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See! So we should give him a kiss, don't you think? And she'd hold the trout up to Emaleen's face again, and Emaleen would wrinkle her nose and shake her head and giggle.

Okay, okay, we don't have to kiss him. How about we eat him for lunch instead? Maybe Clancy will cook it up for us?  And Emaleen would cheer.

Partway into the alder thicket, the tip of the fishing rod caught in the bushes ahead of Birdie. She'd forgotten to carry it backward, the way Grandpa Hank had taught her, with the tip following her through the brush. As she tried to pull it free, the line wrapped around the end of a branch. She set down the trout and the tackle box and began to untangle it, swearing quietly as she worked.

When she was done and she bent to pick up the tackle box, the sound of breaking branches continued. Something large was moving through the alders toward her.

Before she could decide to run or yell, a man appeared out of the bushes. It was Arthur Neilsen. He looked just as startled, and when he tried to step back, he stumbled over a low alder bough and nearly fell.

Birdie laughed. "Scared the hell out of each other, didn't we?"

He gave no reassuring laugh or smile and continued to look as if he wanted to flee in the opposite direction. He was a big man, well over six feet, but he'd leaned out since Birdie had seen him last fall. His choppy, golden hair looked like he'd cut it himself with a dull blade, and his beard was full, except where a deep scar ran down the side of his head and cheek. All that remained of his ear on that side was a small flap. Maybe because of the disfigurement, or his awkward behavior and strange way of speaking, people tended to shy away from Arthur. Birdie had always been more curious than anything.

Arthur looked down at the fish and moved closer. "The trout," he said. "I come here to see if they are in the creek again."

"Yeah, me too. I thought I might be too early, but I ended up catching two. Lost the first one." She picked up the gutted trout and tried to wipe away the leaves and grass that had stuck to its drying skin.

"Got this one, though." She held it up for him to see, and his expression took on an intensity, like a man moving in for a kiss, or a cat winding up to lunge at a mouse. Birdie became aware of how deep they were in the woods, how if anything went wrong out here, no one would hear her shouts.

"Okey dokey," she said with a little laugh. "Well, I'd better get back. Everybody's expecting me."

He tried to step out of her way but there was no room in the tight bushes. As she brushed against him, she was fairly certain she heard him take a sharp breath in through his nose, as if he were sniffing her.

Birdie walked quickly, looking back over her shoulder. Once she saw that he was continuing toward the creek, she called out, "Good luck fishing!" A few strides later, though, she felt stupid for saying it—he hadn't been carrying any fishing gear.

CHAPTER TWO

Emaleen didn't know what to do. Her mom had been gone a very, very long time and she was scared, except she didn't want to think about that, about how scared she was, because the fear might bubble up out of her and grow and grow to a terrible size. Instead, she was trying to keep it wound up in the smallest, tightest little knot, and she could feel it somewhere by her belly button.

Emaleen used to be scared of the dark. That was when she was little. Now if it was night time and she woke up alone in the cabin, she knew her mom was just working late at the bar. She would stay under the covers and squeeze her eyes tight and count to one hundred or whisper stories to Thimblina until they both fell asleep, and when she woke up again, her mom would be in bed beside her.

But it wasn't night time. It was day time and the sun was up over the mountains and even the dandelions were awake and starting to open their flowers. Emaleen had watched out the window as her mom walked into the woods all by herself. Emaleen had watched and waited and watched and waited, shivering in her pajamas. She thought her mom might come right back out. But she didn't. Now it had been a very, very long time, like a whole hour or maybe ten hours, and she didn't know what to do. The longer she waited, the farther her mom went away.

Emaleen wasn't supposed to leave the cabin by herself. She might get smooshed by a car if it drove too fast into the parking lot from the highway, or she might fall into the river and get swept away and drownded because it was a powerful cold river, and she wasn't ever, ever supposed to go into the woods by herself. There were black bears and brown bears and stinging nettles and witches and moose in there. Moose didn't want to eat you, they only liked leaves and flowers to eat, but moose were very tall and very strong and sometimes grumpy. If they got mad because you were too close to their babies or you didn't get out of their way, then they would stomp on you. This one time, that happened to Aunt Della's dog. He got stompled by a moose until he was dead. It was in the winter time and Aunt Della was sad. She said she always liked that dog, even though he was so dumb and chased moose.