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Weeks or months later, I would be found, a ragged skeleton and no one to say who I might have been. I must move. I must go backwards – I could only be a pace or two from safe ground, I reasoned with myself. I slowly raised my body onto my hands and knees and crawled backwards. When I thought I was surely safe, I stood up, carefully, feeling the ground firm beneath me as I straightened. Now, all I had to do was turn and walk back the way I had come. Inch by inch, I turned until I judged myself to be facing in the right direction. The blizzard now was swirling so thickly that there was nothing my eyes could tell me.
    I took a step forward …. and sank once again to my ankles. Heart thumping, I slowly dragged my heavy foot out, and placed it but a short distance to the right. It sank again. Which direction was I facing? Which way had I come? Which way was safety?

Chapter Fifteen
    I stood, motionless, desperately trying to judge which way I must be facing, to decide what to do. I was shivering now, not only from the cold. My father was right – I was a coward. I knew this because my mind was crying out to be led to safety. I was desperately clinging to life, whatever that life might hold. I wished that anyone were here instead of me.
    I think I shouted. I shouted to the wind, to God, to no one at all, for I knew no one could hear. I screamed out my fear and my fury and my prayers.
    It was at this moment that I saw it – though even now I cannot be sure. I blinked. Could I have imagined it? A light. Far ahead of me, moving slightly, swaying in the wind, like a lantern held at shoulder height.
    I blinked again. The light disappeared. But no! There it was again. Swinging. Moving away from me slowly. I peered into the growing darkness, my wide eyes stinging in the whipping snow. Wiping my hand across my vision, I strained to see. Yes! It
was
a light.
    But then again, perhaps it was not. I still could not be sure what I saw. I am still not sure now.
    I had a choice: I could ignore the light, or I could follow it. Something drew me on, something which I will never understand. It was not bravery. It was something deeper. We are drawn to light as moths to a flame, even if the flame may singe our wings.
    The light seemed to move in one direction. And disappeared. Now it appeared again, swinging in the same direction, and disappeared once more. The next time this occurred, I thought perchance that whoever held the lantern meant me to move in the same direction as he had moved the light. I took one step. The ground was firm. The light moved again. I stepped again in the direction indicated. Firm ground once more. Could I be rescued? I began to dare hope so.
    I stepped forward.
    Firm ground was beneath me at every step now, as I followed the swinging direction of the light. I hurried forward, trying to get closer to whoever held the lantern, or whatever it was. Sometimes the light disappeared completely, and I would stand and wonder if I had imagined it, as I peered into the darkness and the swirling blizzard. Perhaps I did? But each time I glimpsed it again, I believed it, and followed it eagerly.
    As I hurried, the light moved faster away from me. But then, in a sudden lull of the wind, the snow thinned and I could see a dark shape – a horse, surely a horse! A rider on a horse. I could even observe the outline of his cloak. And then, as suddenly, the snow swirled again and I could see nothing but the faint swinging of the distant light.
    I do not know how much time passed as I followed the light across the marsh. I forgot my tiredness, my soaking clothes, my icy skin; I almost forgot my fear, fixing my mind only on the light and the occasional flimsy glimpse of the shape of a horse and rider. If that was what I saw. Each time I saw it, I thought I was certain, but within moments I was equally sure that my memory was playing tricks.
    The light disappeared. Now I could not see it at all. I stood still again. “Where