Nyssa lingered for two days with the old mage, who tended to her wounds, but she would hear no more talk of prophecy. Her leg began to heal with unnatural speed and on the third morning she found she could move well enough to search for Iona and Gosta. Greta watched her as she dressed in her furs and tied her pouch around her waist. She kept her sheath, though there was no dagger to fill it, and she felt a pang of loss. Her father would not forgive her for losing his knife. She had nothing left of him to hold onto. Another piece of home had been stolen from her.

"I'll come back for you," said Nyssa, facing the mage. Greta's face was still unreadable. Her words left no mistake.

"I think not, girl," she said. "I'll be long gone when you return home. Remember what I've told you."

"Thank you," said Nyssa, bowing her head in respect to the old woman who'd brought her into the world and now saved her life. She would remember the mage's words, even if she did not obey them.

Nyssa stepped out of the cave and found that they were not far up into the mountains. The plains were only twenty feet below the ledge on which she stood. She began to climb, certain that Iona and Gosta would be further up. She would search their usual campsites. Hopefully, she would find them by nightfall. The going was slower than she would've liked. Soon, her leg ached where the spear had pierced her, and she was forced to pause at every outcropping to catch her breath.

As the sun set, she had not even reached the first campsite, but she knew she could not climb in the dark and her body needed rest. Nyssa wedged herself under a jutting boulder to shield herself from the bitter winds. She tried to sleep, knowing her body was in desperate need, but her belly burned with hunger and she could hear the wolf. Its howls stayed with her now whether she was awake or asleep. To keep the sound at bay, she spoke to her sister, promising to find her soon.

"We will be together again," she whispered to the night, alone on the mountain. She remembered the day when Greta had passed the squalling, bloodied infant into her arms, while their mother lay dead, her legs still open and everything in between torn. Nyssa had vowed then to protect the girl, to love her, and to not begrudge her for taking their mother's life. She had vowed the same when their father died, leaving the two of them with only each other. No matter what Greta prophesied, or what the gods ordained, Nyssa would not leave her kin.

Just as dawn was breaking, Nyssa's eyes finally closed. The wolf came to her, a direwolf, drenched in blood. It stared into her soul, holding her in its yellow gaze, before turning and running off again, howling at her to follow. "I won't!" she cried after the wolf. "Never!"

Nyssa woke suddenly with the word never still in her mouth and a hand wrapped around her throat to silence the sound. She opened her eyes to the man crouching over her, his face hooded so that she could not see him clearly, though she could tell from his clothes that he was not from this side of the Wall. The man loosened his grip just enough that she could steal a gasp of air, before pressing down on her windpipe again.

"Morning, girlie," said the man. He was not alone. She saw two more hooded figures from the corner of her eye. Unable to move with his hand on her throat, Nyssa did all she could and spat at him. The man let go of her throat to slap her across the face. Ears ringing, she could not make out what the men were saying to one another at first. Their gruff voices slowly filtered back to her. Their accents were further proof that they were not of her people. They sounded more like the merchants that came across the Bay of Ice, though she suspected these men were no friendly traders.

"This one's got fire," said the one still pinning her to the ground.

"Too much," said another. "We should kill her, be done with it, and leave this cursed place. I told you it wasn't a good idea to come this far. I won't go any higher, Durst, I swear it. We'll die in these mountains."

Durst, the man who held her, looked at Nyssa. She saw the gleam of his eyes and little more. "Fine," he said, "But the girl comes with us." He drew a knife from his belt and used the tip to brush the hair from her face. She recognized the hilt of the blade, walrus bone, notched for every one of her father's kills. "She's a pretty one under all this muck," said Durst. "She'll fetch a nice price over the Wall."

Slavers, thought Nyssa, panicked. Heedless of the fact that she was unarmed and outnumbered, she rolled over, scrambling away from Durst, but he caught her before she could stand, slapping her hard again. She continued to struggle as he attempted to bind her hands. Soon his patience ran out.

