coughed.

“Well, now that I’ve told you my name, it’s only fair you tell me yours,” Balto said slowly. Jenna studied him carefully.

“I’m…Jenna.” Her dull, tired eyes swooped over Balto as if she was searching his mind, and again he wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. “Thanks for saving me,” she said finally after a long silence. Balto slapped his paw on the ground and stood up, arching his strong back.

“No problem. Us dogs have to look out for each other.” He strode over to the entrance of the cave and saw a huge ice wall had formed over the entrance from the freezing snow that had swept in piles into the cave and frozen together to make an icy barrier. Shrugging, he scooped some snow up with his paws and packed it in to seal the holes in the frozen crystals. Jenna watched him work, and suddenly something changed in her eyes. She leapt up and tried to drag herself to the ice wall. When she got there she started scratching at the frozen chips in a fury, digging in her nails and panting. “Whoa, what are you doing?” Balto yelled, and he rushed over and slapped her paws away. Jenna ignored him and kept digging furiously. After several failed attempts, Balto managed to get between the ice wall and Jenna’s scrabbling paws. She stopped, breathing hard. “Why are you doing this? Do you want both of us to freeze?!” he yelled. The fierceness of his voice echoed off the walls of the icy chamber.

“You’re a wolf-dog!” Jenna cried. Balto froze.

“What?”

“A wolf-dog!” she shrieked, her hysterical voice bouncing off the walls. “You’re part wolf! I can see it in your features, and the way you move! You’re part wolf! You dragged me to this cave and purposely sealed it up so you could kill me and eat me!” Her speech finished, Jenna quickly moved over and began digging again. Balto whirled to the side and whacked her to the floor, pinning her down as he swooped and pressed his body down on hers. Jenna stared up at him with both fear and anger swirling in her red-brown irises.

“Jenna, listen to me,” Balto said earnestly, “I am not trying to kill you or eat you, and I promise you I won’t ever do that, ever. But there is a blizzard going on outside, and that ice wall is the only thing that’s separating us from it. If you dig a hole through it and try to escape, you’ll kill us both. I can’t let you do that. ‘kay?” Balto looked hard at her to make his point, then slowly, deliberately rolled off of her and stood back up. Jenna rolled over and pushed herself up again, and she stared at this strange canine that had saved her life, yet was part wolf. She felt all confused. Was Balto a friend or enemy? Jenna thought all wolves were supposed to be ferocious killers-hadn’t they killed her father?-but Balto wasn’t like that at all. He could’ve let her die out there, or killed her, but instead he had carried her here and saved her from freezing. Would anyone outside of her family ever do that?

Jenna caught Balto staring at her, and his ripe eyes were filled with so much feeling that she felt herself staring back, looking into the cool pools of gold that shone like the sunset, Balto’s eyes, and Balto stared into hers, into shining gems of flaming rubies like fire, glittering in the ice-shaven light…Jenna looked away. The silence between her and her rescuer rang in her ears.

“So…who’s the wolf in your family?” Jenna asked, surprising herself with the unexpected question. Even Balto looked taken aback.

“My mother,” he blurted out, “Aniu.”

“Did she teach you how to rescue young half-frozen dogs-in-distress?” Jenna teased, trying to break the tension. Balto laughed and started to relax a little.

“No, I did that myself,” he replied, “It could be the part of my father’s spirit I have in me, since I’m not even sure my mother would help a dog.”

“So your father’s a husky?” Jenna asked.

Balto nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t think I ever saw him once in my life! All I know is his name was…” Balto looked up at the soupy blackness of the cave ceiling, thinking hard. “…Scout,” he said finally.

Jenna’s heart skipped a beat. “Scout?” she said casually, not wanting to jump to conclusions. “That’s funny. My dad used to have a friend named Scout. They were both on the mail team together in Nome. They disappeared one day when they were delivering the mail, and they never came back to Nome. I think they were killed by wolves.” Jenna clapped her paw over her mouth after that last sentence. Balto stared at her, realization blooming in his eyes. So she was afraid of him because she thought part of his kind had killed her father. That was the real reason why she had tried to run away, not just a regular fear. Jenna was staring up at him, frightened, and he hoped he could find the right words to say to her.

