We bumped up on a shore in the lee of a tiny inlet. Ice rimed the shallow water where a stream burbled through a tumble of rocks. A blanket of snow carpeted the hollows, but the wind had swept most of the land clean. There were no trees and little vegetation, only lichen and moss. In the sheltered lee of forgotten boulders and clefts in the earth, waxy-leafed plants spread, laced with frost. Nothing stirred, not even birds a-wing.

Pull up the boat. Turn it over and stow the oars. Fill the bottles with stream water. Walk. Walk. Walk.

I did what he told me to do, as a goblin’s automaton obeys. Was that how the coachman functioned? Was the coachman truly of a goblin’s making, or was that just a story he had told me? Would I ever find out?

There was no wood or we would have stopped to make a fire, even though Vai would have had to leave me. By following the stream, he found an animal trail that he tracked like a hunter.

We rounded a boulder to find ourselves face-to-face with a huge woolly rhinoceros. Its twinned horns dipped as it gave a growling snort. A muzzy instinct woke in the pit of my stomach that the creature could trample and gore us. Vai placed himself between me and the animal. He spoke words I did not know in a cadence whose rhythms sailed past, as if he was politely greeting the beast. It snorted as in answer. As Vai eased us past, it silently watched us go.

For an eternity we walked. Once we ran across a fire pit ringed with stone, sheltered on the lee side of a slope, but there was nothing to burn except straggling patches of gorse, so he decided we should go on.

It was just so hard to put one foot in front of the other because I kept staggering off the path and catching myself at the last moment on the point of my cane. An idea grew in my head, a very compelling idea that I ought to have thought of long before.

“I would be warmer if I took off these wet clothes,” I said.

He was striding up a slope amid winter-whitened grasses and hardy sedge. The thought of trudging after him up such a brutal incline made my legs congeal, so I stopped moving and fumbled at the coat.

He ran back to me. “No! Absolutely not, Catherine.” He kept talking as he dragged me along. “Do you see the prints? There have been hunters or trappers here. The track leads to a place people go. There’s likely a sheltered spot where they camp.”

He broke off as we reached the top of the slope. I really wanted to find a small hole to crawl into. Instead I looked up.