The Burning Shadow by Michelle Paver

Kreon for killing the lion. His warriors had been seen carrying the carcass toward the stronghold to be skinned; and soon afterward, the accidents had begun.
    From the ridge, the smith’s hammer rang out. Hylas wished the others would wake up.
    Zan and Beetle were twitching in their sleep, as if they were still hauling sacks. Bat lay clutching the balding remains of his tunnel mouse. Spit’s bony knees were drawn up to his ribs and his mouth hung open: a dark void surrounded by broken teeth.
    Hylas stopped binding his knees and stared at that gaping mouth. A terrifying thought had occurred to him.
    He woke Zan and dragged him to the mouth of the den.
    â€œWhat’s this about?” growled Zan, rubbing his eyes.
    â€œIf a snatcher gets you,” breathed Hylas, “it can reach down your throat—yes?”
    â€œThat’s what they say. So?”
    â€œSo that means it can get
inside
you.”
    â€œThey’re spirits, they can do anything. Why?”
    â€œWhat’s he saying?” Beetle stood behind them with his arms at his sides.
    Hylas motioned him closer. “The first night I came, I asked what was wrong with Spit, and Zan said a snatcher’d nearly got him.” He swallowed. “I think you were wrong, Zan. I think a snatcher already has.”
    Beetle’s face went still. Zan’s scowl deepened. “
What?
”
    Hylas pointed at the sleeping boy and whispered, “He’s possessed.
It’s inside him
.”

    They didn’t believe him.
    Zan got angry, while Beetle retreated behind a blank, uncomprehending stare. When Hylas insisted, Zan turned on him. “Why are you always accusing him?”
    â€œWhy are you always shielding him?”
    â€œWe’re pit spiders, we stick together, that’s how we survive!”
    â€œEven if he gets us all killed?”
    â€œHe won’t. He’s one of us. So shut up!”
    In stony silence they got dressed. Hylas watched Spit waken and pluck desultorily at his rags. He was skeletally thin, and his face was wizened, like that of an old man.
    Hylas pictured the evil spirit coiled in the pulsing red darkness under his heart. Who knew what it would make him do next?

9
    T elamon knelt with his hands in the cold mountain stream and wondered what to do next.
    He couldn’t go back to his father’s stronghold, not yet. And he
must not cry
. He was fourteen summers old: almost a man. And Hylas was dead.
    â€œI’ve kept my promise to you, Hylas,” he said as the water lifted the blood off his fingers. “I said I’d sacrifice a ram for you, and I have. Be at peace, my friend.”
    Long after his hands were clean, he remained kneeling by the stream, while a chill wind from Mount Lykas dried the tears on his cheeks.
    For the thousandth time, he told himself that Hylas’ death wasn’t his fault. How could he have known that his own kin—his father’s brother—would hunt Hylas like prey? It wasn’t his
fault
. It was the will of the gods.
    Why then did the guilt always come back?
    If only he’d warned Hylas sooner. Just a single day. Then he and Issi could have gotten away, and they’d still be alive.
    As Telamon was heading for home, the gods rewarded him for making a sacrifice for his friend: His dogs flushed a boar.
    He didn’t have time to be scared. One moment the dogs were harrying the great beast; the next, it was crashing through the bracken toward him.
    Without thinking, he dropped to one knee and jammed the butt of his spear in the earth to steady it, aiming its point at the boar and gripping the shaft with both hands.
    The boar thundered closer. Its small eyes locked on Telamon’s. He caught its hot rank smell and saw its lethal yellow tusks.
    Suddenly it swerved and came at him from the side. He jerked the spear to meet it. The force of the beast’s charge drove its chest onto the point, snapping the shaft and jolting Telamon to