Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You packed your sunscreen?”

“Yes, Uncle Donald.”

“And your antiseptic wipes?”

“Yes, Uncle Donald.”

“And your emergency batteries?”

“Yes, Uncle Donald.”

“And your–”

“Okay, see you on Monday!”

Huey slammed the car door closed, adjusting his fur cap before hitching his pack onto his back. It’d seen considerably more wear in the last six months since they’d started traveling with Scrooge, but as far as Huey was concerned, it was nothing but incredible practice for his hand stitching with oiled thread. (He was getting rather good at precise needlework.)

The beat up station wagon’s passenger window lowered with a creak, and Donald leaned across the console to peer up at him.

“Be safe,” he said, waving. “I’ll have my phone on the whole time, call me if you need anything, or if you forgot something, or if anyone says anything–”

“A Woodchuck is always prepared!” Huey said, “I’ve quadruple checked both the recommended lists as well as my own supplies, and there’s no way I left anything behind. This weekend will be completely surprise-free!”

Donald smiled at him, waving again.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” Donald said, and Huey stepped back to let him roll up the window. 

Donald beeped the horn as he pulled away out of the dirt parking lot, already filled with dust from the dozens of other cars dropping off dozens of uniformed kids. They were a swirl of activity, other Woodchucks lugging backpacking packs and sleeping bags and cramming their fur caps onto their heads as more parents pulled out of the lot. 

Huey turned, taking a deep breath of the crisp alpine air of the Sierras as he scanned the sight before him. The Junior Woodchuck Summer Village Campgrounds were more than familiar, and at ten– almost eleven– years old, the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range almost felt like a second home. The great log archway, painted red and yellow, stood over the well-trodden dirt path that led up to the Junior Woodchuck Village, and it swarmed with Woodchucks of all ages. The older kids strode, laughing and shoving each other as younger kids dodged through, leaping and screaming and chasing their companions up the path, scattering towards the cabins, dining hall, rec-rooms, and the welcome hall. 

Huey lived in a huge house, surrounded by his huge family, but here, every single person around him was his. Several people waved at him, and he waved back as he made his way to the gathering crowd huddled around the folding table beside the gate. Gretta From The Office, an old woman sitting behind the table, flipped through her clipboard as kids packed in against her check-in station. The noise didn’t put her off one bit, and she nodded serenely as she checked off names as they were shouted from the crowd.

This was his least favorite part. 

Huey tightened his pack, joining the crowd at the back. He was just as excited as anyone else– undoubtedly moreso, but everyone was entitled to their own opinions– but he wasn’t overcome with the same fever that overtook his fellow Chucks as they shoved, elbowing their way forward in the line to check in first.

He could wait, though. They’d touched down in the plane three days ago from their very first trip to Scotland, a trip to New Mexico three days before that, and it was just enough time to recover from the jetlag and be completely ready for the trip and absolutely undistracted from the events of their visit to their ancestral home. Regardless of anything he might have learned. Or secrets that had been kept. Or reality-shattering revelations in dungeons far beneath the earth.

Completely undistracted.

Lucas Brant, a broadly built fourteen year old, turned quickly in front of him, and Huey had a moment of wondering why a padlock dangled from the boy’s (overstuffed) pack before the whole thing collided heavily with Huey. 

Stars flashed, and his vision went white for a moment before Huey reeled back, his brow burning. He stumbled back a step only to bump into someone else, jostling them as he blinked furiously. 

“Hey!” a girl shouted off to his right, “Watch it!” 

“Sorry…” Huey mumbled, rubbing at his brow. 

“Not you,” the same girl – he couldn’t see who – snapped, “Hey, No-Nuts up there, you gonna ‘pologize or what?”

“It’s okay,” Huey said as Lucas Brant’s pack gave dangerous indications of turning again. “Really! I don’t mind–”

His vision slowly cleared, but the crowd was pressing in tighter, Lucas Brant’s pack with its melee-padlock dangled over his face again as the kid behind him nudged Huey forward, bodies cramming in closer on all sides. The comfortably crisp air turned hot. Sweat pricked at the back of his neck as his heart rate picked up.

The crowd jostled again, tan and red and fur caps in every plane of his vision as names were shouted louder over the girl’s yelling, and incredible! His claustrophobia panic response had been nearly quartered in onset-time since the New Mexico incident last week. He’d been here less than ten minutes. 

What a great opportunity for personal reaction observations! There was no real danger here, not like in the field when there’s zombies or ghosts or avalanches or man-eating tiger wizards or caves pressing in on all sides echoing his voice back on itself again and again and again and–

“Breathe,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes tight. 

This was fine. This was his safe-place. This was his second home, he was basically home, the fresh, bright mountain air was just outside the overwhelming onslaught of scents: dusty uniforms and oiled cloth and unwashed socks and teenagers reaching over his head and hot breath on his neck and shouting shouting shouting–

He bailed.

He ducked left, shoving people aside to scramble through the crowd and throwing just as many elbows as necessary to worm through the bodies until finally, finally, he burst out of the crowd. He stumbled a few steps away, backing up and forcing his gaze up to the bright blue sky, framed by shooting pines (Calisota Lodgepole, be specific) that reached up to the open air. 

He breathed.

He counted the tips of the pine trees in his vision.

He counted the individual clouds as they moved across his vision.

When he was ready, he lowered his gaze, and counted the blue cars in the parking lot.

The crowd didn’t take long to disperse, Gretta being excellent at her job and all. After a time, most of the campers had made their way up the path, a few stragglers still collecting their bags from their parents’ cars. Huey watched one of his cabinmates, Max Fenner, hitch his pack onto his back before turning back and throwing his arms around his mother’s waist. She laughed, resettling his cap on his head as she pulled him in tight, and Huey carefully looked away. 

The check-in table was mostly empty, anyway, just a girl having a problem with her form, and he greeted Gretta politely (he knew sign-in times brought the most stress). She smiled warmly, passing him a clipboard and pen before turning back to the rather exasperated-sounding little girl.

Huey looked down at the sign-in form, chewing the inside of his cheek.

It was always a delicate game, having grown up with an uncle. Dewey always said just an uncle, to which Huey would always try to go out of his way to correct. There was nothing just about Uncle Donald, and after ten – almost eleven! – years of practice, Huey barely blinked an eye anymore while filling out forms and permission slips. It was nothing to go through emergency contact paperwork, scratching out Father:_____ in favor of carefully writing in Uncle: Donald F. Duck. Never in his life had he scratched out Mother:____ though, but he’d learned that a neat little N/A on the line kept questions to a minimum. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a mother. Of course he had, at some point. She was just…not applicable.

Now, though, three days back from Scotland, Huey found his pen hovering over Mother:_____. 

There was no reason. 

Nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

Nothing had changed. 

There was no phone number to fill in, he chastised himself. There was no email address. It’d be the most useless waste of ink on an emergency contact form, but the revelation he’d had with his brothers down in the bowels of their ancestral castle over a dusty, spider-filled bag of clothes had put something onto a name that he hadn’t previously known how to feel. His brother had turned his own lifetime of curiosity into an adventure, an action which Huey could understand, because Adventure meant Action meant Reward, but the only reward at the end of that adventure would be knowledge. Huey had a sneaking suspicion his brother was hoping for something else. 

Huey shook his head. 

N/A. 

He nodded at the form, clicking the pen closed.

Not Applicable. 

And it would stay that way.

“Coot!” the girl in front of him said loudly, “C-O-O-T! Elvira Coot!” 

Huey frowned. Gretta really didn’t need any more shouting, especially as she was just doing her job.

“As I’ve said, dear,” Gretta said, “I don’t have anything here saying anything about–”

“Of course you don’t!” the girl – Elvira – said, “Weren’t you listening? I’m visiting.”

Huey looked her up and down. She didn’t look new. She couldn’t have been much more than six or seven, with knobby knees and already-scraped elbows, but her uniform looked well-used. The style was a bit vintage, too, the fabric thick and seam lines just a bit different, and the fur cap that sat over her short hair looked just the same, if not a bit dirty. He couldn’t see the front of her sash, but the cloth was definitely an older, heavier weight cloth.

