before continuing. “I was just thinking about it.”

“About what?” Balto inquired.

Lyrie recounted her nightmare to her brother, watching his expression as she did so. She noticed that Balto seemed especially intrigued when she told of the second part of the dream.

“I wonder what that means,” Balto said once Lyrie finished her explanation.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Lyrie responded, and then she adopted a more mellow tone of voice. “Dad and Ara shouldn’t have died.”

Balto nodded in agreement. “No,” he said. “They should still be here. I wish we could have saved them.”

Lyrie sighed. “But there’s nothing we can do about it. We can never change the past.”

“You know, I miss Galena,” Balto said, glancing at the ground.

“Me too. I wish we could bring her back.”

Balto sat on the ground and sighed. “But I hope she’s happy now, wherever she is.”

A few minutes of silence passed, and the Balto spoke again. “What do you think we’ll do next? Where are our lives going?”

“I don’t know where we’ll end up,” Lyrie answered. “We could go anywhere.”

“There’s no way to tell for sure, at least for now.”

XXIII

Soon Lyrie raised her right forepaw and massaged her cheekbone, the memory of the wounds Anok had inflicted still fresh in her mind. She could still feel where the scars traced across her skin—small welts had formed that ran down the side of her face from the inside of her right eye to the corner of her jaw. Again, she could not help but remember that fateful day: it was etched into her memory forever, never to be forgotten.

A flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she saw that Aniu was awake. “Hi, Mom,” she said, yawning slightly.

Aniu yawned. “Morning Lyrie, Balto.”

“Mom,” Lyrie asked.

“What’s wrong, Lyrie?” Aniu replied.

“I had a dream about...about the fight in the den. When—when Dad and Ara…..” Her voice faded.

Aniu placed a paw on Lyrie’s shoulder and allowed her daughter to rub against her chest. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “I want nothing more than to forget that day.”

“Yeah,” Lyrie said.

Aniu was silent for a few moments. “C’mon,” she told them, “we’d better get going.”

“But why are we still going north?” Balto asked impatiently. “We’ve been doing this for months!”

“I need to do it for Sango,” Aniu replied. “You’ll understand someday.”

Balto shook his head, but he said no more.

A few hours later, Aniu began to hear a rush of water in the distance.

Lyrie ran forward several yards and gasped. She waited in shock as Balto and Aniu followed her to the small hill.

In front of them lay the Yukon River. The heat of late summer had melted most of the sheets of ice that normally coated the river, and the frigid water rushed past, whitecaps forming in an instant and disappearing just as quickly. The sound of the rushing river pounded in their ears as the torrent crashed over the rocks that lay in its path, threatening to carry anything that dared venture in downstream and hurl it against one of the boulders that lined the shores.

Balto looked up at his mother, a worried look in his eyes. “How do we get across?”

Aniu sighed before answering—the only apparent solution would surely amount to suicide. She glanced down at her son solemnly. “We swim.”

Balto adopted a questioning expression. “Swim?”

“Balto, Lyrie,” Aniu said, nodding, after a few seconds had passed, “get on my back.” She knelt and tried to calm herself as she felt her pups climb onto her shoulders. “Okay,” she told them, “listen. I need you to hold on to me as tightly as you can. And don’t let go for anything. Hold on and don’t let go. Okay?”

“Okay, Mom,” she heard Lyrie answer through clenched teeth.

Aniu waited for another agreement from Balto, and then she leapt into the raging river.

The first sensation Aniu felt was cold—a freezing, chilling, unrelenting cold that seemed to have no purpose other than seeping into her muscles and bones. Within an instant, she felt her muscles seize up, and her entire body went numb almost immediately.

Aniu soon became aware that the relentless current was carrying her downstream, her face in the path of the torrent, driving her within inches of hard, sharp rocks that surely meant death. She knew that it was only seconds before she would be thrown against the rocks. Even as she came to this conclusion, she noticed a huge boulder looming only a few feet behind her. She desperately twisted in the water so as not to crush Balto and Lyrie, and she braced herself for the impact.

