Kiss of the Fur Queen Read Online Free Page B

Tiger-Tiger,
u!”
Abraham yelled to his lead dog, and Tiger-Tiger swerved, his seven team-mates following; the sled made an elegant turn to the left.
    “Such a prince, my Tiger-Tiger, such a prince,” Abraham whispered, for he and his part-wolf, part-husky had learned, over the seven years of Tiger-Tiger’s eventful life, to communicate both with and without words. This was fortunate because Tiger-Tiger’s Cree vocabulary was limited, though hehad learned how to ask for “black coffee” on blizzardy Tuesday mornings. Keeping his left hand firmly hooked around the handlebar of the sled, Abraham took aim at the frightened caribou with his right. The sled’s sudden encounter with patches of unevenly packed snow, however — and the fact that the fleeing animal, knowing death was imminent, was running erratically — was making his aim unsteady. His finger was about to press the trigger when a human figure beyond and to the right of his quarry drew his focus. He shot and missed.
    “Damn,” he cursed the ill-timed appearance of this human, who was waving frantically. He would have taken a second shot but recognized his intrepid daughter, Chichilia. She may not be able to sing a note, much less play one, try as Abraham might to teach her, but she could shoot a slingshot with such accuracy that, at eight years old, she killed an entire warren of rabbits, whose ears she made into a stunningly succulent stew. For a girl who astonished audiences with highly polished displays of level-headedness and self-possession, Chichilia’s current agitation was downright alarming.
    “Cha
, Tiger-tiger,
cha!”
the hunter yelled into the wind. The leader of the team swerved to the right so suddenly that the left side of the sled came off the ground. Abraham was now heading straight for Chichilia.
    “Whoa, Tiger-Tiger, whoa!” he shouted, and the dogs began to slow down, though not fast enough for Abraham’s comfort.
    “Whoa!” he screamed, dropping his rifle into the sled as Chichilia’s legs took great strides through snow that, in places, hadn’t hardened quite enough to bear her weight. But all the hunter had to hear was
“nimama!”
to understand her message.
    He pulled his sled to a halt beside the girl, sending fountains of powder snow everywhere. With well-practised motion, Chichilia leapt into the canvas-sided conveyance with the intention of sitting at the bottom. But Abraham had already slashed the air with one grand sweep of his moose-hide whip, shouted
“mush!”
and the dogs were off like bullets, making a beeline for the campsite. Chichilia went flying and slammed headfirst into the handlebar.
    The caribou hunter was in such a rush that he forgot his normally fine-tuned manners. It was a few days before he remembered to apologize to his daughter for causing the rather spectacular bump on her head that would remain with her for the rest of her long and passionate life — a bump that would become the subject of many hours’ quality conversation.
    It couldn’t have taken more than four minutes for father and daughter to reach the spot where they had stopped for lunch on their way to Eemanapiteepitat one hundred miles south for the birth.
    Mariesis was not, however, bent over in pain or crying for help. She was unpacking their tent with the intention of erecting it, help or no help from her three small children. Josephine and Chugweesees were gathering sticks for tent pegs, and handling the hatchet with a less than admirable skill. Champion sat perched on the grub box, singing andplaying his only song, “to make her feel better,” he would explain to his father later, “so she wouldn’t hurt so much.”
    Not waiting for his sled to come to a full stop, the caribou hunter leapt out and ordered his wife to lie down on a blanket.
    “Won’t stop jumping up and down” were all the words she could muster.
    “Ho-ho!”
the caribou hunter exclaimed. “Gonna be a dancer, this one.” And in no time, the tent was