Edie Kiglatuk's Christmas by M. J. McGrath

dead, Kigga.’
    She looked at him, ashamed at her own momentary lapse of principle. She was her best self when she was with him, he made sure of it.

Read on for chapters 1–3 of M. J. McGrath’s novel,
THE BOY IN THE SNOW
, also available from Penguin Books.

Praise for
The Boy in the Snow

by M. J. McGrath
    â€œMcGrath’s characters are both motivated and ruthless. It is Edie’s cunning intelligence and quick decision-making that keep the story moving.”
    â€”Oprah.com, selected as one of “7 Compulsively Readable Mysteries (For the Crazy-Smart Reader)”
    â€œMcGrath has a firm grasp on a little known culture, its values and language. . . . This affecting novel should melt even the most frozen human hearts.”
    â€”
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
    â€œEdie is fierce in her desire for justice. . . . [She] finds herself at mortal risk from the cold, so masterfully described that it chills the reader.”
    â€”
Booklist
    â€œEdie is blunt and tenacious, the plot compelling and the settings mesmerizing. McGrath is a fresh and compelling voice.”
    â€”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
    â€œThe stoic Edie is a strong, determined heroine, though McGrath does tend to subject her to a lot of dire peril. But what would an Alaskan mystery be without frostbite and snow caves?”
    â€”
Houston Chronicle
    â€œ[McGrath] is an author with a quietly impressive command of character. . . . Yet the author’s real skill is in the astonishing evocation of the frigid landscape. . . . What’s more, McGrath is able to keep all these elements satisfyingly balanced.”
    â€”Express.co.uk (London)
    â€œOne of our most gifted younger writers . . . The snow-laden wastes of Alaska are so brilliantly evoked that it almost makes you shiver reading it, and the plot is every bit as chilling, laced as it is with politics, sects and modern greed.”
    â€”
Daily Mail
(London)

1
    E die Kiglatuk had no way of knowing how long the bear had been looking at her. His eyes, brown and beady, were like dark stars in a summer sky, set in clouds of fur. He raised his nose and snuffled, scenting her out, his huge body framed by the snow-laden spruce of the Alaska forest.
    She had spent enough of her life around polar bears to be sure that, despite its colour, the animal standing before her wasn’t one. Ice bears had longer heads, sharper snouts and smaller ears. This creature was different, snub-snouted and raggedy, the size of a black bear. Only not black. And, with its brown eyes, no albino either.
    On the long flight over from her home in Autisaq in High Arctic Canada, Edie had passed the time reading guides to Alaskan flora and fauna and it now occurred to her that the animal was a spirit bear.
Qalunaat,
white folk, called them Kermode bears but the native people, the Gitga’at, knew them as
mooksgm’ol
, and never hunted them. They said the bears were outsider animals, creatures with the power to pass messages across the invisible portals between the living and the dead.
    Something in her felt compelled to get closer. Swinging from her snowmobile she landed with a dull thud in the snow. Alarmed, the animal gave a short bark and rose on his hind legs. He was about six feet tall but his stance wasn’t so much aggressive as…
As what?
Edie had been around bears all her life, but there was something about this one she couldn’t read.
    For a moment the animal continued to face her, his nostrils flaring, small eyes brown and shiny as rain-soaked rock, then he dropped back down and slowly began to tromp away among the trees, turning his head from time to time to make sure she was not following.
    Or maybe to make sure she was.
    The animal reached a patch of sunlight between two spruce, stopped and turned around. Then he stood, making little coughing sounds, his breath fogging the air.
    Waiting.
    She moved towards him, slowly at first, then