The four people around the lantern did not know how they had ended up in the forest, or where they had come from, or even what their names were, if they had any.

Nearest the path was the old man, who was tall and wore a long leather coat with many buttons and a scarf about his neck. His eyes were pale and his hair was messy, his beard scraggly, his skin scarred. There was a long knife hanging from his belt, and when he looked down at it he thought that he might be a criminal, but he couldn’t remember any of the crimes he had committed. When he turned to look down the path, he saw well-kept lines of conifers on either side, and yawning shadows, and decided that they should all stay with the lantern.

To his left was the woman. Her eyes were dark and her black hair was frizzy, and she wore it held back by a headband. She had fingerless gloves on her hands and her arms were quite muscly, and she had a vague idea that her old home had been a desert of some kind, because she remembered the sound of the wind and the sight of sand under the sun. She looked down the path as well, and she saw the same things as the old man, but she pointed out that the lantern was not affixed to anything and they could take it with them.

Opposite her was the younger man. His hair was black too, but long and straight, and his skin was very pale and his clothes were quite fine. He seemed much more confused than the others, even though none of them knew anything more than he did, and he first made his smooth, educated voice known by complaining about the chill in the air. He thought the old man was a bodyguard and the woman a servant, but stopped talking when they glared at him.

Farthest from the path was the girl, whom the old man thought looked about fourteen. She had been the first to wake up, and she did not say anything at all, but she looked at everyone in turn, with keen, light eyes. When the old man asked what she thought they should do, she looked at him and kept her silence. When the woman asked why she didn’t talk, she opened her mouth, and she had no tongue.

The woman decided it was best not to pry any further, but the younger man wanted to know how the girl had lost the tongue. When he voiced this concern, the old man pointed out to him that she would only be able to answer yes-or-no questions, and the woman told them both to shut up.

The argument returned to what they were going to do.

‘We should stay put,’ the old man reiterated, glancing over his shoulder to look down the path. ‘I don’t like the air of that darkness. Feels like I’m being watched.’

‘So you think we should starve?’ demanded the woman. ‘Look at where we are ― tell me if you see any food. Well, do you? Any water? You want to just waste away here? Or freeze?’

The younger man raised his hand, a little tentatively. ‘I think―’

‘Shut up!’ they both snapped, rounding on him.

With a sigh, the girl stood up, picked up the lantern, and set off down the path. Despite his protests, the old man was the first to follow her, sticking close to the wavering orange glow. The woman came soon after him, with the younger man bringing up the rear, muttering inaudible grumblings to himself.

As they followed the path, the shadows between the trees ahead of them parted like curtains to reveal… more shadows, and more trees. The beams of firelight that fell in swathes between the bands of the lantern danced uncertainly, flickering across the pines and the soft earthen path beneath their feet. For some minutes it seemed as though that was all there was to the world: one long, dark road, leading on for eternity.

But then they came to a junction. Another path met theirs and crossed over, and suddenly there were three ways to go. The girl looked at each of them in turn, but stayed put. Behind her, the old man, the woman and the younger man crowded up, eyes straining into the darkness for even a glimpse of variation between the routes.

‘Well,’ said the younger man. ‘I always liked left.’

The woman frowned. ‘I always liked right.’

The girl narrowed her eyes and took a step forwards, towards the middle route. There was a faint, very faint, sound drifting out from it. A shifting of earth, a shuffling of feet, the crack of a twig… quiet, ragged breaths, the stab of a walking stick into dry dirt, all of it gradually fading as the source drew farther into the distance.

The old man had heard it too. ‘That narrows it down. Left or right.’

‘Pick one then,’ urged the woman. ‘Let’s not stand here arguing over it.’

Ignoring them all, the girl turned and started walking down the left path. For a few moments the others all stood still as the light began to dwindle away ― then they were all stumbling over each other in their haste to follow.

The younger man caught up first, smiling from ear to ear. ‘Finally someone listens to me,’ he said.

The woman caught up next. ‘I don’t think she was listening to you, pal.’

Finally, the old man reached them. He had drawn his knife and kept glancing over his shoulder as he went, his eyes skirting the edge of the lantern light and darting from one side of the path to the other. However, he only did this for a few seconds before he stopped and his eyes widened, as behind them the trees began to converge.

It began with a rustling at their very bases. Something beneath the ground disturbed earth, shifting it this way and that, and then the roots began to flick up from below and slither about like snakes, and one by one, they reached out towards the centre of the path.

His gaze fixed on those roots, the old man called to the others, and they all turned to watch as slowly, so slowly, the trees began to drag themselves forwards, shuffling in towards the path until, where the way back had once been, there was only a wall of wood and needles.

The woman breathed a soft sigh. ‘I hope we went the right way.’

The girl shook her head and started walking again.

For a while after that, there was little in the way of events. They kept walking, and they kept coming to junctions, and the path kept closing behind them when they chose a direction. They did not hear the footsteps or the breathing again. Instead, time began to feel both long and short. The younger man began to suspect they were being taken in circles, while the woman was quite sure they had been walking for days and wanted to know why they didn’t need to sleep or eat or drink, and the old man said that they should have stayed put if that were the case.

The girl made no complaint. She held the lantern high ahead of her as though she knew exactly where she was going. In truth, she had no more clue than the rest of them, but she had begun to feel as though she was the only thing keeping them moving, if only out of the fear that if they stopped she would take the light away and leave them to die.

All such thoughts were forgotten when they came upon the cabin. It appeared quite suddenly out of the trees, without even a glimmer of warning light from its windows ― those were dark, instead, curtained and shuttered and set deep into the old walls of that wooden husk of a house. It boasted two floors, one large front door, and a sloping roof with a stone chimney poking through it, smoke rising gently into the sky above.

‘Salvation,’ whispered the younger man.

‘Is that what you see?’ replied the woman.

Slowly, the girl approached the house, taking each step with care as if she were worried the earth might not be solid. Eventually she reached the two wooden steps up to the door and took them both in one step. She pushed, and the door opened inwards with a long, drawn out creak.

‘Could be food inside,’ the old man said. ‘And it’s the first new thing we’ve seen in who knows how long.’

The girl stepped inside, the two men close on her tail. The woman followed more cautiously, but she followed, and as she stepped over the skirting, a cold and whining gust of wind drifted like a long breath through the hall, the door slammed shut, and the lantern flickered out.