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Jane has tea on.”
    Nancy hesitated for a moment, then gestured at the steep mountainside to the east. “But...up there...”
    Angus wrapped his jacket around Nancy’s shaking body. “Up there...what?” he said, steering her toward the house, only half a klick distant, where the outdoor floodlights Jane had turned on spilled across the new grass of the yard, turning it an electric green. He followed the direction of Nancy’s wistful stare.
    “Someone...Something...” She frowned. “I don’t know. Don’t remember, exactly. But I had to get there. Up there, somewhere. A ship?”
    “Right,” he said, hurrying her along now, feeling the cold himself without his jacket. She was obviously hypothermic, irrational. A ship? On the mountain? Sure!
    “Up there,”—He pointed to the west—“is one hell of a big black cloud that’s going to dump a few tons of rain on us any minute now.” Even as he spoke, the stars began to disappear as if being swallowed by a monster.
    They had just reached the shelter of the porch when the load of rain let loose.
    In no time, Jane had Nancy bundled in a quilt, hands wrapped around a large steaming mug of sweet tea. A pair of Angus’s own heavy gray wool socks came almost to her knees, but despite that, her teeth chattered against the china as she sipped.
    A thunderous hammering on the door sent all three of them whirling around as it was flung open and Peter Johannsen strode through.
    “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “I saw you and Nan out there in the middle of the field. What’s going on, here, anyway?” He crouched before Nancy, took the cup from her and smothered her hands in his. “What were you doing, honey? Were you trying to come to me?”
    Nancy looked at him and her face crumpled as she rocked forward against his shoulder. “Peter...I’m so glad you’re here. You’ll keep me safe.”
    “Sure I will. Come on. I’ll take you home with me and get you warm.”
    Jane tapped Peter on the shoulder. “Jacquie’s room’s all made up and ready. How about you get Nancy tucked in there, and tuck yourself right in beside her? Best way I know to warm up a cold body is with a warm one, and she shouldn’t be going outside again tonight.”
    She gave Angus’s arm a tug when he would have stayed there to stare at the sight of Peter Johannsen lifting Nancy Worth from the chair, quilt and all, gray socks dangling, and carrying her down the hall. “Come on,” she said. “We need to get back to bed too.”
    Wearily, he let Jane lead him back to their own room. In a way, he was glad. He was much too old to be clambering up mountainsides in the dead of night.
    Lenore’s shoulders ached under the weight of the ever-present earthquake kit kept at the ready by every sensible person in the entire Cascadia Corridor, following the devastation of ’31. Her thighs, unused to climbing steep hills, burned with exertion. Her lungs, deprived of oxygen at this high altitude, strained. She clutched the trunk of a tree, holding on, aiming the beam of her lightcell along the faint track through the forest. She rested for only seconds before dragging in a deep breath that failed to satisfy and forcing herself away from the tree.
    She plodded onward. She knew, with the same instinctive knowledge that draws a salmon into its home river from the vastness of the ocean, that she would put no foot wrong that night. She followed each twist, each turn, slipped past craggy boulders dropped from mountain cliffs eons before, skirted trees felled by winter storms, leapt streams and knew, no matter how convoluted the track, that she would find Jon at the end of it.
    Suddenly, without conscious thought, she turned right, and found herself on more level ground, a bench land that led back toward the next steep incline as it curved around the flank of the mountain. The evergreens grew more sparsely here, admitting fitful shafts of moonlight that rose and faded as black and silver clouds scudded across the