Carter waits for the storm to pass.

  Finally, the angular man stops, looks in the direction of Carter but doesn’t quite meet his eyes. He takes a deep breath. Gives a “settle down” motion with his hands. “Just—don’t—push,” he warns.

  It frightens Carter, the way the man says it. There’s an undercurrent of anger. This isn’t normal. Grace is still out there. She needs help. He’ll have to be more careful. There’s something wild jumping around in this guy’s eyes.

  “John,” the man finally confides. He smiles to himself, as if remembering a joke. He’s trying, in his way, to defuse the charged atmosphere. “How old?”

  “Eleven,” Carter answers. “And … thanks.”

  The man appears genuinely baffled. Shakes his head. He admits, “I’m not a big raconteur.”

  The look on Carter’s face is blank.

  “I don’t talk much,” he explains.

  Carter doesn’t say: Well, dude, you’re alone. Instead, he finishes the bowl, walks it over toward the kitchen area.

  “Don’t,” the man says. “Give it here.”

  Carter hands over the fork and bowl. “Sorry, I was just trying—”

  “Don’t means don’t,” John snaps. “I don’t need a story to go with it. Don’t you understand how dangerous this is? Keep your head down, kid. They’re watching our every move.” He tosses the bowl to ground, kicks it. The bowl bounces off the boulder and into the twisted arms of a scarlet-berried bush.

  Carter stands still, helplessly watching. He doesn’t know what else to do.

  “I didn’t anticipate this,” the man says. A vein in his forehead visibly pulses. “This is not—I never thought—you’d make it out of the bog.”

  Carter sags to his seat on the rock. The bog. His brain’s not fully back. As if a piece of his spirit is still stuck in that low place. A sliver of self left out there, sinking in the muck. The man’s words register. “You saw me?”

  “I carried you here, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but…,” Carter says. He rubs his forehead. “I don’t remember anything. I mean, when I was in the bog. Were you watching me?”

  The man frowns through his beard. His eyes dart. “Just be glad you’re alive.”

  Carter tells him the story. How they came here. His father, his sister. How they planned to hike Blood Mountain. Every detail. He might as well be talking to a tree. John says little.

  Minutes pass. Carter remembers the tattoos on John’s back and arms. Eagles and skulls and a tattered flag. Words and hearts and barbed wire. “You were a soldier?” he asks.

  John looks at him, says nothing, but his eyes provide the answer.

  “Where?” Carter asks.

  “Doesn’t matter,” John replies.

  “Okay,” Carter says. “I’m just making conversation.”

  John shakes his head. “You talk a lot.”

  Carter smiles, undeterred. “My mom says I should be a lawyer, on account of I talk so much.”

  John doesn’t feel compelled to keep the conversation going. He looks up into the trees, as if forgetting Carter is even there. He’s a man alone again. Not waiting, not thinking. Just … being. Like another plant that has taken root and risen up from the ground.

  “That must have been a long time ago, right?” Carter says. The man isn’t a kid. Carter is still guessing midthirties. Hard to tell. He gives no answer.

  Carter prods, “Wasn’t it?”

  “Not to me, it wasn’t,” John says. “Feels like yesterday.”

  The sharp cheekbones of his face above the beard, the haunted look of his eyes, tells Carter that it’s true. For this former soldier, the war continues. He brought it back home.

  A plane flies high overhead. Both watch it draw a white line across the blue sky.

  “I need to get help for my sister,” Carter says. “Can you help me, John? Please?”

  After a long silence, John answers, “That’s not possible.”

  “You’re not possible,” Carter weakly answers back. “My sister is hurt. She has no food. She might be—” Carter stops, shakes his head. He shifts in his seat, and changes his strategy. “I can’t do it without your help.”

  “I saved you once,” John says.

  “So,” Carter says.

  “Don’t make me regret it. Be glad you’re alive.”

  “Yeah, like you, right?” Carter says.