Not a second later, she felt a crushing force strike her left shoulder, and for the first time her head dipped below the frigid water. She came up again, gasping for breath, and immediately her right side crashed into another boulder. There was no time to twist and save the pups now, though, and Aniu felt something press into her side as she struck the rock.

As soon as she was able, Aniu desperately called out her pups’ names. She heard no response. Almost immediately, she came upon a swell in the mighty river. A tug on her shoulders told her that Balto and Lyrie had been thrown off, dislodged by the sudden force of the water. Aniu’s cries became increasingly panicked as she caught a glimpse of what looked to be a chunk of ice that had been hewn to razor-sharp edges by the torrent of water.

Suddenly Aniu’s head struck a rock, and she was nearly knocked senseless by the impact. She became more disoriented than ever as she felt the river toss her limp body around, the sharp ice and rocks scraping her cheeks and shoulders. Only two thoughts scattered around her mind: herself and the safety of her pups. She hoped and prayed that they were still alive, despite the fact that she knew there was no way they could have survived. Her sides ached and twitched, and she did not doubt that she had broken several ribs during the many sharp impacts.

After what seemed like an eternity, another enormous swell lifted her and threw her onto the rocky shore. Aniu lay there for several minutes, panting heavily, bleeding from the cuts and scrapes that covered her body. Her breaths were long and shallow, and every fiber of her being ached with the fire of hell.

XXIV

Several agonizing minutes passed before Aniu was finally able to hoist herself onto her feet. Shivering, her eyes wide, she desperately scanned the shore for the bodies of her pups. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw two dark forms a hundred yards upstream. Aniu reached them within a few minutes and was further relieved to see that Balto and Lyrie were mostly uninjured.

Once she deemed that the pups were healthy enough to continue traveling, Aniu pressured them into turning west. At least they listen more now that they’re older, she thought. I wonder how long we can keep going, though. She regretted feeling relieved at Galena’s absence, for thought the pup had kept them at a relatively slow pace, she had helped to maintain the general mood of the group. 

Aniu’s prediction proved true: on the third day since the encounter with the Yukon River, a small town became visible far ahead of them A sign—clearly a marker on some long-forgotten trail—read: BISHOP MOUNTAIN: 3 MILES.

As she neared the town, Aniu told her pups to veer to the right—slightly north—and therefore allow them to bypass it altogether.

Suddenly the fur went up and the back of Aniu’s neck. She instructed Balto and Lyrie to sit behind her and squinted into the trees, scanning the deep shadows for any signs of life. A rustling sound to her right caught her attention, and she gasped, whirling around to face whatever had made the noise.

Crouching in the low brush not ten yards away, a hunter lowered the barrel of his gun straight at her. The man took a few seconds to sight her and make sure there was no way he could miss, and then he pulled the trigger.

Aniu saw a brief flash of dim light from the barrel of the rifle, and she instinctively ducked out of the way. She felt the bullet graze past her cheek as an ear-splitting boom resounded through the forest, echoing off the trees several times before fading to an eerie silence.

But Aniu would not—could not—stop to wait. Almost without thinking, she grabbed Balto and Lyrie by the scruffs of their necks and began to sprint away, her panicked gait carrying her as far to the west as she could go. She had no way of knowing whether or no the hunter was following her, or if there were more hunters stalking in the shadows, but those thoughts were driven out of her mind, secondary to the instincts of safety and life.

She ran for miles, not caring how far she went, not caring where the hunter was. A few more gunshots split the air, but all of them missed her, and she simply kept running.

Nearly an hour later, Aniu finally stopped. Her sides ached with fatigue, and her heavy panting was the only noise in the darkening forest. She set Balto and Lyrie on the ground and collapsed to the frozen dirt, a gripping feeling clutching her insides.

“What’s wrong Mom?” Balto asked, an anxious expression on his face. He touched his nose to