“Well…let me tell you the story my mother told me about my dad.” Balto went quiet and mused on how to begin. “She said she and her pack found Nome’s mail team out in the snow, when the pack was heading back to the pack cave after a hunt to get out of a small snowstorm. She said the storm wasn’t big enough to blow itself to Nome, or be detected there, but it was enough to get the musher lost and him and the dogs almost frozen. Oh, and this was also when the pack cave was farther away from Nome. Anyway, the musher was frozen to death, and so were all the other dogs except one.

“Scout,” Jenna murmured.

“He was lying beneath another dog that had been trying to keep him warm, and the dog had frozen to death. My mom saw the name on the dog’s collar: Ranger.”

“My dad,” Jenna said in a hushed voice, and a tear like a diamond chip rolled down her cheek. Both were silent as they thought about this freaky coincidence, and Jenna stiffened as memories of her dad swept into her mind like ocean waves. So he hadn’t been killed by wolves at all. He had frozen to death. Her perspective of wolves had been all wrong.

His last words to her: “I love you, Jenna, my girl.” She had kissed him for the last time that day about two years ago, and he had nuzzled her cheek. She could still feel it to this day, warm and playful and caring. Tears filled with watery rainbows flowed from Jenna’s bright eyes, and Balto stood by her side and licked her face, trying to comfort her. For some reason, when his tongue touched her cheek she felt safer, as if her dad’s spirit had entered the cave and rushed inside her eyes to her heart, which ached. Balto looked at her with sorrowful eyes.

“I’m sorry, Jenna. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll stop talking now if you want me to.”

Jenna sniffed and wiped her eyes with one small white paw. “ No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t get upset like this. I just miss my dad so much.” She sniffed one last time and lifted her head high. “I’m okay. Keep going. I want to here the rest.”

“Well,” Balto continued reluctantly, “My mother felt sorry for my dad, so she convinced the other pack members to bring him back to the cave with them, and she nursed him back to health. They fell in love, and…” Jenna gave a small smile. “But my father got sick again, and that time he died. I never got to see him because he died before I was born. My mom buried my dad far away from the pack cave, and she said she’d never rescue another dog again because it brought too much hurt. Then I was born and…well, here I am. Here we are.”

His story finished, Balto looked at Jenna with wide, sad eyes. She gazed back at him, and she could tell they were both thinking the same thing: how coincidental, how linked their pasts seemed to be, like their paths were meant to cross. Looking at Balto, Jenna suddenly thought how handsome he was. His golden gaze was firm and steady, his back and legs were strong and sturdy, and he had a sort of majesty and mystery surrounding him that only wolves seemed to have. It had taken her such a short time to trust him!

Jenna suddenly felt her legs spasm and lock, and she fell, gasping, to the floor. Balto rushed to her side. “Jenna? Are you alright?” It took Jenna a few choking efforts to answer.

“I’m (cough) fine,” she replied, dragging in breath after breath with difficulty, “The cold must’ve weakened my legs. (cough) (deep breath) I don’t think I can stand up again.”

Balto looked at her worriedly, then quickly padded over to the ice wall and scratched a small hole into it with his nails. Tiny snow crystals blew in from the snowstorm and almost immediately froze over the hole to seal it again. Balto got a quick glance before it was frozen over, and he could see it was darker outside. He trotted back to Jenna and lay down next to her again and helped her to a lying position. “It’s darker outside, so I’m guessing it’s nighttime,” he said, “We should try and get some sleep.” Jenna nodded and smiled her gentle smile.

“Alright. Good night, Balto.”

“Night, Jenna.”

They both moved closer to each other for warmth, and the quiet softly hugged them into a dreamy state. Balto began to feel drowsy, when Jenna’s high voice prodded the silence.

“Balto?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks again, for saving my life. I’ll never forget it.” He felt her warm tongue lick his cheek, and he tingled all over.

“ No problem,” he murmured to her, “No problem.”

The