Northwest Passage Novels & Stories

"There's a pass through the mountains, three days east of here. It's dangerous—rock slides, thin air, unpredictable weather—but Ronan won't expect you to take it. His wolves avoid it. If you can make it through, you'll reach the North Star lands in a week." "Wait," Stellan said. "How do we find it?" Runa paused, looking back. "Follow the river north until you see three peaks that look like claws. The pass is between the middle and eastern peaks. And when you get to the other side..." She smiled. "Tell the North Star wolves that Runa sends her regards. My mother was one of them, once." Then she was gone, melting into the forest as if she'd never been there. We stood in silence for a long mome

Akineta took it from me and studied it. She lifted her head from the map and stared far off in the distance. We followed the line of her vision. “Their main camp is in the northwest. We have to penetrate three tall iron gates before we can get to the main target.” “Then we should get going.” Northwest. It should be somewhere between the north and the west. This meant that the north had these creatures living amongst them. It took us almost an hour and thirty minutes before we reached our destination. There was a stream of water in front of with just a single log of wood across. And once we crossed this river, then we would get to the first gate.

"We got away when Margaret went after our properties. We've been concealing in these passages for quite a long time." I heaved. The Southern pack? In any case, they were our foes! Or if nothing else, they used to be. Kloss came over, his eyes restricted. "How could you track down this spot?" he requested. The old wolf grinned unfortunately. "These passages associate every one of the Northern grounds," she made sense of. "It's an old mystery, known exclusively to the seniors of each pack." I saw Kloss' eyes augment in shock. Obviously, this was a surprising bit of information to him as well.

"The south gate? You would be caught before you hit the treeline. Those guards use scent-hounds, not eyes. They would smell you from a mile away." He tapped a small marked space on the map. "Go through the north-west overflow. The sulfur springs there will mask your scent from the hounds. It’s a long route, but it’s the only one that works perfectly as an entrance and exit." I stared at him, my suspicion warring with my desperation. He laid out answers even without me asking.

He turns to look in the opposite direction, where Morrigan is saying this secret entrance is. “It will take time for all of us to reach the northern border. If they come through the main entrance, we’d be too far away,” Innik thinks aloud. “You’re sure that this break in the cliffs exists, and is big enough for them to pass through?” Morrigan nods. “Only in a single file, but yes.” Innik makes eye contact with Ander, who gives him an almost imperceptible nod. Innik sighs. “Okay then,” he whispers.

Permiton is the only one who could reasonably be here without any trouble. I glance at River, catching his eye, and try to keep my voice calm. “Maybe we should consider another option,” I suggest. “What if we wait for a ferry to cross? Surely, someone from Oceana will come over to this side eventually. We could catch a ride back with them.” River just scowls, and Brook shakes his head, rising and coming to stand next to us, a grim look on his face. “It’s not that simple, unfortunately,” he tells me quietly. “The narwhals are selective and judicious. They don’t take exiles or enemies across the water. They’ll try to drown us if we even attempt it.”

The northern corridor was a strip of mixed forest running along the ridge above the valley, technically neutral ground, practically nobody's because the terrain made it useless for anything practical. Rocky, steep, no water source worth claiming, no flat ground worth building on. The kind of place that existed on maps as a buffer and in reality as a long inconvenient walk between two places that mattered. Except someone had been passing through it repeatedly and with purpose for three weeks.

“Jenna, please let me explain. Last night, I…” I did not slow down or look at him. I simply walked around him and headed for the bus stop nearby. Behind me, he kept calling my name in a panic. I ignored him. I got on the bus heading toward Willow Lane. The bus was nearly empty. I took out the torn recipe from my bag and turned it over. On the back, my mother had written an address before she died: The corner of Willow Lane, Rosie’s Pasta Kitchen. The bus swayed through two stops before I got off near Willow Lane. Following the address, I found an old pasta place. There was a paper sign taped to the glass door.

When Ash didn't say anything, he continued. "As you see, you were right about your hunch that it was a public place and the horizon. But there's just so many places around in Wausau that meets the criteria. But if you added the line "Neptune that divides the east and the west", it narrows down our selection. The term "Neptune" is often used as a metaphor or a description for oceans, or sometimes a body of a water—"

The "next bridge" was no longer a metaphorical concept; it was a physical necessity, an engineering challenge that would serve as the ultimate litmus test for the Midnight Frost’s maturity. The geographical divide—the treacherous, high-altitude spine of the Northern Pass that had historically severed the mountain settlements from the fertile, low-lying coastal trade routes—had been a persistent bottleneck to the region’s economic health.