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    â€œThere will be doom,” his mother said, but not in her own voice. The tone was flat, cool as ice, almost disinterested. “Doom in the north, a cry of death in the great white silence, and the spirits will bear witness.” She entered the room, and Jack caught his breath. That’s not my mother , he thought, and though the idea was ridiculous—the woman standing before him was his mother, with her hair, face, and nightdress—he could not shake the idea. There was something disquieting about her appearance, as if a stranger hiding beneath her skin was trying to force itself out. She was dreadfully stiff, skin almost translucent and the shade of freshly fallen snow.

    There was something disquieting about her appearance, as if a stranger hiding beneath her skin was trying to force itself out.

    He had seen something like this before. She had told him it was her spirit guide speaking through her. He had never before believed a word of such foolishness, and he hated her false spiritualism. She fooled people with it, preyed on their suffering, and—
    Is she fooling me now? Am I here, or am I at home? He thought he was dreaming, but such knowledge usually granted the dreamer control. Here, he was the one being controlled.
    â€œGet out of my room,” he whispered.
    â€œSomething follows,” his mother said, smiling. It was a sickly expression, and it did not touch her voice. “Yet still you’ll die in the snow, cold…and almost alone.” Then she turned and left.
    It was a few minutes before Jack could leave his bed, but when he approached the door, he found a blank wall. He touched it, and it was only wood. I’m awake now for sure , he thought, and after returning to bed he could not return to sleep. He watched dawn cast its cleansing light over Dyea.
    Unsettled by the nightmare, yet determined to let daylight blanch it away, Jack was the first to leave town that day on his way toward the Chilkoot Pass.
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    He’d left Dyea with two horses carrying his kit, his own pack twenty pounds lighter than it had been the day before.His shoulders were padded so the straps did not cut into him, and he’d set off at speed as the sun rose over the white peaks, the crack of Chilkoot Pass gleaming on the horizon.
    That had been four days ago.
    Now his eyes watered at the stench of rotting horseflesh beside the trail, and he kept as much distance as possible from the others jostling for position as they climbed. He’d been making excellent time, outpacing most of the white men and even some of the Indian carriers, who were used to the terrain and the climate.
    He kept his focus fixed on the mountaintops, his goal in sight, and kept to himself. Several times fights had broken out, and he’d had to guide his two horses around the stinking combatants as well as others who had slowed to exhort them on, grateful for the distraction of potential bloodshed. Jack had never been one to shy away from a fight, but he could already feel a cold bite in the air as he climbed higher and higher, and feared winter would arrive sooner than any of them had bargained for.
    The debris of surrender littered the sides of the trail. He passed men who had given up and were making their way back to Dyea, eyes downcast in defeat. They had failed and were ashamed, and Jack vowed that he would never be one of them. Such failure must be hard to live with, and there was no sense of relief in their bearing, even thoughtheir physical hardships were behind them.
    As he walked on, the trail rising higher, the going steeper, memories of his dream flashed across his mind. He often dreamed of his mother, sometimes fancies of the perfect relationship they had never had, more often interpretations of her lovelessness and occasional cruelty. She could be a stone-hearted woman: When Jack was a boy she had often exhorted his stepfather to beat him when he misbehaved, and the