Huey wasn’t one to judge. Lots of Woodchucks got their uniforms second hand. He probably would have, too, if there’d been a Woodchuck in the family before him.

“I understand that you’re new, dear,” Gretta was saying, “But we can’t–”

“Not new!” Elvira said hotly, “Visiting! From out of town. Look at my badges!” 

Gretta’s eyes flitted down, and her brow raised.

“I’m from Troop 89,” the girl insisted, “I’m just here for the weekend, look I have my papers–”

“Why don’t we just call your mother–”

“No!”

Huey jumped at the heat in her voice.

“It’s just that…” the girl dragged her foot through the dirt, suddenly very interested in her sash. “My mom’s on a trip, you see, she said she had to clear her head…she and my dad have been really going at it, and Dad’s gone, too, they sent me here and told me not to disturb either of them. Oh, please, I promised them this wouldn’t happen…that I wouldn’t upset anyone…”

Gretta’s eyes flashed with pity, but all Huey could see was the girl’s hands tuck behind her back.

She crossed her fingers. 

Gretta sighed.

“Troop 89, you said?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said, shooting upright. “I promise I won’t be any trouble.”

Gretta looked her up and down. 

“I’ll be reaching out to your troop leader,” she said, and the girl nodded fiercely. 

“Great,” she said, already snatching up her pack. “Ab-so-lutely. Awesome, okay, thanks, lady–”

“Wait just a moment.” 

The girl pulled up short, and Gretta raised a brow.

“You’ll need a buddy.”

The girl snorted.

“A buddy?”

Gretta nodded as she reached for Huey’s form.

“It’s Junior-Junior Buddy Weekend,” she said primly, carefully laying Huey’s form in with the others. “All Junior Junior Woodchucks must have a buddy for stay-away trips.”

“Psh,” the girl snorted, “When did that happen?”

“2002,” Huey said quickly, and she turned to look at him for the first time.

Her glare was hard beneath her long bangs and little bandaids criss-crossed her knees, but Huey eyed her sash. 

It wasn’t full by any means, but it was definitely more decorated than his had been at her age. He fiddled with his own sash, suddenly self conscious of her sharp eyes. He had the oddest feeling she looked familiar. Her eyes flicked up to his forehead, though, and with a blink, her expression cleared. 

“Hey!” she said, her face suddenly bright. “You’re the kid that got clocked!” 

Huey blinked, bringing a hand up to his brow where, yes, he could feel a lump forming. 

“I…yeah…”

“What a jerk!” she said, throwing a dirty look up the path towards the cabin. “He wouldn’t even fight me proper. Someone’s gotta teach that kid some respect–”

“Oh good, you’ve met,” Gretta said, and suddenly Huey didn’t like the look in her eye. “Huey, I regret to inform you that Lilah Burkes, your Junior Junior buddy, won’t be attending this weekend due to an unfortunate incident with a tambourine.”

“What happened with the tambourine?” Huey and the girl asked at the same time.

“Fortunately for you, my dear,” she said to the girl, “Huey here is one of our fondest and most… thorough Junior Woodchucks, and will be a more than suitable buddy for you this weekend.”

“Wait–” Huey said, “I didn’t…I wasn’t…I didn’t plan–”

“Listen, lady, I really don’t need-”

“I’m sure you’ll show her all the ropes, here,” Gretta said, “Help her find her way around this weekend.”

“But the eclipse–”

“Will still happen as scheduled,” Gretta said, “And you will be there to help your young buddy spot it.”

Gretta stretched, waving them off as she collected her paperwork and made her way over to speak to Bus Driver Gary.

Huey glanced at the girl, who was already watching him shrewdly. He had a sneaking suspicion she would be able to track the lunar eclipse without his help. The internet had been swarming with articles about how rare the event was, a full lunar eclipse colliding with a meteor shower of epic proportions. The last one had been twenty nine years ago, and Huey had spent the last month pouring over Uncle Scrooge’s photographs of the last one. 

The girl looked competent, though. He didn’t think she’d need help spotting the moon blacking out.

It was the rule, though, that Junior Junior Woodchucks had to have older buddies on stay-away trips. She might have been at the tipping point between age groups– it was hard to tell between her quick eyes and clumsy feet, but rules were rules. Huey shrugged his pack higher.

“My name’s Huey,” he said, extending a hand. “Elvira, right?”

She hesitated a moment before nodding.

“Yep,” she said, “That’s me. Absolutely.”

She took his hand, shaking quite hard, and he could feel a band-aid on her finger, too.

“It’s a cool name,” he said, and she snorted.

“You’re a liar,” she said, “It’s a grandma name.”

And she turned quickly up the path. 

“There’s nothing wrong with older names!” Huey trotted after her. She was fast. “My brothers and I all have older names.”

“Anyone who’s got old people names also has parents who hate them.”

Huey blinked, but kept up with her. 

“I just go by Huey, though,” he said, “Do you have a nickname or something? If you don’t like your name?”

She pulled up short, and he nearly collided with her pack.

“Like what?” she said, and he was surprised at the earnesty in her face. She watched him easily with wide eyes, and again, he wondered if they’d met before.

“Like…Vira?”

She shook her head.

“That’s awful,” she laughed, but somehow the way she said it didn’t feel cruel. “Sounds like a disease. Oh! What about Ra, like Ra, God of the Sun!”

“Or Elle. Ellie.”

“Oh.” She looked a little disappointed. “That probably makes more sense. Yeah, you can call me Ellie.”

She turned, shoving her hand out again. She grinned, and her tongue poked out between her missing teeth.

“Hi, Huey,” she said, “I’m Ellie.”

“Hi, Ellie,” he said, “Why did you lie about your Troop?”

“I–” she dropped his hand. “What?”

“You said you were from Troop 89,” he said, “But there hasn’t been a Troop 89 in years.”

“That’s crazy,” she said, “Why would I– wait, what do you mean?”

“They rotate,” he said, “Troop 89 is south of here, closer to Duckburg.”

“Yeah!” she said, “See, I’m from–”

“And changed to Troop 209 in the early 2000’s.”

Her face froze, and she looked so much like Louie caught in a lie that he almost laughed.

“Listen, buddy,” she said, “What’s it to you?”

“I’m a Woodchuck,” he said, straightening, “This is a Woodchuck campground. You’re wearing a Woodchuck uniform. Junior Woodchuck rule 84: A Woodchuck always tells the truth.”

She straightened as well.

“Junior Woodchuck Rule 72,” she said, “A Woodchuck should always help a friend in need.”

“Junior Woodchuck Rule 22,” he shot back, “A Woodchuck never steps down from doing what’s right, even if they do it alone.”

“Junior Woodchuck Rule 54,” she said, “Sometimes what’s right isn’t always correct.”

“Junior Woodchuck Rule– hey!” Huey shook his head. “That’s not a real rule!”

“What, you think I can’t read?” she snapped.

“Junior Woodchuck Rule 54,” Huey said, “Sometimes what’s right isn’t always easy.” 

“No,” she said, “What’s correct.” 

“Of course it’s correct!” Huey said, pulling out his guidebook. “It’s right, which is a synonym for correct! So it has to be correct! Here!”

He shoved his book in her face, and he watched her eyes move over the page. Her brows drew together, and she ripped her own guidebook out of her pack.

It was a thick, older print, but her face split into a grin when she flipped open the page.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, shoving it in his face. “Just because it’s right doesn’t mean it’s correct!” 

Huey’s world tilted a bit.

“Let me see that!” he exclaimed, but she stowed it quickly back in her pack as they drew near the lights of the village. “That doesn’t count! That’s an old edition! It’s…It’s a misprint…”

“Sounds like your’s is the misprint, buddy,” Ellie said, and she grinned widely. “Huey, right? Hey, I’ve got an idea! What if I go this way, and Hue-go that way, and we won’t ever have to talk about how your guidebook is miswritten?”

“It’s not miswritten!”

Huey clapped his hands over his mouth as Ellie blinked. 

He hadn’t meant to yell. 

People didn’t like it when he yelled.

“I’m…”

She laughed, broad and loud. 

“You’re just like my brother,” she said, “It’s easy to push his buttons, too. Okay, buddy, you better help me find out what cabin I’m in, ‘cause I am starving!” 

