Chapter 1 Campfire Bonds
Mount Rainier, Washington. Present Day.
Morning mist clung to the pines. Inside the fogged-up window of David Miller’s pickup, Lily used her breath to draw a clear circle on the cold glass. Through it, the distant peak blushed gold-pink in the dawn.
“Sure you don’t want the extra sleeping bag?” Anna twisted from the passenger seat, scanning the packed truck bed.
Crunch. Lily bit down on a peach candy. “Mom. The camp issues military-grade. This orange monster is a walking fire hydrant. In a blizzard, I’ll stick out like a fuzzy target.”
David chuckled. The cuff of his shirt rode up, revealing the pale scar on his forearm. “Remember the pine needle trick for navigation. Early fog plays dirty.”
“It’ll lift at 3:47 sharp. Southwest winds, twelve kilometres per hour.” Lily bounced forward. “You’re the ones who turned me into a walking encyclopaedia.”
The pickup jolted to a stop before a rustic wooden sign: MOUNTAIN RESCUE & SURVIVAL TRAINING CAMP. Lily sprang out.
As she landed, the thin silver chain around her neck slipped from under her collar. Anna tucked the cold tag back under Lily’s shirt, her fingers lingering at the nape, where that familiar marking lay.
“Thirty-seven trainees, five states.” Instructor Mark descended in resin-stained combat boots. “Ms. Miller.” He jerked his thumb toward a chaotic gear staging area. “Your partner’s already here. Probably counting the pebbles.”
Lily followed his gaze. A young man with sandy-blond hair squatted before an equipment crate, measuring a climbing rope with a metal tape, muttering numbers.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Lily yanked off her wool hat. Her chestnut hair whipped free.
“Jack Nelson. Graduate student in architectural engineering, University of Washington.” He stood, flashing a grey Casio watch wrapped in electrical tape.
“Training manual, Article Three. Partners cross-check all gear before the first exercise. Specifications must match within two percent tolerance.”
Lily walked right up to him, rising onto her toes until her nose almost touched his. The scent of oranges and pine sap collided with graphite and clean sweat. “You know what this needs?” She jabbed a gloved finger at the corner of his firmly set mouth. “A smile button. Right here.”
Jack’s pen dented his checklist. “Two technical ice axes. Four sets of headlamp batteries. One comprehensive first-aid kit…”
“Your kit needs strawberry Band-Aids.” Lily whipped out a bright pink packet. “Scientifically proven. Cute bandages speed healing.” She grinned. “I’m Lily Miller. UW grad student. Geography and Environmental Studies. Geothermal anomalies and pollen analysis.”
BEEEEEP!
The assembly whistle cut them apart.
Lily watched Jack check his harness, felt the familiar rebellious itch. She deliberately unbuckled her own leg loops. “Watch this.”
She hooked one hand on a rough granite ledge about two and a half metres up, splaying her legs in a ridiculous ballet pose. “Squirrel-style climbing. Distributed weight—”
CRACK.
Gravel gave way. Weightlessness hit her stomach. Her waist jerked tight. THUD. Their foreheads bumped. A coil of rope wrapped around her torso with expert speed, pinning her—and him—against the stone. Jack’s arm was a solid bar across her chest.
“Top three causes of squirrel fatalities,” he panted against her ear. “Overconfidence. Ignoring basic physics. Attempting ballet on granite.”
Lily rubbed her nose, her gaze catching a pale crescent-shaped scar above his left eyebrow. A flicker of something—recognition? familiarity?—passed through her, but she let it go, her hand falling back to her side.
Jack spun away. “Clip your carabiners next time.” He shoved an ice axe into her free hand. The metal grip was still warm.
Roped travel. “Does this rope have to be quite so… enthusiastic?” Lily complained after ten minutes.
“Standard three-metre interval. To prevent you dragging me into a crevasse.”
“Can’t you think positively? Maybe I’ll find a beautiful glacial flower.”
“I’m thinking of probabilities.” He prodded the snow ahead. The surface gave way with a soft whump, revealing bottomless blue beneath a thin white bridge. “Crevasse. We go around.”
Self-arrest practice. Lily went in too fast. Her axe skipped off the ice and she tumbled, limb-flailing, toward jagged rocks.
Jack clicked his tongue and launched himself down the slope in a perfect low self-arrest, intercepting her just before impact. They collided in a cloud of snow.
Lily emerged, spitting ice. “Thanks. Good timing.”
“Your trajectory was creative. Entirely non-compliant with optimal stopping dynamics.”
“I’ll roll more by the book next time.”
