For a while, Sam dreamed she was back on the island.
Not the cold, hungry, miserable version of it, but a better one. A warmer one. The kind her mind apparently invented when it could not handle reality anymore.
In the dream, the seals were arguing again.
They slapped each other with their flippers, barked in each other's faces, rolled over one another, and generally behaved like fat, wet idiots with no sense of discipline. Sam marched across the shore in her white bunny suit, pointed one mitten at the nearest offender, and said, "No. Bad seal. Bad."
The seal barked at her.
So Sam did what any reasonable authority figure would do. She slapped its snout with her mitten.
The seal flinched, stared at her in deep betrayal, then backed away.
"Exactly," Sam said. "Order restored."
After that, she climbed onto Big Guy's back, grabbed a fistful of blubber like reins, and rode him out into the Arctic sea. He moved like a dolphin in the dream, cutting through black water with impossible grace, leaping over waves while Sam laughed and shouted into the wind.
"Yippee!"
The cold spray glittered around them like shards of sunlight. Neo and Duo circled overhead like tiny glowing moons, flying in slow lazy rings around the island, which was definitely not something Lightstones could do.
Sam knew that. Some distant part of her knew none of this was real.
Big Guy could not swim like that. Lightstones were not little UFOs. Seals did not obey military discipline after being slapped by a baby in mittens.
But she wanted it to be real, desperately.
Then Big Guy caught fish, carried her back to shore, and vomited up a warm, half-digested pile of fish stew for her.
Sam stared at it.
In another life, she would have found it horrifying. However, after what felt like months trapped on an Arctic island with seals as her closest friends, it looked almost beautiful.
"Wow," she said softly. "That actually looks good."
Then her stomach growled, reality hit, and Sam jolted awake inside darkness, a stinky, leathery darkness.
For a moment, Sam had no idea where she was.
Then the hide pack shifted. Rough hands reached in, caught her under the arms, and lifted her out like a little white rabbit being removed from a sack.
Sam blinked blearily.
"Wha—?"
No one answered.
She was set down on a spread of furs inside a low, round tent. It was not a tent like anything she knew. There were no poles of clean-cut wood, no metal stakes, no neat fabric walls. The frame looked like a desperate argument between bone, driftwood, and bent strips of antler, all lashed together with sinew. Over that, hides had been stretched and pinned tight, their seams dark with grease to keep out wind and meltwater.
The place was small, low, and crowded. The men had to crouch inside it, and even the dogs seemed to understand that sudden movement was a bad idea. Packs, spears, spare skins, bone tools, and bundles of dried sinew were tucked around the edges. Everything smelled of wet fur, smoke, blood, old fat, dogs, and men who had not yet invented soap.
Compared to the world outside, though, it was warm. Not comfortable warm, just not deadly.
Sam sat there on the fur, still half-asleep, while the hunters worked around her with the tired efficiency of people who had done this a thousand times and would die if they ever forgot how.
One man scraped snow into a dark leather cooking bag. It had been rubbed with fat until it was stiff and waterproof, then hung low between stones so it would not tip. Another hunter added thin strips of meat, pinching them apart with his fingers and a small stone knife. Near the center of the tent, a shallow primitive stone lamp burned with a low yellow flame. The lamp was filled with seal oil, and along one edge a line of mossy wick glowed and smoked faintly.
It was not a campfire, not really.
There was no roaring flame. No pile of logs. Wood was too rare here for that. The lamp gave light, a little heat, and the greasy smell of burning seal fat. Beside it, a few stones were being heated in a small bed of coals and glowing moss, helped along by scraps of dry heather, bone grease, and tiny pieces of driftwood too small to build anything from.
When the stones were hot enough, one hunter lifted them with a forked bone tool and dropped them into the leather bag. A hiss followed, and steam rose as the water inside began to tremble, then bubble.
Sam watched despite herself.
They had no metal pot. No clay bowl. No stove. So they boiled water by heating stones and dropping them into a skin bag full of snow, meat, and fat.
It was primitive, yes, but also clever.
Annoyingly clever.
"Huh," Sam muttered. "Okay. Points for technique."
