The fog came up the ravine like a slow white tide, and by midmorning it had swallowed the Greywood whole.

It was not like any fog Alan had known. It had no smell, no taste, no damp. It simply was, a soft pearl-colored nothing that rolled between the trunks and filled every hollow and made the world a place without edges. Sounds came muffled and strange. The light turned flat and pale, and the trees stood in it like the pillars of a drowned temple, their bark gone dull as old pewter. And everywhere it touched, something drained.

He felt it first in his stomach. The leak, the small cold tick that had counted down his reserve for three weeks, had always been a thin and patient thing. Now it was a trickle. He checked his reserve at the first rest stop, and then again half an hour later, and then he stopped checking, because the numbers were falling faster than he could write them down.

-- It is pulling, -- said Priscilla, in a voice that was careful and dry. -- Not from you in particular. From everything that carries a charge. The trees, the water, the air. It is a very patient predator. It is only that you have more to give than most. -- A pause. -- I would like to propose that we leave.

-- The checkpoint is two miles ahead.

-- The checkpoint is in the fog.

-- Then we go through it quickly.

-- Alan.

-- I will not stop, -- said Alan, quietly. -- Nobody can stop. The exam is three days. If I fail the trial, there will be an inquiry. If there is an inquiry, there will be a report. I would rather be wet than written about.

-- That is not a reason to be foolish.

-- It is a reason to be efficient.

She did not argue. She was silent for a long moment, and when she spoke again, it was only to say, -- Left. Ten paces. There is a root across the path.

All through the morning, the forest thinned around them. Students passed in the white, ghostly shapes among the trunks, calling to each other in thin high voices that seemed to come from nowhere. A girl sat weeping at the foot of a tree, her cloud rabbit limp in her arms, its fur dull and its eyes half closed. A pair of boys were arguing about direction, with a lantern between them that burned a dim and sullen blue. Everywhere, the spirit beasts were fading, the bright shimmer going out of them like color from a cheap dye. It was as though the forest had been sucked of something essential and was now trying, with a patient, hungry softness, to do the same to the people.

-- Fascinating, -- murmured Priscilla, in a very small voice, and did not sound as though she meant it.

-- Where is Tobias? -- said Alan.

He had been walking beside him a moment ago. He was quite sure of it. They had been talking about bread. Alan had turned his head to say something about the weight of the packs, and the space at his shoulder, where a round, anxious, freckled boy should have been, was white.

-- Tobias? -- he called.

Nothing. His voice fell flat in the fog, like a stone dropped on cloth.

-- Tobias!

-- He went to find water, -- said Nyx suddenly, in a flat quick voice. -- Do you remember? He said his skin was empty. You said you would wait by the big stump. He said he would only be a minute.

-- That was an hour ago.

-- I know. -- A pause. -- I should have said something. I was counting the tracks.

-- It is not your fault.

-- No, -- said Nyx, grimly. -- It is the fog's. And the fog is going to answer for it. Come on. Follow me. I have his boots.

It took twenty minutes to find the first sign. A scrap of brown cloth caught on a bramble. A single print of a heavy boot in the soft earth, half erased by the slow white mist. Nyx moved ahead of him, a thin dark presence in the front of his mind, calling out each mark. A scuffed stone. A bent fern. A place where the ground fell away suddenly in a steep slope of loose scree, and a long scrape in the gravel where somebody had slid.

-- Down, -- said Nyx. -- Carefully. It is steep.

He went down. He did not use the sync. He thought of it, for an instant, as he slid on his heels over the loose stone, with the white rising around him and the cold wet air burning in his lungs, and he put the thought away. It would have been easy. It would have made him faster, surer, quieter. But the ring was warm on his finger, and a pair of pale eyes were somewhere in the fog, and he had given a promise.

At the bottom of the slope, in a narrow rocky cleft where a thin stream ran black between two walls of wet stone, he found Tobias.

He was lying on his side in the water. He had slipped on the rocks and cracked his head, a small cut over the eyebrow, bleeding thinly, and had fallen into the stream, and had not been able to get out. His lips were blue. His round freckled face was the color of candle wax. His eyes were half open, and unfocused, and when Alan dropped to his knees beside him and took his shoulders, he made a small, thick, mumbling sound.

-- Tobias. Tobias, can you hear me?

-- ... Cold, -- said Tobias, with great dignity, and shut his eyes.

-- Do not do that. Do not close your eyes. -- He hauled him out of the water, with a strength he did not know he had, and laid him on a flat dry rock. The boy's skin was like ice. His hands were curled and stiff. In his breast pocket, Crumb was a dull dim lump, the ember in him almost out. -- Stay with me. Talk. Say something.

