Climb higher, higher.

  Carter senses the ground fall away from him. Incredible—falling from, not to—falling up!—the earth dropping away as he is lifted skyward. Carter’s eyes roll. It is full dark. With each silent step, the stars above roll like waves. He is staring up into a dark sea swimming with stars. Carter senses a heartbeat, warmth, the cradle of two arms carrying him through a maze of trees. A great, hairy beard.

  The angular man does not speak. But he makes a sound, a thrum, as if consoling a baby bird that has fallen from its nest, an orphaned robin—There, there, the noise says, there, there—and the boy is carried by the man to his home place.

  Carter’s mind powers down to nothingness, an uncharged phone, dreamless and gray as granite. Head lolling, eyes glimpse the blur of beard, the serious moonlight, his salvation.

  Carter moans one word: “Grace.”

  34

  [PREY]

  In the darkest hour, when screeching owls stalk their prey and rip heads off mice, a scent causes Sitka to stir. She stands, tail up, nostrils flared. She noisily snorts out the air, clearing the passageway for the next deep sniff. The animal steps forward. A low rumble comes from her chest, a worried growl. Her body vibrates, trembles. She puts forth a low woof.

  Know me, it says to the wilderness.

  Grace wakens. “What is it, girl?” Her voice an urgent whisper. She cannot see a hand before her face. She grabs the flashlight. Tries to turn it on. Wait, that’s off. Now on. Off, on. She shakes it, the batteries rattle, dead. No light.

  The dog’s chest is out, the raised hair on her back makes Sitka appear larger, tail straight up, more formidable.

  Something out there.

  Padding soundlessly in the dark.

  “What is it, girl? What do you smell?” Grace struggles to her feet, standing on one leg, propped against the wall.

  The dog cannot answer, yet knows she is being asked something, hears the amalgam of fear and urgency in the timorous human voice, smells the spike in the girl’s cortisol and adrenaline. Sitka knows when things are normal and when they are not.

  Sitka is on high alert. She smells the world in telling details, pinpoints, sharp specifics—not a wash of indistinguishable odors. The dog smells everything, recent past and the acute present, for a mile in all directions, depending on air currents. The data overload is immense. Mind-boggling to process. But one odor comes clearest. Though Sitka has no direct experience of “mountain lion,” that named thing, something in her DNA recognizes the lurking danger, the predator prowling in the dark, unseen and unheard.

  But not unsmelled.

  Therefore: known.

  An old enemy.

  Sitka vacuums in the odors, sifts through the information. The creatures with names she cannot know: squirrel, vole, owl, mole, mouse, rabbit, hawk, raccoon. Another faint whiff troubles the dog: man. A desperate man has recently moved through this area, the aroma of stealth and haste.

  And another thing: the trees themselves, hosts to so much life. Tree limbs and tree fingers, tree thoughts and tree intentions. The interconnected roots, thirsty and entangled, talking in their ancient tongues, passing along what they know to each other. This is the wild place, the space of time-before, and now the dog forgets recent pleasures of soft cushions and screen doors, fresh water bowls and proffered treats, long drives with the windows down.

  Dog recalls wolf.

  The time-before.

  The snaggletooth. The vicious bite and muzzle shake. The primal memory of ripped flesh and the warm taste of red blood. The fresh kill.

  “What do you smell?” Grace asks.

  How does the dog answer?

  Sitka sits alert, rumbles low, hackles raised, muscles taut. Danger, her body replies.

  She senses danger.

  Grace’s hands blindly reach into the backpack. She unzips the medical kit. Where is it? Where is it? Sitka growls louder, barks low. Grace remembers putting the whistle in the pocket of her flannel, finds it, and blows. She blows and blows, shrill and piercing, and does not stop until she is raw, fractured, spent.

  She sags to the ground, exhausted and jangled. She lies on her side, chest wheezing, and stares unblinking into the black.

  Sitka finally lowers to the ground, front paws out, head still high, nose working.

  Trembling in fear.

  This is how the third night passes.

  DAY 4

  35

  [GRACE]

  Dawn’s foreshadowing of sunrise. Early light. A soft gray glow at first, like a reverse echo of a sound to come: a lightening of darkness. The broken spine of night. Not light, not the sun’s honeyed rays arrowing through the trees, but the foreshadowing of light—a promise whispered in Grace’s ear.

  Light is coming, and with it, a new day.

  Grace watches unmoving as the dark woods gradually take on space, contour, color, dimension. The shapes of tree trunks, movement in the branches, squirrels chittering and birds with their insistent, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here!

  The trees come alive with birds and their words.

  Today springs from yesterday, the dream of tomorrow becomes the new now, and inside Grace’s chest an ember still glows. Call it hope. Call it fierce will. Grace is determined to live. Somehow. Someway. She is alone and injured, her infection blackening, one girl in the vastness of a mountain wilderness. Somewhere, she hopes, Carter is okay. He never should have left. A terrible decision. Grace begins to feel that tug of negativity, her thoughts going down a dark path, but she fights against them in the same way a falling figure claws against gravity. She senses that negative thinking will not sustain her here. Carter will find a way, she resolves. My job is to survive.

  Grace closes her eyes and prays. It has never seemed to do much good in the past. Honestly, she isn’t all that sure. But prayer is a meeting of soul and intention. Her prayer does not require answers. Grace has never understood how some people claim to talk with God or how he answered their prayers. This new morning, Grace does not expect a reply. It is enough to think the words, to bring unity of spirit and mind, the meeting of wish and desire—like a corked bottle with a rolled-up note inside, floating in a great, unpeopled sea.

  Sending the note is enough.

  I am here.

  I have survived so far.

  I would love with all my heart to see another day.

  36

  [SLEEP]

  Carter stirs, groans.

  He rolls from his back to his side, feels a weight covering his body. He’s warm, hot almost. Covered up in blankets or something.

  He senses movement nearby. A presence. The night itself, breathing in, breathing out.

  “Grace,” he moans.

  “Sleep,” a voice replies.

  Carter sleeps.

  37

  [THE CAMP]

  Carter finds himself sipping warm liquid from a metal coffee cup. His lips feel cracked, but the beverage goes down his throat and fills his belly. He sits comfortably on a rock and the sun falls on his head and shoulders. He’s lost his cap.

  A bearded man, wearing camouflage pants and a dark green, long-sleeve shirt, stands nearby. His arms are crossed. His lace-up boots look battered and dirty. The man walks away, crouches to the ground, his back to Carter. He’s busy with something. A faint metallic sound. Carter closes his eyes, his hands wrapped around the cup, feels the steam rise up into his nostrils. Still dazed, his thoughts can’t quite come together.

  The man walks over, holds out a tin bowl of chili.

  “Eat,” he says.

  Carter sets down the cup on the dirt floor. He accepts the bowl into his hands. Everything in slow motion. He stares at it, confused. “Do you have … a spoon?”

  The man makes a sound with his mouth. Turns, walks, bends, returns with a spoon. He does not speak.

  Carter looks up at the man, who does not meet his eyes. He seems to be looking somewhere above and to the left of Carter’s hunched body. The man has long, thinning hair—flecked with gray—that splays down to his shoulders. Maybe thirty, forty years old, Carter figures. It’s hard to tell, like telling the age of one of these trees. Carter shudders from a momentary chill, realizes he has a wool shirt draped over his back. He can scarcely speak. “Thanks,” he rasps.

  Begins spooning the food into his mouth. He does this steadily until the bowl is empty. The man takes it all—the bowl, spoon, and cup—and walks across the small clearing. There’s a large, two-galloon, clear plastic container tucked into the bushes. The man silently works, rinses the utensils, places them on a rock to dry.

  Carter lifts his head, looks around more closely. They are in a small, tight clearing. It feels like a large cocoon. There are two massive boulders on one side, about a shoulder’s width apart. A mass of dense shrubs and trees press inward from every direction. The undergrowth bursts with ferns. Somewhere a woodpecker hammers for grubs. Cicadas whir.

