On a dog-pulled sleigh, the good hunters of the Eskimo take control of the direction and move freely through the snow.

In addition to the bearded hunter in the white fur hat, a dead seal was pulled behind the sleigh, and several fish of various sizes were strung on the line and swayed as the sled progressed.

After turning over several snow hills, the hunter saw an igloo, and as soon as he pulled the reins, the sleigh slid on the ground for a few meters before finally coming to a steady stop.

The hunter, wearing thick gloves and rubbing the ice slag from his beard, first dragged the seal from behind the sled. Adult seals can weigh up to 180 kilograms, and this half-sized seal can weigh about 100 kilograms, and if it weren't for the help of the sled car, the hunter would have successfully killed it, and it would have been difficult to bring back the prey in the snow and ice.

The hunter lifted the thick felt of the igloo, and a teenage Eskimo girl stood up: "Dad, did you catch a seal today?" ”

The hunter put down the seal, and when he saw his daughter Tess's happy little face, he couldn't help but rub her hair. The winter of food scarcity has passed, and his daughter will not go hungry, how can he be unhappy?

Tess ran out and brought in the dog with the sled, and the string of fish, and there was too much food to eat for a while, buried under the snow, fresh and clean.

Although Tess is only ten years old, she is already a good helper in the family, and she and her father clean up the seals, which is very neat.

"Father, look!" As Tess was washing and peeling the seal, she found a blood-stained bead in its belly, and wiped it twice on the ground with snow to find it a round and shiny pearl, and happily held it up to the hunter.

The hunter took it and looked at it for a while, such pearls are really rare in places like the Arctic, and they don't know what seals eat.

Seeing that Tess liked it, he gave her the beads to play with.

The hunter first took the seal entrails and fed them to the dogs, and then returned with his daughter to eat the seal's meat.

There is nowhere to make a fire in the ice and snow, and the Eskimos have eaten raw meat since the beginning of their lives, and with the progress of society recently, except in this extreme north, it is rare to live in igloos and eat raw meat, and the hunter father and daughter are one of the few insistents.

After eating seal meat, Tess lies on the felt and plays with beads.

There are also a number of Eskimos in the neighborhood, and everyone helps each other, and the hunters take out most of the seal meat and give it to the neighbors.

Tess was alone in the igloo, tossing beads up and down. The Eskimos originally migrated from Asia 10,000 years ago, short, yellow-skinned, black-haired, typical of the race, Tess looked very much like a little girl from China.

The hunter returned, and saw that Tess was still playing with the bead, and was happy to see that his daughter liked it. Tess's mother died during childbirth, and for so many years, he raised Tess on goat's milk, and relied on her hunting skills to keep her from worrying about food, but he really didn't know how to play with a teenage girl...... Even his sled dog is better at making the little girl happy than him.

Located in the polar circle of the North Pole, there is no night in summer, and at the turn of winter and summer, the night is mixed with a snowstorm, which comes very late.

Because he lived in an igloo, he could not make a fire at night, otherwise it would melt the igloo, and the hunter gave Tess a thick blanket of bearskin, which made him tired from the day's hunting, and soon fell asleep at the other end of the house.

Tess didn't know why tonight, she was well fed, but she couldn't sleep.

The bead taken from the seal's belly during the day was held in Tess's hand, and in the cold night, the bead seemed to carry a hint of warmth that made her reluctant to let go.

Tess had also heard a few fairy tales, and the bead was so strange that she always felt that there was a fairy hidden in it.

Of course, until the little girl kept her eyes open until midnight, she was so sleepy that she could not fall asleep, and the so-called fairy did not come out of the beads. However, the water aura around the beads fluctuated greatly, so the little girl couldn't put it down.

The next day it was a sunny day, and the hunter had eaten seal meat and went to consult with his neighbors early in the morning.

Tess was playing with the sled dog at home, and the water aura around the beads was getting stronger and stronger, and the affinity of the water made people even more reluctant to put it down.

It was time for lunch before the hunters returned.

It turned out that they had accumulated a lot of seal skins all winter, and they did not want to be underpaid by the fur merchants who roamed among the Eskimo tribes, so they decided to go to the town and sell them themselves, so they went out for a few days, told Tess to stay at home, and not to go out at night.

Tess absentmindedly agreed, her mind focused on the bead.

The hunter instructed his daughter to take out the seal skins that had accumulated all winter, load a full load of sleds, take food and set off.

Tess was very active by nature, and she could stay in the house for the first two days, but it was cold and snowy, and no one talked to her, even the sled dogs went with her, and she was a teenage girl no matter how sensible she was, and at night she heard the sound of the wind mixed with snow slag on the door felt, and she couldn't sleep anymore.

Frightened and curious, Tess got up from the felt and quietly opened the door when she heard a whimper near the igloo.

The neat row of footprints in front of the igloo has not been completely covered by the wind and snow.

Hey, is my father back?

Every time her father came back from town, he would bring her a lot of sparkling sweets, and Tess thought of the smell, forgot the previous whimper, and thought that her father was at a neighbor's house not far away, and put on a big woolly coat, and ran out along the footprints.

There was wind and snow in the dark night, and the little girl was blown by the wind and closed her eyes, and could not distinguish the way, but walked with her head down and followed the footprints, and did not find that this direction did not lead to the neighbor's house at all.

Tess didn't know how long she had been walking, she just felt her legs getting stiffer and heavier, and her body was frozen.

Looking up, Tess finally realized that she was lost! On a snowy night like this, getting lost in the snow will kill you.

Little Tess finally remembered that her father told her not to go out at night, and her little mouth was so cold that she endured it for a long time before she cried.

At this moment, little Tess heard a movement ahead, she tried to open her eyes and looked, a few meters away there was a strong figure, could it be her father?

Little Tess ran two steps, saw the figure clearly, and covered her mouth tightly - where was the father, it was clearly a polar bear, holding some meat in his hand, and the red rope on it was tied by Tess herself!

It turns out that it's not my father who has returned, it's the polar bear who is stealing the seals and fish that Tess's family buried in the snow outside the igloo!

Polar bears also smell the smell of life, they are the least picky animals, and when they can't catch fish in the summer, they will survive the Arctic summer with carrion, and naturally they also want to eat people, especially children like Tess, who are not aggressive...... The polar bear threw down the meat in his hand and pounced like Tess.

Tess turned around and stumbled two steps before she fell to the ground, and the bead in her hand fell out, and Tess couldn't see where it had fallen in the night.

Ten years old Tess was so frightened that she forgot to cry when her feet sank into the snow, and the polar bear's claws continued to enlarge in her eyes, and Tess curled up in a ball, trembling at the thought of her father.

At this moment, the direction in which the bead fell suddenly burst into a dazzling light, and the polar bear seemed to sense something and took two steps back in fright.

Tess's eyes widened as she looked at the beads she had been playing with for a few days, emitting a dazzling light, gradually floating into the air, and in the blink of an eye, a woman in a skirt suddenly appeared where the beads shone -

Against the light, Tess couldn't see the woman's face clearly, and the glowing beads were worn on her wrists, like a small sun, lighting up the Arctic night.

Wearing such a thin, beautiful dress, this woman who suddenly appeared, was she a fairy who came to save her?

Ten-year-old Tess stared blankly at the fairy's approach, and tears of fear flowed in hindsight.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I am very happy to see your book reviews and your support