The snow slides slightly at her feet and she pulls herself back—remembering, suddenly, the woman who fell.

Someone calls to her and she turns. Karo is carrying the radio and a few Toblerone in a backpack, and she hands around the chocolate now. They can’t stop for long; the cold is sharp and surprising. It hurts to breathe.

Maeve tries holding a hand over her face to warm the air before it enters her lungs. When the sugar is gone, they start walking again. The wind whips at them. There are no trees here, just open sky and rock—somewhere under all the snow.

They’re only five minutes farther along when Dan stops cold.

There is no path anymore—they are making the path. But here, there’s a wider swath that intersects it and cuts off northward. Another trail, left by a larger animal, and a depression in the snow where the thing paused. You could almost imagine that it was an elk—two or three elk together, maybe—except for what it’s left behind.

The scat is large and fresh enough and would be sitting in the center of the path if the path still existed.

“Fur,” Dan murmurs to himself, crouching to get a better look.

Maeve leans in to see for herself. Not just fur but bits of bone: it must have gotten a deer, or even an elk, somehow fallen away from the herd.

She feels winded, like she’s been hit from behind. It’s hard to speak.

“It’s a good size.” Dan rises to standing, still staring down at the thing.

“What does that mean,” Anna says. Her voice comes up, agitated. “A good size? The bear or the poop?”

“It’s hard to predict the size of the bear exactly.” His tone is purposely casual, but he’s surveying the woods to the north of them with a sharp eye. “It’s a good size. I wouldn’t normally say this is a black bear. But I lead a tracking expedition every year: we don’t get grizzlies usually, not so close in.”

Anna backs up to where Maeve is standing.

“At home, we don’t even go for a picnic without a shotgun in the trunk of the car,” she says. “Just in case an alligator shows up.”

Maeve keeps her eye on Dan, thinking of the claw in her hip pocket. He’s used to tracking bears in these mountains? That’s something she didn’t know.

“I thought there was a bear near my studio.” Her shoulder brushes Anna’s now, but she’s speaking loud enough for everyone to hear. “Yesterday. Remember? I told you.”

Dan looks put out.

“I told you,” she says again, this time under her breath.