Bonesetter 2 -Winter- Read Free Page A

else could ever have kissed as sweetly. Pulling back, she said “You don’t have to take care of them, you know?”
    Pell’s eyes rose to the horizon and he wiped at one of them. “But… some of them are my friends . And the children…”
    Gia looked at the horizon herself, giving a little shrug. “And you can’t take care of the children without taking care of their mothers. You can’t help the mothers without helping their mates. You can’t help one hunter, without helping his friend… Yes, I know. It goes on and on.”
    Pell drew a shuddering breath, “Why couldn’t the snow wait until we’d gotten in a few good hunts?”
    “There’s no accounting for what the spirits decide to do.” Gia said, “I should know, look what happened to my tribe…” her voice broke for a moment, then she continued in a rasping tone. “So many dead… so many…”
     
    The two young lovers were still quietly holding one another in the snow blanketed silence when suddenly Gontra burst from the opening of the cave, looking wildly about. When he saw Pell, his shoulders visibly relaxed and he started through the snow toward Pell and Gia. “Spirits,” he almost gasped, “I thought you’d left us!” He looked around, “And it snowed last night!” He shook his head, “We’d be goners if you’d left us.”
    Gia felt Pell shrug, “We may be goners anyway. I can’t do anything about the weather!”
    Quietly, Gia said, “Pell, maybe your ‘trapping’ will work even in the snow?” Pell and Tando hadn’t yet taught the members of Aganstribe who’d joined them at Cold Springs how to trap. Therefore, Gia really had no idea what trapping was or whether it might work in the winter. She did know they’d only developed it this summer and so they couldn’t have used it in the winter before.
    Pell shrugged again, “Maybe,” he said dubiously.
    The flap over the cave mouth opened and Tando came out. He rubbed his arms and said, “What’re you guys doing out here?” He walked to the edge of the ledge and started passing his water.
    Gontra said, “I woke up and saw them gone! I thought they’d left. Then when I came out here and saw it’d snowed, I really started to panic. Fortunately, it turned out they were just out here fooling around.”
    “We were not!” Pell exclaimed.
    Gia looked up at him and saw that Pell was blushing . He really is new to this, she thought, then supported him by saying, “Pell’s really worried about how the Aldans are going to make it through the winter. He thinks this snow is a bad omen.”
    Tando turned and walked towards them, a surprised look on his face. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Pell will figure something out.”
    Pell gave him an irritated look, “How am I going to ‘figure out’ food for so many people?! They don’t have any fat stored up! They don’t have any meat, and they only have three hunters!”
    Tando shrugged, “Teach them to trap. Teach them to smoke their meat. They should be fine, just like we are.”
    Exasperatedly, Pell said, “What if trapping doesn’t work after the first snow?!”
    Tando made an odd twist with his lower lip, then said, “What if it does? You worry too much. I’ll bet you put snares out yesterday when you got the deer, rabbit, and squirrels, right? We’ll go check them this morning and find out.”
    Enthusiastically, Gontra said, “Yeah, and we can start learning how to do your new kind of hunting. Are these ‘traps” and ‘snares’ part of how you hunt?”
    Pell nodded.
    Tando said, “For the Spirits’ sake! Let’s go back inside.” He rubbed his arms again, “It’s really cold out here!”
    They made their way back over to the cave opening and pushed their way through the big leather flap. Once it fell back into place, Tando said, “Hoy! It’s so dark in these caves with flaps over their openings!” He turned to Pell, “You need to figure out how to get more light in here.”
    Pell said, “How