River’s End

resigned to using this route to draw her out. Instead, he was fascinated.
    Despite the rain and fog there was a quiet green glow, an otherworldly pulse of it that highlighted thick tumbles of ferns and knotty hillocks coated with moss. Everything dripped and shimmered.
    He heard a cracking sound from above and looked up in time to see a thick branch tumble down and crash to the forest floor. “You wouldn’t want to be under one of them, would you?”
    “Widow maker,” she said with a dry smile.
    He glanced at the branch again, decided it would have knocked him flat and out cold. “Good thing for me we’re not married.”
    “Occasionally, the epiphytes absorb enough rain to weigh down the branch. Overburdened, it breaks. Down here, it’ll become part of the cycle, providing a home for something else.” She stopped abruptly, held up a hand. “Quiet,” she told him in a soft whisper and motioned for him to angle behind the wide column of a spruce.
    “What?”
    She only shook her head, pressed two fingers to his lips as if to seal them. She held them there, while he wondered how she’d react if he started to nibble. Then he heard whatever had alerted her and felt the dog quivering between them. Without a clue as to what to expect, he laid a hand on her shoulder in a protective move and scanned through the trees and vines toward the sound of something large in motion.
    They stepped out of the gloom, wading knee high through the river of fog. Twelve, no fifteen, he corrected, fifteen enormous elk, their racks like crowns.
    “Where are the girls?” he muttered against Olivia’s fingers and earned a quick glare. One let out a bellow, a deep bugling call that seemed to shake the trees. Then they slipped through the shadows and the green, their passing a rumble on the springy ground. Noah thought he caught the scent of them, something wild, then they were moving away, slowly sliding into the shadows.
    “The females,” Olivia said, “travel in herds with the younger males. More mature males, such as what we just saw, travel in smaller herds, until late summer when all bets are off and they become hostile with one another in order to cull out or keep their harem.”
    “Harem, huh?” He grinned. “Sounds like fun. So, were those Roosevelt elk?” Noah asked. “The kind you were talking about yesterday?”
    If she was surprised he’d been paying attention, and had bothered to remember, she didn’t show it. “Yes. We often see them on this trail this time of year.”
    “Then I’m glad we took it. They’re huge, a long way from Bambi and family.”
    “You can see Bambi and family, too. During rutting season there’re some high times in the forest.”
    “I’ll just bet. Why didn’t she bark? Or chase after them?” he asked, lowering a hand to Shirley’s head.
    “Training over instinct. You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” She crouched down to give Shirley a good, strong rub, then unwound the leash on her belt and hooked it to the dog’s collar.
    “What’s that for?”
    “We’re moving off MacBride land. Dogs have to be leashed on government property. We don’t like it much, do we?” she said to Shirley. “But that’s the rule. Or. . .” She straightened and looked Noah in the eye. “We can circle back if you’ve had enough.”
    “I thought we were just getting started.”
    “It’s your dime.”
    They continued on. He saw she had a compass on her belt, but she didn’t consult it. She seemed to know exactly where she was, and where she was going. She didn’t hurry, but gave him time to look, to ask questions.
    Rain sprinkled through the canopy, plopped onto the ground like the drip of a thousand leaky faucets. But the fog began to lift, thinning, tearing into swirls, creeping back into itself.
    The trail she chose began to climb and climb steeply. The light changed subtly until it was a luminous green pearled by the weak sunlight that fell through small Ieaks in the canopy, and in the breaks he caught glimpses of color from wildflowers, the variance of shades and textures of the green.
    “It reminds me of snorkeling.”
    “What?”
    “I’ve been snorkeling in Mexico,” he told her. “You get good enough at it, you can go under for pretty decent periods and play around. The light’s odd, not green like this really, but different, and the sun will cut through the surface, angle down. Everything’s soft and full of shapes. Easy to get lost down there. Ever been