Ellie, as it turned out, was to take over his previous buddy Lilah’s bunk for the weekend. Huey had never been particularly keen on Lilah (she was a bit of an aloof, disinterested kid) but it was his job to help keep her on the straight track, and in her absence, he could take the opportunity to help rear Ellie, who was turning out to be more than a handful already. 

The sun had just embarked on its downward arc, hanging high in the sky over the deep valley. The tall pines were a refuge from the heat, but they were several hours out from the towering mountain casting shade on the valley and Huey already had begun to feel bad for Uncle Donald, taking care of three six year olds at one time. He could barely keep track of–

“Wow!” Ellie exclaimed. She dropped her pack and before Huey could blink, she was clambering up one of the towering, roughly cut lantern posts like a bug.

“Careful!” Huey said, “You could fall, you’re–”

His stomach lurched as she clambered her way up to the hanging lantern, wiggling to sit at the top nearly fifteen feet in the air.

“Look at this!” she called down, prodding at the lantern. “There’s no wires!” 

“Yeah,” Huey said, picking up her pack. “They’re solar, they were replaced in–”

“Solar?!”

“Yeah, they– don’t hit them!” 

“If it’s shady,” she said, “How come it’s still on?”

“That’s…that’s not how it works. Look, come down–”

“Woah!” She squinted as she looked out over the camp. “Look at all the cabins! They’re so much more colorful!” 

“More colorful than what?”

“Uh…than mine!”

Huey threw a look up and down the lit pathway, but it seemed nearly all the other campers had made their way– rightly– to the mess hall. The overwhelming heat of Duckburg had yet to make its way up into the high mountains properly, leaving the Village nestled in the forest a comfortable warm until the long shadows of the mountains decided to their arms like giants across the valley. 

“We really ought to get going,” he called up, “It’s two o’clock, lunch’s already being served!” 

Indeed, he could hear the laughter and shouting from the mess hall, the windows glowing orange beyond the cold bonfire pit in the Village square. It was probably almost full by now.

If the mess hall filled, he’d be at the back of the meal line, and if he was at the back of the meal line, he’d be the last one to pick out the dessert snack, and if he was the last to pick out the dessert snack, all the home-made strawberry fruit leather would be gone, and he always had a strawberry fruit leather dessert at camp. They were only ever served the first meal of camp, and it was the only time he’d ever get them, and they meant he was at camp, and if he didn’t have them, then it was basically not camp, and it wouldn’t count, and it was a special camp, even, because of the eclipse and the meteor shower, it only happened every twenty nine years, and if he missed out on the strawberry fruit leather, that means it would be half a camping trip, and then the next time the meteor shower came around, he would be too old to be a Woodchuck anymore, and what if this was the last time they ever served the strawberry fruit leather and he’d already had his last one and he didn’t even enjoy it enough because he didn’t know and–

“We’ve got to go!” Huey shouted, and Ellie blinked down at him in surprise. 

“Wow.” She swung herself back onto the wooden post. “You should carry a granola bar or somethin’, you’re cranky when you’re hungry.”

Huey bit his tongue. She was just a kid. Junior Junior Woodchucks needed the support and guidance of older, more mature Woodchucks to help grow into young explorers and preservationists. Having grown up with his…unique brothers, and with his newfound experience adventuring with Uncle Scrooge, Huey really was the perfect candidate.

Speaking of experience–

“Careful!” he called as Ellie slid a bit down the thick post. “That’s raw redwood, without gloves you could–”

“Augh!” 

“Get splinters. No–”

Huey watched in horror as Ellie jerked her hands back from the sharp wood, her legs scrambling to keep hold. He rushed forward, shooting his arms out, and she managed to slow herself as she skidded down just enough that Huey only stumbled a bit as he caught her by the waist. 

“And that’s why we keep our feet on the ground unless we’re harnessed in.” 

She wiggled her way to the ground, but she only glared a bit as she looked at her hands. 

Huey threw a glance at the open doors of the dining hall before sighing. 

“Let me see.”

Ellie shoved her hands out, and they were particularly small in his as he turned them palm up. 

It wasn’t bad, but Huey didn’t envy her by a long shot. Fine redwood bits feathered out of her palms and fingers in odd directions, and she’d picked up a little scrape on her inner arm. Ellie leaned over in fascination, wiggling her fingers and wincing.

“Oof,” she said, “Those look brutal. Do you have a knife? We’re definitely gonna have to do some lancerations to get those bad boys out. We can use my sewing kit to stitch my hands back together, but we’ll need to build a fire to sterilize the needle.”

“Or we could use tweezers.”

“Oh.”

She looked unsettlingly disappointed as Huey let her hands go to pull out his multi-tool, tugging the tweezers free. He sat on the low log wall beneath the lamp post, and Ellie eyed the redwood cautiously before lowering herself onto it beside him, letting him take her hands.

“Have you ever had any lancerations before?” she asked as Huey got to work.

“I’m assuming you mean either lacerations or wounds that had to be lanced,” he said, “And not really, no. I broke my ankle once, though, when my brother–”

“My uncle had a lanceration once,” she interrupted.

“Laceration,” Huey said patiently. Hopefully.

“Yeah, a laceration!” Her legs had started kicking, and Huey adjusted his grip as she bounced. “He came to our birthday party and he was all mad because Mom made him come home early from his trip to see us and he had a huge lanceration–”

“Laceration.”

“Laceration on his forehead!”

“Wow…did he fall or something?”

“No! He was hit with a real life lance!”

Huey frowned, working at a particularly stubborn splinter in the web of her thumb.

“That’s not actually what lancing means–”

“But he wouldn’t tell us the whole story because I touched it when he was eating cake and it started bleeding everywhere and he wouldn’t stay even though it was our birthday…”

He couldn’t keep a straight face at that.

“You–”

“Mom said he didn’t like banana ice cream cake, but it was our choice– ouch!”

“Almost done.”

She fell silent for a bit as Huey pinched around her thumb. With the pause in her previously unending chatter, the sudden quiet was weirdly unnerving.

“You said our birthday,” he said.

“Yeah, my brother and me!”

“Are you a twin?”

“Uh-huh. He’s not here.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s stupid.”

Huey laughed.

“My uncle’s a twin, too.”

He wasn’t sure what possessed him to say it. Usually when the multiples conversation came up, the Triplets Card was far more impressive.

“Is he identical?” she said, “I’m identical.”

He hesitated. He didn’t know.

“Boys and girls are super rare,” she went on, completely oblivious to his preoccupation. “Doctors love going oooh when they meet my brother and I–”

“My brother and me,” Huey said before he could stop himself. “And we’re done.”

Ellie cooed, leaping up and scrunching her hands as he tucked away the tweezers.

“The adventure continues!” she cried.

“The adventure to your cabin,” he said, picking up her backpack. “Woah, why is this so heavy?”

“A Woodchuck is always prepared!” 

She dove her arms into the straps, and she only stumbled a bit as Huey let her take the weight. 

“Supplies: loaded,” she said darkly, “Mission status: engaged.”

And with that, she was off. Huey rubbed his temple before setting off after her. 

It was nearly three by the time Old Sue the Cook dabbed hot mashed potatoes onto his tray, and Huey was grateful. Old Sue was a professional. No matter how late a Woodchuck, she would never let someone eat cold food. 

Ellie had been easy enough to settle in her cabin. Her bunkmates were only a little perturbed at the exuberance with which she flung first her bag and then herself into one of the top bunks (the bunk’s current occupant was a little more so), but with a quick thumbs up and an okayseeyouatlunchbye, Huey’d taken off like a shot, free to drop off his own pack before finally trudging to lunch.

“Don’t usually see you stragglin’,” Old Sue said, moving to the barbecue serving dish.

“A Woodchuck’s job is done when the last person has been helped.” He hoped his voice didn’t sound as resigned as it came out.

Old Sue dropped a piece of barbecue on his tray, shaking her head. 

“Corn?”

“No, thank you. Just the fruit leather, please. Strawberry.”

Sue set a juice box on his tray.

“Sorry, hon,” she said, “Jimmy Babcott got the last one about ten minutes ago.”

