“Nope,” said Cooper. “But they ain’t comin’ no closer, neither.”

“I suppose.”

But Peter wasn’t convinced. And now he was the one behind the reins without Cooper to mask him, he was suddenly unsure how much his scent could guard him. He squeezed his thighs against Snowball’s side to move him along. Snowball huffed, standing his ground in protest, but Cooper made it clear he had to listen to both of them now that Peter was family and after a moment or two, he reluctantly did as he was told.

They got a little closer. The figures still didn’t speak or advance. One of them had a withered arm. It jutted out at wrong angles with its stick fingers all crooked and broken. Perched on top of it, with its black eye blinking, was a crow. Peter was about to call out to the figures again when Snowball moved forward without being prompted and the bird took off into the mist.

Peter sighed. The three pine trees were dead. All that was left were their raw-boned branches, blackened once the needles had completely rotted off. Only now could he feel the heat coming up from below and he removed his gloves to hold his hands out. It wasn’t mist rising from the ground at all, but steam. He withdrew the hood of his wolfskin and the earth beneath their feet rumbled like distant thunder.

“Reckon we’ve crossed the border into Yellowstone,” said Cooper pushing the Stetson from his brow. “There’s a volcano down there.”

Peter retracted his hand. “Then we’ve come out too far. We should head back.”

“We need to choose our path real careful now,” said Cooper, ignoring him. “The Earth’s crust is as thin as a scab on a knee in some places here.”

“I don’t like it, Coop. We should turn back. It feels like death here.”

“Nah. I reckon the opposite’s true. Pa used to say Yellowstone was one of the few places in the world where the planet can’t hide itself. It might look real calm up top with its steady rivers and seasons that pass in the same order one year after the next, but just below the surface, it’s all mixed up and movin’ with its heart all troubled and full a fire.”

Cooper’s arms tightened around Peter’s waist as was often the way when he sensed how dizzyingly small the planet made him feel. Out here the land had a habit of doing that. One moment you were crawling through dense woodland, the next it sprawled out into impossible distances or dropped away into impossible depths, casually reminding you of its own breathtaking enormity.