Saul and Naomi load their canoe with supplies and head off downriver. Their journey is difficult because of the cold and the snow, and because they have to haul the canoe into and out of the water every morning and night. They struggle to fend off the cold with small fires, makeshift shelters, and body heat. Then disaster strikes when they fall asleep on the canoe and it sails down a rivulet, colliding with a rock and breaking apart. Naomi remembers a path Saul’s great-grandfather made out of the mountains, and asks Saul if he can see it. A seer, he hears a voice and finds the path, and they follow it until they reach Minaki, weak and starving. They lie down together at the train station to rest, in the freezing cold and the snow, and Saul feels Naomi go cold in his arms. Eventually, people come and take him away from his dead grandmother, into a strange new world.