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homestead, and straightway entered a dark wood stifling the early daylight so effectively that only accidental glints of hazy sunshine hit upon the road. Thick-trunked trees with trailing branches flanked her on either side, towering over a damp green floor of ferns and forbs and stunted yew and cedar. The stillness of the forest was so oppressive, the caw of a raven startled her. Gargantuan shapes lurking between tree columns made her look twice to see they were not wild animals or monsters, but uproots of huge fallen trees covered with moss and lichens, bent and tied in eerily humped and erratic shapes. She began to question the intelligence of pressing through that foreboding wood, for it seemed rather unhealthy to be in it alone. But she had only rounded four or five bends when the road ended unexpectedly in a sunlit turnaround. Even more unexpected, a dusty black pickup was parked there in it.
    Sevana was greatly perplexed by the presence of that truck. She was sure Fenn had said no one else lived up there. She darted a glance in all directions, but no one was in sight. Then she realized she could hear water bubbling somewhere in the woods nearby, and reasoned that a fisherman might have come to fish Avalanche Creek. This brought to her the interesting idea of exploring the woods to see if she could find the creek herself sometime—and feeling less alone with the prospect of another human engaged in that innocuous sport nearby, and the sight of a sunnier slope above making her forget the entrapment of the mossy cathedral behind, she ventured on.
    From there, only a footpath littered with pineneedles switched up the mountain, unyielding in its climb. Sevana had to stop more than once to catch her breath, and her shins were soon sore from hitting against the rigid leather of her boots, but she pressed ahead, spurred by her goal to find an unobscured vista. The higher she went, the more the lonely feel of the mountain increased, making her acutely aware of how far she was straying from the safety of the house. Once in a while she looked back to see if there was a view yet, but always she saw only trees.
    At last there was a break in the forest ahead and the blue of the sky, and she clambered eagerly up the last steep pitch. But when she came over the crest, she discovered she wasn’t at the top at all—but only on a level bench with the slope continuing beyond it. And in that opening, overhung by the boughs of some sheltering spruce trees, resided a maple-brown cabin of axe-hewn logs.
    Sevana stopped in her tracks. A cabin was the last thing she had expected to see up there. Without meaning to, she’d blundered into someone’s property and was trespassing at that very moment. But before she could retreat, a man came striding around the corner of the house, having detected her presence before she was aware of his. Keeping his eyes carefully fixed on the slender, pixielike figure standing at the edge of his promontory as if he expected it to vanish momentarily like a vision, he crossed the grass to her—while Sevana remained caught to the ground, between two minds whether to stay or flee.
    “Hello there.” He stopped a few paces from her, his face inscrutable of expression. “What brings you up here?” Then, as a thought occurred to him— “She didn’t send you up here…with some kind of message, did she?” he asked, a sudden tightness showing in the lean muscles of his face.
    She had to look up to him, for he was as tall as Fenn. But while Fenn was fair, this man was dark, with uneven layers of black hair down to his collar, and deep obsidian eyes in a finely structured face. He wore faded black work trousers and a rough gray shirt with suspenders, easily fitting his spare frame. “No, I—I’m just out for a walk,” she stammered, confused by his cryptic question, and trying not to mind that a revolver hung readily at his side.
    He dismissed his previous thought and addressed the situation from a plainer