I stay up long past midnight, drinking and staring into the fire until I collapse at one point onto the scratchy plaid couch in the living room. Dreams come that I don’t want. Haven’t asked for. Are they even dreams?

I’m in the forest on a narrow trail with Eden. She walks ahead in one of Hap’s heavy work jackets, her shoulders straight and solid. Not sick, then. Not sick yet.

“Look here, Anna. A medicine woman showed me this once.” She points to a tree that’s bent sharply sideways, as if it has a waist and is peering down at the thick, damp humus around it.

Wait. “You know a medicine woman?”

“It’s a marker tree.” Has she heard my question? “An arrow. The Pomo sometimes did this to signal one another hundreds of years ago. And see, we’re just getting the message now.”

“What message?”

Then Eden is gone, and Hap is with me instead, older than I ever knew him in life. Bent like the tree, nearly in half. Stooped on the trail.

“Just the old hip, screaming,” he says aloud, as if he can hear my thoughts and knows I’m worried about him. “Come on. We can do it together. We’re almost there.”

Where? I try to step closer but am stuck somehow, glued in place. I miss you, I try to say. I can’t do this alone.

“Almost there,” he says again. But he hasn’t moved.

Around us the fog is so complete that the trees drip with it. I see a banana slug on the path near my wet boot tip, fat and yellow-green, slick with dew.

“Everything’s getting a drink today.” He’s listening to my thoughts again and laughs a little. “Here, now. Look.”

It’s the same marker tree, but the branches point down at a wounded doe. The creature’s buff hide has been ripped open by something terrible, its abdomen chewed through so that I can see how its heart trembles, fist sized, black with blood. From its throat comes a noise not human or animal but both at once—a steady, deep sound of hurting.

Oh, Hap. Do something.

“I can’t, but you can. She’s just like you, honey. That’s how you’ll find her.”

Then the deer is gone. The forest floor is cinnamon colored with redwood needles, cool and whole and still. Hap is nowhere in sight, but I can hear him, his words moving through me like original sound, the sea in a cupped shell, the whole forest in the branch of one tree.

“Don’t be afraid. You’ll know what to do. Just follow the signs.”

What? No. Come back!

“Anna, honey. This is why you’re here. Open your eyes.”

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