There’s a disorienting moment where she hears the sharp sound of impact and thinks that Cedric has actually done it: twisted and snapped his own familiar’s neck in a jagged crack of bone, wrung Rost out like meat for the stewpot, murdered a piece of himself.

But it becomes apparent a moment later, as the door slams open and shudders on its frame and cold air bursts into the cabin, that it’s the wind: the wind blowing the door open, the wooden frame creaking and cracking, not bone. And I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.

Rost runs out into the night, faster than Raskmodig could chase him down; wolves are endurance animals.

Blood splatters on the snow and along on the hare’s path, a trail winding out into the darkness, where the blizzard disappears everything. The room is suddenly freezing cold, the wind blowing in and peeling warmth from Astrid’s bed-warmed skin; her shoulders hunch and she tries to get at the door to shut it again, shoving against the elements and failing. Is it worth going after the hare? Probably not.

“I thought,” she says, ignoring the sting of pain in her own torn leg, “that spring was coming,” and it really is disorienting, because now that the door’s open, they can see that the mountains seem to be gone, whited-out as if some great hand has swept the slate clean. There’s nowhere to go.

The dream trembles underfoot; it’s about to shiver apart. They’re about to wake up.