He let himself out, started the truck, and while he waited for it to heat up, he went to the woodpile, filled the wheelbarrow, and wheeled it over to the door. Restocked the woodbox outside the step.

Then he cleared his windshield, got in, turned on the lights, and backed around.

He glanced in the rearview mirror as he pulled away.

She was standing at the door, her hand on Granite’s head, the snow falling softly on the cabin nestled in the woods.

eight

The grizzly came out of nowhere.

Fourteen-year-old Echo and her dad had just come around a curve, the late-afternoon shadows thick between the alder and pine on this stretch of the trail.

Her father knew it well—could mush it with his eyes closed, and maybe they were. They’d gotten up so early, the kind of early that required her father to wear his headlamp, the light carving out a path for their twelve-dog team.

That day, they’d caught three river trout—she still remembered it. Then he’d tucked her back into the sled, the sun starting to slip away.

She slept, the warmth of the furs that covered her settling deep into her bones. She didn’t see the bear until the team had already crashed into it.

Her first real memory was falling into the snow, the sled dumping over as the dogs tried to flee.

Even now, under the swaddle of sleep over a decade later, she could taste the tinny blood as she bit her lip.

Mostly, however, she could hear the howling. Dogs crying, her father yelling. The batter of her heartbeat against her chest as she scrambled out of the furs, away, watching as the beast swatted one dog, then another.

Then her father raising his bear spray. He didn’t bring a gun on the trail—never had—but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what a bear could do to a team, a man.

His daughter.

“Dad!” The roar of the bear ate her words, and she clung to the sled, watching as the animal batted away the spray, as it bore down over her father, his head practically in the bear’s mouth.

He was going to die, and in her sleep, she whimpered, her body thrashing.

The bear would kill him while Echo watched. And still, she hid.

Run! Her brain pulsed the word, but she couldn’t move, her bones stiff. She’d closed her eyes to the gore and wailed, the noise keening up from inside her. It morphed into a droning sound, then a shot cracked the air, and she knew it was almost over.

The belly of a ski plane swept past her.

The bear dropped her father’s body and stood, pawing at the plane. Another shot and it ran, bellowing.

Leaving the bodies of three dead dogs, more battered, and her father unmoving.