“I’ve been afraid my whole life,” I say. “I don’t remember everything that happened to me, but my body certainly remembers how to be afraid. Hector calls it the soldier sickness. He says he’s seen it a lot, especially lately, since the war.”

Rosario knocks my shoulder with his own, giving me a gentle shove. “I know how you are. What I don’t understand is . . . how can you live with it?”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

Rosario snorts. “I thought you were going to say something wise and inspiring.”

“No. Just . . . you’re not alone. I understand what it’s like to be afraid, and I don’t blame you for it one bit.”

He leans his head on my shoulder, and his soft hair tickles my cheek. “Thanks, little sister.”

“No problem, little brother. You can sleep here if you want. I’ve got the floor.”

5

Then

WHEN the girl woke, it was to the wavering, flashing orange of torches against the night.

They provided just enough light that she could make out the shape of a huge snowdrift blocking half the entrance to her den. She froze, more still than a rabbit with a hawk overhead.

The girl was colder than cold, like her very bones were made of icicles, and her lips felt puffy in her face. Though she had obviously slept all day and into the night, she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and return to oblivion.

Her mamá had taught her about cold sickness. Your bones like ice. Your eyes so heavy with the need to sleep they’re like rocks in your eye sockets. Your lips that swell to cracking.

It meant she needed to get warm—quick, before she was dead.

That was it, the thing she was trying to remember before she blacked out. Her mamá would have wanted her to build a fire. The tinderbox was still in the basket, barely a stretch away. But she couldn’t chance moving with the torches so close.

Voices drifted toward her, muffled by snow and stone. That language again, with the funny syllables and singsong cadence. The language of monsters. She hardly dared to breathe.

They were above her, maybe right over her head, peering into the ravine. If they climbed down, they’d see her little den. But the ravine was thick with snow now. It probably didn’t look like much. You had to be born to these mountains to understand how tricky things were in winter, like how ledges and overhangs were smaller than they seemed and you’d better watch your step or else, and how crevices were always deeper, with sharp branches and hard boulders and maybe even tiny cozy dens hidden beneath the snow.

Being so still for so long was awful. It made her think and feel things she didn’t want to think and feel. Like how cold she was. How hungry. How tired. How alone. And oh, she missed her mamá so much it was an actual pain in her belly, far worse than the cramp of days-old hunger.