Spirit Walker by Michelle Paver Page B

tree--and chose the thinnest, and a length of deer-sinew thread. The thread he'd made from the roe buck had been lumpy and thick, and when Vedna had seen it she'd pursed her lips and given him some of hers. It was as fine as spider's gossamer, and he thanked her under his breath.
    The first stab of the needle was agonizing. Drawing
83
the thread through his skin made him moan, and he had to hop in circles with the needle sticking out of his calf before he could work up the courage to make another stitch. When he'd finished, tears were streaming down his face.
     
Next, the dressing. He used some chewed green willow bark--at least there was plenty of that-- although dabbing it on stung like fury. Then a soft pad peeled from the inside of a horsehoof mushroom, with a birch-bast binding to keep everything in place.
     
When it was over, he was trembling. The wound was still throbbing, but the pain had lessened a little.
     
He found his boots--muddy but undamaged--and pulled them on. He was glad they were summer ones, with a rawhide sole and soft buckskin sides, which wouldn't chafe his calf. Lastly, he stowed the rest of the horsehoof mushroom in his pack, for changing the dressing in a few days.
    A few days . . .
He would still be here, working on the carcass. If the Follower didn't get him first.
The rain had stopped. Water dripped off the ruined willow, and glistened on the carcass of the boar. A pair of ravens flew down, eyeing it hopefully. Torak shooed them away.
    Black spots darted before his eyes, and he realized he was faint with hunger. Butchering the carcass would
84
have to wait. He had to eat.
He'd finished the supplies he'd taken from the Ravens, but with the carcass, he had no shortage of meat. He'd never felt less like eating.
    Watched by the ravens, he forced down the rest of the liver. Drinking the blood was harder. Most of it had drained into the mud--a mistake that he couldn't now repair and that, being against the Pact, would bring him bad luck. To make amends he took his birchwood cup from his pack and scooped up what remained in the body cavity. He tried not to think about Oslak whittling the cup for him one long winter's night; or that he was drinking the blood of a friend.
To take away the taste, he crunched up some young burdock stems. Then--at last--he made a start on the carcass.
    Skinning it was back-straining, arm-wrenching work, and it was nearly dusk by the time he'd finished. He was covered in blood and shaking with tiredness, and the hide was a muddy, stinking mess. He still hadn't washed it or started scraping off the flesh and fat. After that there would be days spent curing it with wood ash and mashed brains, and drying the meat, and splitting the bones for fishhooks and arrowheads.
Not forgetting, of course, that he still had to build a shelter and a fire before it got dark. . . .
    85
"Wishing won't get it done," said a voice behind him.
Torak gave a start.
He couldn't see anyone. The bracken was man-high, filled with shadow.
"Who are you?" he said. He took a step forward-- then realized he'd left his weapons by the carcass.
That was when he saw it. A face in the bracken, staring at him.
A face of leaves.
86
Chapter ELEVEN
The creature with the face of leaves was not alone. Another appeared close by. Then another and another. Torak was surrounded.
As more emerged from the trees, he saw that although their faces resembled that of the Follower, they were full-grown men and women--and they didn't have claws.
They wore their brown hair long, and braided with the tail hairs of forest horses. The men's beards were dyed green, like the moss that hangs from spruce trees. The lips of both men and women were stained a darker
     
87
     
green; but most startling of all were the leaves on their faces. Torak saw that these were dense greenish-brown tattoos: oak leaves for the women, holly for the men. The tattoos gave the disquieting impression that they were peering from the trees--even when, as now,