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been keeping the sun to her right during the mornings and letting it glide down to her left in the afternoons and evenings. Just before dusk on both days, the orange light poured through the trees sideways, just as it had when she’d been a child and her parents had let her wander in the woods near their house. Larysa knew that the sun’s light took mere minutes to reach the earth, while the light from stars could take centuries. But she liked to imagine, as she kept to the cooler, darker parts of the forest, that this pre-dusk light was the exact same that had shone on her as a girl.
    It was almost Tuesday morning now. There had been no human sounds since she left Queesik, only the sounds of birds singing and squirrels scolding. Being cautiouswas her only option now, the only thing that was keeping her alive. By now, Bochko would be on her trail, but with any luck, he had no idea exactly where she was headed. Knowing him though, she wouldn’t be surprised if he could smell her from a hundred kilometres away.
    By the late morning, the forest had begun to thin out, and she was close to where the towns of the Lake District started. She walked the shoreline of a small lake that fell to scrub and marsh around its western edge, and she felt exposed. But standing in the open, she saw that she was very close to Kehoe Glenn. That was where Henry had lived. In the distance, she saw where the highway divided and one part of it swung down over a little bridge – that swoopy feeling in her stomach every time they drove over it – and went under an archway with the name of the town on it. If she waited until nightfall, she could cross the highway and track up and around the town. But nightfall was twelve hours away and she didn’t think she had time to wait. She’d have to make some moves out in the open.
    In two and a half days, she’d eaten nothing but berries and wild onions and chewed on burdock leaves. She’d been sick a couple of times, but her strength had got her this far, and it would get her the rest of the way.
    When dusk began to fall, she chanced it over to the town-side of the highway and vanished into the treesbelow it. She hoped she hadn’t attracted any attention. She was wearing a blue T-shirt under a ratty black sweater and a pair of grey sweatpants that were too big for her, with the word CANADA in black letters down the right pantleg. Perhaps she looked like a local.
    She followed the lights of the town laterally and then emerged onto a quiet, sidestreet intersection. There was a corner store there and on the other side of the road a car dealership. Everything would be easier if she had a car, but she had no idea how to steal one, and a theft would draw attention. However, outside the corner store, a bike was leaning up against a lamppost, and she saw the opportunity to get two things she needed at once. She went in, walking casually and looking down. There was a kid standing at the front counter getting the shop owner to count out candies from a bucket into a paper bag. He was taking the candies out one by one with a small pair of plastic tongs. She was quick about it: she took a bottle of water quietly out of the fridge and pushed it down the front of her pants. Then she took a pack of cookies off the shelf and stuck it up under her shirt. Then she idled in front of the magazine rack for a moment while the kid got his order tallied up on the cash register and slipped a map of the county, with all of its major towns shown in little inserts: Dublin, Kehoe Glenn, Kehoe River, Mulhouse Springs, Port Dundas, Hoxley, Hillschurch, Fort Leonard. When the kid was going for his money and she figuredthey’d both be distracted, she strolled out of the store, silently wheeled the kid’s bike away from the post, and then hopped on it and rode away down a cross-street as fast as she could. If there was any shouting about it, she was too far away to hear.
    She rode the bike into a little gully where a stream would have