They left the Door at dawn.
Eleven thousand people from Frosthold walked north behind eight from Brightwater. They walked slowly, the way people walk when they have just come through something terrible and do not yet believe it is over.
Clovelle rode on a stretcher. She had folded fifteen times in a day and a night, and now she could barely lift her head.
"I'm fine," she kept saying.
"You're not," Big D said. "Lie down."
She lay down. She fell asleep before they had gone a mile.
Frosthold knew nothing.
That was the first thing Almond learned on the road. They did not know what an Ender was, or what a sanctuary was. They did not know that their imprints got weaker the more they used them raw. Some of them had not even opened their statuses yet.
So the eight from Brightwater taught as they walked.