"The easy way then," he said, raising her father's knife. He struck her on the back of the head and she went still, unconscious.

She could not wake from the blood rain and the wolf's cries. It felt as if an eternity had passed while she watched the world drown in blood, waiting to drown with it, and then the rain stopped, drops of blood freezing in mid-air all around her. A creature was suddenly standing before her, the size of a child, but like no human she'd ever seen. It's slanted eyes were liquid gold and its skin, the green color of new bark.

Nyssa did not know the proper greeting for a Child of the Forest. The Child did not leave her time to decide whether or not to bow, before speaking in the same voice she'd heard on the wind, telling her to run.

"The land is shifting," said the Child. "Old magic stirs once more. You feel it."

"Yes," said Nyssa. She could not lie in this place, caught between a dream and waking, for she did feel the earth moving even as she stood still in the shadow of the Frostfangs. "But I don't understand. What do the gods want from me?"

"You must go South," said the Child, pointing behind her, away from the Fangs where Iona and Gosta waited for her. "There you will find the direwolf." Mist swirled at the Child's feet and they shimmered, there and not there. "Wake now," they said.

A gust of wind rushed against Nyssa, forcing her South, no matter how she dug her heels in the snow. She had no control as her spirit was blown back into her body. The pain returned to her. The ground still seemed to shift beneath her and water stung her cheeks. Desperate for anything to wet her tongue, she licked at the droplets. Salt burned the cuts inside of her mouth. Seawater, she thought.

When she opened her eyes, there was no Child of the Forest, and no forest, only gray waves for as far as she could see. She was on a small boat, with only a top deck, and just three men to man the oars. Their hoods were down now and she could see the faces of the slavers in the blazing sun, but she did not look at them long. Her eyes moved instead to the iron shackles cuffed to her wrists and ankles. She followed the heavy links chaining her to three others' an old man, a woman, and a girl. All of them looked half-starved. None of them looked back at her.

Nyssa closed her eyes again, hoping now that she might return to her dream, to the mountains and to Iona, but the boat continued to rock beneath her. The woman chained next to her hummed some quiet song to the girl. Awake or asleep, the wind carried her South.

Nyssa slipped in and out of consciousness. She was sometimes aware of her surroundings, the sea on all sides, and sometimes she was lost in the blood rain, trying to outrun the wolf. Sometimes she heard a woman singing and thought it was her own mother. Sometimes it rained and there were days when the sun burned her face. Sometimes she thought she was dead and sometimes she wished that she was.

At last, her delirium broke. She opened her eyes, her mind clearer than it had been in days, and a woman's pale face filled her vision. "Come back now," said the woman. "They'll throw you overboard if you don't."

Nyssa struggled to keep the fog from shrouding her again. She could not remain lost forever. Iona was still waiting for her. "Your name?" she said.

"Cara," the woman told her. She glanced at the slavers, who were not paying them any mind, and then passed Nyssa a damp cloth. "I caught some rain water. Go on, you must be thirsty."

Nyssa took the rag gratefully and sucked like a babe at their mother's teat. She had never tasted anything so wonderful as the mouthful of water she managed to wring from the cloth. "Thank you," she said, brushing the woman's hand as she returned the cloth.

"Good, you're awake," said one of the slavers. Cara skittered across the deck, back to the girl, as the man approached. He knelt before Nyssa and she recognized his eyes. "Going to stay that way this time, pretty one?" said Durst, stroking her cheek. Nyssa pressed her lips together. She would not speak to him. She had not the voice to waste on such a man.

Durst pinched her thigh, his thumb pressing into her wound, reopening it, and she bit her tongue so as not to give him the pleasure of hearing her cry out. He squeezed harder. Tears would've pricked her eyes if she'd had enough water in her to form them. Durst stood. He kicked her in the ribs, but still she made no sound. "Fine then, keep your silence," he said. "Men like a quiet woman."

