The trail of ashes is no use any more – it's iced over, she can't even see it – and the wind is stronger. Should she open the kitty litter bag right here in mid?journey? No, she'll need a knife, or some scissors; although there's usually a pull string. She peers inside the shopper with the flashlight, but the battery must be low because it's too dim in there to see. She could get chilled to the bone struggling with such a bag; better to make a dash for it. Though dash is hardly the word.
 
 
 
The ice seems twice as thick as when she started out. The bushes in the front lawn look like fountains, their luminous foliage cascading gracefully to the ground. Here and there a broken tree branch partially blocks the road. Once she's reached her house, Constance leaves the shopper outside on the walk and hauls herself up the slippery steps by clinging to the railing. Happily the porch light is shining, though she can't remember turning it on. She wrestles with the key and the lock, opens the door, and tramps through to the kitchen, shedding water. Then, kitchen scissors in hand, she retraces her route, descends the steps to the red shopper, cuts open the kitty litter bag, and spreads lavishly.

There. Wheeled shopper up the steps, bump bump bump, and into the house. Door locked behind her. Drenched coat off, soaking wet hat and mitts set to steam on the radiator, boots parked in the hall. "Mission accomplished," she says in case Ewan is listening. She wants him to know she got back safely; he might worry otherwise. They'd always left notes for each other, or else messages on the answering machine, back before all the digital gadgets. In her more extreme and lonely moments she's thought of leaving messages on the phone service for Ewan. Maybe he could listen to them through electric particles or magnetic fields, or whatever it is he's using to throw his voice through the airwaves.

But this isn't a lonely moment. It's a better moment: she's feeling pleased with herself for carrying out the salt mission. She's hungry too. She hasn't been this hungry ever since Ewan has failed to be present at meals: eating alone has been too dispiriting. Now, however, she tears off pieces of the broiled chicken with her fingers and wolfs them down. This is what people do in Alphinland when they've been rescued from something – dungeons, moors, iron cages, drifting boats: they eat with their hands. Only the very upper classes have what you'd call cutlery, though just about everyone has a knife, unless they happen to be a talking animal. She licks her fingers, wipes them on the dishtowel. There ought to be paper towels but there aren't.

There's still some milk, so she gulps it down right out of the carton, spilling hardly any. She'll make herself a hot drink later. She's in a hurry to get back to Alphinland because of the trail of ashes. She wants to decipher it, she wants to unravel it, she wants to follow it. She wants to see where it will lead.
 
 
 
Alphinland currently lives on her computer. For many years it unfolded in the attic, which she'd converted to a workspace of sorts for herself once Alphinland had made enough money to pay for the renovation. But even with the new floor and the window they'd punched through, and the air conditioning and the ceiling fan, the attic was small and stuffy, as the top floors of these old brick Victorians are. So after a while – after the boys were in high school – Alphinland had migrated to the kitchen table, where it unscrolled for several years on an electric typewriter – once considered the height of innovation, now obsolete. The computer was its next location, and not without its hazards – things could diappear from it in an infuriating manner – but they've improved the computers over time and she's become used to hers now. She moved it into Ewan's study after he was no longer in there in visible form.

Excerpted from Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 2014 by Margaret Atwood. Excerpted by permission of Nan A. Talese, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.