  He’s a guest in this man’s orderly, spartan campsite. But Carter sees no ring of stones, no firepit, no charred wood. Across the way, a crude kitchen: a metal box, a small camping stove, and—so impossible that Carter can’t quite believe his eyes—a propane tank, camouflaged with green and brown duct tape. Different items hang from nails in a tree: bungee cords, green plastic bags, wire, a jug filled with water, a dustpan, and a whisk broom.

  Carter finds it hard to concentrate, feels light-headed and weak. He absorbs the calm of the environment, the natural hush, the soporific sound of the breeze stirring the leaves. He yawns, utterly spent. It is as if the blood in his body slows as it passes through his veins, like a gawking driver by a roadside wreck.

  “Is this where you live?” Carter rouses himself to ask.

  The man ignores him.

  The site doesn’t look right to Carter. There’s something off about it.

  “Why here?” the boy asks.

  The man turns, looks in his inquisitor’s direction. “Privacy,” he says. Terse and sharp.

  An inner alarm clangs deep in Carter’s core. He sits perfectly still, feeling its reverberation on the hairs of his neck. He realizes they are perfectly closeted away in this place. Hidden.

  Behind him, Carter spies a dark, horizontal crevice in the ground. Like a hollowed-out tomb. There’s a deep-green tarp above it, a disorderly jumble of branches. He knows this is where he slept. The man now holds out a damp cloth. Water drips from his long fingers. “For your face,” he says.

  Carter’s left eye is nearly swollen shut. It doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t matter, it just adds to his fog. He lifts his face to the man who, in reply, steadies Carter with a firm grip on the top of his skull. It’s like he’s palming a basketball. With the other hand, he presses the cloth on Carter’s insect-ravaged forehead, cheeks, lips, jawline, neck.

  “You’ll get used to it,” the man says.

  His hands are huge.

  Carter yawns, feels the warm food in his stomach, yawns again. He can’t seem to stay awake.

  “My sister,” he begins.

  “Not now,” the man replies. He gestures to the hole in the ground. “Rest.”

  Carter doesn’t argue.

  He can barely stand.

  He crawls back into the narrow hole, the shape of a lozenge, which is surprisingly warm and comfortable. He is asleep in seconds.

  38

  [TRY]

  Using the walking stick as a crutch, Grace hops and painfully hobbles to the water source. She fills the bottle, rinses her face, arms, legs. It pleases her to obtain water in this way. Not just absently turning a faucet, opening the fridge. Despite her injuries, the act connects Grace to this place. An intricate spiderweb, damp with dew, sparkles in the ferns. The slightest effort exhausts her, so she takes it slow. There’s no need to rush. Oh, yes, a hot shower would be so sweet right now. Body wash, sweet-smelling shampoo, just an hour with her phone. Her mind feels clear this morning. The sky, too, is a crisp, polished blue. A few puffy clouds that look deliciously edible. She admires the orange-yellow wildflowers. There are rows of conical purple ones, too. Life abounds. Grace sees shiny black berries on a bush about her height. The leaves are oval in shape, pointed at one end. She wonders if she could eat them. Or are they poisonous? Food is definitely an issue. She thinks of survival shows where naked people in the woods eat bugs. She’d do it, she decides, if it comes to that. It would be disgusting—but Grace realizes she needs protein. Just not today.

  How many days is it? She’s not sure. Counts and whispers aloud, “Four.”

  She squats and pees right there. No point being modest. Her mind travels back the years to a memory from when she was a little girl. Four years old? Five years old? It’s difficult to say. Her father was laid up, recovering from a serious motorcycle accident. Out riding his beloved Harley—he enjoyed “tooling around” on weekends—he hit some gravel on a hairpin turn. The back wheel lost traction, skidded, and the bike fell, crushing his right leg.

  He was determined to recover without a limp. So the doctor devised a plan. He explained to Grace’s father that many people limp because they favor the leg. It hurts, so they are reluctant to put their full weight on the injured limb. Thus, they never regain full strength, form a habit, and walk with a limp.

  The doctor told Mr. Taylor, “If you follow my instructions each day without fail, you will recover fully. No limp. It’s up to you.”

