It’s snowing more heavily than ever when she finally pulls on her boots and wanders out of the studio, dazed from the work. For a moment she’s disoriented. You can see how hikers go missing. She remembers reading how pioneers used to tie one end of a rope to the house, the other to the barn, so they couldn’t get lost in a storm. Maeve doesn’t have a rope, but someone would come and find her if the weather was really bad, right?

As if on cue, the wind suddenly lets up—the path is dusted with fresh snow but plain to see. It’s obviously been cleared sometime during the day, but when, and by whom? Maeve is the only one working out here. At the edge of the woods, she can see the chain of solar lanterns, still unlit at this hour, a trail of little black hats leading to the center.

She’s supposed to go to the spa. Karo is right; a hot soak will in fact be good for her muscles. But she suspects that’s not her reason for going, and she’s chastising herself a little. Sim Nielssen with his whalebone and his steady gaze. The curve of his lips.

His way of addressing her, one artist to another: Everything is in our service.

As if to prove something to herself, Maeve detours sharply across the clearing instead of heading straight back. There’s still enough light in the sky, and she traces the tree line to where the ridge crops out, bare white, going over the work in her head as she moves along, conjuring up the few, fleeting glimpses of herself from the mirror that satisfied her, pasting them together. She knows she hasn’t hit it yet, hasn’t found what she’s hoping for, but she twists and changes the shapes in her mind. Trying to imagine how it could look in the bodies of younger dancers, dancers with all their muscles intact, with more control and less exertion behind each gesture.

She stops at the boundary of the woods, against the steep edge of the gorge. Far below, there’s a shallow river, already frozen, and farther along, an arc of cable extends over the valley to a wide platform. She remembers the attraction she saw marked on the center map—the SkyLift.

A shadow sweeps in, and she turns to look, spooked—but it’s just the range, rising higher and higher to all sides, the weight of the shelf looming. A bowl. Maeve feels dizzy inside it.

She toes at a ridge of snow and it lifts up, layered and whole, then suddenly flips and somersaults down over the rock. Perfect fort-making snow. She can picture Rudy, his fleece hat cocked on his head, working to build a wall.

What is she doing here, hiking up a trail two thousand miles away?