Chapter 4: The Ice-Run

The ledger closed under a large hand before I read a single word.

Kjell stood beside me in the lamplight, looking down at the cover.

"That is not for you tonight," he said.

"My name is in it."

"Yes."

"Then I want to know why."

"Ask me again at the end of the month," he said. "If you still want to know, I will answer. If you have taken the key, you will not need it."

"That's a bad answer."

"It is the only one I can give you honestly," he said. "Go to bed, Solveig. The ice-run is at dawn."

I went.

I did not sleep much.

The ice-run was a river in the valley below the Hold, wide and fast and half frozen, with a rope bridge across it and a stone ledge on the far side.

The trial wolves ran it on the first morning of their first week, Bram told me, and it was never about speed.

"It's about the first shift," he said. "We want to see your wolf."

I stood on the bank in a borrowed tunic and my own boots, with about thirty wolves lined up behind me.

At home my father had let me shift only at night, in the cellar yard, with the shutters closed.

He said it was for my safety.

No one in Silverbrook had ever seen my wolf by daylight, and I had only seen her by moonlight, silver and shy.

"Whenever you're ready," Kjell said.

He stood a little apart from the others with his arms folded.

I took off my boots and let the change take me.

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