Being so still for so long was awful. It made her think and feel things she didn’t want to think and feel. Like how cold she was. How hungry. How tired. How alone. And oh, she missed her mamá so much it was an actual pain in her belly, far worse than the cramp of days-old hunger.
The monsters talked in their funny language for a long time. Daylight began to turn the walls of her den to murky gray. Their footsteps dislodged snow, which tumbled down from above, pattering onto her snowdrift. That snowdrift had probably saved her life, blocking out the worst of the wind.
A hawk squealed. Wind whistled against the granite slopes, and more snow floated down. It occurred to the girl, distantly, that she couldn’t feel her toes.
Suddenly it was brilliant daylight, and a sliver of blinding brightness angled right into her eyes. Maybe she had blacked out again. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but the voices were gone and the sun was high.
Still, she waited a moment, listening.
Nothing. No funny language, no footsteps, just the ever-present wind and the chatter of mountain jays, who would never be so joyous if the monsters were still around.
Carefully, slowly, she reached for her basket. Her fingers were clumsy and thick and she dropped her tinderbox twice before bringing it to her lap.
Now, for kindling. Detritus covered the floor—some pine needles, a few small sticks, the dried cat droppings.
She gathered it all into a little pile. It wouldn’t burn long, but maybe it would be enough to stave off the cold sickness.
The girl fumbled with her tinderbox. It was wooden with a hinged lid, and it took several tries to get it open. Everything inside was intact: a firesteel with a small handle, a flat piece of uneven flint, some dry grass tinder.
She left the tinder alone; she had plenty in her den, and she might need it later. She lifted firesteel and flint from the box and struck them—at an angle, just like Mamá had taught her.
Pain blossomed in her knuckle. She popped it into her mouth and sucked. The girl had scraped a good chunk of skin off, with no spark to show for it.
She tried again. And again. On the fourth try, she got a decent spark, but it landed in the dirt and fizzled away. The girl leaned closer to her little pile and aimed. This time, the spark landed on some dry pine needles. They crackled and grayed and she held her breath—until she remembered that she was supposed to blow oh-so-gently to fan it into flame.
She did, just like she had practiced with Mamá, and the pine needles caught for true. A beautiful, bright flame licked at them, then hungrily leaped for the tiny sticks, and finally for the cat droppings.
Warmth flooded her cheeks and fingers, which all began to itch. The girl was so relieved she almost cried.
But the fire was burning itself out too quickly. It wouldn’t last long enough for her to get warm, not really. There were probably more branches outside, under the snow, but she didn’t dare go out there. What if the monsters were still nearby?
The girl glanced around her tiny den. She spied another branch, a small pile of pine needles, collected in a crack. Still not enough.
Then her eyes settled on the basket. It was big, made of willow. Sitting on the ground, it rose past her knees. It could hold a month’s worth of herbs, a week’s worth of chicken feed, an entire cloak with a tinderbox.
Her lower lip trembled. She caressed the handle with her forefinger. Mamá had woven this basket herself. They’d collected the willow shoots together along the creek. One of their bundles had dried a beautiful reddish brown, which Mamá had used to make a lovely stripe just under the basket lip.
You know how much I want you to live, yes?
She burned the basket.
Hours later, thirst drove her outside. The sun was high overhead. Melting water sheened down the walls of her crevice. She tried to lick the stone, but found it was easier to just grab handfuls of snow. The cold made her tongue itch, and each handful was barely a few drops in her mouth once it melted. Her lips and gums drank up the water almost before it could reach her throat.
She ate so much snow she thought she might burst.
She rummaged around the ground outside and found a few branches, which she took back inside her den. She brushed snow from them as best she could, but when she placed them over the flame they crackled and popped and hissed with melting water. The girl was grateful when they caught and burned.
Now, for food. Eating snow had at least given her tummy something to do for a while. She was still dizzy, still weak, and for some reason the thirst in her belly was worsening. She shivered. And then she shivered some more. Not even the fire was making her feel warmer.
She stared out the entrance to her den at the steep crevice walls. She’d have to climb out somehow. The walls were slick with meltwater, and her hip still hurt something awful. Still, she had to try.
The girl gave herself a little while longer, to drink more snowmelt water—which was not slaking her thirst at all—to absorb the warmth of the fire, to gather her courage.
She had no basket to carry the cloak, so she put it on, working the bone hook through the clasp. It was so huge that it would drag behind her, maybe even trip her if she wasn’t careful.
The girl shoved her tinderbox down her shirt and stepped into the cold sunshine. She stared at the granite walls.
There was no way up. No cracks, no ledges, absolutely nothing to hold on to. Just slick gray stone covered with water that would freeze into sheets as soon as the sun was no longer directly above.
A rustling sounded just ahead, where a stunted manzanita shrub clung to a bit of soil at the bottom of the crevice. Her eyes roved the shrub hungrily, but it was too early in winter for edible manzanita blooms to appear. Maybe she could chew on a branch, give her mouth something to do, trick it into thinking she was eating. She stepped forward.
A snowshoe rabbit burst from the shrub, a flash of white with only a few patches of summer brown left in its fur. The girl tore after it.
Her cloak caught in detritus and she nearly tripped, but she kept going. A rabbit! A rabbit would feed her for two days. Maybe the crevice would dead end. The critter would have nowhere to go and she could catch it and—
The crevice hooked right and broke apart, spilling her onto a snowy meadow. The rabbit tracks bounded across the snow, and she followed—across a frozen creek, around a clutch of young pines, down a slope. And straight into a wall of thorny bushes she could not penetrate. The rabbit was gone.
A little whimper escaped her lips. Dizziness made her sway, and the girl allowed herself to crumble into the snow.
It had been stupid to chase a rabbit. She couldn’t catch a rabbit on foot in fresh powder snow even if she was rested and well-fed. She was a foolish little girl, just like the blacksmith always said.
At least she’d found her way out of the crevice.
An icy blast hit her cheeks. Blackness roiled overhead, and wind whipped the tree branches into angry, punishing paddles. Another storm was coming.
She glanced around in a panic. She had forgotten to track her journey. “Pay attention to where you’re going,” Mamá always said. “Or you’ll get lost.”
The girl spied her footprints, and relief filled her. She could follow her own trail back to the cave. The girl forced herself to her feet.
Her hip throbbed in agony. Her stomach was a pit of raw pain. Snow swirled; she tracked it dizzily as it dipped and swooped in the air, until she realized that she had forgotten to keep walking.