Simulated crevasse rescue. Lily drew the short straw: victim. Jack checked her harness, tugging every carabiner three times.
“Keep pulling and the harness will develop a complex.”
“Failed gear doesn’t get complexes. It gets people killed.” He lowered her into the deep practice pit.
Lily dangled in the chilly darkness. “Any chance of speeding up? I’m about to invent suspension yoga.”
“Construction speed is inversely proportional to reliability. Skip the yoga.”
She felt the pull. As her head cleared the icy edge, she reached for the lip and pushed off with a boot.
Crack. Snow fractured above. She fell a few centimetres.
“Don’t move!” Jack’s voice sharpened.
Lily froze. Jack slammed his own axe into solid ice and transferred the rope’s weight in a blur. The line snapped taut.
He looked over the edge, face pale. “That anchor was built for your weight. Not for freestyle climbing mid-haul.”
Instructor Mark walked over. “Nelson, good save. Miller, your clever ideas are a suicide ticket. Lucky your partner is competent.”
Jack hauled her up without another word.
Dusk. Lily huddled in the communal cook tent. Outside, a steady tap… tap… tap.
She pulled back the flap. Jack stood in the moonlight, holding a steaming mug of cocoa and a hand-drawn map—safest routes to the latrine and secondary shelter.
“Tent stake number six is off by fifteen degrees. Blizzard around 2:00 AM.”
Lily lifted the lid. A melting marshmallow smiley face floated in the foam. “Hey.” She snagged the end of his scarf as he turned to go.
He paused.
“Game?” She traced wavy lines in the frost on her tent wall. “Guess what these mean.”
Jack adjusted his glasses. “Hydrological markers? Ancient riverbeds?”
“Wrong!” She grabbed charcoal and added a jaunty pair of sunglasses. “Prehistoric surfing guide.”
Her laughter spooked a pair of Steller’s jays.
The blizzard hit at 1:57 AM. Lily shivered in her sleeping bag. The tap-tap-tap came again—Jack, reinforcing stakes. On the third pass, she yanked the door flap open. Icy wind slapped her face.
“You know what this sounds like? A hundred thousand penguins tap-dancing in iron boots.”
Jack hammered the last stake. “Natural cave ninety metres southwest. More stable. If wind hits eighty kilometres per hour… we evacuate.”
CRACK-BOOM. A snow-loaded tree snapped.
Lily bolted into the whiteout. “Race you!”
He cursed, then his boots crunched after her.
“Found it!” She pointed to a fissure half-shrouded in ice. She ducked and crawled in. Her headlamp lit a small, cramped space, scraped walls.
“Black bear den. Recently used.” Jack squeezed in behind her. “Safer than the tent right now.”
They huddled as the storm screamed outside.
Post-storm sky, piercing blue. The training river had swollen. Instructor Mark kicked an empty gas can. “Today: river crossing. Build your raft, paddle it. Fall in? Hypothermia recovery. No cocoa for swimmers.”
Lily watched Jack lashing pine logs with a tarp. “You know what this looks like? A proper Alaskan sea otter nest.”
“The current shreds romance and otter nests. Stay low. Don’t let go of the frame.”
Midstream, the current surged. A low grinding groan sounded from a steep clay cliff.
CRASH. A basketball-sized boulder tore free, followed by rubble. The wave shoved their raft toward the cliff base. Churning water scoured away loose soil, exposing a dark opening in the rock.
Their raft crashed onto a narrow shelf. Lily was flung forward, her ankle twisting. White-hot agony.
The life rope snapped taut. Jack grabbed exposed roots, jammed his knife into a crack, and dragged them onto a muddy ledge.
“Med kit!” Lily collapsed.
“Your ankle first.” He ripped open a pressure bandage with his teeth. “Grade two or three sprain. Ice.”
As he worked, Lily stared past him at the dark gap behind the landslide. Warm, mineral air wafted out, and something else—something she couldn’t name, not a smell, not a sound, but a faint vibration, like a hum heard from very far away. Her skin felt it before she registered the heat.
“Jack… look.”
“We need to signal for extraction.” But Lily was already limping toward the fissure.
The entrance was narrow. Lily crawled in, eyes locking onto a faint greenish glow. “Oh my God…”
She scrambled through a tight squeeze. Jack followed, hit by warmer, humid air. The entire rock wall pulsed with thousands of fireflies, their lights bathing the cave in emerald. Beneath this flowing star-curtain, ochre-red bison charged—muscles straining, hooves airborne.
“Just like the barn mural back home,” Jack breathed, wiping his glasses. Lily pulled out a sketchbook and began drawing with quick, excited strokes.
