"Mm," she says, not quite in Archer's direction. She walks down the motorcycle tracks. The wind tugs on her sleeves, the ends of her hair, the tails of her coat, and telling it not now is as useless as telling herself not to breathe.

There was a forest outside of Wilno, even larger than this one. Zofia played there, sometimes, when she was a girl. One evening she told her parents she wanted to play hide-and-seek, and she raced to a perfect tree for climbing, with wide forks and sturdy branches. The first branch was just beyond her fingertips until she jumped for it -- and after that she sprung for branches further and further out of reach, and invisible hands lifted her there.

Her parents shouted themselves hoarse looking for her, and turned white when they saw Zofia high up in the tree, waving down at them. You mustn't do that ever again, her father said when he got her down. It isn't safe, you could have fallen, we could have lost you, or someone else could have seen...

A week later, the forest burned, and she wondered for a long time: had someone seen? Was that why?

"We can't wait long," she says. "The longer this goes on..."