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hadn’t said a single word about Zeke. If anyone mentioned him, Elk stood up and walked out of the room.
    Now Sam sat on the empty seat of the school bus, heading home. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass window and looked out into the passing trees. Tall and solemn, they looked weary from the long winter that never seemed to end.
    They were passing the border of Mrs. Harless’s property. It was said that her great-great-great-grandfather marked his tract with rock cairns. No one knew specifically where the originals were now. Some of them had likely been knocked apart by growing trees, or pulled over by bears searching for grubs. Some might have been toppled by the Whippoorwill when she flowed out of her banks after a heavy snowmelt.
    Elk and Zeke used to hunt for cairns all the time. They’d found five or six, and when Sam was big enough, they let him tag along too. But there was something else made of rock that they all wanted to find: the Grotto, which wasn’t a true cairn so much as a shallow cave. It was thought that the rocks surrounding the entrance might be carefully placed in an orderly way, like those stacked in an old gate maybe, or an old archway. They had looked for it all one summer, along with Sylvie and Jules, searching along the animal trails and along the paths that led to the Slip on both the Sherman and Porter sides of the river, looking for anything that might be a rock structure or a cave entrance.
    All they’d found were a bunch of stone walls and the foundation of an old cabin. But abandoned foundations and crumbling stone walls were everywhere in Vermont, bordering roads and property, marking trailheads and rights-of-way. They’d even found some of the old original cairns, or what might have once been old cairns: a stack of rocks that seemed too even for nature to have set it that way, or a set of matched stones that were crisscrossed in a certain manner.
    But no Grotto. And that was what they truly wanted to find. Especially Jules, with her fascination for rocks. Jules, with her special hammer and her hand lens that she wore on a lanyard around her neck. Half the time Jules’s backpack was weighed down more with rocks than books. Elk even called her Rock Girl.
    As Sam stared out the bus window, the trees looked as lonely as he felt. Elk was probably out there right now, driving his four-wheeler along the old paths, stirring up the birds.
    Was it possible, somehow, that Zeke’s spirit was out there in the woods? What about Sylvie’s spirit?
    Just as Elk couldn’t talk about Zeke, Sam had a hard time thinking about Sylvie. It had been weeks since she drowned. Two, maybe even three. Sam hadn’t tried to keep track. All he knew was that they hadn’t found her. His throat tightened, and he pulled his jacket up around his ears. And as he did, a flash of rusty red flickered between the trees. He sat back. Blinked.
    â€œFox,” he said, turning automatically to tell Sylvie and Jules. But of course neither of them were there. And the fox he’d heard the day Sylvie drowned hadn’t brought anyone any luck, had it?
    He stared at his knees, willing himself not to cry. All he wanted was to get home. One stop. Another. Finally it was his turn. As the driver pulled up to the end of his family’s driveway, he hurried down the aisle, not looking at anyone as the bus rolled to a stop.
    He tore down the steps, ready to run up the driveway, but someone stood in his way.
    Elk. The bus lumbered away as Elk hauled Sam into his arms and squeezed him hard. So hard it felt good.

12
    I n the above world, the days grew longer. In the birthing den, Senna and her brothers grew too. Fast, the way little foxes do. Soon their parents would lead them through the complicated earthen tunnels to stand at the brink of the above world.
    In the meantime, there were the brothers. Older Brother smelled of milk and earth, Younger Brother of fur and pine sap. Older