The tools were just as rough as the tent, but none of them looked useless. There were knives chipped from dark stone and set into bone handles. A half-moon cutting blade that one man used to slice meat against a flat stone. Needles made from bone. Awls. Scrapers. Antler wedges. Sinew cord twisted thin and strong. Everything had been made by hand, repaired by hand, and used until it looked older than the men carrying it.
In that moment, Sam had to admit something uncomfortable. These people were not stupid. They were just living at the edge of what the world allowed.
Then she noticed the dogs.
All three sat behind her, eyes locked on the cooking bag with holy devotion. Drool gathered around their jaws. One of them whined softly, then snapped its mouth shut when one of the hunters glanced back.
Sam understood them completely.
Soon the food was ready. No one used spoons. The hunters pulled meat out with fingers and knives, blowing on it before eating. The broth was poured carefully into shallow bowls made from bone and wood, each one darkened by grease and age. Some of the men drank straight from the edge. Others dipped strips of meat into the broth, tore pieces loose with their teeth, and swallowed fast before the warmth could escape.
The dogs received their portions first, thick scraps and broth dumped into rough bowls near the back of the tent.
Then one was placed before Sam.
Hers was smaller, carved from bone, shallow and crude, but it held warm broth and tiny pieces of meat cut small enough for her useless baby mouth.
For one second, gratitude almost won, but then she saw the meat, it was Seal.
Her stomach tightened.
It was from the animal they had killed. The same seal she had healed, slept beside, and thought of as one of hers. The memory came back too clearly: warm bodies on the shore, dark eyes, the strange peace of surviving among creatures that had accepted her more easily than humans ever had.
Now one of them floated in her bowl.
Sam's mittened hands curled.
Across from her, the dogs were already eating with full, shameless joy. The largest one finished half its bowl in seconds, then looked toward hers with open interest.
Sam pulled the bowl closer.
"Don't even think about it."
Her mouth filled with saliva before she could stop it.
She hated that too.
She was starving. Her body did not care about grief or loyalty or moral complexity. Her body smelled warm fat and meat and decided survival was the only law that mattered.
Sam stared into the bowl for a long moment. Then, slowly, she lifted it with both mittens.
"I'm not letting them eat all of you," she whispered. "That would be worse."
It was a stupid justification. It still helped, and she drank.
Warmth hit her tongue, then her throat, then her empty stomach, and for one terrible, wonderful moment, shame vanished beneath relief. The broth was rich, salty, greasy, and better than anything had the right to be after being cooked in a leather bag by kidnappers.
Sam's eyes widened.
"Oh no," she whispered. "It's good."
She drank more.
The meat came last. She hesitated, then swallowed it piece by piece. It was soft enough that she did not need proper teeth, which was good, because she still had none worth mentioning. One of the hunters noticed her appetite and passed her a split bone with marrow inside.
Sam accepted it.
Then she ate that too.
Nari, the youngest hunter, watched her and smirked.
Sam froze with the bone halfway to her mouth.
He looked far too pleased.
She narrowed her eyes, lowered the bone with as much dignity as a baby in a bunny suit could manage, and crossed her arms.
"What?"
Nari laughed. The others laughed too.
Sam turned her face away with a huff.
"Whatever. I needed calories. This is strategic eating."
No one understood her, and that was probably for the best.
After the meal, the hunters did not sing or tell stories or celebrate. They barely spoke at all. One by one, they wrapped themselves in furs and lay down. The dogs curled close to the warmest part of the tent. Sam was placed near them, not quite among the men, not quite apart from the animals.
Apparently, that was her assigned category now. Dog-adjacent magical luggage.
She waited.
And soon enough the tent filled with the heavy sounds of sleep. Breathing. Snoring. The occasional twitch and huff from the dogs. Outside, the wind dragged itself over the ice, low and endless, brushing against the hide walls like something trying to get in.
Slowly Sam opened one eye, then the other. Her moment had seemingly come, her time for, "Escape."
The thought came sharp and immediate.
She sat up slowly, listening. No one moved. The hunters were buried beneath their furs, broad shapes in the dimness. The dogs lay piled near the center, warm bodies rising and falling with sleep. Neo rested in Sam's right mitten, warm and obedient, its little pulse answering the stranger second heartbeat in her chest.
