The Wolf in the Whale by Jordanna Max Brodsky

Author:Jordanna Max Brodsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2019-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

“Omat, wake up. We’ve got to get out of here. Come on, kid. Come back to me.”

I knew the voice. Now, for the first time, I understood the words.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The birchbark hut swam into view.

Brandr’s face hovered above me, his relieved smile flashing in the dark.

“There you are. I thought I’d lost you.” He sounded weak, as if suffering from the same dizziness I did. Then, in his halting version of an Inuk’s words, he added, “Good Omat. Good. Go. Go.”

“Yes. I understand,” I whispered in Norse. My thick tongue struggled with the foreign sounds as they hadn’t when I’d lived Brandr’s dream, but I knew the right words. “We need to go. Where is your sword? My spear?”

“Odin’s eye! How can you speak like that?”

“No time,” I said, shaking my head. Even that much movement sent my brain spinning. “Your sword?”

“They took it, don’t you remember? They left us our packs, but not our weapons.”

So many other people’s memories filled my mind that I barely had room for my own. I groaned in answer. “We must leave. Red men…” I searched my dream for the word I needed. “Are not dullards.”

He grimaced. “True. Word of my people must’ve spread.”

“They do not like my people, either.”

“So I gathered.”

With Brandr supporting my head, I sat up gingerly and leaned against the bark wall. “Hut can break. Can you make carnage? Red men are there.” I gestured to the opening. “Not there.” I motioned behind us.

He tapped the bark thoughtfully. “Carnage, huh? And then what?”

I shrugged. “We run.”

“You can barely stand!”

“And you can barely walk.”

“Not much of a plan.”

“No,” I conceded.

“What about your dogs?”

“Wolves,” I corrected, remembering the word from the vision. “Wolfdogs.”

“Oh.” He looked at me with new respect. “Well, can you call to them?”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?”

I couldn’t explain my hesitation to him. The old red woman’s dread had lodged itself in my own mind—I couldn’t shake the image of slavering sled dogs tearing her dwarf family apart. No, not dwarfs, I reminded myself. People. People just like me.

But Brandr was right: we needed my wolfdogs. We’d walked right into the feud between the painted men and the Norse. Our only hope was to fight our way free.

“I will call. Ready?” We didn’t need more discussion than that. Despite our new words, we still shared our old unspoken understanding.

Brandr slung his pack over his shoulder, then hunched over in the low room. He braced his shoulders against the thin bark ceiling. The support posts for the hut were sunk deep into the ground, but Brandr flashed a smile at me, all confidence. “Ready.”

I shoved the old woman’s bag of liquid and container of dried flowers into my own pack and lashed my parka back in place. Then I rose on unsteady legs, rubbed my face to clear my thoughts, and tried to remember what it felt like to run with Singarti across the valley. I took a deep breath and threw back my head, a howl tearing from my throat. Long and low it began, rising pitch by pitch.

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