Mara knelt beside him and took the other end of the bow. Together they pushed back and forth, back and forth. Finding a rhythm, rubbing the sticks together until smoke poured from their hands. She blew the coal into a flame.

They plied the flame with pine needles and birch bark and fatwood until it spread, until fire licked the panels of bark on either side of the shelter door. It took a long time for the shelter to catch. For minutes it only blackened. But once it did, the fire rose quickly. Soon the shelter was ablaze with flames six or seven feet high, casting a ring like daylight on the three survivors. Mara thought of Kyle inside it. She thought of his carved calendar burning to ashes beside him.

There was something familiar in the smoke, and it wasn’t until Mara’s mouth watered that she recognized the smell of grilled meat. She backed up until she couldn’t smell it, noticed Bullfrog do the same. Ashley stared into the fire, her expression like the dead themselves. Mara touched her shoulder and pulled her back, and Ashley let herself be guided.

Bullfrog’s lips were moving, and Mara realized he must be praying. The same words again and again. She sat down. She couldn’t tell if she was crying. Her face was hot from the fire, too hot for tears, but she needed the warmth of it, couldn’t bear to back farther away. Though the night air was warm, too. The fire hissed, cracked, sent up sprays of sparks to the waiting stars. Maybe this funeral wasn’t for Kyle, she thought. Maybe it was for all of them. The only one they’d ever get.

Maybe Kyle, more than any of them, knew what he was getting into. Maybe he wanted it. Maybe that was a terrible thing to think of a child.

They didn’t sleep all night, just sat and watched the flames. Watched them sink into glowing coals the size of boulders, then simmer in a dark mound. The morning came red like the fire itself.

“It seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves,” said Mara.

“What’s that mean?” asked Ashley.

“I’m not sure,” Mara said. Though she had her ideas.

THEY TOOK STOCK OF THEIR BELONGINGS. A BUNDLE OF SMOKED BEAR MEAT AND some dried trout. Six bottles from crew camp, which they filled with water. The wind-up flashlight, which was a piece of crap. Knife, axe, lighter, bow drill just in case. They wrapped what they had in canvas bundles. They left the gun by the shelter, because it was heavy and out of bullets. They left the cameras in the trees.

Their first steps felt strange. Walking through a place they knew so well, knowing they would never see it again. What else was there to do?

They had to choose a direction. They walked along the lakeshore and found the creek that fed from the far side. After a while, another creek joined from the right, and now they walked beside a river. They would follow water; wherever it flowed, so would they. In this way, they hoped, they would not end up where they had started. Mara wondered if it was true that all rivers reach the sea. She wondered if this river had a name.