Chapter 16: The Branch

"Oh, thank God," Linnea said.

She came across the ice toward us with the torch held high and her eyes already wet.

"Marit. You're alive. I've prayed for it every night."

Petra stepped in front of me.

Linnea stopped ten feet off.

She was in her cream coat, with the Luna's silver crescent pinned at her collar, and the red mitten swung from her key ring.

My pin.

"You're shaking, sweetheart," she said gently. "You've had a terrible shock. You're confused, and you're standing right at the edge of the hole."

"I'm not confused."

"Let me walk you in. I'll take your arm, and we'll go to the lodge, and Garrick will..."

"No."

"The ice is so thin here. If you fell again, I couldn't bear it."

She held out her free hand, and her fingers were steady.

I looked at them.

They were the hands that had braided my hair on the afternoon of the Walk.

I had watched them hold a branch a foot short of my fingers, eighteen years ago, and draw it back.

"Stay where you are," I said.

Her smile slipped, just slightly.

"You came to see if I was in it," I said. "You've been coming every night."

"I came to light a candle for you."

"You don't have a candle."

She glanced at the torch in her hand.

For one moment nothing at all showed on her face.

I held up my left hand, and the split scar dripped red onto the snow.

"It was a silver bracelet," I said. "You threw it on the thin ice and dared an eight-year-old to fetch it."

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