Ytutin has come - a time of shameful fear in the souls of people, when the most powerful hunters do not stick their noses out of their igloos, as if a deadly poison was spilling in the air, and whisper to each other: “Neswa kuche wuk” - “all three are frozen together,” - meaning earth, sky and air. The thermometer may not indicate danger, since a person does not necessarily die at a temperature of fifty or sixty degrees below zero, but the air is dry as gunpowder and so still that if anyone If anyone dared to wet his finger and put it out, it would freeze simultaneously and evenly on all sides. Into such frost traveled Swift Lightning, a wolf, in whose veins flowed a drop of the blood of a dog, and Firefly, a beautiful young Scottish sheepdog, whose owner had died and who left the ship frozen in the ice with people, the owner’s comrades, choosing Swift Lightning as her husband. Day and night—if you counted them by the hour—they walked straight toward the center of the vast, barren snow plain that stretched between the tundra of the Arctic coast, plowed by an ancient glacier, and the first forested areas hundreds of miles to the south. During this time they walked about fifty miles, and irresistible fatigue began to accumulate in the shepherd’s slender body. At times it happened that, lying down in the snow to rest, she would whine softly, longing for the ship, for the warm bedding and tasty food - for everything that she left for the sake of her wild companion, who once saved her from Wapaska, the polar bear, and then fought for her with a whole pack of ship's dogs.