  It became a game. He handed Grace a digital stopwatch. He would take his position in the hallway, steady himself against the wall. Then he would nod to Grace, lift his left leg off the ground, and stand with his full weight on the injured leg. At the beginning, he could stand it for five seconds, ten seconds. A little more each day. She’d watch as he stood, sweat forming above his lip, face gone flushed, his body trembling with determination. “How long?” he’d ask, still holding the pose.

  Grace learned to call out the intervals. “Forty-five seconds … sixty seconds … seventy-five…”

  He would stand until he could stand no longer, and then he would stand a bit longer than that. Toward the end of each session, Mr. Taylor looked depleted, haggard. He’d nod, not even smiling, take a deep breath, and say, “Again.”

  This period signaled the end of his daredevil days, no more rides on the Harley, and the beginning of his prodigious belly. But he never did limp.

  Grace resolves to stand. The tenderness of her ribs becomes a sharp, sudden, stabbing pain when she makes certain movements. She gets to her knees, blows the air out, breathes in. Reaches to the ground with her left hand for balance, tucks in her toes, counts—three, two, one—and in one excruciating motion comes to her feet. An involuntary cry comes from her mouth. Sitka paces nearby, agitated. The dog comes to Grace, presses a moist nose against the back of her knee, whines softly. Grace blinks away the pain. Her right foot, the sprained or shattered ankle, softly kisses the ground. A whisper. Almost all of Grace’s weight is placed on her left foot. She stands shakily, her hand on the firmly planted walking stick.

  “Okay,” she says out loud.

  Sitka listens.

  “That was fun,” she says. “Now for the hard part.”

  Grace gradually transfers more and more weight to her right leg. The pain is immense and seems to shoot through her entire body. She feels dizzy, light-headed. And yet she persists until she is standing solidly on two feet. The stick is lifted in the air.

  She remembers her father in the hallway. Stares off to the middle distance, focuses on a sturdy oak, and now lifts her left foot off the ground. She stands entirely on the damaged leg. Grace counts, “Five … four,” and surrenders. She bends, gasping for air, one hand on a knee, the other leaning on the stick. The pain in her chest returns, a knife twisting about six inches below her right armpit.

  Grace nods, lightly touches the dog’s head, runs her fingers the length of Sitka’s ears. She rises up to full height, focuses once more on the mighty oak, and says:

  “Again.”

  Again, and again.

  39

  [JOHN]

  Carter blinks, remembers.

  I’ve been saved.

  But he is not sure by whom, exactly.

  Feigning sleep, Carter secretly looks out from the coffinlike comfort of his sleeping quarters, watches the wiry man sitting on the rock in absolute stillness. His shirtless back is to Carter, his head turned to the right in a downward-seeming gaze. He wears sleeves of tattoos on both arms and ink on his back. Perhaps he is lost in thought, staring intensely at nothing whatsoever. Ghosts, maybe? Carter sees the lines around the man’s eyes. His sun- and rain- and wind-weathered face. The man’s great beard displays a montage of colors: brown with patches of red, streaks of gray.

  “You’re awake,” the man says, without turning his head.

  Somehow he knew.

  Carter climbs out, stands, stretches like a cat. “How long did I sleep?”

  The man shrugs. Points to the sky. “There’s the clock.”

  Carter glances up, confused, then gets it. Oh, the sun. At least he knows it’s daytime. “What were you doing?” Carter asks.

  “Doing?”

  “Sitting there,” Carter says.

  The man scowls through his beard. He rises, gestures to the rock for Carter to sit. He goes to the kitchen area, digs around, returns with an old plastic bowl filled with brown rice. Hands it to Carter. He mutters something, shakes his head. Goes back and gets a fork.

  Carter thanks him and shovels forkfuls of cold rice into his mouth. He’s never eaten plain rice before and now wonders why not. It is delicious. The perfect meal.

  “Do you even want to know my name?” Carter asks.

  “Names,” the man echoes. He swats away a fly.

  “It’s Carter. Carter Aaron Taylor. My sister is Grace. She’s still out there and we have to—”

  “We don’t ‘have to’ anything,” the man spits back. He rises, tugs a long-sleeve shirt over his lean, undernourished torso. He paces in an agitated state of distress, across and back. Five long strides. Sparks almost leap off his body, like struck steel just out of the furnace.