we’re going to have to walk. You look strong enough, though. And I’ll do the best I can, since I doubt you know the way to Nome.”

“What makes you think I’d follow YOU of all dogs into the wilderness, to wander around in circles, looking for a town which you don’t even know where it is? I don’t even know who you are!” she responded hotly.

Knowing it was the only thing to get Taya to move, Copper said, “You don’t seem to think much of yourself, so why does it matter to you? If you’re totally worthless, it doesn’t matter what you do.” He hated to be injecting more poisoned arrows of self-hate into Taya’s soul, but he was tired and cold and his mind had started to shut down of its own accord. It was the only way he could think of to get Taya to follow him.

She was silent for a few seconds and didn’t move when he darted away from the building and out into the black sky and white snowdrifts, but after another few seconds he heard the crunch of snow beneath canine paws behind him, and he knew she had decided to follow.

The old land stretched out before them in an endless sheet of swirling black and white. Copper felt for the trails made by the sleighs and sniffed the snow to catch the scent of the sleigh dogs. By this method he and Taya slowly made their way nearer to what he hoped was Nome. The snow was freezing, and the two dogs started out at a quick pace, but as the minutes dragged on they both slowed to a gradual stumble over the ground. Copper didn’t even notice at first, and drowsily lifted one paw after the other, slower and slower and…sloooower and s-l-o-w-e-r…

He awoke with a start with a mouthful of snow and a wake-up kick in the face from Taya. He jerked upwards, but his brain wasn’t working with his body and he almost fell over again.

“Wake up, you idiot!” Taya screeched at him over the wind, “Y-You c-can’t fall asleep now! You’re the only one that knows the way to this place!”

“I know, I know,” Copper said groggily, concentrating as hard as he could to put one paw in front of the other, “It’s just the cold…and the fight…and how late it is…it’s all wearing me out. I feel like if I close my eyes for just a second too long, I’ll fall asleep. I’ll try to stay awake, but…” He couldn’t continue. His eyelids felt like weights were pulling them down. The snow looked SO soft, like the pile of feathers he had played with when he ripped open his pillow and all the fluff had burst out. That was when he was a pup, when life was simple…

Blackness clogged his mind, and he awoke again to soft colors bathing his face in light and shining into his misty eyes. He was splayed out in the snow, and he looked up to see Taya was yelling at him again, but the sounds that came from her mouth were muffled and blurred. The pale colors of the Aurora Borealis melted against her red-gold fur, and the sky blue and pale pink and mint green made her look slightly younger, more alive. For the first time she looked beautiful in her own way, but Copper couldn’t even register this scene much as he could feel himself giving in to the cold and exhaustion. The Northern Lights danced and shivered in the dark sky with no moon, while Taya’s words gradually became louder and clearer and easier for him to understand:

“Hey, you! Whatever-your-name-is, get up! C’mon, husky, you’re gonna make us both freeze out here! And while I don’t care if I die, in certain circumstances I do care HOW I die, and freezing to death isn’t exactly a pleasant experience!”

Copper couldn’t move. He was too cold, too tired. “Can’t…” he choked out, but before he could finish Taya clamped her teeth onto the red fur on the back of his neck and hoisted him up. Too surprised to find strength in his legs, he had to lean against her to stay upright. His head spun at the sudden movement, and the Lights in the sky turned from elaborate streaks to a whirlpool of color. “Sorry, Taya,” he whispered unsteadily, “I’m just so tired all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, well, don’t think I’m not tired, too,” she huffed, taking a step forward and nudging him to do the same. He stepped, and the world spun like Duke’s airplane propeller. “Look, what is your name? I really don’t mind calling you ‘hey, you’, in fact I think it suits you better than some names I can think of, but I guess it would be on more polite terms to know your name. So, what is it?”

“Copper,” he sighed, and they both took another step forward. But the world tipped back and forth so much that Copper took a step back. Taya sharply prodded him with her shoulder to keep going, but when she looked down and saw the large pawprint displayed in the lit-up snow, she shrieked.

