By Christmas, the heaviness that made Emlyn want to stay in bed and never get up begins a slow and reluctant lift. By spring she’ll have come up with a word to describe what it is that Varden and Rev gave her that winter, as the snow spun and twirled like ghosts off the Obsidians and Borahs. The sense that maybe she could love and be loved. That maybe Varden was right about the wilderness, that her story goes on. A tiny word, four letters, no frills. “Hope.”
