Eviane fired again, and his body straightened out as if hit under the chin with a baseball bat. Twisting, he crumpled to the ground.

Eviane walked to her first target, moving more slowly now. She stared down at the body.

The wind’s whistle was dying. The flakes of ice were settling to the ground. The air was warming, but she shook.

She bent down, examining the wound she had inflicted. The man’s forehead was gone.

What incredible… effects…

As if they had a will of their own, her fingers touched the dead man, crawled to the ghastly hole above the still, staring eyes. They traced the edges The wind died. Sound became silence, save for the whimper of wounded and the growing murmur of the other warriors who approached with lowered weapons. Mute, the titanic shape of the Terichik writhed in the sky behind them.

Eviane stood, eyes wide, mouth open but silent. Finally, as with a terrible effort she screamed, and ran. She threw the rifle, the goddamned rifle, aside and hurled herself behind an upturned stand of boats.

She knelt there, whimpering, and watched without comprehension as the Terichik flickered and dissolved. As the moon disappeared from the sky above her. And the stars. And the distant mountains. All that had been heaven and horizon was now a blank white dome crisscrossed with enormous rectangles.

One building at a time, the abandoned Inuit village disappeared: the lodge, the smokehouse, the line of boats. The boathouse remained, but it was too far. Eviane whimpered and ran and hid again, this time beneath a heap of splintered wood and iron: the only remaining boat.

Over and over in an endless loop her mind screamed: What is happening? What is happening? I don’t under-ohgodohgod And then even the wreckage disappeared.