“What in the…! You’re part wolf?”

Copper brushed the print away with the back of his paw. “Yes.”

Taya immediately became frigid and tense under her short fur and quickly pulled away so Copper had to stand on his own. She stood there, her ice blue eyes as hard and as hating as icebergs. “Any relation to Balto, perhaps?” she said coldly.

“Any relation to Steele, perhaps?” Copper sighed, wobbling but looking Taya in the eye. For the first time in his life, he hated the Northern Lights for revealing his identity.

She glared at him through the white flakes and cold wind between them, never mind the distrust and suspicion. He looked back, and finally decided to get to the bottom of things. “Are you Steele’s daughter?”

“Yes,” Taya spat forcefully, “Steele is my father…and you’re Balto’s son.”

“Yeah.”

The two dogs stared at each other in study. Copper opened his mouth to ask, but Taya cut him off. “Shut it. You want to know what happened, right? Well, my father found another female to substitute for Jenna soon after she and Balto were officially ‘together’. The female was mostly Chow Chow, as you can see from my fur. I was born with my litter in some alleyway in Nome, and then Steele left. I don’t even know my mother’s name, and she up and died right after giving birth to her litter, and I guess that’s why Steele left. He didn’t want to look after a whole bunch of dumb puppies by himself…and I think he was just a…” Taya cussed him out. “My siblings and me were left to survive on our own, and we eventually all got separated. The only one I remember is this one brother that I stuck with for awhile. He had white fur with big brown spots, I think, and we both had Steele’s blue eyes.” ‘Hawk,’ Copper thought, with a sudden sick feeling in his stomach. “But then Carson picked me up off the street when he saw me beat an older dog in a fight for some food out of a garbage can, and he took me and trained me to be a fighter! I don’t know where any of my littermates are now. I don’t know where my FATHER is either, and I’m glad!” She proceeded to cuss Steele out some more, then turned on Copper with her teeth bared. “Anything else you want to know, wolf-dog?”

“Er…” Copper was more than a little surprised at Taya’s abruptness, but he admitted to himself she must have been waiting her whole life to scream out something like that, and he had just given her that opportunity. She had taken it. Her obvious hatred of her father gave him a spark of hope. “Listen, we’ve still got to get to Nome. If you’ve got any resentment towards me for what happened between our dads over my mom, could you push it aside till we get to Nome? I mean-”

“I hate my dad!” Taya screamed, “Wouldn’t you hate a dog that was supposed to take care of you but instead left you to die? Just so long as you don’t try to get revenge on me for your dad, I’m fine!”

“I swear I don’t have anything against you,” Copper said, raising one white paw with mock dignity. And truly he didn’t.

The world had slowly been rocking back and forth for him all this time, and suddenly his left front leg spasmed and gave way, and he sprawled into a face-ful of red snow. The cold crystals smelt like blood, and he realized the wound on his left front leg had re-opened again and had been steadily dripping his blood onto the snow. The leg was cut as well as fractured.

Taya’s face appeared in his vision as a red-gold splotch. The Aurora Borealis had disappeared into black behind the chow/malamute’s head, and everything started to blur.

“Copper! Copper, get up! COPPER!”

His eyes closed and he felt himself tilt sideways. Something caught him before he fell and hoisted him up to drag him through the snow on it’s back. The bumps of old scars and wounds on cold skin pressed into Copper’s left side, and he knew it was Taya who was supporting him. He felt guilty and ashamed and relieved all at once and wished he wasn’t so weak right then. Everything had just gotten to him: Storm’s death, Hawk’s death, getting hurt in the fights, the cold, blood loss…He was pretty much mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. He would never be able to lead the way like this. They would never get to Nome.

Copper forced open bleary eyes and could make out two bright yellow glowing eyes a few feet ahead of him. Dizzy and not exactly thinking straight, he said the first word that came into his head. “Kaila?”

Taya had stopped in her tracks and was looking up into the eyes in fear or awe, or both, Copper