Originally published in Enchanted Forests, ed. Katharine Kerr and Martin H. Greenberg. A short story of 9k words
A young man is visiting his sister at her cottage—in the middle of a bitterly cold winter. Who does that? He doesn’t particularly like cottages, he’s not fond of nature when it’s not contained in planters, and he’s not a fan of the cold.
But he’s here, in a winter forest, with his sister … and shambling corpses that seem to follow him wherever he goes. What happened here? Why are they after him?