Carefully, Sam crawled toward the tent flap.
The entrance was tied low, but not perfectly. The hide edge had been pressed down with snow from the outside, probably to keep the wind out, but there were small gaps where the frozen ground was uneven. She was tiny enough to fit through one if she could lift the edge. Maybe Neo could melt just enough ice to make room. Maybe she could slip outside, find the direction of the island, and start moving before anyone noticed.
It felt impossible and kinda suicidal, but it was still better than lying there, waiting to find out what five starving hunters planned to do with her.
So Sam reached the flap and pushed it open, and instantly cold air touched her face. Pushing away the feeling of discomfort she sucked in a silent breath and lifted the edge just enough to peek outside.
The world beyond the tent was vast, gray, and silent. Snow stretched across the ice in hard pale sheets, fading into a low horizon beneath the heavy Arctic sky. Far in the distance, almost swallowed by weather and darkness, she could make out the faint shape of the island they had left behind.
Or at least, she thought she could. In the distance there was a sort of dark rise against the white, with a small jagged crown at the top.
Sam squinted until her eyes watered, and for one wild second, she swore she could see the stone circle standing there like black teeth against the snow. She could see her home, her precious island.
However to her dismay, the distance between them looked impossible. Even if she escaped the tent, even if the hunters did not wake, even if the dogs did not follow, she would have to cross miles of ice in a body that could barely walk properly. She could freeze. Starve. Fall through a crack. Get carried away by wind or eaten by something she had not even learned to fear yet.
But the thought came anyway, stubborn and desperate, "I have to try."
Sam shifted her weight forward, but stopped. Before she went any farther, she had to make sure nobody saw her leave. So she looked back into the tent to make sure no one had seen, and then she nearly screamed.
The short guy was awake.
The youngest hunter lay on his side beneath his furs, watching her with narrowed eyes. He did not move, not fully, but one hand was already free of the blanket. The guy she believed the other's had called Nari was just waiting for her to move, daring her to try. If she crawled one more inch, he would be on her.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Then Sam smiled awkwardly.
"Bathroom break?" she whispered.
Nari did not blink.
Sam held the smile for another second. Then, very slowly, she lowered the flap.
Cold air vanished. Dim warmth closed around her again. She crawled backward behind the dogs and settled down as if escaping had absolutely never crossed her mind.
"Fine," she muttered. "Maybe later."
The largest dog opened one eye, huffed warm breath into her face, and went back to sleep.
Sam lay on her back, staring up at the dim hide ceiling. The tent smelled of fur, oil, smoke, dogs, and sleeping men. Somewhere outside, ice groaned softly under the wind. Inside her mitten, Neo pulsed with warmth.
A little too much warmth perhaps. Which made her realise that warmth was good, but possibly melting the floor of a tent pitched on ice was not.
"Not too much, okay?" she whispered. "We are not melting the ground. We are not turning the tent into a puddle. Just me. Maybe the air a little. Enough to not die. That's it."
Neo answered with a soft pulse.
To Sam's relief, the warmth changed. It drew inward first, gathering around her small body like a blanket, then spread only faintly through the tent. The air wasn't biting cold, but the frozen ground beneath them stayed solid.
The men did not react to the slight change. One of the dogs though shifted a bit closer. Then another. Soon all three had edged just a little nearer to her, drawn by the gentler warmth.
Sam watched them in the dimness and sighed through her nose.
She liked these dogs, and she did not hate the hunters, not truly. That annoyed her.
Because it would have been easier if they were monsters. But they were just people. Harsh, filthy, hungry, primitive people with no manners and no idea what personal freedom meant, but people all the same.
Sure they had killed her seal friend, stuffed her into a bag and carried her away. But they had also fed her. Kept her warm. Shared what little they had when they did not have enough for themselves.
Sam turned her face toward the ceiling.
"They just did what anyone would do out here in the Arctic," she muttered. "That's all. Don't get emotional. They're just stupid, primitive Genghis Khan looking people."
Neo pulsed again as if to agree with her, as Sam slowly closed her eyes and drifted into a deep sleep.