  John looks away. Picks up a leaf. Quietly shreds it in his hands. He stands and walks away.

  “Where you going?” Carter asks. “John?”

  The angular man stops, points a finger. “You. Stay.”

  “John?”

  The man glares, angry at the world.

  “What? I’m trapped here?” Carter asks.

  “Tomorrow,” he answers. “Today, you rest.” He slips off through the narrow gap between the two rock boulders.

  40

  [SEARCH]

  Makayla sings as she hikes. Usually it’s Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Mavis Staples, the old soul classics that her parents played in their apartment. Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, a world away. Singing is both habit and comfort. In bear country, it’s advised to make noise on the trail. Some hikers even carry bells to avoid surprising any mama bears with their cubs. The wild things don’t want to mess with humans. Makayla thinks of the escaped mountain lion. This cat might be ruined. No sign of it yet. Very unlikely it’s out and about in the late afternoon. At the same time, it’s no ordinary lion. Spent its life in a cage. What does it know?

  Ever since Makayla learned the name of the missing girl, the tune wormed into her skull and would not crawl out. She used to sing it loud and proud as a child at Sunday service, dressed in frilly whites, clutching her mama’s hand:

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

  I hear You singing over me,

  I once was lost, but now I’m found …

  The ranger stops to take in the contours of the landscape. Scans for irregularities. A color or shape that doesn’t belong. She tries to imagine the bad decision a lost child might make. On instinct, she veers off to follow a deer trail. Checks her cell phone: dead zone. No surprise there. She pulls out the map, calls into dispatch on the hand radio, relays her coordinates. Over and out.

  She picks up the song like a loose thread, never missing a beat:

  My soul is silent, I am found,

  And it’s a beautiful sound.

  It’s a beautiful, beautiful sound.

  For the Department of Environmental Conservation, today is considered day two of the operational period. It was set in motion yesterday, the moment Makayla called in the discoveries she made at the trailhead. Strong suspicion of two children lost. But for her, the search began in earnest when her boots first hit the trail. Those kids had a two-day head start.

  The search-and-rescue operation was extensive, organized, and highly motivated—now bumped up to incorporate type 3 strategies. Working in coordination with the state police, the DEC planned to throw every available resource at it. Lieutenant Watkins drove in from the suboffice and was personally directing the show at the mobile command post. Multiple rangers were actively involved and, last Makayla heard, they’d already received responses from more than eighty volunteers. More would follow. These weren’t just ordinary citizens wandering around with flashlights, calling “Yoo-hoo”; the department held regular training sessions to certify volunteers in search methods and procedures. These were smart outdoorspeople, experienced men and women, wise to the ways of the backcountry. They did invaluable work. Still, organizing that many was no simple task. Working a search grid, a type 3 technique, took strict efficiency and constant oversight. Makayla was glad it wasn’t her assignment; she far preferred running trails out in the field. Even with all those resources at play, sometimes hikers don’t get found right away. Days can turn into weeks. Optimism morphs into something darker. Today’s afternoon cloud cover wasn’t helping. Days started out clear, but not anymore. Due to poor visibility, aviation was grounded because the weather was deemed “not conducive.”

  Makayla was freelancing. Working independently, trusting instincts sharpened on the whetstone of personal experience. She’s not scheduled to take a shift the next two days, actually has longstanding plans to visit her boyfriend, so Makayla pushes extra hard today. She stops, calls, whistles, glasses the landscape for any signs. The dog might be her best hope. And of the three, the one most imperiled. Good thing the dog was a mutt. Most purebreeds would never make it out here. She whistles again. An image comes to her, that long silver, slender whistle in the glove compartment, and she tucks away the idea for later. Maybe Frank can help with that. Makayla notices a shrub growing from fleshy roots just five feet away. It has attractive, glossy, black berries. She recognizes the shrub as Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade. An invasive species native to Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia. Somehow it got into Canada and now here. Such is life in the shrinking world. She read the other day how disease-carrying bacteria attach itself to floating plastic and cross oceans—it survives for years, suckered to a tossed soda bottle—changing the course of continents in the process. The invasive berries might look appetizing, but they are poisonous. She hopes Grace and Carter have enough sense not to eat anything they aren’t sure about.

