Pip scrambled down the wet slate steps to the flooded gravel bar, keeping its belly fold tucked tight so the cold river spray wouldn’t chill its skin.
The water in the side-channel was rising fast enough that foam spun around Pip’s lower ankles before it reached the wedged boulders. Up on the ledge, Chaska leaned out with the small brass hand-lamp, throwing a shaky puddle of yellow light over the rocks.
“Get behind its rump and shove,” Chaska called down over the rush of the river. “If it snaps at your nose, leave it.”
Pip circled to the downstream side of the boulders. The newborn quartz predator was too cold and waterlogged to snap at anything. Its six short, suction-padded legs scrabbled weakly against the slick stone without catching purchase, and its milky, translucent skin had turned the dull gray of wet tallow. Carefully, using the broad, flat ridge of its snout below its bound antlers, Pip nudged the young creature’s hindquarters free of the pinch and pushed it up the sloping gravel bar until all six of its feet rested on dry slate three feet above the foam.
Instead of getting up or crawling away, however, the young beast collapsed on its side.
