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toy gun is on the bed, next to him. He slept with it, I just realized.
    “Go ahead,” I say. “Take it.”
    Outside it’s dark, but there’s a moon slung low, and the dirt road that leads away from the school is lit with a shadowy light. It’s the same road that priest drove down when he took Isaac away, his car spitting stones and dust. At the end of that road is the highway that leads north to Fairbanks and south to Anchorage. If we can fi nd Isaac and hitchhike north to Fairbanks—and then get a message to Uncle Joe somehow—we can get home. Uncle Joe has a friend who fl ies planes.
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    “I’m hungry,” Bunna says. “We oughtta eat fi rst.”
    “Eat what? Horse soup?”
    Th
    is shuts him up.
    We’re coming up on the place where the school road turns out onto the highway. Th
    ere’s a cabin on the corner there and
    it has its lights on.
    “Wait here,” I tell Bunna, but he don’t listen. He follows right behind me like a shadow.
    “What the heck you doing?” he asks.
    “We gotta fi nd Isaac. Maybe this is where they’re keeping him. Stay low.”
    We sneak up to the window of that cabin and peek in.
    Part of me already knows we aren’t going to fi nd our brother in there. Th
    e other part is desperate enough to look any-
    where.
    Inside is an old Indian man sitting there, all alone, wearing dirty brown coveralls, staring at his stove and drinking coff ee. He’s got his back to us, and the hair on the back of his head looks matted, like he just woke up. He looks mean, even from behind. When he stands up, I duck down quick, my heart pounding. Now what?
    I think about my grandpa’s uncles, killing all them Indians, but I don’t feel that brave. All I feel is a sudden need to get off that road and out of sight.
    “We gotta cut through the woods behind,” I whisper.
    Bunna looks at those big old black trees, moving their branches back and forth like fi ngers. “What about Isaac?” he says in a small voice.
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    “I don’t know where they got him. We gotta go get Uncle Joe to help us.”
    Bunna is still looking at the trees. “I’m not going in there,”
    he says.
    I don’t want to go in there either. “You rather stay here?
    Th
    at what you decide?”
    “No,” Bunna whispers. “I never.”
    “Okay then.”
    Bunna and I never been in woods before, and right away we don’t like it. Th
    ere’s things on the ground you can’t hardly
    see: roots and rocks and bushes and pieces of tree. Th ings that
    make it hard to walk. And the trees lean in so close that when you look up, you can’t even see the sky.
    Th
    is place is not right. You’re supposed to be able to see things when you’re outside. You’re supposed to be able to look out across the tundra and see caribou, fl ickering way off in the sunlight, geese fl ying low next to the horizon, the edge of the sky running around you like the rim of a bowl. Everything wide open and full of possibility. How can you even tell where you’re going in a place like this? How can you see the weather far enough to tell what’s coming?
    Bunna trips, and there’s a sudden pounding sound that makes my heart stop cold, makes me grab him hard.
    “It’s only birds,” Bunna says fi rmly. Like he’s trying to convince himself.
    “Whatcha trying to do, get us killed?”
    “It’s only birds, Luke,” he repeats, but his voice doesn’t sound all that sure.
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    “Yeah, well, you gotta be more careful.”
    Th
    at’s when we hear the crack of something way bigger than birds, something crashing through the woods behind us and veering off through the bushes in front: a big bull caribou.
    “ Tuttu ,” Bunna breathes, and we both