“Fireflies at this altitude? Clustered like this?” Jack swept a laser pointer over the glowing clusters. “Moss moisture… slight geothermal heat. A micro-greenhouse.”
“More than that.” Lily pointed to seeping rock fissures. “Warm, damp, dark—a firefly buffet. They’ve been breeding for generations. Maybe our ancestors’ eco-bulbs.”
Jack adjusted his glasses. “Does the Geography Department teach supernatural ecology?”
Lily didn’t look up. She tiptoed toward a firefly resting on a bison’s painted eye. Her breath startled it. It zipped up, trailing a green comet-tail across the ancient art.
“Shh… They’re doing annual mural maintenance. With light.”
BOOM. A subterranean growl. The cave quaked. Dust rained.
“Move!” Jack lunged, shoving Lily away. THUD. His back hit the rock wall. His headlamp froze on a previously hidden section—above the charging bison, wavy lines ended at a stylized Mount Rainier.
“Not a migration route,” he said, tapping a symbol. “Survey markers. Danger markers.”
The tremor eased. “The cave’s unstable. We go. Now.” He hauled her up.
Lily grabbed her sketchbook and scrambled into blinding daylight.
The assembly whistle blew. Instructor Mark held Lily’s waterlogged boot. “Nelson! Miller! Where’s your raft? Did the Pacific need a new toy?”
“Here, sir!” Lily pointed. Their pine-and-tarp bundle was wedged between two rocks. On it sat a fat red squirrel nibbling a piece of her forgotten peach candy.
Laughter erupted across the training ground.
Jack stood wrapping a bandage around his bloody palm. He paused. Someone had drawn a small, goggle-wearing cartoon squirrel on the white bandage tip.
Survival skills. Orienteering. Lily’s ankle was wrapped, Jack’s hand bandaged. Paired again, a silent understanding between them.
“Compass bearing off by three degrees.”
“My compass has personality. It likes to explore.”
“Iron deposits in that ridge. Compensate. Twenty paces west of your heading.” His tone, for him, was almost gentle.
At a break, Lily looked at his scar, then at his hand. “You okay? From the cave. When you pushed me.”
“Bruised. Acceptable. Your ankle?”
“Throbs. I’ve had worse.” She grinned. “So… your farm mural. It’s like the cave?”
He nodded. “Same bison. Same style. My grandfather spent years trying to decipher the symbols around it. They’re called ‘The Earth’s Awakening Breath.’”
Later, building a survival lean-to, Lily steadied a pole. “Not bad for a guy who talks to tape measures.”
“And you’re surprisingly systematic for a walking force of natural chaos.” He tightened a knot. Their eyes met over the frame. He looked away first. “Efficiency is logical.”
Dusk gilded the peak in fire. Lily and Jack sat on a separate log by the main campfire. Lily sipped her cocoa, her cave sketches spread at her feet. Jack’s notebook lay open.
“So,” she poked the coals, “your farm mural. That ‘Awakening Breath’ symbol. Connected?”
Jack stopped whittling. He slid the notebook closer. A careful pencil rubbing showed the bison route stretching north. “Here.” His finger stopped on a complex spiral. “My grandfather called it that. Every map he tried to overlay…” He trailed off.
Lily leaned in, shoulder almost touching his. “So let’s find the answer. Your farm. My data. We can piece it together.”
Jack stared at the smudge of charcoal on her nose. He reached into his jacket. Plop. A sealed plastic bag slid onto the notebook.
Lily opened it. Inside was a cave sketch—mimicked from hers—warm from his body heat. Margin notes: Marker angle suggests origin to NNE. Triangulation with farm site possible. Consistent with ‘Awakening Breath’ symbol proportions.
“You… you mimicked mine?”
Jack looked into the flames. “I was verifying river flow data against geothermal maps. And… the cave tremor data needed cataloguing.”
Lily slowly smiled. She folded the paper and pressed it back into his hand. “You keep it safe, Mr. Calculator. We’ll need it.”
Later, half-asleep in her tent, Lily saw Jack’s silhouette by the dying fire. He added one last detail to the margin of his mimicking sketch—a delicate, glowing firefly over the eye of the charging bison.
Hundred kilometres away, lights still burned in a lab at the Seattle Geological Institute.
Dr. Emma Howard loaded the latest micro-tremor data from Mount Rainier.
Jagged lines jumped across her screen. She frowned, overlaying historical patterns.
On a whim, she pulled up a digital scan of a yellowed document: the official Yukon River Disaster Report.
She overlaid its seismic curve onto her current screen.
The two curves, separated by twenty-two years of grief, locked into a perfect, terrifying sync.