When she woke again with drool in her mouth, the tent was already coming apart.
Morning, or what passed for morning under the gray Arctic sky, had arrived without asking her permission. One moment she was half-conscious beside the dogs; the next, the furs were being pulled away, the hide walls loosened, and the cold poured in.
The hunters moved with a speed that almost felt insulting to Sam, whom had on occasion been camping herself as well in the past.
The tent's bone and driftwood supports came down. Hides were shaken, folded, and rolled tight. Packs were opened, sorted, and tied. The cooking bag vanished into one bundle, the lamp into another. Tools were checked. Meat was divided. Snowshoes were pulled free. Dogs were given small pieces of meat as breakfast.
There was no wasted movement, no discussion or hesitation.
Sam sat there blinking, hair messy, hood half-fallen over one eye, while the entire little world of the tent disappeared around her in minutes.
Then Nari appeared above her. Sam looked up and said firmly, "No."
He grabbed the back of her bunny suit, as if to say, "yes."
He lifted her despite her protest. And a moment later, she was lowered into the hide pack, surrounded once more by leather, fur, old meat-smell, and darkness. The flap closed above her, leaving only a narrow slit of gray light.
Outside, the dogs barked.
The hunters started walking.
And just like that, the journey continued.
For days, perhaps longer, the world became ice, wind, hunger, and motion. The men traveled over the ice for what felt like forever, and later they seemed to come upon another island as they began traveling over ridges, across frozen flats and through hollow places where the wind had carved the snow into hard waves. They moved on snowshoes made from bent wood, bone, and rawhide webbing, spreading their weight over the snow so they could walk where other men would have sunk to waist height.
Sam rode most of it in the pack, reduced to a spectator in her own kidnapping. When she was awake, she watched the world through a slit in the hide. When she was tired, she slept. When she had strength, she sent thin pulses of light along the distant thread to Duo, keeping the little sanctuary alive and ever growing behind her.
The men did not speak much while traveling. At first Sam thought they were simply grim, but she soon understood that silence was part of survival. Breath meant warmth. Words meant breath. Out here, even conversation had a cost.
Little by little, she learned their names.
Aputak was the largest, broad-shouldered and severe, the one who carried the heaviest pack and seemed determined to bring her home no matter what.
Nari was the youngest, smug and curious, the idiot who had first touched her hair and discovered she could be lifted like a toy.
Kiviu was quiet and best with the dogs. He was also the most afraid of her, lowering his eyes whenever Neo glowed too brightly.
Taqi was lean, sharp-faced, and practical. He watched food more than miracles and often gestured at Sam as if asking whether she could make warmth, meat, or anything useful.
Oruk was the oldest, not the strongest, but the one the others obeyed, as did the dogs. He moved like a man who knew the ice, the weather, and the old stories well enough to fear all three.
Sam did not like them, but she began to understand them.
They were not evil in the clean, simple way she wanted them to be. They were desperate Arctic hunters with no metal, no easy food, no room for softness, and no idea what to do with the strange sky-child they had found. They merely treated her like luggage, fed her with the dogs, let her be most of the time, and carried her whether she protested or not.
But they kept feeding her, and in exchange they didn't demand her to do anything. She just was there with them, and most importantly, they did not eat her.
That mattered more every day.
They worked with a harsh, practiced rhythm. The tent could be raised in minutes and packed almost as fast. One man set the frame. Another stretched the hides. Another weighted the edges with snow and stone. When they camped, two men often took the dogs and went hunting while the others checked gear, cut meat, scraped hides, repaired straps, or searched for fish beneath the ice.
Sometimes they came back with nothing.
Sometimes with fish.
Sometimes with small rodents or birds as the land slowly changed.
That was what surprised Sam most.
The world was getting warmer.
At first, she noticed only small things: dark rock showing through thinning snow, wet moss in cracks, patches of dead grass that were not quite dead anymore. Then birds began to appear. Then tiny animals. Then more open water.
It was probably not winter, but spring, Sam realized.
A terrible Arctic spring, yes, but spring all the same.
