“I’m not stupid!” the girl had snapped. Because “mostly tolerate” was just a polite way to say “hate.”

So even though the village beckoned with cozy snow-covered rooftops and familiar faces and pine-sharp smoke curling up from hot chimneys, the girl ran in the opposite direction, toward the mountain peaks and the tree line. It would be colder, harsher, hard to travel, impossible to find food . . . but it wouldn’t be hateful.

Besides, she had an idea.

A month ago, she’d chanced upon a tree squirrel, a particularly bold fellow who hadn’t run away from her. She was hungry. They were short on supplies. So she’d picked up a rock and threw it at the squirrel as hard as she could.

The rock hit the rodent square in the head, leaving a gash where one eye used to be, but not hard enough to kill it. The squirrel careened away, dizzy and concussed, crashing into trees, barreling through underbrush as it fled.

The girl remembered the sick feeling in her tummy. She never, ever would have thrown a rock at the poor creature just to hurt it. But it had been so close, and she had been so hungry.

So she’d torn after, following the clear trail through the snow. The squirrel would tire eventually. She would find it and put it out of its misery. Or maybe bandage up its head. After it was warm and fed, it would understand that the girl was really a good friend who had just made a terrible mistake.

The squirrel tracks had led to a granite face, polished clean by wind, sparkling in the winter sunshine. And that was where the prints disappeared. She had no way to tell where the squirrel had gone, and she never saw it again.

The girl had to be like the squirrel. If she could reach the smooth granite slopes where snow never caught hold, the sorcerer’s people would lose her trail.

She was smart. Mamá always said so. Even Yara the herb woman, who hated her, always called her “wise for her years.” So she set off with firm determination in the direction she was fairly sure was east, toward the windward side of the mountains.

She didn’t get far before she heard someone yell. The voice sounded far away, but it was hard to judge in these mountains; sometimes a distant sound turned out to be as close as a whisper in the ear. The girl broke into a run.

Running through snow was one of the hardest things in the world, especially if you were little, with little feet and little legs, and a very awkward basket filled with a heavy cloak. She fell to her knees three times before she realized it was faster to just walk.

The voices sounded again, closer. She couldn’t help herself—she was too scared and her legs wanted to run too badly, and she gave in, tripping and wading her way up the snowy slope. But no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she ordered her legs to go faster, they refused. They felt like porridge. Useless, wobbly things that could barely hold up her body.