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Vivienne looked behind her. The light from their fire did not extend into the forest, so she could not actually see the base of the tree where Isabelle had found the rock.

The young man had probably sat exactly where she was.

Had he reached out and picked up the flat stone, maybe intending to skip it over the water?

She imagined him sitting there, looking down at the river rock. And then something had changed his mind. Instead of tossing it into the lake, he’d placed it at the base of the tree. Carefully. Deliberately.

Vivienne had been to the Arctic many times. Had seen the stone cairns erected over the graves of explorers who’d ignored the advice of the Inuit. And died. With the last of their strength, the dying men had scratched names on the stones. Dates. To let people know they’d been there. Had once lived. And perhaps as a warning to those who followed.

“Can I see the stone again?”

Isabelle dug it out of her knapsack.

Vivienne rubbed the hard dirty surface through the protective plastic baggie.

“Careful,” said Isabelle, reaching out to take it back. But the deed was done.

Vivienne shook her head. Nothing.

Still, the rock itself was odd. It should not have been that far from the shore. She looked up at Isabelle.

“What?” asked Isabelle. “What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” said Vivienne, getting up with a groan and walking away from the lake, away from the warmth and light of the fire. Into the darkness. “Of the cairns in the Arctic. What doomed explorers left behind. I’m thinking what Charles wanted us to find wasn’t the rock but—” Now she had her flashlight app on and was kneeling by the base of the tree. “This.”

She leaned away and pointed.

There, cut into the bark at the base of the tree, hidden under some rotting leaves was etched a very small arrow and beside it an even smaller cl.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Isabelle. She raised her stare from the tree into Vivienne’s eyes. Her own wide with wonder. “You found it.”

Vivienne reached out. Some mothering instinct wanted to caress the letters, as though to comfort. But Isabelle stopped her.

“The arrow’s pointing into the woods.” Isabelle’s own phone was out, flashlight on. She was snapping photos as she spoke. “He wants us to go into the woods. That’s where he hid it.”

At last. At last.

“We’ll have to look tomorrow, right? Too dark tonight.” Vivienne was clearly hoping Isabelle would disagree and they could wander, drunk and lost, in the cold, dark forest.

“Yes,” said Isabelle, not without regret. “Tomorrow.”

Both women remained kneeling and staring into the woods. Then they walked slowly back to the campfire.

As they sat down on the warm rocks, Vivienne returned her gaze to the lake. A bat flapped overhead and disappeared into the darkness, and a loon called. It was hard to believe that not much farther north the disaster had occurred.

Wildfires had burned through millions of hectares of forest, sending plumes of ash into the atmosphere before falling to earth, coating American cities, large and small. Smothering them. The images had been apocalyptic. The events unimaginable. The fires unstoppable.

They’d broken out across Canada, all at once. As though nature had pulled a trigger.

And now there were fears the fires had heralded a new age. An annual calamity that would continue, in biblical fashion, until there was nothing left. No trees, no forest. No habitable cities. Just ash. A sort of nuclear bomb made of wood. And stupidity.

Vivienne stopped herself. The wine was making her maudlin. Surely she was overstating it. Besides, in a twist of fate, the worst of the ash had not actually landed on Canada. Such were the atmospheric conditions at the time.

A very bad thing for the United States but, it must be quietly admitted, a good thing for Canada. If you looked beyond the millions of acres of destroyed forest.

Vivienne turned around. If there was another disastrous season, this forest would be the next to go. These magnificent trees, which had been saplings when the Magna Carta was written, would go up in smoke to once again bury American cities.

How many times could that happen before too much damage was done? And what would be the American reaction if this became an annual catastrophe? How long before they tired of it and decided to do something about it? To defend themselves.