Mara took a breath, tried to smile, and dropped to her knees beside them. “Looks like we’re building a fire.”

“Trying to,” said the one with the machete. He was maybe forty, with tan skin and muscular shoulders, like he worked out at a gym. He was a math teacher. That was James.

Kyle was much younger. Red hair and thin arms, constellations of zits. His teeth chattered loudly. He greeted Mara briefly before turning back to the bow drill, which he’d pinned under one freckled knee. He pushed the bow back and forth, but only a tendril of smoke rose from the point of friction. He was shivering so hard that even the smoke wavered.

At Primal Instinct, Mara gave clients a choice in fire-starting classes, letting them pick between a bow drill, flint, magnesium rod, or a single match to start their fires. Everyone chose bow drill, even though it was hardest. Because it was hardest. And fickle, which meant, of course, that it should be the last resort in any real situation. Classes were one thing, but if Kyle, with his pick of fire starters, had knowingly grabbed the unreliable one—

“I’ve done this at home,” said Kyle, through clacking teeth. “I can do it, no problem.”

“Let me guess,” Mara said. “You even made one yourself.”

“In Scouts,” he said, looking up pleased. When he realized it wasn’t a compliment, he looked back down. Mara felt bad. She didn’t mean to be harsh. It just happened sometimes.

“I know a trick,” she said. “If you want help.”

“I got it.” Now Kyle was defensive.

Mara looked around. The meadow was surrounded by trees. Mostly fir and white pine, though at the far edge of the clearing a maple towered above the rest, dead and split at the top. The buzz of insects. Somewhere a crow caw-cawed.

The underbrush was thin, which struck her as promising. She had always liked an airy woods. From a distance she thought she recognized bee balm, and broad leaves that might be violets. Farther on, the terrain rolled into a series of hills, culminating in a mountain a few miles away. To the northwest, judging by the light.

It wasn’t a tropical paradise, but it wasn’t the worst place, either. Workable. Lush in a modest way, and rustling with birds, the sense of springing branches just out of sight, things living in the trees and in the shadows between them. The temperature was probably midfifties, and cooler in the shade. No breeze. The sun hung two fists’ height above the horizon.

A whine sounded, a gnat whine, and grew stronger as the helicopter approached from the south. That deep roar as it stalled, whipping the lake into whitecaps. Waves sighed against the shore. The helicopter door stayed open for a long time. Then someone dropped, and Mara was struck by how quick it was, a pin-straight figure there then gone.

A few minutes later, a sun-creased man with a white beard approached the group, clutching an axe in one hand. He shook himself like a dog, took in the scene, and sniffed.