Outside, I found Billy crouched with his arm around Emma, looking from a safe distance at the wolf in his crate. Shadow stared at them through the cage with his inscrutable sulfur eyes. The sight of father and daughter prompted an odd sensation: longing.

I was closing in on thirty-two. Children were not a near-term prospect in my life. Nor even a medium-term prospect. This vision of the Cronks filled me with a feeling of my life slipping away.

As I was reaching to close the lift gate, Emma said, “Stop!”

“What is it, Em?”

She produced her wand, directed it at the cage, and moved her lips soundlessly, while twirling the tip.

Billy had told me that she was insistent he find a rowan, or mountain ash, from which to carve her magic stick. The finished result resembled a unicorn’s twisted horn.

“What spell did you cast?” Billy asked.

“Protection. So Shadow will be safe on his journey.”

“What about Uncle Mike,” said Billy with gruff affection. “Doesn’t he deserve a spell, too?”

She nodded her blond, braided head. “Don’t move!”

I stood in place as the little girl waved her rowan wand and mouthed the silent words to keep me safe against whatever dark forces I might encounter that day.

3

I float in the current until I am jostled by a miniature iceberg. The jolt reminds me to move my legs, heavy from the weight of my waterlogged boots. Amazingly, I am still gripping the knife in my stiff hand, a case of premature rigor mortis.

I give a few hard kicks trying to propel myself, dolphin like, above the surface. The thicker ice ahead is visible as a pale smudge, more gray than white. If I don’t get on top of it fast, I’ll be trapped underwater again.

The cliff is somewhere behind me to the right. Through the blowing snowflakes, I can’t see land. No rocks, no trees, and no houses pouring light from their windows. Shouting for help would be a waste of breath and energy.

I reach up at the ice plate beside me, but as I feel for a grip, it rolls like something heavy falling off a shelf.

Something hard strikes me from behind. A dead tree fallen into the stream. I grasp for a branch with my left hand. The tree, which had been floating lengthwise in the current, begins to pinwheel. I have upset its course, and now I am turning with it, watching the trunk and roots swing past. Just as I am about to let go, it crashes against the nearest sheet, cracking through the crust along the edge and catches on the thicker stuff.

I have only seconds before the current pushes the tree loose again. I “climb” shoreward along the weathered trunk, but already I can feel it shifting, sliding, its roots being pulled by the hydraulic force of the Androscoggin.