Chapter 6Tyler was dead.
Frozen to death, a small, hobbled creature on the flattened snow. Marla had found him first, rising early so that she could make him snowshoes for the remaining journey. Indeed, she’d wandered back over the land we’d come through the afternoon before, grabbed some bare branches from the hollowed-out willow trees, only to take them back and find Tyler’s body in the same place, unmoved. Dead.
“I said good morning to him,” she said, her eyes hollow. “I thought he said it back. I thought he was fine. But he’s been dead for hours.”
I surveyed the body. He was frozen solid, all the way through. Why had he taken the post for watch at night, if he was so close to death? I had completed the watch the night before, and so when I took Garrison into my tent, I figured Jaspe