Maybe Meighen Island had been too far north. Maybe the golden beam had disturbed the weather there. Maybe she simply had no idea how seasons worked in this part of the world. Whatever the reason, the farther southeast they traveled, the more life crept into view.
Somewhere along the journey, the men decided her name was Ulloriaq.
Sam hated it immediately.
"No," she told them. "Sam."
The hunters stared.
She pointed at herself. "Sam. I am Sam."
Nari tried first.
"Sa…m?"
"Yes. Sam."
Aputak said something that sounded like, "Noisam."
"No. Just Sam."
Taqi tilted his head. "Samira?"
Sam stared.
"No."
Kiviu tried something that sounded dangerously close to "Samurai."
The men looked at one another. Then they laughed.
Sam pressed both mittens to her face.
"I hate all of you."
After that, whenever they wanted to annoy her, they took turns trying new versions.
Sam.
Samira.
Noisam.
Samurai.
Ulloriaq.
Eventually, Sam gave them the only response they deserved. She turned her back, crawled beside the dogs, and went to sleep.
Days blurred together.
Maybe weeks.
Time became hard to count when most of it was spent being carried, fed, pooping, sleeping, and carried again. Sam grew used to the rhythm despite herself. Pack up, move, camp again, food, sleep and pack again. When the men hunted, she waited. When they returned, she ate. When they worked, she watched.
Then they reached the edge of the vast island, and the journey changed.
Ahead lay a failing bridge of ice.
It stretched across dark water toward another distant land, but only barely. Cracks cut through it. Floes shifted. Black seams opened and closed with the pull of the sea. Pieces were already breaking loose and drifting south.
The hunters stood before it in silence.
Even Nari did not smile.
Sam looked through the slit in the pack and felt her stomach sink.
"Oh, absolutely not."
No one asked her opinion, and soon enough the crossing began at dawn.
The dogs went first, light on their paws, guided by Oruk's sharp commands. The men followed in a loose line, spread far apart so their combined weight would not break the ice beneath them. They moved like dancers across a floor that wanted to kill them. Step. Wait. Listen. Step again.
The ice spoke beneath them with a crack, a groan and a snap.
Sam sat in the pack on Nari's back, gripping the hide with both mittens. The world bounced and tilted with every step. Through the slit, she saw black water beneath the cracks, white plates shifting around them, and once, far behind, a piece of ice they had crossed only minutes earlier split away and drift south with the current.
She went very still.
"I have not gone swimming in this life," she whispered. "And I would like to keep it that way."
The crossing felt endless.
Once, a dog slipped and had to be dragged back by its harness. Once, Taqi nearly lost a spear. Once, the ice cracked so loudly beneath Aputak that every man froze, waiting for the world to open under him.
It did not.
Somehow, by skill, luck, madness, or all three, they made it across.
On the other side, no one cheered. The men simply collapsed beyond the ice line, breathing hard and staring back as the broken bridge continued to fracture behind them.
Sam stared too.
"Okay," she whispered. "You are all insane."
But the journey did not end there.
After rest and searching, the men uncovered two skin canoes hidden among rocks and driftwood, weighted down against wind and weather. Sam did not know what they called them. She only knew they looked thin, fragile, and deeply untrustworthy.
Apparently, that was enough.
The men loaded their packs, their tools, the dogs, and Sam.
Then the paddling began.
Water replaced ice. The canoes moved south through gray channels, past broken coasts, low islands, and dark slopes where snow clung to shadowed stone. The land grew greener day by day. Not lush. Not gentle. But alive. Grass spread in dull patches. Birds circled overhead. Fish flashed beneath the surface. Seals watched from distant rocks, not her seals, but seals all the same.
Compared to the stone circle Island, it looked like paradise. And compared to the other larger island they had been on, it looked like the edge of a new world.
By now the further they went, Sam had grown more certain of one thing. This piece of land, what they were travelling on the shore's of, was not merely another island. This was something larger.
An Arctic continent, or close enough to one.
The men were not wandering blindly, they were headed south to wherever their home was.
By the time their destination finally appeared, the world had changed. The air was still cold, but no longer sharp enough to flay the inside of Sam's nose with every breath. Beneath the salt and damp of the sea, she could smell wet earth now, fresh meltwater, old grass waking under snow, and the dark mineral smell of stone that had spent all winter buried beneath ice.
