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The bear gave a low, menacing growl when she turned toward the path.

Gytha rounded on him, her pent-up frustration and grief overflowing in sudden anger. “I need to see my family! Do you understand that? I love them, and I miss them! I need to know they’re all right.”

She stared him down, her bright blue eyes against his dark, unreadable gaze. Then she turned her back on him, deliberately rude, and set off up the path.

She climbed until her legs burned, her eyes brimming with tears. She ignored the tears, letting the wind freeze them on her cheeks.

Her muscles protested the unusual exercise, and soon she was huffing and puffing her way up the hill. Each breath burned her lungs like cold fire, and her face felt like a frozen mask. Her eyebrows grew thick with frost.

At last she reached the top of the cliff, and she turned to look out at the vast sea. This was the very end of the world, an immensity beyond sense and logic. There was no sympathy or humanity here, only endless cold and water.

With the wind pulling at her cloak and sneaking between the layers of her clothes, the cold was like a living thing. It would freeze her from the inside as well as the outside, her face and her lungs at the same time.

She turned to look at the land. That was south. It looked just as endless as the sea, an immeasurable expanse of cold and ice, but if she could walk far enough, endure long enough, there was life. Family and love were there, somewhere beyond the snowy tundra.

With a deep, stinging breath, she set off.

Magni and the bear followed.

Hour upon hour, she strode over the ice. The wind died away for several hours, and the silence was broken only by the crunching of her feet upon the ice and snow. Her breath made clouds before her. The world was glittering ice, blinding white and pitiless, and she squinted and pulled her hood down to block as much of the light as she could. Snow-blindness was a real danger, and she had not thought to make goggles to prevent it. The light meant it was summer; this land must never thaw.

Where the ice was relatively clear of snow, the going was easy, though the breeze tugged at her as if to make her lose heart. Then the wind picked up, and snow began to fall, and the icecrust beneath her feet broke so that she stumbled through knee deep drifts until she found thicker ice.

Then the drifts were deeper, and the snow slithered into her boots before she could find a solid place to climb up again.

Again and again she fell through, and her breath came hard. The wind caught her hood and pulled it back so hard that the clasp in the front yanked on her throat.

She wept in frustration, and her tears froze on her face. Still she pressed on until the ice broke yet again, and she felt into snow as deep as her chest. Exhaustion pulled at her, and she forced her way through the snow until her heartbeat pounded in her ears louder than the howling wind.

Blinded by snow, she fought forward until her legs buckled and darkness threatened to overwhelm her entirely. She could make no headway against the snow and ice. The sweat of her exertion had turned to chills, and she shivered uncontrollably. She was half-buried in the snow, and she sank down until her head was beneath the surface.

Her shivers subsided a little and she had a strange sense of warmth. Perhaps she would not die of cold after all. She would take a nap and resume her trek.

A warning sounded in her mind. Sheknewthe cold was death.

But she was so tired.

Did it matter if she died?

Magni’s gray hand gripped the back of her jacket and hauled her up, so that she sprawled on the thin sheet of ice beneath the top layer of powdery snow. The wind blew right into her face, and she would have sobbed in frustration and despair if she’d had the energy.

Then the bear was in front of her, his great white body blocking the worst of the wind.

“Go away!” she screamed. “I want to go home!”

But he did not leave. Instead he lowered himself until the wind was again in her face. She clambered atop him, clumsy and weak with cold and exhaustion, and she clung to his back as he set off.

“How do I know you’re not a liar?” she whispered into his fur. “How do I know they’re alive? You told me this would help you but it feels like death. I’m alone and cold, trapped underground in a stone prison, and I’ll never see anyone I love again. I want to go home.”

The bear’s steps did not falter, but there was a heaviness to them, and she thought there was a faint, low growl beneath her hands buried in his fur. She pressed her face into his fur and clung to him as she fell into an exhausted sleep.

For hours or perhaps days he ran, until the air grew warmer and his steps finally slowed. Magni was nowhere to be seen; perhaps he had decided not to come so far south, or perhaps he had merely fallen behind. Once Gytha realized he was not following them, she did not look up again. She did not want to see the tundra or the trees passing by. She did not want to know if Alexander was taking her home or if she would die somewhere out in the snow and ice. She did not care what happened to her, as long as the trial would end.

But when he began to stumble, she finally raised her head.

She sat up in surprise, ignoring the fatigue that nearly crushed her. They were at the hill just north of her village, and the houses were laid out before her just like in the painting. The air was frigid, but the wind was not biting. It was late autumn, not the dead of winter, and there was a hint of spruce and pinein the air, not only ice. It was later in summer than she had realized; the first snows had come already, but patches of green still showed through where the sun kissed the ground from dawn to dusk. Autumn would bring more frequent snow and shorter days.

The bear stumbled down the hill, his steps dragging as if he would fall on his face.