The Son Of The Snow
an excerpt

The heat was like some kind of glue. It stuck to the young man’s skin, drawing forth beads of sweat. The red glow of the hearth illuminated the tiny space around it in angry monochrome.
Kengu ul Sijak sat beside the fire, naked, his skin streaked with clay and ochre. He rocked back and forth and his eyes were rolled up, his eyelids fluttering. For a moment, the young man almost backed away, out into the frigid air of the winter night. But then Kengu spoke. His voice was the voice of the rumbling earth, the voice of the storm and the forest and the winter.
“Drink,” he said. The young man looked down, at the beaker that sat beside the fire. “Drink, and enter the otherworld, and find your name.”