Here when it grew light enough for him to stir and muck about, but still well before sunup. The air had a special quality to it as the night was just beginning to relent and give itself to the day. These breathless moments were undeniably the best, no matter what season it was. In spring, you could drink it in deep and smell the fresh, full-bodied, fertile readiness of the earth about to renew itself. And in summer this was the last of those cool moments before the sun began to radiate down from the sky, heat baking back up from the earth in waves of oppressive torture. Now in late autumn the air captured a tang, that aroma of things dying lifting from the ground where leaves and plants lay moldering, where little creatures dug themselves in for a long nap. Come winter, those creatures meant to sleep would not stir, while those meant to suffer and die would indeed endure and withstand, or die. Come winter in this far north land, a time when life could be decided quickly, brutally—when survival hung by a slender thread—each new terrible morning could taste as sweet as winesap on his tongue, at the back of his throat.
