An avalanche of snow toppled across the overhang, all the way along the length of the plateau. But the white soon turned grey. Ashen bodies tumbled past and the avalanche transformed into thick sludge. Peter closed his eyes, listening to the leaden slop of those wretched bodies dashing against the rocks. But the onslaught was short lived. A final boulder of snow cracked overhead, exploding into powder across the forest below, and it was over.

In the darkness of the valley floor, the river started moving in unnatural ways. It undulated. Those skeletons and limbs that had survived the fall stumbled up from the riverbank, passing like shadows through the water into the woods. The pines quaked. Snow on their spires shivered then broke free. It took a few minutes for the Dead to spread out into the forest, but soon pine trees further back juddered, and the herd moved on deeper into the wilds until eventually they were gone.

Cooper didn’t once look out from inside his own thoughts, even to notice they were safe. And not for the first time, Peter wondered if he alone was enough to comfort him. But as sunlight struck the back of the forest, breaking in beams through the pines on its way into night, other thoughts grew stronger: that perhaps Snowball’s death would finally be enough to keep Cooper home. Wherever home was. Wherever home could be.

6

Cooper looked so small out on the lake. Just a speck passing from one snowy island to another, not so much carrying himself on his own two feet as drawn home by his shadow which crawled out long across the golden ice this late in the day. Peter clambered the rope ladder up to the tree house, stopping on the bridge in among the bundled pines, and watched him for a while. Cooper hadn’t spoken once these last few days during the walk home. He hadn’t even taken his hand. He’d cut a lock of white hair from Snowball’s mane before he fell and spent the journey caressing it between his fingers allowing his thoughts to drift elsewhere, most likely to those days spent roaming beneath the sky when it was just the two of them. Once or twice, Peter placed his palm across the small of Cooper’s back or tried to initiate conversation, but he remained locked inside his own thoughts and Peter didn’t dare intrude by asking him to share them.

Stretching out from the middle of the lake, the watchtower’s shadow struck the eastern islands like the hand of a clock announcing sundown and Cooper’s shadow dimmed. Sunlight that had dazzled like liquid gold across the cabin windows of Old Pappy only moments before began to fade, until only the island’s treetops were left clipped by gold.