My family’s screams followed us into the snow. I looked back as best I could as the bear began to move, struggling against the woman’s grip as the slow lumber gathered speed like an avalanche. I saw my father sprawled in a drift, one arm outstretched towards me, my name on his lips as he shouted himself hoarse. He must have tried to run and fallen, his wounded leg giving out beneath him before he could make it to the clearing’s edge. Aspen had Juniper wrapped in her arms, keeping them both upright as they swayed with horror, and Juniper’s sobs echoed in my ears long after the trees obscured my vision and my family faded from sight, lost to me in the gloaming.

That night stretched into a cold morning. I woke at one point, shivering, to find that I had turned against her, my head lolling on her shoulder. I ached with cold and exhaustion and fear, and a new stiffness. Riding a giant bear was nothing like riding a horse, and I had never ridden a horse through the night. My thighs ached. My rear ached. My heart ached, and I wondered what my sisters and father were doing now, as daylight brought the reality of the night into harsh clarity. I wondered if I would ever see any of them again.

We rode through dark forests full of pine and fir and black outcroppings of rock, slick with ice and shadow. Ahead and behind ranged the wolves. I counted seven in number, though it was hard to tell them apart. The only one I was sure I hadn’t counted twice was as black as the rocks we passed.

The bear lumbered through the drifts, a tireless pace that jarred me to my frozen core. Elk scattered in the higher clearings, snorting plumes of steam and shaking their great antlers. From a distance, I thought I saw the swift fall of a mountain lion descending on something small and white, although it could have been nothing more than a gust of windblown snow.

The air grew thinner the higher we climbed, catching in my throat and burning in my lungs. My captor pressed on, keeping a pace that would have killed a man on horseback, or even a man on a dogsled. Nothing natural moved the way her beasts did, and the wind from our passage creaked through the trees.

We came at last to a vast frozen lake high amid the peaks. The bear paused on the shore, and across the ice rose the highest point in the spine of my world, a peak so tall that the clouds felt miles below us. At the base of that peak, overlooking the lake, was a keep. The wolves yipped, setting out toward it at a steady lope, and the bear coughed deep in its chest. The roots that the rose had put deep in my flesh stirred again.

Home.