‘Well, fuck you too.’ She set her jaw hard, and turned back to the ascent.

The summit was above her, and close up it was now clear that gaining it wouldn’t be straightforward. The direct route took in at least two bands of loose scree and a vertical cliff just below the top, where the rock had broken away and tumbled down into the forest beneath. To her left was a steep incline that merged with the sheer side of the gorge, and only to the right did the mountain become easier to navigate.

She didn’t want to climb in the pitch black, so she started off again, zigzagging up rather than confronting the whole edifice at once.

She worked her way around to the shoulder of rock that sloped down from the summit, scaling the last ridge in the last of the light. She was almost there, a few more steps and she’d be on the very top. It didn’t seem at all likely, the girl from the tower blocks, on a mountain, exhausted, exhilarated.

The view opened up to take in what looked like the whole world. At her back were seas without end, at her front, a mountain range so tall that the snow didn’t carry all the way to the top. Left and right were bays and islands, and everywhere between was cut with rivers and leavened with lesser peaks and hills. Up on the darkening mountain, her leaf cape was now redundant. She discarded it, and unlike Crows’, hers caught the gusty wind and came apart, leaves separating and spiralling away, chasing each other across the bare rock like children.

The last sliver of reflected sunlight died in the sky, and it was night. With no stars to appear, she was left entirely unsighted, at least until moonrise. She couldn’t tell where the mountain ended or began. She realised that if she took a step anywhere, she might end up broken at the bottom of the gorge, or bouncing down the way she’d come in an avalanche of loose rock.

She crouched, felt around her, and sat down. She wouldn’t have that long to wait for the moonglow to begin glimmering on the underside of the clouds far away on the horizon. A couple of hours before the massive moon ground into view and thundered across the heavens.

While she sat, aware of the unseen vastness around her, she began to see things. Flashes of light where there were none, trails of luminescence in the sky, bright sparks dancing around her: none of it was real, and yet it didn’t matter. She’d never experienced anything like it before, and it was her reward.