“It won’t hold your weight,” Thornsong said, eyeing the log rolling in the black water.

“It has to,” Raspberry said. “I’m not taking the long way around.”

“You’re going to get wet.”

“I haven’t been dry since we stepped into this stinking, soggy swamp.”

Raspberry placed a toe on the log. The rolling stopped. He bounced the pad of his foot on it. It seemed to stabilize, sinking into the bottom ooze.

“You forget sometimes - we almas are natural travelers. We don’t build huts or shelter in caves. Always on the move. And we move well.”

He put one foot, then another, on the log. He spread his arms, threw back his head and whistled.

“Won’t hold my weight,” he said, triumphant. “As if a man could really tell an almas how to move in the wild-”

The log gave way. Raspberry made a choking, strangling, chirping sound as he suddenly sunk all the way to his nose.

Thornsong crouched and extended a leg in his direction, grabbing tufts of moss at the water’s edge.

“Grab hold,” he said. “And try not to tear it off.”

Raspberry clamored out of the ooze, sliming Thornsong in the process.

“Your fragrance isn’t great at the best of times,” he said. “I’m not looking forward to the next few days.”

Raspberry shook his wrist and slopped a gob of mud on Thornsong’s chest.

“There - best get used to it.”

“At least it’s warmer here - we’re headed north, but this valley traps the moist air.”

“And the mosquitos. And the carrion birds. And the stink.”

Thornsong sighed. The horizon was lost in a tangle of muck, twisted wood, and tall grasses. The mountain they were ostensibly heading toward was just barely visible as a greasy, purplish blob.

“I’m still not quite clear on what kind of opportunity a cannibal in the woods represents,” Raspberry said, pulling himself to his feet. “The degenerate salted and ate half of his wife. He fled the village to almost certain doom. What part do we have to play in that?”

“He might come back,” Thornsong said. “That’s what I aim to prevent.”

“Why would he?” Raspberry said. “The villagers would hang him from the nearest tree, if he’s lucky.”

“He would be...changed,” Thornsong said. “Some taboos exist for a reason.”

“Here’s a taboo I will not violate - it is almost noon and we haven’t had a bite to eat since last noon.”

“I’m aware,” Thornsong said. He turned in a slow circle.

“Time is of the essence, but we’re not getting out of this bog today. Might as well camp, build a fire to keep the mosquitos at bay, and find something to eat.”

“I don’t fancy sleeping with my ass in the mud,” Raspberry said.

“Our asses are always in the mud,” Thornsong said. “But we can try to make it more tolerable. There’s a hillock over there. It should be somewhat drier. Gather up some of that long grass and build us a nest.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“I’ll find us something to eat. Just leave a bare patch where I can build a fire.”

Thornsong left Raspberry to his work and scanned the bog. Food was everywhere - if you knew where to look and weren’t too picky. A boyhood spent watching the yhool gibbons beachcombing for the remnants of Beringia that occasionally washed ashore taught him that.

Step one: Look down.

His moccasins were soggy and torn. He kicked them off and allowed the cool mud of the bog to squish through his toes.

Thornsong turned in a slow circle, scanning the khaki grass clumps. There. A single red ruby, like a drop of blood. He bent and plucked a tiny by well-formed marsh strawberry from its runner, tucking it into his mouth. He grabbed the runner and began to trace it to other little strawberries tucked in the long grass.

“One for me - and one for the bag,” he said, nibbling as he went.

The runners slithered through the grass for a good 15 feet. He’d gathered two fat handfuls of strawberries by the time the relatively dry land ran out and dipped into a muddy pool.

He was still on his hands and knees, following the runner, when he heard the first “plop” and saw a pair of green eyes swiveling on the surface.

Thornsong looked for the sun. It was still well above the horizon, but the light was getting increasingly rich and red. It would be twilight soon.

He dug around in his pack till his fingers pricked on a short, sharp piece of beaten copper. He’d found it out west, just laying in a dry stream bed as a peculiar U-shaped thin nugget. A little shaping with two heavy round stones, and he’d fashioned a frog gig.

He took the gig and used a few strands of the bog’s long grass to tie it securely to a notch he made in the tip of a marsh reed. A few additional strands through the U of the gig to make sure no particularly big bullfrogs swam away with his gig, and he was ready to hunt.

“The fat little water caribou,” he said, staying low by the side of the pond. He kept his breathing shallow and tried to imagine the bullfrog sitting in the muck at the bottom, holding its breath, hoping danger would pass before he needed to snag a mouthful of air.

He didn’t need to wait long. The swiveling green eyes returned, trailing a pair of legs nearly the length of his forearm. Thornsong palmed the gig and aimed in tiny increments until the copper tip was pointed at the bullfrog’s body, below the water line.

