Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.

The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light.

A vast silence reigned over the land.

The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.

There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness--a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility.