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fur, each lined with an inner sack of soft birdskin, with the feathers on the inside.
These were so warm that they felt better almost at once; but Torak realized with
alarm that the White Fox man had disappeared, taking their clothes with him. Now
they were completely in his power."He left us some food," said Renn. She sniffed a
strip of frozen seal meat.Still in his sleeping-sack, Torak shuffled to the wall,77and
peered through a crack.What he'd taken for the roof of the snow hole in which
they'd sheltered overnight was in fact a large sled, which now stood upright. Its
runners were the jawbones of a whale, its crossbars the antlers of reindeer. A
tangled harness disappeared into a smooth white hillock, and into five other
hillocks a little farther off. From the middle of each came a thin wisp of
steam.Inuktiluk whistled, and the hillocks erupted into six large dogs. They yawned
and wagged their tails as they shook off the snow, and Inuktiluk batted away their
noses as he untangled their harnesses and checked their paws for ice cuts.With her
thumbnail, Renn pried a shred of meat from between her teeth. "The Walker said
'the foxes' would tell us how to find the Eye of the Viper. Maybe he meant the
White Foxes."Torak had thought of that too. "But can we risk it?" he said. He
wanted to trust Inuktiluk, but he'd learned the hard way that a man can do kind
things and still hide a rotten heart."You're right," said Renn. "We won't tell him
anything. Not till we know we can trust him."Inuktiluk was turning their clothes
inside out, and laying them on the sled. They froze in moments, and he beat the ice
from them with the flat of his snow-knife. Then he fetched meat and tossed it to the
dogs.78Five were full-grown, but the sixth was a puppy of about five moons. Its
pads hadn't yet toughened, and it wore rawhide paw-boots; it squealed with
pleasure as Inuktiluk flipped it onto its back, to check that they were securely
fastened.Torak thought of Wolf, and the dream returned to darken his spirit. He
told Renn about it. Then he said, "Wolf was with Fa, and Fa is dead. So was it Fa's
spirit who sent the dream? Was he telling me that Wolf is dead too?""Or maybe,"
said Renn, "it wasn't your father's spirit that dreamed to you, but Wolf's. Maybe
he's asking you for help.""But he must know that we're coming for him." She
looked unhappy.He was wondering if now was the time to tell her about the Soul-
Eaters, when Inuktiluk returned."Get dressed," he said sternly.Their clothes were
drier, but uncomfortably cold. It didn't help that Inuktiluk watched them with
evident disapproval. "You're much too thin. To survive on the ice, you need to be
fat! Don't you even know that? Everything in the north is fat! Seals, bears, people!"
Then he asked them what names they carried.They exchanged glances. Renn told
him their names and clans.Inuktiluk seemed startled to learn that Torak was79Wolf
Clan. "That makes it worse," he murmured."What do you mean?" said
Torak.Inuktiluk frowned. "We won't talk of it here.""I think we must," said Torak.
"You saved our lives, and we're grateful. But please. Tell us why you were looking
for us."The White Fox man hesitated. "I'll tell you this. Three sleeps ago, one of our
elders went into a trance to watch the night fires in the sky, and the spirits of the
Dead sent her a vision. A girl with red willow hair, like the World Spirit in winter;
and a boy with wolf eyes." He paused. "The boy was about to do a great evil. That's
why I had to find you. To stop you from bringing evil to the people of the ice.""I
haven't done anything wrong," Torak said hotlyInuktiluk ignored that. "Who are
you? What are you doing here, where you don't belong?"When they didn't answer,
he rolled up the sleeping-sacks and headed out. "Rub more blubber on your faces,
and bring the lamp. We're leaving.""Where?" said Torak and Renn together."Our
camp.""Why?" said Renn. "What are you going to do to us?"Inuktiluk looked
offended. "We're not going to harm you--that's not our way! We'll just give you
better gear, and send you home."80"You can't make us go back," said Torak.To his
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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