-- Honey cake.

-- Good. Another.

-- ... It was on a windowsill, -- said Tobias, faintly, and Alan, kneeling in the cold with his heart pounding, felt a wild brief urge to weep.

-- Fire, -- he said aloud, to the fog. -- Helga. Fire.

-- Dry wood in the lee of the left wall, -- said Helga, instantly, gruff and sharp and absolutely steady. -- Under the overhang. There is a dead pine. Break the dry branches from the inside, where the rain does not reach. Use the flint in your left pocket. Shave the bark thin, like a feather. Do not stack it, lean it. Quickly. Quickly, boy.

He did it. He did not know how his hands did it. They were shaking, and numb, and clumsy, and she talked him through every step in a steady growl, shave, lean, strike, breathe, and the flint threw a bright spark into the feathered bark and a thin thread of flame climbed up it. He fed it twigs, then sticks, then branches. It caught. It crackled. A small bright orange light bloomed in the cleft of the rocks and threw a wavering glow across the white.

-- Now the blanket, -- said Valeria. -- Strip his wet clothes. Wrap him in the wool. Wax side out. Put him between the fire and the wall. -- Her voice was crisp and quick and quite calm. -- Then lie against him. Share your heat. It is not a matter of modesty. It is a matter of survival.

-- I know, -- said Alan.

He did. He stripped off Tobias's sodden jacket and shirt, and wrapped him in the waxed blanket, and lay down on the cold stone beside him, with the fire on one side and the rock wall on the other, and wrapped both his arms around the boy's shivering back. It was uncomfortable and ridiculous and entirely necessary. Tobias was cold as a fish. He pressed against Alan's chest with the helpless, simple trust of a child, and muttered something about bread.

-- The ward, -- said Seraphina, very quietly. -- Dear. Across the opening. To hold the heat in. Only a little. A very small one.

-- I know the one.

-- I know that you do. -- Her voice shook. -- Please be careful.

It was the second one she had taught him, the curved shield, thin as a sheet of glass. He raised his hand, and it came, a faint gold curve across the mouth of the cleft, shimmering in the firelight. It cost him four points. He felt them go. The fog outside lapped at it like water at a sea wall, a patient white pressure. He held it. He held it for twenty minutes, with Tobias shuddering against him and his own muscles screaming, until at last the boy's trembling slowed, and the blue faded from his lips, and he gave a long, shuddering, comfortable sigh and went limp.

-- He is sleeping, -- said Priscilla, softly, in a voice that cracked. -- His pulse is steady. His temperature is rising. He will have a headache. He will be insufferable about it. But he will live.

-- Thank you, -- said Alan.

It was a whisper. He let the ward drop. He lay on his back on the cold stone with Tobias asleep against his shoulder, and stared at the pale glow of the fog above the cleft. His hands were trembling. His head felt light and strange, as though it were filled with warm water. He reached for his reserve, to see how much was left, and found, with a distant and curious calm, that he could not feel it at all.

Three, he thought. Perhaps two.

-- Alan, -- said Valeria, sharply.

-- Yes, Senior.

-- Your reserve.

-- It is adequate.

-- It is not adequate. -- She was very quiet. -- I can feel it from here. Frost. Report.

-- I am fine.

It came out short and flat. He had not meant it to. It was a door closing, small and quick and soft, the oldest sound he knew, and he heard it leave his mouth and was powerless to call it back.

-- You are fine, -- said Valeria.

-- Yes, Senior. Just tired. It is a normal level of fatigue after exertion. I will rest here for an hour and then move on.

-- Dear, -- said Seraphina. Her voice had risen, and cracked, and she did not seem to notice. -- Dear, please. Say halt. You have the word. Say it. It is such a very small word.

-- It is not that kind of tired, Senior.

-- It is exactly that kind.

-- I cannot afford to stop. If I stop, then. -- He swallowed. -- The exam. The fog. The boy.

-- The boy is asleep, -- said Seraphina, in a tight, high, trembling voice. -- He is safe. You have made him safe. You may stop now. Please. I would so much rather that you stopped. Please let me. Please let me come out and. -- She broke off. -- You cannot afford it. I know. I know. I have counted. I only. -- A long uneven breath. -- I cannot bear to listen to you say that word.

-- Which word?

-- Fine, -- said Seraphina.

He did not know what to say. He had never heard her voice sound like that, small and raw, like a child's.