  Dispatch relays a message. Turns out the heart attack victim, Mr. Taylor, has been upgraded from critical to stable condition. “Looks like he’s going to make it,” the voice on the radio informs her. He’s asking about his kids. This cheers Makayla. It gives fresh bounce to her step. Good news always does.

  41

  [ROCK THOUGHTS]

  There is so much Grace doesn’t know about rocks and plants and birds and mountains. It is as if she is a visitor to a foreign land who doesn’t speak the language. She knows tree but not butternut from elm, oak from alder, beech from ash. They are mysterious words drifting in her mind, like jellyfish in a great sea, attached to nothing, and therefore meaningless. Lost words disconnected from the world. It has never mattered to her before: the names of things. But in this place, her home-for-now, surrounded by these living creatures—breathing, swaying, sighing—Grace senses she has missed something essential. She is filled with regret. Grace says to Sitka, “When we get back, I’m going to learn all about this place. The names of everything.” The dog, lying on her side in the shade, drums her tail on the ground. Sitka lifts her head, not to look at the girl but to turn her nose in the speaker’s direction. Her ears lift, too.

  “And I also want to say,” Grace tells the dog, “thank you for staying with me. You are the best good girl in the world, yes, you are.” An expression pops into Grace’s mind: I’d be lost without you. It almost makes her laugh, thinking: Oh well, I guess I’m lost with you!

  Sitka languidly rises, the early stages of arthritis in her joints. She is weakened by the heat of the day, and from a lack of nutrition, and by her responsibilities in this new world. The near-constant vigilance. Tail relaxed, the dog moves closer to Grace. The girl is sitting up in her now-familiar position, her back propped against the rock wall. Grace pats the ground, here. The dog collapses wearily in that very spot, her curled back pressing against Grace’s thigh. Grace rests her hand on the animal, and like that they affirm their connection: you and me, together in this place. A sharp pain reminds Grace of her battered ribs when she shifts her legs or adjusts the position of her back. Actually, it only hurts when she breathes. Oh well. Grace closes her eyes, counts slowly—one, two, three, four, five—and waits for the wave of pain to subside. There, better. She is learning to manage it.

  How, even, do mountains happen? She does not know. Grace knows only that there is rock, strangely, exactly here. How or why it got here she doesn’t comprehend. Grace reaches up with her left arm, the one that is less sore, and feels the coolness of the flat rock against the back of her hand. Again, mystically: flooded with gratefulness and communion.

  Inspired, Grace limp-hops down a few feet to more closely examine nature. She tries to think like a naturalist. This plant has small round leaves bunched in threes. This rock is jagged, not smooth. That tree’s wrinkled bark reminds her of an elephant’s knees. She decides to make up her own names for things.

  “This plant,” she tells her four-legged companion, “is called heartwort. It heals broken hearts, makes sadness disappear. But one must stare at it for a long, long time for its magical properties to take effect.”

  The dog sits sphinxlike on its belly, front left paw stretched out, attentive.

  “And that tree,” Grace continues. “Now what is that one called?”

  At the rise of her voice, the inflection at the end of the sentence, the dog tilts her head as if puzzling out the answer.

  “Do you give up, girl?” Grace asks. “That’s called a starscraper. Don’t you see that long straight trunk, the way the uppermost branches reach toward the sky? Oh yes, that’s a starscraper all right. The stars like to have their bellies scratched, just like you.” Grace reaches over to scratch the dog around the head and neck. Sitka’s fur is thick and matted. Grace picks at it, grooming the dog.

  Grace gestures to the collection of medium-size stones that she has painstakingly gathered into a small pile. Her arsenal in case of attack. “These are called getouttaheres,” Grace explains. “They are perfect for throwing at wild beasties.” She holds one in her palm, weighs the heft of it, turns it around in her fingers. “They are also called stone wasps. They sting.”

