There was no hiding the car. But snow was falling thick and fast enough that my footprints disappeared almost immediately – not, at this point, that there would any longer be much doubt where I was going. I looked up. For the first time in hours a smudge of light in the sky silhouetted the tops of the trees. I stepped forward and counted twenty paces – pistol at the ready – running my hand along the ice bank for balance until I found the break in the branches that marked the opening to the track.

Thirty minutes to RV.

I stopped, momentarily overwhelmed by the cold and the darkness. And then I heard my mother’s voice, clear against the white-whistle of the storm-song, whispering ‘Bayu Bayushki Bayu’, warning me to be careful lest the grey wolf snatch me away into the woods.

The wind dropped a little. I mouthed a pointless thank you and sniffed the air. The intensity of the snowfall softened. High above, the blanket of cloud was beginning to fray. Here and there moonlight bled through the rents in fleeting flashes of silver, pooling for a second or two on the forest floor.

It was a straight shot for another kilometre until I hit Highway 178. It was doable. I could do it.

Just walk, Max.

I stumbled immediately, falling as my boot found a rabbit hole. I cursed as my already bruised ribs crunched on the ground. I picked myself up and listened. But I could hear nothing except the wind ebbing and flowing and my mother’s voice, steel-sharp in my brain, singing lullabies to her wicked son. I willed myself westwards. My hands, cheeks began to sting. Frozen beads of ice clogged my eyes. I took another step. And another. My legs moved like lumps, weaving me in an uncertain path between the birches. After what felt like a few minutes, I checked the time again. I’d been out of the car for quarter of an hour.

Fuck.

I pressed on. And then the path stopped abruptly. Trees on three sides. The scattered moonlight that had got me this far was swallowed by the forest. I groped in the dark, squinting obliquely along what I thought was the trail, using any faint scrap of light to see the way. I cracked my shin on frozen deadfall. In my mind’s eye I saw the satellite map I’d memorized in Poland – lush green in the spring photographs, almost useless in the winter darkness. The track should have veered sharp right, but now I was trapped. I must have disorientated myself when I fell. I turned a silent circle. And then another, spinning myself inside the vortex of the dying storm.