Frostbite Read Online Free PDF

“Magnetic north, that’s centered on the pole of the planet’s magnetic field, okay? That’s where your compass is pointing, where it’s always going to point. But the magnetic field doesn’t line up perfect with the actual axis of the earth, the imaginary line that it rotates around. The magnetic field pole and the axis are a couple hundred kilometers away from each other. So the compass doesn’t point north at all, really. Maybe down south where you come from nobody’s ever heard of the difference, but up this far you always have to compensate when you’re using a compass. You know that if the compass says north, you actually want to head a little bit to the west, right?”
    “Okay,” Chey said, not really following.
    He shook his head and turned to look at his skillet again. With his bare fingers he flipped its contents over so they cooked evenly. “You keep following that compass and you’ll end up in Nunavut. Which, believe it or not, is even emptier than this place. Wow, lady, it’s kind of a miracle you survived this long. Considering how stupid you’ve got to be.”
    He winced when her face darkened in anger.
    “Hey, hey now, I’m sorry, like I said, I’m no good with people,” he told her. “Lucky for us both, I’m better with a compass.” He laughed again and pulled a strip of something pale and greasy out of his skillet. “Here, eat this,” he said, nearly dropping it in her lap. “I’m sure you didn’t bring enough food, either.”
    “Thanks,” she snarled, but she bit into it. It wasn’t meat, whatever it was—it had barely any taste at all. “What is this?” she demanded, even as she took another bite.
    “It’s the inner bark of the lodgepole pine tree,” he informed her. “Totally edible, I promise. Just about the only thing you can eat in this forsaken wilderness.”
    She’d been looking forward to back bacon, but she supposed she couldn’t complain. Well, maybe a little. “You couldn’t hunt for game?” she asked, as she chewed vigorously on the stringy vegetable matter.
    He pulled his furs closer around himself, then smiled very wide when he said, “I’m a vegetarian.”

6.
    Dzo let her lean on his arm as they hiked out of the clearing. It was a blessed relief not to have to put her full weight on her hurt ankle. It still throbbed like mad, though, and she was terrified it might be getting infected. She didn’t want to take another step on it if she didn’t have to. If he faltered, or if she lost her grip on him, it was going to hurt badly, but he didn’t let that happen. He was shorter than Chey, maybe ten centimeters shorter, but his shoulder felt hard as a rock and she got the impression he could easily have carried her. Not for the first time she wondered who this guy was, and where he’d come from. She tried asking, but his answer didn’t make much sense to her. “I came up from the water down there,” he told her.
    “No, but originally,” she said, thinking she needed to be very careful to be as literal as possible when talking to him.
    “Gosh,” he said, and looked up at the trees as if trying to remember. “That was a long time ago. I think there was less water back then. Everything was so dry.” He shrugged. “Things change, you know? Places change. Especially up here. Seems like it’s different every summer.”
    Her leg hurt too much for her to want to quiz him further. She decided it was enough he was there, and that he could save her, and she lapsed into silence as they trudged along.
    They headed along the course of the trickling stream. The water was cold and very clear. Red pine needles spun on the surface and caught onexposed tree roots and then slid past them again. Insects skimmed along the surface or walked on the water with hair-thin legs longer than their bodies. None of them were biting her, so she ignored them.
    Not so very far away from the stream ran an abandoned logging road. It didn’t look like much to Chey—it