-- Halt, -- said Valeria, harshly. -- It means halt. It means that when you say it, I stop. It also means that when I say it, you stop. I am saying it. -- A breath. -- Frost. Halt.

-- I cannot, -- said Alan, and heard, to his shame, that his voice was shaking. -- I am sorry. I cannot. I am so near the edge that if I stop, I will not be able to start again. I need to get out of the fog. It is eating the whole forest. If I rest here, in it, it will take the rest of what I have. I have to move. I have to find clear air. I have to. -- He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. -- I am so sorry. Please do not be angry.

-- We are not angry, -- said Priscilla, gently.

-- I am angry, -- said Helga.

-- Helga.

-- I am. -- Her voice was thick. -- I am so angry I could throw a hammer through a wall. And I am not going to say a thing about it, because he cannot afford to hear it. I will be angry later. When he is warm.

-- That seems a sound plan, -- said Nyx, quietly.

For a moment, nobody said anything. The fire crackled. Tobias snored, small and warm, against his shoulder.

-- Listen, -- said Nyx. -- I am going to say something, and I would like everybody to hear me. -- Her voice was very level. -- Give him an hour. An hour, in a dry place, outside the fog, with nobody talking. Not a word. Not a breath. He cannot walk out of this on nothing. If we want him alive, we will let him rest. And then he will walk out of here, and we will follow him, and we will say what we need to say when he is strong enough to hear it.

-- That is, -- said Valeria, slowly. -- That is a tactical proposal I can accept.

-- Priscilla?

-- I will close, -- said Priscilla. -- Without reservation. For an hour.

-- I will close, -- said Helga, in a very gruff, very small voice.

-- I will, -- said Seraphina. She sounded as though she were speaking through a hand. -- I will, dear. I will close it all the way. -- A pause. -- I would just like you to know that I am doing it because I trust you. Not because I am not afraid.

-- I know, -- said Alan. -- Thank you.

-- You are welcome. -- And then, so softly that he might have imagined it, -- Please come back.

He felt the windows close. One by one. Valeria's, with a firm, clean click. Priscilla's, like a book being shut. Helga's, with a muffled thump, as though a very large person had put her hands over her ears. Seraphina's, last of all, slowly, hesitantly, with a long tremor, like a hand drawing back from a flame.

Only one stayed open.

He carried Tobias out of the ravine over his shoulder, in the end, because there was no other way. He climbed the scree on his hands and knees. He crossed a ridge in the white. The fog thinned, slowly, as the ground rose, and at the end of an hour and a half, at the lip of a small dry hollow beneath a ledge of rock, he stepped into clear grey air and sank to his knees and let the boy slide down onto a bed of moss. Tobias grunted, and turned over, and went on sleeping. The sky above the hollow was a pale and ordinary overcast. No glow. No drain. For the first time since dawn, the leak in his stomach had slowed to a thin steady tick.

He crawled under the ledge. He pulled the waxed blanket over both of them. And then, quite without deciding to, he put his head down on his arms, and shut his eyes.

-- Kid, -- said Nyx.

It was very quiet. It was so low that it was almost not a sound. She had not left. She had been there the entire way, a thin steady presence at the front of his mind, calling out each step, each rock, each root, in a voice as even and dry as a metronome, and he had not once thought to wonder why she had not closed.

-- You can sleep, -- she said. -- I will keep watch.

-- I am not tired.

-- You are the most tired person I have ever seen.

-- I am only resting.

-- You said fine. -- She said it very gently. -- Three times today. I counted. It is the same word you said in the alley. It is always the same. And I would like to ask you again what I asked you then, because I think you can answer it now. It is only me. The doors are shut. Nobody else will hear. You do not have to answer. But I would like to know.

He lay with his face against his arm. The hollow in his chest was a small cold ache. The ring on his finger was warm. It was very dark under the ledge, and very quiet, and the only sound was the slow breathing of the boy beside him.

-- Who taught you, -- said Nyx, -- to say fine like a door closing?

For a long time, he did not say anything.

It was not a decision. It was a thing that happened, like a tooth coming loose after years of pressure. He lay in the dim hollow with his eyes closed and felt it rise in him, a low heavy slow swell, the way the tide comes into a harbor, and he thought, quite clearly: I am too tired to hold the door.

-- My mother, -- he said.

Nyx said nothing.

-- She said it. All the time. -- His voice was very quiet, and very level, and it did not sound like his own. -- She was ill. For a long time. After my father. She had a, it was a mana toxin. It was in her blood, from the, I do not know. From something that had been done to her, or that she had done, I was never told. It comes in veins. Grey. You can see them, under the skin. They crawl up the wrist like frost on a window. -- A breath. -- I was eleven. We were living with my uncle's family. They were, they gave us a room. At the back. It was very small. She slept in it. I slept on the floor.

