Web of the Norns

He was puzzled. By all that he knew about himself and his state of health, he should be feeling sick, or be dead, not feeling this unexpected exhilarated pleasure at the simple fact of eating; nor should he be enjoying the dazzling whiteness of snow in spite of the cumbersome weight of the pack he lugged. He had been told that he was weakly, that he should avoid exertion and excitement, yet he had the thought that no one who was weak could have picked up the monstrous pack at all. He had lifted it because he had to carry it or die, and every step was a new and conscious effort, but the strain was probably the effort to force lazy surprised muscles to do the job they had been intended to do, and the pangs were pangs of disuse.

Why had he ever believed he was an invalid?

Because his mother had told him, and because he had those fits of immobility.

Slipping and catching at bushes, he followed the trail of footprints as they wandered down an embankment and struck left along a dry creek bed at the bottom.

The floor of the creek bed was a nightmare for a novice woodsman. There were hidden tree roots to catch his feet and snow-laden branches to catch at his face and dump their burden of snow on his head. As he went on, he reviewed the passages in Cooper where the hunter went silently and skillfully through the forest, and remembered how he had envied and wished he could do it too. If he had followed his inclinations, he might have been as soft footed as an Indian, as magnificently muscled as Aker Amen, not a clumsy beginner.

His smooth-soled mukluks slipped on a downslope in the stream bed and he sprawled ignominiously on his back, and had to scrabble for holds to pull himself upright, losing many minutes before he could hurry on. Grant O'Reilly took the falls and bruises without the concern that had always made him fear mortal damage to his health — a bitter anger against his unused, pampered body kept him driving on. He would overtake Aker Amen and Grayf and show them he was no laggard.

But they remained elusive, although sometimes he heard their voices ahead. Hours passed, and as he went on, he remembered the coddling care his mother had given him, her warnings to avoid excitement, to stay away from the other children. Why had he believed her?

Because of the fits, the moments of dizzyness and immobility. Yet now, when his muscles ran with liquid flame, when he had never exerted himself so much for so long in his life, he was not sick. Yesterday he had been closer to death and more legitimately frightened than at any time in his life, and yet he had had no fits and had not been sick. As a matter of fact, he felt more wide awake and his senses were sharper now than at any time he could remember. Then what had given him fits and dizzyness, if not this kind of thing?

Half skidding, half sliding down another short drop in the stream bed, Grant braced his hand against the bank and fell sidewise as his hand went through into a snow covered bush which had looked like solid earth. For a moment, in the sudden sheltering dark, he lay limp and thought of something that might be an answer. Excitement without any exertion was notoriously unhealthy, a source of ulcers to business men. And a child needed activity more desperately than an adult. Inaction, then, had made him sick. His mother's coddling had made him sick!

Anger drove him, and he clawed his way out of the bush and staggered out into the bright snowy day to follow the footprints of the eternally elusive Aker and Grayf, grinding his teeth. He would show his mother, he would be a savage, like these savages, and not the puny, effete fool she had tried to make of him.

The soldiers held him in too much contempt to walk with him, he thought bitterly. They could tell he was following anyhow; probably the thumps and crashes of his blundering could be heard for miles. They did not know he had been deprived of his birthright, that he could have been as good a man as either of them, if he had been given a chance.

The sound of a branch cracking ahead and a murmur of voices encouraged him to totter forward at a more rapid rate. If only he could catch up, he might be able to ask them to stop for a short rest. He scrambled up a short embankment from the dry stream that they had been following and found the broken branch when he reached for the last hand hold. There was no one there when he reached the top — only footprints which circled as if in doubt or discussion and then started off in a line again.

Grant followed, and the woods thinned and the ground grew more level. He could go faster now without tripping. He found himself stumbling across a large clearing and looked up from the trail of footprints just in time to see the two soldiers disappearing into the forest on the far side. He tried to make a cheerful shout, but the most noise he could muster was a faint croak.