Time stalled out.

“But…it’s First Lunch.”

Old Sue sighed.

“Bears did a number on our strawberry patch this season. Preserve stock’s low. Still got raspberry if you want.”

“That’s not strawberry. I always have strawberry.”

Old Sue smiled ruefully.

“Unless you wanna go hunt down those bears and ask ‘em politely, we’re out, baby boy. Sorry.”

Huey blinked once. Twice.

“Thanks, Sue.”

“You have a good lunch, Huey.”

His tray suddenly felt like lead as he turned back to the dining hall.

This was fine. He didn’t have a strawberry fruit leather almost every day of his life. This trip would be special because he didn’t have one! It made it different. This was the only day they’d have a lunar eclipse like this for almost two decades– that made this trip different from others! That was fine! It was all fine!

Huey nodded. 

Different. He could do different.

He scanned the hall. 

The red, angry heat bubbling in his throat leapt a bit. Clearly the whole point of Buddy Weekend was completely lost on his fellow Woodchucks, as nearly all of his cohort had crammed themselves happily into the tables at the center of the hall. Each table, long rows of wall-to-wall bodies, was made up of shouting, laughing kids, shoving each other, flailing loudly, cheering and booing as they regaled each other of their– wildly exaggerated– recent escapades and flashing each other their sashes that boasted newly sewn-on badges. 

Along the far side sat the Junior Juniors, their cheery, round faces alight as they held surprisingly more subdued conversation, helpless to the need to wiggle in their seats as they passed around crudely folded fortune-tellers and worn-down colored pencils. Towering over them sat Launchpad, his eyes widening as Mikey Farley, a grubby seven year old with sticky-looking fingers, flashed him the inside of a crumpled fortune-teller.

Huey went the other way.

He walked up the long lines of his peer’s tables with his tray, doing his best to make eye contact with those seated. Some looked up, some friends waved, but none made an effort to cram themselves aside for a spot. 

That was fine. He’d never arrived so late to a meal (nearly three thirty now), so seating had never been a big problem. Usually he arrived with bunkmates, or his friends came to him, so this change of plan was inevitable. He’d just have to adapt. He was great at adapting! The sound of the hall had doubled since he’d arrived, he was sure of it. He could practically feel the voices reverberating off the wooden floorboards, the plank ceiling lower than he remembered. The line of tables was tight on either side, and the campers rowdier than they ever were. 

A carrot flew across his path, and the tables roared as Ruby Maizer caught it in her teeth. Fin Langley’s elbow jutted out, jostling Huey’s tray and he scrambled to keep his juice box upright. The sound pushed in on his ears.

“Huey!” 

He looked up, and a whole table of Junior Juniors’ eyes were locked on him as Launchpad stood, waving his hands and gesturing to the bench beside him.

Lisa Winters banged on the table right next to Huey, starting a chant as Wallace Green chugged three apple juice cartons at once. Two other tables joined in.

Buddy table it was. 

“You’ve got to let Sandy tell your fortune,” Launchpad said as Huey set down his tray and climbed in beside him. “Sandy, tell my best friend’s brother what job he’s gonna have!”

Huey reeled back as Sandy Lucas, a scrawny five year old with enormous braces and exactly one badge turned to him, and a crinkled fortune-teller appeared under his nose. Her eyes were brown and desperately serious under her explosion of curls.

“Uh, green.”

Sandy turned to her paper, and Huey turned quickly to Launchpad. 

“Why isn’t Lilah Burkes here this weekend?” he said, “I’ve got a new buddy, and she’s…enthusiastic, but I really shouldn’t be turning my attention to a new pupil without–”

“That’s right! I heard we had a new face!” 

Someone tugged on Huey’s sleeve, and he glanced over his shoulder.

“Nineteen,” he said, barely looking at the numbers on the side of the folded mess. Sandy went back to work.

“But shouldn’t she go with someone who needs a new buddy?” Huey said, “Not that I don’t want to mentor her! A Woodchuck should take every opportunity to help a friendly new face, I just think, with a trip this important, I should be concentrating on my starcharting badge. I’ve been drafting my graphs for weeks, and– what with how rare this specific lunar eclipse is– it’s important I’m able to–”

Sandy tugged on his sash.

“Thirty six,” Huey said, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. He’d learned during Dewey’s Fortune-Teller Phase the higher numbers kept him busy longer.

“Sorry, no can do,” Launchpad said, “All the buddies were logged this afternoon, and everyone’s paired up. Hey, what flavor did you get?”

Huey blinked down as Launchpad ripped open the wax paper wrapped around a roll of fruit leather. Huey’s mouth watered.

“I actually didn’t get–”

Launchpad’s face fell as he took a huge bite out of the thick strip.

“I got strawberry!” he managed, “You should try one, they’re great!”

Paper crinkled around him. The kids had finished their dinner and every single one around him had begun tearing into their waxy papers of fruit leather.

Sandy tugged on his sleeve again.

“You’re gonna be an ice cream man in space,” she said seriously, showing him the paper. “You’ll feed all the astronauts that crunchy ice cream that makes your tongue dry.”

Huey watched in despair as she picked up her strawberry fruit leather and took a huge, slobbery bite. 

“Why don’t you have dessert?” she said around her full mouth. 

“I’m…not very hungry…”

“Benjamin was!” Launchpad pointed at a little boy with lank blonde hair. “He got two fruit strips!”

Benjamin grinned as he shoved the last chunk in his mouth.

Sandy tugged his sleeve again.

“What?” 

“Do you want some of mine?” 

Huey blinked. Sandy offered her fruit leather, and Huey watched a drip of saliva roll down the side.

“No…thank you,” he said, “But I really appreciate it.”

“Really,” she said, “My mommy packed me lots of extra snacks. One of them’s almost like this but different and you can have it if you want.”

Huey bit his lip.

“You keep that,” he said, “I have other snacks.”

She nodded, taking another bite.

“Did your mommy pack you snacks?” she asked.

He felt Launchpad still next to him, even as the sound around him tripled.

An odd answer arose in his throat. But you don’t say stuff like that to five year olds.

“I packed my own snacks,” he said simply, but Launchpad’s arm was pressing in on his right side, and someone kept kicking him under the table, and Sandy’s legs were swinging and bouncing the bench seat and Lisa Winters was still banging her fist on the table all the way across the hall and the room had gotten even smaller, he needed to ask Gretta if they’d done a renovation, because he had some complaints–

“Huey,” Launchpad interrupted as Sandy frowned. “What job did you get–”

“My mommy packs all my snacks,” Sandy said, picking at her braces.

“You said that already.”

“Yours probably doesn’t because you’re a big kid,” she said, “But my brother’s a big kid, and our mommy still packs our snacks. Sometimes she leaves drawings on our napkins, but my brother doesn’t like it. Does–”

“I need to check on my charts!” Huey scrambled out of the bench. 

He could hear Launchpad calling after him, and really, it was very rude to leave his tray for someone else to clean up, but the room had grown hot, sweat prickling at his neck just like it had in the caves as he ran for the exit.

He burst through the double doors, and the cool breeze cut through the midday warmth like a fresh breath. He didn’t stop, though. He stumbled down the steps, and the dirt path crunched under his feet as he ran past the bonfire pit and back up the walkway towards the cabins. The mountain reached high to his right, the thick treeline creeping from it right up to the low log wall they’d sat on earlier. 

The solar lamps swung lightly, and Huey took a deep breath of the pine air. Birds were deep in their song, loud now in the absence of campers, and Huey forced his breath to ease his shoulders down. The prickle of sweat that had gathered at the back of his neck cooled in the gentle breeze that slipped down the mountain, and Huey nodded slowly to himself as he set off down the path. 

He didn’t really want to go back to his cabin. The promise of still air and more ceilings had his head tingling. He tilted his head up to watch the clouds that seemed whiter than they did back home dapple the sky.

Open air above him. Open air behind him. Nothing like New Mexico.