Aiming below the waterline is tricky, he thought. It distorts lines, confuses size and shape. He had to be quick.

And he was. The gig jumped forward with a twitch of his wrist and impaled the frog. It immediately went limp - a good strike. He pulled straight back to avoid bending the gig and laid the frog on the bank. He considered a quick whack with the butt of his knife to make sure it stayed there, but the gig seemed to have finished the job.

He moved on to the next pool. It was too early in the year for the big males to congregate for breeding. He hadn’t heard a single croak after more than two days in the bog.

Another bullfrog reared his head and received the gig. Next pool, new bullfrog.

The third pool was deeper than the others, but frog-free. Thornsong held his breath. The main course for the night’s feast could be close. He pushed the gig into the water and found the depth to be about three feet, sloping sharply down to a hollow under the stump of some ancient old oak that must’ve drowned when the outflow spilled its now-forgotten banks and created the bog.

He began to strip. He considered wrapping his hands with his war shirt to avoid snake bites - but he’d seen precious few in the bog thus far and - besides - they were too far north for water moccasins. A snake bite would be irritating and the infection potential high, but a common watersnake would simply join the frogs on the spit if he was wrong about what lived in the oak stump hollow.

No need for delicacy for this hunt. He was no longer still-hunting the flighty little water caribou. He intended to swagger into the bear’s den and wrestle it out by hand.

Thornsong slipped into the cool water, exhaling through his nose to keep the worst of the mud out. He kept his eyes screwed tight, navigating down to the bottom of the pool by digging his fingers into the bottom muck. Once he was entirely submerged, he felt for the edges of the oak hollow.

There. The water was subtly colder inside, shielded from even the most meager sunlight. He reached deeper into the hole, keeping his fingers tucked closely together as if they were in an invisible mitten. He flapped it irregularly, no longer reaching and groping - but luring.

The hit nearly forced his eyes open. He exhaled forcefully. It was as if a log wrapped in sharkskin had been dropped onto both sides of his hand. He curled his fingers, getting a hold on the sand-and-slime force, and yanked hard straight back.

Here was the danger - he needed to plant his feet and get his head above water before his quarry reacted to the hand in his mouth and tried to drag him back under, back into that hollow. In his youth, Thornsong had seen other boys die this way - trapped by their pride or an errant root or by a catfish that was simply too large to haul up. A bit of a lottery, noodling was. Sometimes you ate the fish - and sometimes the fish ate you, bit by bit, as you rotted in a pool over the coming weeks and months.

Not today. The pool wasn’t overly deep and the mucky bottom had just enough rotted plant life at the bottom to allow him to push up and out. He bounced on the surface, hand deep in the catfish’s maw, and wrestled the beat to the bank. With his free hand, he was able to grab a lingering root from the old oak. It held. Thornsong pulled and slithered up onto the bank.

The catfish was grunting at its jaw worked at his hand. A trickle of muddy, bloody water ran out of the corners of its mouth. His wrist was being gummed raw. They didn’t have teeth, not really, but they did have a hard bony plate covered with tiny denticles. Some tribes Thornsong had encountered used them, dried, as wood rasps.

“Need help?” Raspberry said, standing over man and fish, both gawping and gasping for air beside the pool.

“Please,” Thornsong said.

Raspberry knelt down and wrapped on the catfish’s broad head with his knuckles, like he was knocking on a door. The mouth went slack for just a moment - long enough for Thornsong to pull his hand free. He grabbed his tomahawk out of his belt and delivered a quick chop to the fish’s spine, directly behind the head. It shivered, gasped another two or three times, and then laid still. Residual nerve impulses kicked its tail lazily side to side.

“Must be 75 pounds,” Raspberry said, doing his best to whistle. It came out as a phlegmy hiss.

An hour later, with the belly meat of the big catfish crisping on the coals and his feet turned toward the sparse but hot fire in front of their grass sleeping nest, Thornsong smiled. He nibbled at the white meat clinging to his frog leg as Raspberry crunched through another small handful of strawberries.

“Not bad,” he said, picking at his teeth with a broken stick. “I’d have preferred venison. But it beats pemmican.”

“Doesn’t everything?” said Thornsong.

“I’ve eaten pine bark before,” Raspberry said. “When the winters turned especially cold. Not the outer stuff, but the soft inner layer. Tastes like pitch. When we were sick, we’d eat clods of red clay. Soaks up the poison. And once I ate part of the buffalo-hide door covering from a long-abandoned wigwam. It was stiff with age and mold.”

He smiled back at Thornsong.

“Still better than pemmican.”

“Indeed.”