Frozen Stiff by Sherry Shahan

Author:Sherry Shahan [Shahan, Sherry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307794079
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-08-31T05:00:00+00:00

Cody crawled back inside the tent, snatched the damp cloth, and pressed it against her swollen eyes. She must have stared too long at the parade of icebergs. Even without any glare, she could feel the strain. Daylight would be utter torture.

He must be making it up. “You want to be a writer. And this is a story, right?”

Derek rezipped the tent flap. “I don’t think he wanted me to see him. I just did, at the cabin.”

She pressed the cloth harder against her eyes; the pressure caused a play of colors behind her lids. She remembered the stack of skins under the boards. The pile of bones. “Were those his skins we found?”

The outfitters had talked a lot about poachers, about men who killed animals for their hides and sold them to other countries. Animals hunted without permits, slaughtered out of season. Even animals on the endangered lists. The thought of poachers made her sick.

“Maybe he followed us,” she said, considering another possibility.

“I think he was already here. He just saw us, that’s all. Knew we were in trouble, knew we needed help.”

The same person could have scared off the bear at the waterfall. Maybe the bear had ruined his plans of sneaking up on her. Cody didn’t want to think about that.

That had been days and miles behind them. There weren’t any roads or trails out here. Except for the maze of trampled brush made by bears. Unless someone else had been on the water. Surely she would have seen a kayak or canoe. Then she remembered Derek spotting a shadow on the far side of the fjord. Maybe the shadow was on this side now.

All at once it was as if the pages of “Hansel and Gretel” were unfolding. Two kids lost in the woods, following bread crumbs to the wicked witch’s house. “He’s a poacher, Derek. I’d bet anything.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

Cody dropped the cloth, waiting for her eyes to focus. She could see that some of the scabs from Derek’s mosquito bites had been picked off. There were small white spots on his forehead, a stark contrast to the dark circles under his eyes. The blisters on his nose had dried. Now half peeling, the skin underneath was raw and pink.

“Why else would he be out here this late in summer?” she asked.

Derek shrugged.

She shivered, knowing he could be lurking outside the tent at this very moment. “What did he look like?”

Derek hesitated, then described him. The stranger was too much like a character in a late-night movie. The kind where a scientist travels back in time and discovers a lost civilization. Crude deerskin pants and a poncho-type shirt, homemade boots, scruffy fur cap and gloves.

“It doesn’t matter what he looks like.” Derek finished, and glanced toward the cabin. “He’s trying to help us.”

“Said the spider to the fly,” Cody said.

“You’re just paranoid,” he said. “Because of that kidnapping.”

Cody sighed, remembering Ginny Martin, the curly-haired little girl who had been snatched from her bed in the middle of the night.

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