He wandered up the path, humming  snatches of old tunes to fill the quiet. The cabins were silent as he meandered past them and up the path in the direction of the Big Lakes, where he knew the canoes lay in their racks, and grass reached all the way down to the gently lapping waves. (The Tiny Lakes were several miles Northeast.) He briefly considered making the quarter-mile walk to the waterside, one of his favorite spots to sit and watch fish leap for errant mosquitoes, but campers had to be in pairs to go near any bodies of water. Besides, he tended to get caught up watching lakes and rivers by himself, and lose track of time. Best to keep closer to camp, lest he miss curfew. 

Granite boulders cropped up from the treeline now, huge slabs that stacked their way up a low ridge, peppered with spruce saplings and creeping greens. Huey’d spent a memorable weekend practicing his bouldering skills on those rocks. They’d just taken up traveling with Scrooge, and some rather unfavorable comments had been made about his athletic skills. He’d come back with broken fingernails and his knees and fingertips scraped like nobody’s business, but the next desperate scramble up a mountainside mid-rockslide, he’d made the jump.

A white shadow swooped high overhead, and he looked up to watch the pale-headed eagle ghost overhead before disappearing into the trees to his right. He smiled a bit.

But the eagle wasn’t the only thing moving.

Something was climbing the rocks. 

He dropped to the dirt, ducking into the tall, patchy grass beside the trail. He peered through the stalks before he even thought to question why he was hiding. 

Adventuring was really starting to get to him. 

On second look, the small figure wasn’t unfamiliar at all. Ellie gathered herself before taking a running jump, lunging for the edge of the boulder above. Her fingers found purchase.

He rose.

“Ellie?”

The girl continued her scramble up the boulder, her little legs kicking as she pulled herself gracelessly up the ledge.

“Ellie!” 

She sized up her next jump. 

Huey glanced back up the darkening path before turning back to the little girl that crouched for the leap. He growled, throwing his hands in the air before darting off towards the treeline. She leapt, and her legs skidded out from underneath her on the granite. She rolled back, dragged by her heavy pack, and Huey leapt up the granite as she scrambled to her feet.

“Ellie!” 

“Eugh!”

She spun on her heel, clutching her chest.

“Who– oh!” 

Her scowl cleared as she caught sight of his face.

“Hey …buddy!” She grinned, and her tongue poked through her tooth gaps. “Whatcha doin’ out here? Shouldn’t you be at lunch or somethin’?”

Huey glared as he scrambled up the boulder, crossing his arms to frown down at her. 

“Shouldn’t you?” he said, “You’re not supposed to leave the Village without your buddy, especially off trail! It’s way too dangerous for a little girl!”

“Little girl?” Ellie snapped, “What’s that supposed to mean, punk?”

She stomped her foot, fists on her hips, and for a second, she could have been a much smaller Webby.

“I didn’t mean like that,” he said, “You’re just young. You’re not supposed to go exploring off the paths!”

She snorted.

“I don’t wanna brag,” she said, “But I think I know way more about exploring than you.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Oh, yeah? I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of some of the places I know all about.”

Huey rolled his eyes.

“Look, let’s just get you back to the Village, and you can tell me about– come back!”

Ellie bounded off, leaping up to catch the last granite slab. Her feet scrambled for purchase, and Huey sighed, watching her struggle to pull herself up. 

“This is why you need a buddy,” he said, “Your pack is too heavy, you’ll never be able to get up a ledge that tall with all that weight.”

“Why?” she grunted, “‘Cause I’m a girl?”

“No, because your grip is too narrow.”

Ellie hung for a moment. She widened her grip, and gave a little hup as she hauled herself up. 

“Thanks for the tip!” she said, dusting off her hands.

“Of course, that’s what buddies are– wait, no, come back down!”

She popped her head back over the edge.

“Look, buddy,” she said, “We got three options, here: One, you run back to snitch on me, I skidoo as soon as you turn your back, and then you’re kicked out of the Woodchucks for abandoning your innocent buddy to an almost certain bloody, gruesome death–”

“They wouldn’t–”

“Two, you forget you ever saw me, and I do my thing while you do yours, nobody asks any questions, and we never had this conversation!” 

“I can’t just let you go off into the woods! You could get lost!”

“Option three...” She shrugged. “You make sure your buddy doesn’t die in the wilderness all by herself and come with me!” 

“Ellie, I can’t–”

“Bye!”

“Wait!”

Ellie vanished over the rock, and Huey’s heart pounded. It would be dark in a few hours. Any number of things could be out there, from predators to cliff drop offs to coursing riptides in rivers to straight up exposure. She was just a kid, she wasn’t like his brothers or Webby. He couldn’t just leave her on her own to get stuck in some ditch or twist her ankle on a rock or get bit by some venomous spider she thought looked cool or get lost in a cave system nobody knew about and spend hours shouting his voice raw for help from people who didn’t even know he was lost–

It’d been a long week.

He shook himself before scrambling up the rock, diving into the treeline after her.

“They’re gonna realize we’re missing,” Huey panted, pushing through the brush. “The troop leaders are going to be worried, they’ll come looking for us!”

“There’s a bonfire orientation tonight,” she called over her shoulder.

“Exactly! They’ll see we’re not there, and–”

“It’s optional.” She turned to face him, walking backwards and throwing her arms out. “They’ll think we just didn’t want to go and went straight to bed.”

“But my bunkmates–”

“Will think you’re at the meeting!” She grinned toothily. “They won’t realize we’re missing ‘til breakfast! We’re cleared for adventure!”

Huey’s stomach swooped. She was right. If he couldn’t get her back soon, there’s no telling how far she could get before they sent out a search party. If they even did–

Don’t be ridiculous, he chided himself, Launchpad knows I’m here. He’ll be worried if I don’t show up for breakfast. 

Ellie spun back around, her backpack clanking, and she set off again at double speed through the trees. 

“That means we have all night for the first leg of our quest!” she said. 

Huey hauled after her.

“I don’t have my pack!” he realized, “I have no supplies, no rations, no–”

“Calm down, ya worry wart. I’ve got all the supplies we need right here.”

She thumped the side of her pack.

Huey watched in despair as she scrambled over a fallen log and dive into a fern. 

“Please, Ellie,” he tried, vaulting the log after her. “I’ve had a really, really long week, and I’ve been getting ready to map this eclipse and its meteor shower for months. Please just come back, and I’ll talk to LP and see if we can organize a sanctioned hike up to the Tiny Lakes, just for you. Please.” 

She popped out of the fern.

“You want to map the meteor shower?”

“Yes.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I’ve made all sorts of graphs, and we’re going to be watching the eclipse from the Bear Rock campgrounds, just south of the Village.”

He pointed.

“And from those campgrounds, if we don’t have any fires going, and if there’s enough shooting stars at the right time, we might be able to see the entire spread of the meteor shower across the Milky Way!”

She raised a brow.

“You’re a nerd.”

“I’ll have you know–”

“If you think that’s cool,” she said, “I’ve got something that’s gonna blow your brains!”

“I really hope you mean mind.”

“Yeah.”

She was off again. 

“Forget the Milky Way,” she called, “This is gonna really knock your socks off.”

Huey threw his hands in the air, running after her. 

She dodged through the pines, her feet crunching over twigs and blasting through branches. Huey and his brothers had been traveling with Uncle Scrooge for months, now, and Scrooge had been working with them on keeping their feet light. He, Louie, and Webby had grown fairly adept (Dewey was a bit of a lost cause, but he was doing his best, and that was what mattered), and Huey found he’d forgotten just how loud someone could be running through the woods. For all Ellie’s dramatic steps and furtive looks as she ran, Huey had no doubt every animal in a ten mile range could hear them coming. 

Huey abandoned subtlety, and he measured his breath as she stepped out into a small clearing, an outcropping of granite and grass.

She caught her breath, and Huey pulled up beside her.

“Can you at least tell me how far we’re going?” he said, glaring down at her.

“All the way to the top,” she said, pointing up and past him.

Huey already knew what he would see, but he followed her finger anyway, turning to slowly look up at the very peak of the mountain. 

“Silvertooth Ridge,” she said.

Huey balked.

“There’s no way!” he said, and she crossed her arms, cocking a hip to look up at him. “That’s miles of trail, there’s no way we can make it there and back before dark, it’d take hours!”

“Day and a half,” she corrected, and Huey felt the blood drain from his face. “If we go fast. And who said anything about trails? I’ve got a secret path.”

