Why, oh why hadn’t she paid more attention? Why had she let her mind wander? She’d never been like that when she was young. When she was young she’d drink in everything around her greedily, tucking every sight away in her mind so she could remember it later.
（They were moving through the dark woods fast, so fast, but what she could see she promised herself to remember. She’d remember so that she could find her way home.）
But where was home? That she couldn’t remember.
Home is the place where they called you Samantha.
Samantha, Mattie remembered. Samantha.
Samantha struggled. Samantha fought back. Samantha ran away.
Yes, she ran away from William but he caught her and put her in the Box. The Box was where bad girls went.
“If I don’t get home soon he’ll put me in the Box,” Mattie said to herself.
She had to stand up. She had to. But how will you find your way home?
Stand up first. Just stand. Then walk. Then worry about how to get where she needed to go.
But it was no good. No matter how she rolled and pushed and struggled, she couldn’t get on her feet. After several minutes she lay in the snow, panting, unable to do anything except gaze up at the too-bright sky and the dark silhouettes of the branches against it.
Trees, she thought. The animals in the trees. William doesn’t know.
（It doesn’t matter because William is going to be safe in the cabin with the warm fire and you’re going to be out with the night and the cold and the creature that strings animals up like decorations）
The creature. She needed to get away, get inside before it found her. It wouldn’t even need to hunt her in the state she was in. It would just scoop her up and take her back to the cave and rip her to pieces and sort all those pieces like a child organizing its building blocks by shape.
Get up, Mattie. Get up before it finds you.
She rolled to her stomach, propped herself up on her elbows, then used her elbows to dig into the snow and pull herself forward, dragging her legs behind.
It was painfully slow going. Her body felt like it wasn’t attached to her brain, like it wouldn’t respond to the orders she gave it. Every few inches she stopped, her breath hard and fast. She felt the throb of her heart against the snow, thought sometimes it might beat right through her ribs and stay there, an offering for the thing in the woods.
After a long while she was close enough to a tree trunk to grab it. She threw both arms around the tree, pushed up with her knees, and by very slow degrees managed to kneel. Her face rested against the tree bark, her arms trembling.
“Keep going, Mattie. Keep going.”
Somehow she got one foot on the ground, and then the other, and then—hugging the tree for dear life—she rose up until finally, finally she was standing.
The next tree wasn’t too far away. Mattie unwrapped her arms, used both hands to brace against the trunk. Then she pushed off, using the momentum to stumble into the next tree.
She was up. She could walk—if you could call it walking. She just needed to find her path home now.
A second later she laughed, though she stopped quickly because laughing made her throat hurt and because it was a horrible barky sound that echoed strangely in the deep silence of the forest. She didn’t need to find the way back. William’s footprints were right there in the snow.
Mattie glanced anxiously up at the sky. The footprints were only useful as long as she had light. William had said it was only a couple of hours until sundown. She didn’t know how much time had passed since then.
Every minute you stand here dithering is a minute of sunlight wasted.
She vaulted off the second tree as she had the first, but the next trunk was farther away and she nearly missed it, only just grabbing one of the low-hanging branches to stay upright.
Mattie staggered from tree to tree in this way, always keeping the trail of William’s footprints visible. Too soon she realized that the trail was growing more difficult to see. The shadows had deepened. The sun was setting.
A bubble of alarm bloomed in her chest. She didn’t have any light. William had the candles and matches.
She took a good look around her for the first time since she’d awoken from her faint. Nothing appeared familiar. There were only trees and rocks and snow, and she had no notion of how far away the cabin might be.
Her stomach twisted. It had been hours since she’d eaten. Her mouth and throat were parched, too.
Mattie knew how to find edible berries in the woods but it was well past berry season. She gripped the tree hard with one arm and cautiously lowered into a crouch. She inspected the snow for animal droppings and, finding it clear, scooped large handfuls into her mouth.