“Careful!” Twelve hissed as Dog stepped back. There was a plant just behind him that had begun waving its fronds though there was no breeze. Its leaves were lush, untouched by the frost that coated everything else. “Strangler vine,” Twelve pointed out, remembering it from class.

Dog leaped away as more tendrils quested toward him.

They moved on as quickly as they could, but first had to tie Five onto Surefoot’s saddle. He was far too weak to hold himself upright unaided and Six needed both hands free for his bow and arrow.

“Outrageous,” Five muttered, a slight slur in his voice. “Trussed up like a prisoner.”

“Stop using all your energy talking.” Six tightened the final rope and leaped up lightly behind him. He dug a slightly shriveled apple out of his pocket and cut a slice off with Five’s sword. “Here, eat this.”

“Can’t,” Five scowled. “Hurts.”

Widge’s nose twitched hopefully toward the fruit until Twelve handed him a few nuts.

“Talking must hurt too so just eat instead,” she said to Five. The look he shot her was venomous, but he raised the apple to his lips and took a painful nibble. Behind him, Six nodded gratefully at her.

Twelve felt a little better once they were moving, but the ache in her chest was hard to ignore. Another dream of her family. Would it be like this every night? She forced herself to concentrate on the things she could actually see, trying to peer through the haze to discover what lay before them. She was here to find Seven, she reminded herself firmly. That, at least, was something she had control over, something she could succeed in. Her eyes followed the tracks in the snow and her heart lifted slightly.

In the shifting mists behind them, something moved. Widge stiffened on her shoulder.

“Did you see that?” she muttered to Dog, not wanting to alarm the others.

“No,” Dog whispered back. “The haze makes it hard. We could be surrounded and not know.”

Hardly reassuring. Twelve huffed out a breath and peered into the distance, but everything was still. She sensed rather than saw the sun rising above the trees. The quality of the light around them subtly changed, but the gloom never shifted and no ray of sunlight pierced the tightly woven branches overhead. On instinct, Twelve took the moonstone out of her pocket and held it up.

“Hey,” Six muttered disapprovingly, “we’re trying to sneak thr—”

His voice trailed off abruptly as he caught sight of the tree trunk nearest him. By the moonstone-light, the many knots and whorls in the wood were still visible but shifted and altered. The features were craggy and the mouth barely a gash, but it was undeniably a face. When Twelve lowered the moonstone, it vanished.

The group froze.

“What is that?” she whispered, a slight tremor in her voice.