between them tremble gently, and though Duo had no words, she understood the shape of its answer well enough.
It would wait.
She sat back, suddenly feeling the loss of its warmth from her left hand, but Neo remained steady in her right.
"All right," she said.
Then she pointed inland again.
"I'm going."
The hunters looked at one another.
Sam took a few steps toward the ridge, but the moment the slope rose in front of her, her body reminded her that she was still very small and very tired. She climbed only a little before her foot slipped, and she nearly fell face-first into the snow.
"Ah—damn it…"
The largest dog appeared beside her.
It lowered itself slightly, thick shoulder pressing close to her side.
Sam stared at it.
The dog looked back.
Neo pulsed.
The dog huffed.
"…you offering?"
The dog did not answer, because it was a dog.
But it stayed there.
Sam hesitated for one second, then grabbed a fistful of fur and dragged herself upward. The climb onto its back was clumsy and undignified, involving far too much squirming, one accidental kick, and a lot of muttered apologies. But the dog held still.
Finally, Sam settled on top of it, both mittened hands buried in its thick fur.
The hunters went silent and all five of them just stared.
Sam looked at them from the back of the dog. And for the first time in this life, she felt tall. Which made her grin, "No way…"
The dog took a step forward.
Sam tightened her grip.
"Oh God. Okay. Okay, we're doing this."
The other two dogs bounded ahead, tails high, excited now. The one beneath her began walking inland, steady and sure across the snow, while the hunters hurried to gather their packs and weapons behind them.
Sam clung to the dog's fur as the coast slowly fell away behind her.
The warm little clearing.
The ruined shelter.
Duo's hidden pulse.
Big Guy watching from the water.
All of it remained there as she rode away.
Ahead, the island rose in long white slopes toward the center, toward the ancient circle and the buried cave waiting beneath snow.
Sam held Neo close in her right mitten, feeling its steady heartbeat answer her own.
A laugh escaped her, small and breathless.
"I'm riding a dog," she whispered.
The dog carried her onward.
"No, seriously. I'm riding a dog."
The wind brushed past her hood, and for a moment, despite the cold, the hunger, the fear, and the strangeness of the men following behind her with spears, something bright sparked in her chest.
First seals.
Now dogs.
Maybe she really was some kind of tiny Arctic nature spirit, a ridiculous one, but still.
Sam looked toward the distant rise where the stone circle waited.
"All right," she murmured, gripping the dog's fur as they began the climb. "Let's see if those spooky rocks know something useful."