“Secret path? There’s no secret path, it’s all on the map.”

“Then why aren’t we allowed up there?”

“Because it’s dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s unscout…oh.”

Ellie nodded.

“Exactly.” 

She took him by the elbows, and he let her turn him up to face the mountain’s peak. 

“Think about it,” she said, “Sure, maybe other explorers and adventurers have gone up there. Maybe even the people who built Woodchuck Village. But why wouldn’t they mark their path down on the maps? So either they did make it to the top, and found something so mind-blowing they had to keep it a deadly secret upon pain of death, or, no one’s ever been up there. Which means we– no… you could be the first ever person to map the peak.”

It was stupid. It was faulty logic. It was kid stuff.

He couldn’t look away from the peak.

“I don’t have my journals,” he tried.

“I’ve got mine,” she said, “You can use my paper. Isn’t that what a real adventurer does? Use what’s available to them?”

It was going to be a warm night. Huey’d spent countless nights sleeping under the stars in much less pleasant conditions than this.

“Don’t you want to know why it’s called Silvertooth Ridge?” she said, and Huey knew he was done for.

“You’ve got trail rations?” he said.

“Yep!”

“Enough for two?”

“Totally.”

“First aid kit?” 

“Yep.”

“Water filter?”

“Yep.”

“Matches?”

She dug in her pocket before holding out a flint stick.

He sighed. 

“Since I’m not able to get you back to camp,” he said, “I suppose the only responsible thing to do would be to make sure that my Junior Junior buddy stays safe in the face of nature exploration and learning as she traverses the unknown.”

“Yes!” 

She flung her arms around his middle, and the weight of her pack had him stumbling back. He caught her hat as it tumbled back before patting her back.

“Okay,” she said, leaping back, “We’ve got to get moving if we’re gonna make it to the flats tonight.”

“The flats? That’s miles!” 

She looked up at the sky.

“We’d better get started then,” he said.

He patted down his pockets, taking a brief inventory.

“Multitool,” he said, “Compass, flashlight–”

“No flashlights!” she snapped, “We’re still too close to camp! They could see us on the mountainside and foil our plans.”

Huey raised a brow.

“It’s for predators.”

Her eyes lit up.

“What predators?”

“Bears, for one thing,” he said, and she fell in step beside him as he started off North. “Mountain lions. Coyotes. Wild boars–”

“You think I’m gonna get attacked by a pig?”

“Wild boars are nothing to laugh at,” Huey said, “Beyond being deeply territorial, wild hogs have been known to carry up to thirty viral and bacterial diseases, and forty parasites that are transmissible to people and pets.” 

“But can they transmit themselves into my BLT?”

Huey wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer. 

“Okay, smart guy,” she said, “But you forgot the most dangerous predator out there.”

“Are you gonna say you?” 

She stopped for a second, her eyes wide.

“You forgot the second most dangerous predator out there…” She started walking again, and Huey trudged after her. “A beast that lives in the highest peaks, so horrendous, so foul, so bloodthirsty, they had to strike all record of its existence for fear of the Woodchucks fleeing and never returning.”

Huey cocked an eyebrow.

“It’s a beast,” she went on, “And all beasts must feed. And with no Woodchuck prey wandering into its hunting grounds, it’s been left to starve, mindless with hunger, prowling the caves of Silvertooth Ridge until it can taste the sweet flesh of children fresh off the bone once more…”

“There’s no caves on Silvertooth Ridge.”

Ellie sighed.

“You’re really boring, you know that?”

“I’m not boring, I–”

“How would you know?” she said. 

“Because I’ve been told I’m very interesting–”

“No! About the caves!” 

Huey held up a branch for her to duck under before following. 

“Because it would be mapped,” he said, “It’s–”

“Maps can be wrong!” she pushed, “My uncle–”

“There’s no caves!”

Huey’s head rushed, and he stopped. His mouth had gone dry, his tongue feeling swollen, and his muscles twitched to slide off a pack that wasn’t there to grab a canteen that wasn’t there. He whipped off his cap to drag his hands through his hair. 

Ellie watched him.

“You know,” she said slowly, “On second thought, maybe you should stay in the Village. Adventuring’s not for everybody.”

“I’m fine.” He resettled his cap. “How much water do we have?”

She pulled the canteen out of her bag, passing it to him.

“I’ve got a water pump, too,” she said, watching him drink. “That way we don’t die of dysentery on the quest.”

“Dysentery takes a few days before symptoms arise,” he said between sips. “If it takes us two thirds of a day before we refill from contaminated water, we’d probably make it home without knowing.”

“Does that mean we can ditch the pump?”

Huey passed her back the canteen.

“If you die of dysentery, you won’t be able to go on any more adventures.”

Her eyes widened.

“Filter it is,” she said, stowing the canteen. “I gots big plans.”

Huey checked the sun’s position.

“Alright,” he said, defeated. “Let’s get started on those big plans.”

She crowed, and he followed her higher into the Sierras. 

‘Big Plans,’ apparently, included refusing the use of switchbacks. Ellie seemed perturbed at his suggestion that they take the easier but slightly longer route, as opposed to her plan, which was a straight, vertical climb up the mountainside. He spent the first two hours hoping that between their scramble up granite slopes, their sticky, pricked hands from sappy pine boughs, and her endless chatter about nonsensical trips she’d be taking someday, she might burn herself out and finally acquiesce to sneaking up the mountain’s face diagonally. By hour five, his hopes had been dashed.

Her energy tank prevailed longer than his, and he almost wept with joy as she pulled him up over a particularly steep slope and they turned to look on the sweeping sea of granite flats before them. 

“Woah,” she breathed, and he couldn’t help but agree with her.

For the moment, they’d left the forest behind, and the granite flats extended for what looked like ahead, sloping gently upwards to the right, where the edge of more forested areas met the stone. The land ahead of them looked like a desert of cool, grey stone, coming together to form deep, smooth cracks where the flat boulders met. The landscape was dappled with enormous boulders, some bigger than Uncle Donald’s car, just…sitting on the surface. Spindly, ever-determined foxtail pines broke through the stone itself in twisted knots, growing sideways, curled, broad, and tall in their quest for life, scattered across the flats like pillars.

Huey’d always liked them. Each one was uniquely distinct in its shape making them excellent landmarks in a fairly monotonous region, and they were more than a little inspiring. Nature wanted to live. 

“Look at the rocks,” Ellie said, stepping further onto the stone. “They look like someone just dropped them there! Like giants playing tennis that just forgot to pick up their balls.”

“You’re not wrong,” Huey said. He took the pack she slid off, and he followed as she rushed to the nearest one beside a tree. He boosted her to the best foothold before crawling up after her.

“There were giants here?” she said as she reached the top.

“No, they’re called glacial erratics.” 

“Oh.”

“They were carried here by ice sheets, that’s why they’re different from the bedrock itself.”

She gasped.

“How much ice does this place get?” 

She whirled around to look, as though she might spot an enormous glacier creeping in the way they’d come.

“That was thousands of years ago,” he said, “But there are still glaciers here, much higher up.”

She nodded solemnly before tugging at the back of the pack Huey wore. He turned, kneeling to let her rifle through it before dragging out a beat up, stained journal– the ten cent spiral kind he’d used in school– and a pen. A crude picture of a dragon had been scrawled on the front in smeared marker, and she flipped it open to the inside cover. 

Huey couldn’t make out most of the messily scrawled, bullet-point list. The unsteady cursive looked more like hieroglyphics than the English he assumed it to be, and he leaned in to re-read what seriously looked like ‘Wrestle a penguin,’ written just below what he was fairly confident she’d scrawled ‘De-vampire a vampire.’ She wrote slow enough that he was able to make out her newest addition, ‘Ride a glacier,’ before she flipped the journal closed with a satisfied grin.

“Bucket list?” He turned to let her shove it back into the pack.

“Weekend list,” she said, “For when I’m big enough to go along.”

“Go where?”

“Family trips,” she said cryptically as Huey sat on the edge of the rock. 

She dropped next to him. 

“Your parents leave you at home?” he asked.

She kicked her legs, scowling at the rocky plains.

