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Sharh the tracker had said that the reindeer would go into the high mountains for cooler weather. Ever since the solitary man had joined Jonh’s family two season-turns ago, he could find their prey as if he himself was a deer in human form; he knew how they thought and moved. So Jonh and the rest of the family climbed the foothills, heading for the mountain lakes.
Bare stone and soil showed on patches of the mountains and they had to clamber over several large rockslides. The land here had recently had a bout of the shaking fever, the one that could kill a person but when the very earth caught it would split rocks and even break mountains.
Bones made out of stone showed in the new rock-shear – huge leg-bones and spines, bigger than mammoths, a gaping skull like a sturgeon with wolf teeth. Everyone murmured to see such things, and the children cried in fear.
“Surely they were gods, to have skeletons made out of rock,” Jonh said.
Sharh looked at the bones. “Perhaps they lived here when the world was built, a long time ago.”
“When we kill our first reindeer here…”
“…We should give these creatures the head and hide, and many flowers,” Sharh finished his friend’s words. “The world is wonderful, Jonh, to have such bones.”