There is no pain on earth like that of losing a child. Mithew Gar discovered he could not handle that burden.

Never had there been such a broken man. His heart, his mind, his soul shattered the moment his infant daughter lay lifeless in his arms. He continued to clutch her tiny, perfect body until the sun rose, when he laid her as gently as crystal into her bassinet. After one long, final gaze at the snuffed-out light of his life, he turned and left the room.

Shock stilled his mind and his voice for a while—long enough to leave the pleasure-house, leave the town, leave the county. He took no supplies with him, but he lacked the presence of mind or soul to feel hunger or thirst. The cold seeped into his toes. The snow clung to his eyelashes. His joints began to ache, his belly to cry for attention. Mithew Gar walked on.

If he had mind enough to think, perhaps he would think freezing to death in the woods could reunite him with his beloved Lizha. But even a desperate plan such as that was too much for his incoherent mind to piece together. No, his trudge through the dark and wild wood was fueled by emotions far more instinctual.

Just as suddenly as the desire to flee possessed him, it left. He stopped walking, stopped moving, and dropped to his knees in the snow. The blinding numbness and shock vacated his body, replaced with a hot, bleeding, grieving fury.

The cries and screams of a man so mad with grief could have woken the dead, were he within hearing range of any civilization, current or past. But as Mithew Gar tore his clothes and pawed the ground like a rabid beast, no one came to his aid. No one fled in terror. No one so much as shivered or shook their head, because not a single soul in the world heard his pain.

Deep in the woods, the stories say, there stands a pond. No matter what the season—winter, summer, spring, or fall—the pond lies still under an impenetrable sheet of ice. Mithew Gar, in his grief and pain and fury, did not see the pond by which he knelt. He did not notice when the water began to shimmer with movement, or when the ice began to crack. His sight was too blurred with tears to notice the strange blue-white glow emitting from the pond. The sound of slowly thawing ice could not catch his attention over the immobilizing pain of his heartbreak.

But the soft, gentle voice of a woman did.

"Son of Adam, what troubles you?"