“Mom doesn’t trust us with anything.” 

Huey was a little taken aback at the heat in her voice. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he’d trust her on one of their adventures, either, but the kind of travel normal people did wasn’t anything akin to the kind of travel he did, so maybe that wasn’t fair. Surely her mother could handle her at an airport, or going up the Eiffel Tower, or whatever normal families did. 

She didn’t have anything more to add, though, and he squinted off to the west. 

“I think there’s a creek,” he said, pointing to the fine ribbon that wound its way between the stones. “We should refill there.”

She leaned around him to look, blinking into the deepening orange light of the sun. The promise of impending darkness neared, and he’d been meaning to do a total supply inventory before night. He checked his watch. 

He was always surprised by the summer hours and the sun’s persistence to hang in the sky even into evening hours.

“It’s nearly eight,” he said, “We shouldn’t go any further than here for tonight.”

Ellie huffed.

“But we’re almost at the Tiny Lakes!” She squinted at the treeline in the distance as if she might be able to spot the lakes from here. “No way, we gotta keep going!”

“We’re still at least four miles from the Lakes, and besides, I don’t want to set up camp in total darkness.”

“What would you do if your eyes were cut out of your skull and you were left with only your sense of smell, sound, and touch?”

“Please tell me that’s theoretical.”

“How would you set up camp then?” she said, “You need to practice!”

“In case my eyes get gouged out?”

She nodded enthusiastically as he gauged the distance to the ground.

“Is that something…you prepare for often?” he said, slipping off the pack and handing it to her before dropping to the ground.

“Sometimes I get up really early in the morning and shower and get dressed and stuff with all the lights off and my eyes closed and pretend I have to be really, really quiet in case zombies hear and attack our fortress.”

She tossed the pack down to him.

“Your bathroom?”

“It’s the most defensible.”

Growing up with Dewey was the only preparation he got before she let herself fall from the boulder. He caught her around the waist. 

“Okay,” he said, setting her on her feet. “Go find a defensible position to set up camp for the night. Leave the bag, I’m going to get us some water.”

“You’re bossy,” she said. She dug in her bag a moment before tossing him the canteen, and he caught the tangled mess of tubing and absolutely vintage-looking hand-pump that followed.

“Don’t go far!” he said. 

“Okay, Mom.” 

Huey shook his head as she set off across the stone, climbing the smaller rocks and leaping across the divots.

He watched her for a moment. Her arms were wild, but feet steady as she made her way, and for all her wide fantasies and the cacophony she left in her wake, he could almost imagine her living the life she wanted. She might even do well on a proper adventure. Surely she could keep up with Dewey, maybe even giving Webby’s endurance a run for her money. Louie’d certainly have a field day with someone else to back up his fibs. 

He snorted at the expression on Scrooge’s face in his mind’s eye at her piercing voice and too-quick feet. He’d probably put her on a harness and leash like errant toddlers at amusement parks.

His chest panged as he wondered again what his family was doing. He took a deep breath of the cooling air as he set off.

He reveled for a moment in the sudden lack of voices, the crickets, wind through the high pines in the distance, and padding of his feet the only sounds. As he drew nearer, he discovered the stream was much deeper as it cut through the stone, fast flowing, clean, and ideal for drinking.

He lowered himself into the small crevice, and the snow runoff of the high mountain stream was cold over his feet as he dipped a toe in. He sat on one side, one foot in the river and the other propped on the stone across as dropped the end of the tube into the clear water, took up the pump, and let the tension drain out of his shoulders with the repetitive motion. 

It wasn’t that much unlike an adventure with his family, he supposed, it was just…not a Woodchuck Weekend. That was okay. If he was with his family, he might even enjoy this. It was certainly tamer than any of the high-stakes, fast-paced scrambles for his life they’d had in the last five months. Dewey and Webby would be bored out of their minds. 

Come to think of it, though, Dewey and Webby would probably be making the most of it. Ellie had their same zeal, and Huey actually sent up a thanks that they weren’t here. He didn’t want to even consider what kind of shenanigans his new buddy would get up to with Enabler In Chief Dewey Duck to egg her on. Or the other way around, honestly.

Huey shook his head. 

He found his thoughts wandering back to the others, tucked up at home in the mansion. The events of the last week had left their bedroom more than a little tense, mostly from Louie, but Huey couldn’t help struggling to push away a twinge in his chest at the thought. Dewey keeping secrets wasn’t a shocking revelation. He was, in fact, rather infamous for hoarding information from them– not that he could ever manage to keep a secret. He just wanted everyone to know that he knew something they didn’t. His ability to sneak behind their backs was probably helped by Webby, and somehow, her knowing stung more than he thought it would. 

Dewey told someone else, and didn’t tell him. 

The filter was slow to fill, and he turned his thoughts back to the present around him, listening to the eagles that shrieked in the distance as the canteen gradually grew heavier.

Ellie hollered something, and Huey sighed, tucking away the tubes and sealing the canteen. 

She’d wandered a bit further than he’d liked, dipping out of sight with the gentle slope of the stone beside three twisted, diagonally growing pines. Another lay over the stone, knocked down long ago by what looked like a lightning strike.

“Ta-Da!” she exclaimed, “Jazz hands!” 

He smiled despite himself. 

“Good spot,” he said, peering around. “Nice combination of grass patch for cushioning and fallen pine needles for insulation. Plenty of sustainably harvestable dead wood for a fire. Excellent branches at a good height to hang up food…perfect view of the sky.”

“Fire time?” 

“Fire time.”

His legs were sore, but she was enthusiastic in their stick hunt, and didn’t complain like his brothers at the labor of breaking up the branches from the dead tree. He cleared out a pit as she sorted the wood by size– narrating the whole time, of course– but he was surprised at how quickly, if not a bit clumsily, she set up the tinder bed and kindling in a cone. He did end up having to take over with the flint striker eventually, but they had a nicely crackling fire by the time the sky turned from deep blue to inky black.

He sat back to look from the fire to the open sky with no small bit of satisfaction. She dropped down across from him, toeing at the warming rocks around the fire pit. 

“So,” he said, “After dinner we can look over supplies.”

As the word dinner, her stomach growled so loudly even he could hear it.

“Alright, what rations did you pack?” he said.

She dug in her pack for a moment, and Huey’s heart sank as he watched her withdraw her hands from the bag.

“A meal fit for wilderness kings!” she exclaimed, holding out the two cans. “Wild caught tuna, and barbeque baked beans!”

“Those are your rations?” Huey groaned, “No wonder your bag was so heavy.”

She snatched her cans back to her chest. 

“Proves what you know! Adventurers and explorers used to survive off this stuff for years!” 

“Canned tuna?”

“Probably.”

“Canned goods aren’t an adventurer’s first choice,” Huey said, “They’re bulky and way too heavy compared to their quantity and low nutritional value.”

“Gold miners survived off of beans and stuff for years, and they’re super strong and carried all their stuff like us!”

Huey plucked up a stick to prod at the fire.

“Depends on the gold rush,” he said, “In the Klondike–”

“You know about the Klondike?” 

She sat up quickly, and he found himself abruptly missing Webby again, despite the slight not bitterness.

“Sure,” he said, adding wood to the fire. “It’s a well documented period in history, and–”

“They ate beans!” she interrupted, “And bacon, and a lot of flour–”

“They didn’t just eat flour ,” he laughed, “It was for recipes. And their beans were dried from sacks, not cans.”

She looked at him suspiciously. 

“Dry beans? Like raw?”

Huey reached out a hand for her cans, and she tossed them across the fire neatly. She was a rapt audience, watching with wide eyes as he explained the humbler details of the miner lifestyle that he’d picked up from his uncle in the last few months. He picked his words carefully, though. People tended to get weird once they found out exactly where he lived and who was in his family line, and he wasn’t sure he could handle this particular girl’s doubtlessly unending line of questions about the richest man in the world, adventurer in chief, etcetera. 

