Guil sighed, imaged <Burn sleeping quietly,> and shut his eyes in all confidence of Burn’s hearing the ambient even when Burn was asleep.

<Wind,> Danny decided, huddled in the lee of tumbled rocks, as another night came down. It had to be <wind moving the boughs.>

Cloud hovered close, hungry and in an ill mood, but Cloud had kept that uncommon quiet, taking no chances, and imaging <snow> and <snow on branches > so consistently Danny could hardly, at times, realize he was hearing Cloud and not seeing <snowy branches.>

He’d never known Cloud to do that before. He sometimes feared that something was wrong with Cloud’s mind; but Cloud grew disturbed when he tried to get Cloud’s attention—Cloud imaged <hungry horse > and then went back to his <branches> so loudly he couldn’t seeanything but that.

He didn’t know what they were going to do about food. He’d gone to sleep hungry one night, now it was the second, and he didn’t know where they were going to get food for either of them. He was mad at himself for not thinking to grab his packs, or anything— but he hadn’t been thinking at all when he’d run from the camp, and not thinking a lot today, in their forest of <snowy branches.> He was mostly scared.

They’d moved, today, and they’d seen game, but Cloud hadn’t wanted to hunt and he had no gun.

He could at least have made a fire. He had his burning-glass in his pocket, he’d some wrapped, waxed matches on him, but he was scared to do it for fear that Harper or a horse he didn’t want to meet or even think about would smell it on the wind, in this place where smells you didn’t notice downland were very, very obvious as man-made. So he’d made his bed with evergreen, the same as last night, with less desperation, with more care. And he really truly hoped Cloud would find them <breakfast.>

But that wish got him nothing but <snowy branches, snowy against the clouds,> so persistently it upset an empty and already chancy stomach.

They’d found a berry bush with berries still left out of reach of smaller creatures, and Cloud could eat the berries, so they were probably all right, but that wasn’t always true: human beings weren’t of the same earth-stuff as horses, and you couldn’t always rely on the safety of plants horses could eat—so once he’d seen Cloud go at them, he’d tucked handfuls of the autumn-dried berries in his pockets and eaten just one of them, figuring to test if he got stomachache or went strange afterward.

He hadn’t, and they were still in his pocket, so he nibbled a few. They were sour and set his teeth on edge, but they were better than an empty stomach.

Cloud found a few sprigs of dried grass that grew about the rocks, and licked lichen or some kind of fungus off the stone; at least it looked as if Cloud was getting something to eat out of all that effort—the image was now <lichen on stone, > for variety, instead of <snowy branches and dry grass above the snow.>

Which was probably smart to do, this <branches > business. But it made thinking and planning hard.

He watched Cloud for a while, wondering if the stuff on the rocks was edible—but he wasn’t greatly tempted to peel it off and have a try at any scummy fungus, no more than he was tempted to abandon the little warmth he’d found to go collect it.

He didn’t know where he’d go next, or, more to the point, where Cloud would be willing to take him. He was, he had to admit it to himself, lost—not lost, in not knowing where down was on the mountain, any fool could tell that, but lost because he didn’t know which side of the road he was on, and he didn’t know whether the nearest village was behind him or in front of him, above him or below him on the mountain. They hadn’t crossed a clear-cut, or seen any other indication of a road in any place they’d crossed.

Most disturbing—he figured that Cloud was imaging <snowy branches > so fervently because there was a good reason for hiding.

Which made him, unwillingly, think about the <fire on windows> and that <presence> he didn’t want to feel.

Cloud snorted and shied away from him, with <snowy branches > louder than ever until he stopped and plunged his head into his hands and swore to the God back in Shamesey town he was through being a hero: he wanted <finding the downhill road, going down to lowland pastures.> Cloud would have his winter in the Wild, just not in the high country—

Because Cloud’s fool rider, having gotten them into one human mess after the other, had now lost all his gear and everything he owned. Cloud depended on his rider to see ahead and think ahead, and understand the Wild, and his fool rider hadn’t even understood human beings. He wasn’t any help to anybody, and the best thing he could do was get them off the mountain alive and get Cloud fed and safe.

<Snow falling. Snow drifting down in the dark.>

<(Desire,)> came a thread of feeling. <(Bodies together, dark nighthorse bodies, feelings intense as the dark… )>

Danny caught a breath, roused out of sleep, suddenly beset by feelings he didn’t know where they’d come from—out of control, but he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, he didn’t understand what was happening to him…

<(Wanting—wanting closeness, wanting—)>

<Snow> came down on him, cold and quiet, poured down until he was lost in a breathing, snowy night. That was Cloud. He knew it was.

<(… bodies merging, tearing, ripping apart—)>

<<… Watt, running through the dark, running and running— chest aching, breath coming edged with cold and terror, not enough air, branches breaking against arms and face, jabbing at eyes, branches crashing and breaking—> >

Stuart on the porch. “Stay with your horse.” Jump across time. Another moment. “Stay with your horse.” Danny and Cloud at the fireside. “Stay with your horse, whatever goes wrong, stay with your horse.”

<<Man running in the dark, something behind him, branches breaking—he won’t turn, he won’t turn and look, just running, sound coming closer with every stride—open ground, and steep rocks, and empty, dark air—> >

Danny gasped, jerked, caught at the ground, couldn’t get breath, couldn’t overcome the falling-feeling—

<<Snow. White everywhere. Heart slow, so slow his blood can’t move. So slow he can’t breathe—> >

Then could. Danny sucked in a breath, his ribs able to move.

He got another, and another, and his gloved hands knew the solid ground was under him, he hadn’t fallen. He wasn’t falling. That was somebody else—somebody was dying.

<Cold on his face, chilling cold against the sweat.> He sat there with his heart pounding, sure he’d been somewhere else—that he’d been somebodyelse. He was sure that something had been behind him, but when he looked he saw only the night-shadowed trees and the solid stone of the mountain.

A presence went past them then, fast, like a blink of starless dark—it swirled and it reeled dizzily, it wanted, it fell, it rose, it was a man and it wasn’t—it was lost and it was angry and it was looking for someone, it lusted after sex, after touch, after feeling, after something it had <(lost and couldn’t find)>—

He suffered a spasm of chill, then of arousal, but he held himself still, too wary to catch. He felt <drifting snow> on his face, and after a time of harsh, measured breathing the lust and the hurt and the wanting went away, sucked away into the dark farther and farther and farther, faster than any horse alive could run.

He thought at first it was another kind of falling, and clung to the rocks, shaking and afraid that the whole mountain would dissolve around him—straight outward into the air.