I am not sure how long I walk. For a time I keep moving, directionless, unaware if I am heading toward home or only drifting deeper into the swamp, using the lighter occasionally to light my way. Then for a time I sit down to rest, and as I stop moving, the cold fills me and I begin to tremble, trying not to imagine Donovan beating against the underside of the ice, swept away in the dark. For a time I bounce Julian gently up and down to warm him, holding close the lighter’s tiny flame and murmuring soft meaningless words. Then I rest him against my chest to free my hands and rub my feet, but it doesn’t seem to help; they are numb as two cement blocks affixed to my ankles.

After a time, I notice that Julian has stopped crying. The stillness and silence of the swamp invade me.

“Julian?” I whisper, a terrible dread gripping me. He is sleeping, I tell myself, pulling the towel back from his pale face. I put my hand to his ice-cold cheek. He is sleeping, I tell myself.

“Julian?” Gently, I shake him a bit, to see him open his eyes, to see what color his eyes are, see what they look like after all. I never saw. Then I shake him harder.

My eyelashes have crusted over with frozen tears.

I pull the towel back over his face.

Delirious, I rise to my feet, not knowing where to go, knowing only that I need to keep moving. I need to keep moving. And as I move, I see light in the distance, and I follow it, as a moth goes to a flame. And as I move, I bounce Julian up and down and offer him soft meaningless words and try to convince myself he can hear me.

As I approach the light, thinking it is fox fire, some trick of the swamp leading me farther from home, I realize it is in fact real fire—a bonfire set atop the icy ground. I push my way eagerly through the last of the trees toward it, nearly sobbing with relief as I fall to my knees before its blazing warmth. At first I close my eyes, allowing my skin to thaw, prickling painfully as it does.

Then I hear a creak, and my eyes snap open.

I did not see it at first, but the fire sits just before a little wooden shack, with a door that has just swung open to reveal a gaping pit of darkness within that the fire’s light cannot reach. I recognize the shack I saw once many years ago, when I was lost in the swamp with my sister, when we fell out of our canoe and stumbled upon a structure that should not be.

Perhaps I should turn and run away from the darkness inside the shack, which makes my skin crawl as the blood rushes back in, but I cannot bring myself to leave the fire. Out from the doorway gradually manifests a tall shape. And as that shape steps forward and the shadows peel away, the fire blazes a freakish glow on the decayed form of Clementine.