She wasn’t going to be able to rescue the others, even if she could find them. She didn’t owe them anything, really, even though the thought suddenly struck her as, if not wrong, certainly unworthy. She didn’t know where such an idea came from. Perhaps she could find someone to help her rescue them, or better still, who would do all the rescuing for her.

No. There would have to be a rescue at some point – she assumed that was a given – and she had to be involved in some way. She wouldn’t be alone, though. The Red Queen needed soldiers.

The problem was, there was no one here. The woods were empty. She’d have to start walking until she found someone. Not upriver though. Away from it. If she’d started the day with the sun on her right and ended with it on her left, she’d have to travel towards where it rose and watch it circle around.

She was also fucking freezing, and if she didn’t make a move soon, she’d never go anywhere at all.

She emptied her boots, wrung her socks out, and straight away put them back on, hurriedly brushing off the leaf litter and the tiny bugs that had crawled out of it to investigate her toes. Her fingers were stiff and shivery, and tying wet laces was hard. When she put one foot in front of the other, she was so uncomfortable, it was all she could do not to sit down and weep.

What drove her on was the certainty that the others would swap places with her in an instant. She was free. They were not.

She walked. The forest looked the same in every direction. She couldn’t see the distant mountains; she could barely see the sky. The sun was behind her, but she couldn’t tell how far it was from setting. She could be walking straight back the way she’d come, just on the other bank of the river.

And when it did set, she would be alone, in the dark.

She kept on going. She started to pick up on subtle changes in the land around her, though it was muted and dormant under the green canopy. The small streams she crossed, where she slaked her thirst with loamy brown water, ran downhill, diagonal to her path. The ground went from flat to gently undulating to a series of ridges and dips. The trees themselves started to be shorter and narrower, and maybe their leaves looked a little different too.

On one ridge, the rock broke through to the surface, black and weathered. There were no trees there, and she climbed and climbed, hands slipping on the mossy covering, legs aching with effort, until she was finally in the sunlight and above the tops of the trees.