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I remember blowing on the embers of the morning’s fire, watching a flame rise. I remember adding more and more wood. But then I don’t remember getting out of my clothes, or getting into dry ones. Socks, underwear, T-shirt, jeans. No sweater, no jacket, no rain shell.
My memory keeps skipping. I remember Bo leaning up next to me. Thinking he shouldn’t because he’s wet and I’m getting wet again. Thinking at least we’re getting warm.
Then I’m lying with my head on Bo’s side, thinking how very, very warm it is, how nice.
Then Bo lurches upright. My head hits the ground, jerks me awake, and I realize the reason it’s so warm is that the fire has jumped. I’ve built it too high. It snatches at the underside of the shelter, at the pine needles that have dried until they’re the perfect tinder.
They spark and flare. Fire races along the shelter wall.
Bo backs up, snarling. The exit is blocked off, the fire grown too large, catching the stack of waiting logs behind it.
I stare dumbly as smoke fills the space. A spray of flaming needles drops as the branches burn. They hit the back of my hand and I yelp, shake them off, and finally move.
I throw my shoulder against the lattice I made to block off the head of the shelter, shoving it free. Bo lunges out, knocking me against the rock. I start to follow, stop.
Everything I have is in here.
I snatch my clothes, throwing them out of the shelter behind me. I grab my duffel and the bag and crawl out coughing, my eyes stinging with smoke. The fire is catching on the birch logs and the planks, now, devouring the entire shelter.
I have to save it, I think, except it isn’t a coherent thought. Panic seizes me, and I grab at the nearest birch log. I yank, pulling it straight toward me so that it falls back from the rock.
The rope is still tying all the planks and logs together. When the log tumbles, it drags everything else with it.
The shelter collapses in a shower of sparks and embers. I scream, almost fall over, but I only stumble back. The fire rages at one end of the rock, still trying to devour everything, and I have no way to stop it.
I retreat, gather my things around me, and sink into a crouch.
Bo and I watch it burn.
I’M SO COLD. And so hungry. And I don’t know what to do. The shelter’s gone. My feet are bloody. I can’t get warm.
The canoe is gone, too. It’s floating off shore. I must not have pulled it up enough when I got back, and it floated free. It’s only thirty feet away, but I can’t swim after it.
No more fish.
No more bullets.
I am so hungry.
I REMEMBER WHENI was little I had this bear, a stuffed bear. Not like a teddy bear, like a real-looking bear on four paws, with really soft fur. I think my dad bought it for me. Probably because I was his baby bear. It must have been. Mostly I think that because mom was always weird about it, about how much I loved it and I would sleep with it in my bed and everything, and she’d be sweet about it but also give me these weird looks like it meant something I didn’t understand which I guess it did; it meant—I don’t know, that I loved my dad or something, that I didn’t hate him and maybe she wanted me to be mad at him for leaving her leaving us but that came later, I didn’t know to be mad yet and he was like this story, this amazing story, this dad that was out there somewhere like Bigfoot. I don’t know. It’s just—
•••
IT’S GETTING HARD to think and there’s still no food.
Everything is gone and I have nothing. Except this morning I caught one tiny fish from the shore, and I ate all of it. Even the guts, most of them, cooked them up and ate them because otherwise there’s nothing. I have to do something different, soon, today, or I have to get lucky. And I think my luck’s all gone by now.
There was a storm last night, wind and sleet, and when I woke the whole world was covered in ice. Even my clothes were stiff. I haven’t gotten any of the shelter back up so it’s just the two of us huddled under the rock again, and it keeps most of the rain off but not all of it, and all those little droplets added up and froze together so I crackled when I sat up, and I had to get the fire going and huddle by it for an hour before I was dry enough to risk stepping outside. The ice was gone by afternoon, but there’ll be more.
I had to cut up one of my T-shirts to bandage my feet. It’s hard to keep them clean and dry and warm, but it’s the only way they’ll heal. And I need shoes to walk, but the best I’ve been able to do is to layer on the socks and then use what’s left of the rope to tie tarp around them. It makes it even harder to walk, but at least they stay warm and they don’t get torn up. But the knots slip as I walk, or the tarp shifts. I have to stop constantly and fix them, and every step hurts.
I have to find another shelter. I have to get food. I can’t think it’s over, not yet. Not while I can still think and I can still move. I have water and Bo and wood to burn, and it isn’t winter yet. Not quite.
I have to keep trying.
•••
COLD WILL KILL you first. I work on the shelter. Not much left. Two logs, one plank. So I take what’s left of the rope and what’s left of the tarp, and I stretch it out like a tent over the rock. It isn’t big enough to reach the ground on both sides, and there’s not enough rope to tie it down.
