A snowshoe rabbit burst from the shrub, a flash of white with only a few patches of summer brown left in its fur. The girl tore after it.

Her cloak caught in detritus and she nearly tripped, but she kept going. A rabbit! A rabbit would feed her for two days. Maybe the crevice would dead end. The critter would have nowhere to go and she could catch it and—

The crevice hooked right and broke apart, spilling her onto a snowy meadow. The rabbit tracks bounded across the snow, and she followed—across a frozen creek, around a clutch of young pines, down a slope. And straight into a wall of thorny bushes she could not penetrate. The rabbit was gone.

A little whimper escaped her lips. Dizziness made her sway, and the girl allowed herself to crumble into the snow.

It had been stupid to chase a rabbit. She couldn’t catch a rabbit on foot in fresh powder snow even if she was rested and well-fed. She was a foolish little girl, just like the blacksmith always said.

At least she’d found her way out of the crevice.

An icy blast hit her cheeks. Blackness roiled overhead, and wind whipped the tree branches into angry, punishing paddles. Another storm was coming.

She glanced around in a panic. She had forgotten to track her journey. “Pay attention to where you’re going,” Mamá always said. “Or you’ll get lost.”

The girl spied her footprints, and relief filled her. She could follow her own trail back to the cave. The girl forced herself to her feet.

Her hip throbbed in agony. Her stomach was a pit of raw pain. Snow swirled; she tracked it dizzily as it dipped and swooped in the air, until she realized that she had forgotten to keep walking.

Keep walking, keep walking. The snowfall thickened. It gathered in small drifts against the trees, filled the dips in the land. The footprints she followed began to soften and blur. Soon she couldn’t see them at all. She had no way to retrace her steps.

Nothing looked familiar. She’d torn after that rabbit so fast that she hadn’t paid attention to anything else. She was truly, hopelessly lost.

“You’re a smart girl,” her mamá always said. “Think, my sky.”

She reached for a nearby pine branch and in one swift motion, stripped a handful of pine needles, which she shoved into her mouth. Chewing pine needles would keep the whites of her eyes from turning yellow and make her teeth stay in her mouth. Or so Yara the herb woman had told her. She just had to be careful not to swallow, no matter how angrily her tummy demanded it.

With the sharp tang came a brief clarity: She had to find her village. People there were hateful, sure, but asking for help would be better than starving or freezing to death. But which direction should she go?

She had no idea. She was too little to decide such an important thing. Too scared, too hungry, too dizzy.