Branna Holt crouched by her small fire and watched the snow swallow the trail. She had come to map a safe route through Frostbite Gorge, one no caravan would lose an ox on again. Three deaths last winter still counted in her head. The storm did not care. Her camp was a thin tent, a rope fence, and a ring of stones holding back the wind. She kept the fire fed and her boots dry. It was shelter, not progress. Inside the tent, her field table held everything she could not yet finish. Maps curled at the edges. Notes piled on notes. A red line marked the second switchback. She could not even reach the first. She pushed out into the wind and climbed toward the lower pass. A wall of layered ice and spiraled drift rose where the trail should be. Taller than her shaggy ox. Wider than any shovel could fight. She pressed a gloved hand to it and felt the cold push back. Branna turned into the storm and walked back to the fire. The drift had decided for her. She could not work the switchback today, or tomorrow. That left one road still open — the old man she had been avoiding. At first light, she would go.

At first light Branna walked out of the storm and found the old man's cabin tucked between pines, smoke thin from the chimney. The wood was dark with age. A row of small carved markers lined the sill, one for each winter he had kept his silence. He was outside, mending a snow-packed fence post with bare, red hands. He did not look up. Branna stopped at the gate and waited. She had brought no coin, no trade, no map worth showing. Only the question, and the cold between them. She pulled the wool scarf from her neck. It had been her mother's, frayed at the ends, dyed in soft grays. She folded it once and laid it on the top rail of the fence, within his reach. "My hands are warm enough," she said. "Yours are not." The old man set down his hammer. He looked at the scarf a long moment, then at her. He picked it up, wound it slow around his throat, and spoke for the first time. "Come inside, herder. There's a thing about that switchback your maps won't hold."