As his body lay on the travois being tugged steadily south by Raspberry, Thornsong’s mind wandered to lost Beringia. He watched the scene from above, as if he were a warbler perched on a branch overhead.

A baby lay wrapped in a long strip of softened reindeer hide, sucking in huge gasps and expelling them in shrill screams. He was tucked inside of a thicket of thorny raspberry vines. Tiny speckles of blood dotted his arms and legs, the result of his spastic flailing.

A woman with long, white hair parted the thicket with her gnarled hands and her mouth fell open.

“A baby,” she said, turning her head. “It’s just a baby.”

A man appeared at her side. He was grim, his face mangled by some long-ago incident. With the knowledge of 30 years in the wilderness, Thornsong knew them to be from the claws of a mountain lion.

“Leave it,” he said. “Strange babies in the woods - nothing good can come of it. How did it get here? Why was it left?”

“Monster,” she said, playfully. “You don’t mean that? It’ll die - it’s already too skinny.”

The man cracked a smile and shook his head.

“Soft heart, soft head,” he said, bumping her with his shoulder. “I’ll part the thorns. You grab the little foundling.”

She hesitated.

“Bad luck to take in an unnamed baby,” she said. “For it.”

“Thornsong,” said the man. “Boy or girl, it fits both. And that racket, in its first cradle. A tangle of thorns.”

While Thornsong’s mind swam in the past, Raspberry’s hands worked in the present.

He set down the travois and watched Thornsong’s chest rise in ragged increments.

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“Not much I can do for the ribs,” he said. The corded muscle layered over Thornsong’s chest would have to do for stabilising the broken bones. The skin hadn’t been punctured, and bandaging it further would make breathing even more difficult. The last thing he’d need would be restricted movement and fluid pooling in his lungs.

That arm, though - Raspberry lifted it gingerly and Thornsong’s eyes briefly fluttered open, bright with pain. He lapsed back into unconsciousness immediately.

The ulna was broken. Raspberry could clearly see the divot in the skin around the break. The arm had turned a lurid purple from elbow to wrist. He needed to drain the pooled blood, set the bone, and secure it.

Raspberry took Thornsong’s dagger and pushed the tip into the muscle of his forearm. He stopped as soon as the swollen muscle went slack.

A risk, but a calculated one. Thornsong had taught him that trick for compartment syndrome. Ignore it, and the damage could be catastrophic - it might even blacken and die.

Raspberry ground some of the snowberries they’d gathered on the trek up the mountain into a paste between his fingers, smearing them into the cut. He took another look at Thornsong’s face. Best he stay unconscious for this part, Raspberry thought.

Only one of the forearm bones was broken. That was good news. He prepared a wrap with some loose buckskin and grass braid, gripped the broken bone between his fingers, and slid them into alignment with a snapping gesture.

Thornsong screamed, eyes still screwed shut. He seemed to be grasping for words, but only gibberish poured out. Raspberry quickly wrapped the injured arm, sliding a spare sheathe for his dagger into the wrappings to act as a splint.

He waited a few moments for Thornsong’s breathing to lapse back into a troubled kind of sleep, then picked up the travois poles and continued on.

Thornsong continued on, too. Images melted and reformed in a memory collage. Tastes and smells long-forgotten filled his head. Bear grease rubbed into his hair to keep lice and fleas at bay. The stink of pine resin candles. Mouthfuls of boiled cattails and acorns.

Then heat, building slowly at his toes and then traveling up his body. Screams. A pair of gnarled hands yanking him roughly out of his hammock.

“Run,” said a familiar voice, grown reedy with age. A tumble of snow-white hair, a gush of crimson, and even more screaming.

The fire in his body turned to ice-cold water as he left the burning village behind, clutching an iron dagger pressed into his too-small hands.

“Run,” his adopted mother screamed after him. She knelt over the body of her mate, his old scars hidden under a patchwork of new red welts. “Run!”