Monday, January 14

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Clare smelled the smoke first. She came to a standstill, breathing in the chill and windless air. Pine tar and wet wool and the frozen freshwater smell of snow. And smoke. She had crammed as many logs as she could into the cabin’s woodstove before she left that morning, but they would have burnt down into glowing cinders by now, their smoke long vanished into the air.

So. Someone had stoked the woodstove. She wasn’t alone. She clutched her poles and almost-almost-turned back into the woods. She had food and matches and a blanket and a knife in her day pack. She could escape.

A cold touch on her bare hand startled her. A single fat snowflake melted onto her skin. As she watched, another fell. Then another. She sighed. There was no escape. She trudged forward, breaking through the last of the hemlock and white pine, clambering over a hard-packed wall of snow thrown up in the wake of the private road’s plowing.

Gathering her poles in one hand, she sprung her bindings, stepped free of her snowshoes, and scooped them up with her free hand. Her legs felt shaky and insubstantial as she tottered toward the cabin.