Today’s such a day, a day that doesn’t know it’s supposed to be August instead of October. You can actually see the wind as it hurtles between the peaks, dragging along thick shreds of clouds, and you feel it as an ocean current. Cold and forceful it strikes you, sharp and wet at the same time, turning your cheeks and your fingers numb, any skin you dare to lay bare. Elfriede, wearing a thick, belted cardigan but no coat, no jacket of any kind, relishes the hardship. She trudges along the path that leads downward toward the trees, a trail she knows well, every rock, every kink of landscape. The heads of the wildflowers huddle low to shield themselves, like Elfriede herself. The surrounding peaks are invisible inside this mass of howling clouds. No, forget the surrounding peaks, even her own mountain is lost to sight, the slope disappears before her, and she walks on faith alone, curling her fingers inside her sleeves to keep them warm.

Then the first trees flash between the streams of mist. Grow larger, more certain, more plentiful. Elfriede quickens her stride. She reaches the stubby pines at the vanguard, and a hundred or so yards later she’s enveloped by them, like stepping into a cathedral. The wind dies to a breeze. She finds a fallen log and sits in relief. Leans her head back against a thin, hardy trunk. She loves the smell of wood and rot and moss. She closes her eyes and dreams of her baby, whose features are blurred, but whose heart she feels clamoring inside her chest, whether she wants it there or not.

Though the trees muffle the howling of the gale, the forest is not silent. The branches rustle, the wind whines between the pine needles. Certain of her own solitude, Elfriede doesn’t hear the sound of footsteps as they approach, only the voice that greets her, an instant after she senses the vibration of another human being.

“Frau von Kleist?” a man inquires, in a slight, courteous English accent.

Two weeks have passed since Elfriede encountered the Englishman in the infirmary garden. To be precise, sixteen days and a few hours, but who’s counting? Her eyes fly open, she startles upward from the log. She beholds him, a pumpkin-headed skeleton belted into a thick Norfolk jacket, wool trousers, leather gaiters. A hunting cap covers his wide skull, his stubbly ginger hair. There should be a pipe sticking from his mouth, a shotgun nestled in the crook of his elbow to complete the picture, but mercifully no.

“You shouldn’t be out in such weather,” she exclaims.

“Probably not. Yet here I am. You might say the mountains called me. Do you mind awfully if I sit down? Still a bit short-winded, I’m afraid.”

“No, of course not.”