How long have I been unconscious? It’s unlikely to be more than a few minutes, but the snow is still coming down heavily. I pull myself up and feel around for my phone, but it’s nowhere to be found; all I can make out in the meager light is the unbroken shroud of bone-white snow, except for a spray of blood above where my head landed. I turn my head slowly and now I can make out the mound I mistook for a fallen tree, I’ve clearly been unconscious for long enough for the snow to cover her again. I shudder at the thought of the two of us out here in the night, side by side in the clearing, struck still, snow falling silently onto us until we are entirely covered and one with the landscape.

There is a strange feeling in my mouth and I run my tongue around it. A tooth toward the back of my lower left jaw is missing; this must be what I spat out when coming to. In its place is a disturbing hole and fresh blood surges to its surface as I probe it with my tongue.

A searing pain tears into me, shooting up my leg when I try to flex my left foot gently. My ankle is broken, without doubt. If I hadn’t regained consciousness when I did, I don’t think I would have lasted a half hour in this cold. I’ll die out here if I can’t get back to the car, but how? I remember the long walk up to the cabin through the woods from where I parked; it took me at least fifteen minutes of brisk walking to reach it, on uneven terrain, and that was before the snowfall. There is simply no way I could make it back, not with a broken ankle, in the dark, in an unfamiliar place. I could fall again, or get impossibly lost, and either way, I’d freeze to death before morning, my body entombed in ice like Leah’s. I don’t want to die.

‘I don’t want to die,’ I whisper out loud, and even my voice hurts. I begin to cry because the pain in my foot is so intense. My mind darts to a wild animal caught in a trap and left to die. I bring my hand to the racoon trim of my parka jacket and cry even more. My head spins.