Young Adult Fiction, Adventure, Female
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway. The trees have been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seem to lean towards each other, black and ominous. In the fading light, a vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless without movement, so loan and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it off laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness. Ah, laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx. Ah, laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and in communicable wisdom off eternity, laughing at the futility of life and the effort off life. It was the wild, the savage, frozen hearted north land wild. But there was life abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. They're bristly. Fur was rimmed with frost. There, breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spume of vapor that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs and the leather traces attached to them to a sled, which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up like a scroll in order to force down and under the boar of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled blankets, an axe and a coffee pot and frying pan. But prominent, occupying most of the space was the long and narrow oblong box in advance of the dogs On wide snowshoes toiled. A man at the rear of the sled toiled a second man on the sled. In the box lay 1/3 man whose toil was over, a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the wild toe like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement, and the wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water and prevents it running to the sea. It drives the sap out of trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts. And most ferociously and terribly of all, does the wild Harry and crush into submission man, a man who was the most restless of life ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must, in the end come to the cessation of movement. But at front and rear, a nod and indomitable toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft, tanned leather eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masks, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all, they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as Theo abysses of space. They traveled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was silence pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their mind. As the many atmospheres of deepwater affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remote ist recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them like juices from the grape. All the false Arturs and exaltation Zen undo self values of the human soul until they perceived themselves finite and small specs and moats, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom. Amidst the play and interplay of the great blind elements and forces, an hour wind by and a second hour, the pale light off the short, sunless day was beginning to fade when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush till it reached its top most note, where it persisted, Pal pitted, intense and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul. Whaling had it not been invested With a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness, the front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind and then across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other a second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear. Somewhere in the snow expanse. They had just reversed 1/3 and answering cry arose also to the rear and to the left of the second cry. They're after us, Bill, said the man at the front. His voice sounded horse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort. Meet scarce, answered his comrade, I ain't seen a rabbit sign for days. Thereafter, they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the hunting cries that continued to rise behind them. At the fall of darkness, they swung the dogs in tow, a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin at the side of the fire served for seat and table. The wolf dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves. But inv inst no inclination to straight off into the darkness.