-- Go on, -- said Nyx.

-- There was a pharmacist. In town. He sold the medicine that would have, that might have slowed it. It cost eleven silver bits a vial. We did not have eleven silver bits. We had, my mother had a saucer. A white one, with a crack. She kept it on the table by the bed. And every week she would put coins on it. Copper, mostly. Whatever she could. She would count them out. One, two, three. And I would take them to the pharmacist. And he would count them again. And he would shake his head. -- He swallowed. -- He was not unkind. He was only a man with a drawer.

The fog moved beyond the ledge. Somewhere far off, a bird gave a single cry.

-- She would say, it is all right, Alan. -- His voice cracked, finally, very slightly. -- She would say it every time I came home. I would stand in the door, and I would say, they did not have enough. And she would be lying there with her hand hanging off the bed, and the grey, the grey was up to her elbow by then, and she would turn her head and smile at me, and say, it is all right. It is only a little. I am fine. -- He pressed his arm over his mouth. -- I am fine, Alan. I am fine.

Nyx did not say a word.

-- She was not. -- It came out as a whisper. -- She died in the winter. On a Tuesday. I was at school. I came home and the saucer was on the table, and it was empty. She had given away the last of it. For, I do not know what. Soap. A candle. Something for me. -- He took a long unsteady breath. -- I learned how to say it from her. That is all. It is only a sentence. It is the most useful one I know. If you say it, nobody asks you anything else. If you say it, no one is worried, and no one is troubled, and no one has to put their hand on your arm and ask what is wrong. You close the door and they go away. And it keeps them safe. It keeps them from having to know.

-- Alan, -- said Nyx, and her voice was very low, and entirely without mockery.

-- I did not mean to say all that.

-- I know.

-- It is a great deal.

-- It is not enough, -- said Nyx. -- It is the first time you have said it out loud. It will take a long time to be enough. -- A pause. -- But it is a beginning.

He did not answer. His eyes were wet. He could not have said when it had begun. He lay in the dark hollow with his face against his arm and the tears running sideways across the bridge of his nose and into his hair, and he made no sound at all.

Something touched his hand.

It was small and warm. It was a piece of paper, folded into a twist, laid in the open palm of his hand. A boiled sweet, red and white, striped, slightly crushed. It had not been there a moment ago. He had not heard her come. He turned his head, very slowly, and in the dim light under the ledge, a shape sat beside him with her knees drawn up and her cloak around her shoulders, and her face turned away.

She was not looking at him. She had given him that, he understood. She sat in the dark, with her chin on her arms, looking out at the fog. Her eyes were bright. She did not say anything. She did not make a joke. She only sat there, solid and warm and quite silent, a careful yard away, with her shoulder not quite touching his.

He put the sweet in his mouth. It tasted of cherries, and burnt sugar, and a trace of pepper.

-- I do not know what to do with it, -- he whispered.

-- With what?

-- With having said it.

-- You do not do anything. -- Her voice was soft. -- You sleep. And in the morning, it is still said. And that is all. That is the whole of it. It is a thing that happened, and it is allowed to have happened. -- A breath. -- I will keep it. I will not use it. I will not say a word to anyone. I swear it, on every bad thing I have ever done.

-- I believe you.

-- That is a very dangerous thing to do, -- said Nyx, in a thin odd voice. -- I would like to be worth it.

-- You are.

She did not answer.

He lay quite still, with the sweet melting on his tongue, and the warm bulk of Tobias at his side, and the cold clean air in his lungs. The tide in his chest had ebbed. He was hollowed out. He was as empty as a shell. But under the emptiness, he found, to his surprise, that there was something else, a small, steady, unfamiliar lightness, as though someone had lifted a stone from his ribs that he had carried so long that he had mistaken it for bone.

He slept.

He did not hear the horn at first. It came through the dark very slowly, a long low note from far away, rolling over the hills like the voice of some great sleeping animal. It sounded once. It sounded again. It was the signal for the end of the second day, and the muster for the final march.

-- Kid, -- said Nyx, very gently, in the darkness, when he stirred. -- It is the horn. It is time. -- A pause. -- I will keep this.

-- I know.

-- I mean it.

-- I know, -- said Alan.

And, in the dim hollow beneath the ledge, with a sweet in his teeth and the first star showing between the clouds, he found that he did.