The canoes slipped through a sheltered waterway hidden behind broken islands, low ridges, and long fingers of black rock. Here and there the slopes showed patches of green and brown where the snow had already given way. Thin streams came down from higher ground, threading silver through the land before feeding a wider river that ran out toward the sea. The valley itself opened slowly, not broad and gentle, but narrow, stony, and wind-cut, with flat stretches of thawing grass between ridges of rock and old snowbanks that still clung stubbornly to shadow.
It looked harsh.
But after everything Sam had seen in the high Arctic, it also looked alive.
At the edge of that valley, where the river bent near the foot of a dark hillside, stood the settlement.
It was not much.
A handful of low dwellings crouched close together near the mouth of a cave, built from hide, bone, stone, and whatever driftwood the sea had surrendered. Their walls were small and practical, half dug into the earth in places, half raised against the wind, all of them built to survive rather than impress. The cave above them yawned wide and dark, a black mouth in the hillside that looked older than the village itself, as if the people had built their homes there because the land had already offered them one.
Smoke rose thinly from the camp, not in thick lazy coils, but in sparse gray strands that the wind worried apart almost at once. Around the huts lay signs of use rather than wealth: racks of drying hide, bones stacked for tools, lines of fish or meat, piles of driftwood, worn footpaths in the thawing ground, and little else. No fences. No fields. No grand structures. Just a hard little place clinging to a narrow pocket of spring.
Sam peered out through the slit in the pack, and she could see that people were already coming out.
Not many at first. A woman from one hut. An older man from the cave. Then two children. Then more and more, until the whole little settlement seemed to wake at once. Women wrapped in fur stepped out into the pale light and shaded their eyes toward the river. Young children, still short and thin with winter, clung to legs or darted ahead before being called back. A few older boys ran straight for the shore. Two dogs barked first, then a third, and suddenly the whole camp's half-starved pack was racing forward in a mess of fur and noise.
The men in the canoes saw them.
Nari let out a sharp cry of triumph.
He lifted the pack on his shoulder with both hands as if he were carrying some priceless trophy and not one deeply offended baby girl in a bunny suit. The other hunters shouted too, their tired voices suddenly alive with something Sam had not heard from them before. Relief, pride, the wild joy of men who had gone out into death and actually come back.
On the shore, the reaction was immediate.
One of the women put both hands over her mouth. Another began to cry before the canoes had even scraped the shallows. A third stumbled forward, then broke into a run, skirts of hide and fur dragging through wet grass. The older men did not run, but they raised their arms and shouted. The children needed no permission at all. They burst down the slope in a pack of their own, yelling and laughing, while the camp dogs reached the shoreline first and leapt in circles ready to embrace the returning hunters.
The whole place felt young.
That struck Sam at once.
These were not the weathered faces of an old, settled people with deep roots in one valley. Most of the adults looked young or barely past young. Strong, worn, hungry, yes, but not old. The few elders stood out immediately because there were so few of them. This was a founder's camp grown into something slightly larger, a thin little second generation pressed hard against the limits of the land. Too many mouths for such a meager place. Too much hope forced into too little food.
To Sam, with her very modern and very uncharitable perspective, they all still looked a bit like Genghis Khan had personally founded an Arctic village, so it was hard to say who was old and who was not.
But even she could see what this moment meant to them.
The hunters had crossed ice, sea, and death itself to bring something back. And, unfortunately for Sam, that something was her.
The canoes had not yet reached the shore, but every face was already turned toward Nari and the pack on his shoulder. Toward the strange white thing he carried. Toward the promise or omen or answer they clearly believed had come back with the expedition.
Nari grinned so hard he looked half feral.
The others grinned too.
Sam stared through the slit in the hide and felt her stomach sink.
For a moment, no one on shore spoke clearly enough for her to separate one voice from another. There was only noise. Crying women. Cheering men. Barking dogs. Children shouting and pointing at the pack.
Every last one of them was looking at her.
Sam sighed.
"Oh, great," she muttered. "Now there's even more of you."