Nyssa let out a silent breath of pain. The bandage around her thigh was stained with fresh blood. She felt herself slipping away again, but pinched her wrist to keep herself awake. She had to stay alive. She had to get back to the mountains. The gods did not control her. One way or another, she would find her sister. Go South. Find the direwolf. The Child's instructions made no sense. There were no direwolves over the Wall. Nyssa told herself that it had all been a dream. She willed herself to believe it so even as the gods pulled her further from where she wanted to go.

On land, it was much harder for the captives to speak to each other without the crash of waves to disguise their voices. They found a way to communicate in fragments, stealing any opportunity when Durst and his men were preoccupied. Nyssa shared a horse with the old man, Beak, the two of them tied together.

"If you fall, I fall," he had warned her on the first day. So far she had managed to keep in the saddle, though she was not accustomed to riding horseback and her wounded thigh burned from rubbing against the horse's side all day and sometimes into the night.

"I had a woman once," Beak whispered to her as they rode across an unfamiliar landscape. "And three little ones who grew up too fast. They went off in search of Rayder. Told 'em I'd be damned before I bowed to anyone, so they left me behind." His speech was punctuated with bouts of coughing. He'd been sick before the slavers caught him. Nyssa suspected he would not make it much longer, so she listened to his stories, memorizing them, so that he wouldn't be forgotten. It was the least she could do.

Cara and the girl, called Briar, had been picking the last of the summer's berries when the slavers came upon them. Whether the girl had a father waiting for them to come home, Cara never said. Briar never spoke at all. She only smiled when her mother sang to her. Nyssa shared what she could spare from the food the slavers gave her for the girl's sake. In this strange land, far from home, she felt bonded to the three of them. They were the only semblance of familiarity, the only reminder of who she was and where she'd come from. The land was dead this side of the Wall. Often she thought of Gosta and all his talk of a better life, but she could not see why anyone would want to conquer this hilly emptiness.

"Where are they taking us?" said Nyssa.

"Barrowtown," said Beak. "Three days from here, I'd guess."

"You've been this side before?"

"Long time ago," said Beak. "Back when I was a boy, my father brought me. He used to trade with the Dustins."

"Who?"

"Lords they call themselves. Lords of Barrowtown. You won't like it there, either. I never did. Loud and dirty." Beak spat a glob of blood at the ground. "But you've seen worse, ain't you, in your dreams." Nyssa did not answer. He did not wait for her to. "I hear you, howling and crying. You got the Sight?"

"No," said Nyssa. "Who wouldn't have nightmares in this place?"

"I can smell a lie, girl, but it ain't none of my business. I doubt I'll be around much longer to see what you do."

"So do I," said Nyssa. Beak's laugh turned into another bloody cough.

Come the early hours of morning, Nyssa lay awake, listening to Beak choke on his own blood. She waited for silence before crawling over to him. Sure enough he was dead. "Go home," she told him, wiping the bloody spittle from his chin. She traced an old scar that ran across his jaw, all the way down his neck, and wondered how he'd gotten it.

A shadow fell over her. She recognized Durst by the stench of him. The slaver dropped his trousers and pissed on Beaks' corpse. His urine splattered Nyssa, but she did not flinch away, and waited for him to leave before wiping her face clean with her sleeve. The other slavers had only just begun to stir. She kept vigil over the old man as a red dawn painted the horizon.

No pyre would be built for Beak. His withered body would be left behind to be picked apart by the crows. There was nothing she could do about that. Quietly, she sang a song of death, a song to guide him to rest, until Durst returned to haul her away. She was put onto the horse alone, no more Beak at her back to whisper stories of home in her ear.

Don't cry, she told herself, afraid that she would not be able to stop once she'd started. Something deep inside of her whispered that the death had only just begun. She brought Iona's face to the surface, but it blurred, changing into the old man, the frozen girl from camp, Gosta's father. Don't cry. Beak was where he wanted to be now. He was free of this dead land and, as soon as she could find a way, she would be too.