He tried to calm himself, recalling that the bear had taken fish rather than going straight for his throat. But with no rations left to offer, he couldn’t help imagining the creature’s jaws snapping shut around his flesh. Fear clung to him like a shadow.
Yet something else tugged at him from beneath the terror: a soft, persistent sense that the bear was as desperate as he was. Step by step, he pressed on through the hush of the Arctic night, torn between the urge to flee and the impossible pull to follow.