  Grace looks away, lost in the thought. She wonders if a handful of stones could possibly protect her from an attack. Probably not, she decides. By that point it might be too late. Perhaps a good strike on the snout might be enough to give the attacker some pause, time enough to wonder if it’s worthwhile to engage with a creature that stings from a distance. She worries most about bears.

  “Maybe that’s all I need,” Grace tells Sitka, “just enough to warn them not to mess with me.”

  42

  [SHREDS]

  Carter is unsure of what to do. At first, he idly waits, expecting the man who saved his life to return. The minutes drag. Carter tries to figure out how to use the sun to estimate the hour of day. He holds his right hand straight up. Twelve o’clock. High noon. But the sun isn’t up there. It seems to be inclining toward the horizon. Long past noon. He extends his left arm to the side, parallel to the ground. That’s the horizon. Sunset, right? Call that eight o’clock. Looking up, he sees the sun is almost perfectly at the midpoint between the directions indicated by his two hands. Four o’clock, he thinks, best guess.

  It settles the essential question: To stay or go? The memory of yesterday feels like a sandbag in his chest. He can’t face that again. Can’t risk it. Especially not this late in the afternoon. He is afraid of becoming lost again.

  Carter tries to convince himself that he needs to rest, recover his strength. He’s not ready to make that kind of hike. Not after what just happened in the bog. Tomorrow, John had said. But Carter doesn’t trust him. Something about John feels deeply, disturbingly wrong.

  Carter slips through the narrow space between the two boulders. It’s tight even for Carter. He has to sidestep his way through. He takes about five steps beyond the rock. That’s all the open space available. When he turns, the effect is astonishing. Due to the position of the rocks, one slightly in front of the other, there’s no visible crack. The two boulders would appear to anyone walking by as one impassible rock wall. And what hiker would walk by? There’s no path. Carter can’t imagine which way John might have gone.

  Something alerts his senses. Carter strains to listen. The birds have quieted. Even the ever-present white noise of cicadas seems strangely absent. He feels uneasy, as if he’s being observed.

  No, not watched. Stalked.

  He glances around. The terrain is so thick with chaotic growth, he can’t see more than ten feet in any direction.

  “Hello?” he asks.

  Waits.

  “John?”

  The wilderness does not reply.

  If he ventures any farther, Carter isn’t sure he’d find his way back again. Not without cairns or trail markers. Hansel and Gretel used bread crumbs, but they got lost because birds ate them. Still, it gives Carter the beginning of an idea. A way to probe the wilderness but safely find his way back if necessary. He retreats back through the crack.

  Nothing to do but wait.

  He investigates the camp more fully. He drinks from the water bag that hangs by a strap from the tree. Hungry, he finds a metal locker tucked into the brush, next to the propane tank. Inside there’s a number of neatly stacked plastic containers and glass jars: rice, oats, grain, nuts, dried fruit. He opens a jar of almonds. Chomps on a few. There’s a jar of peanut butter. He wishes for bread. And in another jar—can it be?—candy corn. Yellow and orange triangles of pure sugar. Not at all what he expected. Carter twists the lid, steals a few. They taste like Halloween, like home. He carefully returns everything to its well-ordered place.

  Under a tarp he finds a canvas bag stuffed with John’s crisply folded clothes. A heavy shirt, socks, etcetera. There’s something else: a well-worn, wrinkled copy of a book. Poems by Lao Tzu. The pages are dog-eared, with lines underlined. Opens to a random page and reads:

  The five colors

  Blind our eyes.

  The five notes

  Deafen our ears.

  Whatever. Carter flips to a new page:

  Who knows

  Doesn’t talk.

  Who talks

  Doesn’t know.

  Carter doesn’t understand it, but realizes the words must be important to John. He turns to the first poem, “Taoing.”

  The way you can go