CHAPTER ONE

The River Roars

He could not see, he could not hear, and vainly he poked out his tongue to lick, but the smell of milk was gone and with it the warm teat. He could feel only cold, nothing else. It filled him until his small body was racked with violent shivers. How had everything changed so fast? Where was the stream of warm milk, the soft fur, the squirming presence of the other pups? In his brief life, he had known little, but now he knew less. Smell, taste, and feeling, the only senses he had, were starved. The pup felt himself drifting off into a void that was neither life nor death, only a terrible nothing. And with this great void came numbness.

Something stirred — a vibration — and with it a new element entered his barely pulsing life. The terrible cracking and booming as the river ice buckled was so loud that it penetrated the pup’s sealed ears. Then suddenly, a roar surged through his head. There was a great lurch, and he began to skid off the ice shelf, but digging in his sharp little claws, he gripped hard.

It would seem a cruel trick that the lone pup gained two vital senses, sight and sound, as the winter-locked river ruptured and broke free. It was perhaps the shock that caused his eyes to unseal and his ears to open.

The final thaw of the river unleashed immense cataracts of water that tore at the banks, uprooting trees, dislodging boulders and rocky outcrops. The shelf on which the Obea had placed the pup creaked, then tilted, and at last, there was a sharp crack that splintered in his ears. Light flashed brutally in the pup’s eyes as the moon scorched the ice floes sweeping down the river.

Dim in the pup’s memory was a previous violence. Birth. He had been launched from the warmth of his mother’s womb into the grip of forces greater than himself. His small body was nothing against the intense contractions that expelled him. And now it was happening again. But instead of going from the inviolable warmth of his mother’s womb, he was sliding into the frigid waters of the tumultuous river. He dug harder with that splayed paw, which seemed to have a better grip than the others. He clung, clung dumbly to the shelf that had joined the other flotsam in the river.

It would have been easier, less painful, to release his grip, to slip off and drown. But there was only instinct, and the instinct was to grip. He opened his eyes wider and saw the gleam of the full moon on the river. The brightness made him squint.

His first lesson: He could adjust his eyes to the light. His first thought: What else might he adjust or be able to change? Might he bring back the warmth he once knew? The smell of milk, the taste? The soft crush of those wiggling furry creatures that had tumbled about him as they all scrambled for the milk? The comforting rhythmic vibrations he felt as he pressed close to suck? There was something beneath the fur, deep in the Milk Giver, that beat.

Icy water dashed over him, but still he clung. Occasionally, he felt the ice shelf spin round and round in one place. The light swirled and he experienced a dizzying nausea. To steady himself and keep his grip he had to shut his eyes tight. Then there would be a jolt and his raft would break loose and join the tumult of the stream again. He felt the ice diminishing beneath him. His hind legs hung off the raft now and were growing numb in the water. The numbness crept through him. It was not an unpleasant feeling, but with it something else seemed to grow dimmer, to seep from the deepest part of him. His claws began to lose their grip.

The last thing he felt was a tremendous jolt; the last thing he heard was the sound of his claws skidding across the final fragment of his ice raft.