She was a much more enthusiastic listener than his brothers when he really dug into a topic though, asking surprisingly bright questions about the region and traditions that had him scraping his memory for answers. She seemed more fascinated in day-to-day life for the miners than the rush itself. As they talked, he taught her how to pop open cans without can openers– because of course she forgot one– and showed her how to roast a can of beans in the firepit. She moved closer to him as conversation drifted to other famous expeditions (she was worryingly fascinated in the Donner Party, who’d been lost several hours away in the same mountain range), and together, they balanced the smaller can on his knee and picked with their fingers at the tuna chunks until the baked beans foamed over.

It felt a little scandalous, eating luxuriously spiced beans on an adventure, no matter how tame it was, and he could only imagine the chagrin on Uncle Scrooge’s face at the idea of cinnamon, brown sugar, and paprika anywhere near “trail rations.” The dry tuna chunks were a little more his speed.

The beans were messier without forks, and the sky had settled to deep black by the time they’d done their best to wipe their hands and faces and turned to look up. Ellie was particularly fascinated with the stretch of Milky Way, visible in its oceanic waves across the night sky in blues and whites. White starlight shone bright on the pale stone outside their circle of firelight, casting the flats a ghostly hue against the black backdrop.

Ellie didn’t seem to mind the otherworldly setting. The day seemed to have taken its toll on her after all, and she’d grown more subdued as the evening grew on, listening to his explanation of the Aztec’s ahuizotl, a probable opossum-turned-mythological-creature-of-legend. She fell silent after dinner, and when he asked, she just shrugged.

“I miss my brother,” was all she offered.

Huey nodded, and their camp was still for a moment.

“So,” Huey said, “Does your mom travel for work?” 

She shrugged again.

“Where does she go?”

“Nowhere I’m gonna go,” she said, “And once I’m big enough, I’m gonna go everywhere!” 

She flopped onto her back, her arms painting the darkening sky.

“I’ll find the last mud-dragon of Cairo,” she said, “I’ll be the first person to fly around the world in a single day! I’m gonna get a seashell from the lost city of Atlantis!” 

Huey wrestled a grin off his face.

“Isn’t Atlantis a myth?” he said.

She shrugged.

“All myths are based on something,” she said, “My uncle says even if a story isn’t true, the world is big enough that if you look hard enough, you can find something close enough. Then you’re part of the myth forever, and that means you’re part of history forever.”

Huey hummed, thinking of the mythological ahuizotl Webby had befriended last month.

“If you prove it’s real, though,” he said, “That means it isn’t a myth anymore.”

“A dragon doesn’t stop being a mythical creature just because it's real,” she said, letting her arms fall back to the stone. “I’m gonna be remembered forever.”

Huey looked at her.

“You want to be a myth?”

She shrugged.

“I wanna live a big life.”

“Doing what?”

“Something exciting.”

“That sounds lonely.”

She snorted.

“I’m not gonna be alone,” she said, “That’s the best part about having a brother. He literally can’t get away from me. Built in best friend. Sucker.”

Huey leaned back on his hands, smiling a bit. She wasn’t wrong.

“How come he’s not here?” he said, “Is he traveling with your mom?”

She laughed.

“Yeah, right,” she said, “He’s grounded.”

“Is he a Woodchuck, too?”

“Barely.”

“What’d he do to get grounded?”

She kicked her feet into the air, tucking her legs up to her chest like a bug.

“Got us caught, that’s what,” she said darkly.

Huey glanced down at her.

“Caught?”

She mumbled, but he was pretty sure he picked up the word fireworks.

“At least your mom let you come on the trip,” Huey said, “I’ve only been grounded once, and I had to stay home.”

“Ha.”

Ellie sat up. 

“My mom doesn’t let me do anything.” 

Huey narrowed his eyes.

“She didn’t let you come, did she?”

Ellie turned, and he’d spent enough time around Louie to recognize the look on her face in his sleep.

“You snuck out?”

Her grin widened.

“She was gonna let me go before I was grounded, so it’s not like I’m in danger or anything. And the eclipse is only one night! It wouldn’t happen the same time as the meteor shower for another twenty nine years! She’ll understand.”

“She’ll be worried about you!” Huey said, “She–”

“Mom won’t even know I’m gone,” she said, pushing herself up on her elbows. “She probably doesn’t even remember she has two kids, she’s so busy running around everywhere.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Huey said, swallowing something odd rising in his throat. “Moms love their kids. That’s a mom’s whole job.”

She shook her head.

“Moms just boss their kids to get ‘em out of their way,” she said, “That’s it.”

“My uncle does more than that,” he said, busying himself adding wood to the fire. “He doesn’t just take care of us, he makes our lives great. He’s our friend.”

“Moms can’t be their kids’ friends,” she snapped, “They’re just there to tell you what to do and what you’re not allowed to do. I hate my mom.”

Huey nearly dropped the branch he held.

“You can’t…” He swallowed again. “How can you hate your mom? She’s your mom.” 

Ellie flicked a stray bean into the fire, watching it sizzle. 

“What about you?” she asked, “Are you friends with your mom?”

Huey picked up the branch again.

“I never knew my mom,” he told the fire, “Before I was born, she…”

He dug into the ashes.

“She’s gone,” he said simply, “Our uncle raised us.”

“The uncle who was a twin?”

He nodded.

The fire was very loud for a long moment, and he braced himself. He tried not to tell people, because everyone always got really uncomfortable when they found out, like them bringing it up made it happen, or like they were waiting for him to burst into tears or something. They always apologized, and then he’d have to comfort them because they felt bad, and then they’d tell him he was brave or something, like it wasn’t everything he’d ever known. It’s not like he’d lost anyone. He’d never had it. He didn’t know any different.

Ellie snapped a twig in half.

“Do you think you would be?” she asked.

He looked over at her. Her face was mild, but it wasn’t sopping in the pity he’d been expecting.

“Would be what?”

“Do you think you’d be friends with your mom?” she said.

He let the breath go.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, “I don’t really know much about her. My uncle said she was loud. And she liked the color blue. I think she was nice.”

“Well, I think you’re really cool,” Ellie said, “And really nice. I think she’d like to be your friend.”

The woodsmoke was making Huey’s eyes itch.

“Thanks,” was all he said.

They fell back into silence for a moment, Ellie looking back up at the galaxy overhead.

“I wish we had s’mores,” she said suddenly, and Huey was startled into a laugh.

“It’s probably for the best,” he said, “Sugar would keep us from a restful sleep, and we need a good one if we’re going to make it to the peak tomorrow.”

“Even just one?”

“Would you really have just one?”

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Oh!” she said, “You know what I do have…”

He watched her drag her pack over, rooting around in the bottom.

“I didn’t pack s’mores,” she said, “But I did bring this!”

Plastic crinkled, and she grinned as she withdrew a fist-sized, brightly colored package. 

“Roll-Up Fruit Tape!” she exclaimed, ripping into the wrapping. “Tropical Tongue Tie-Die Tattoos, they’re the kind that leave stamps on your tongue in animal shapes, but they never really work.”

“Weren’t those discontinued in the early 2000’s?”

“No! Aw, really?”

She unfolded the flat, thin, waxy-looking fruit tape stuck on the wax paper, decorated in unintelligible ink-stamps. She laid it out on her knee, smoothing it before looking up at him.

“It’s strawberry,” she said, looking up at him. “Do you like strawberry?” 

His heart clenched.

“Yeah,” Huey said, “Yeah, I like strawberry.”

Ellie was right. The stamps didn’t work, but the fire burned low as they tore off uneven strips, laughing themselves stupid as they pressed the artificial strawberry tape onto their tongues, holding their mouths open until they drooled to see who could get the best stamp. Ellie swore his were awful, and Huey swore his had to be better than the purple smears across her tongue, but no mirrors meant they had to take each other’s word, and Ellie learned he could touch his purple tongue to his nose and Huey learned she snorted when she laughed too hard. 

They washed out their cans in the stream, stringing them up with their sunscreen and bug spray in a plastic bag in a tree a ways away to the north– always practice good bear safety– and turned in.

The three trees above meant the fallen needles added a bit of padding around their roots, relief from the hard granite beside the fire, and they unzipped Ellie’s sleeping bag into a square over the needles. Her blanket, unforgiving wool and surprisingly industrial, was big enough for them both to stretch out under and warmer than anything he had, but she just smirked when he asked where she got it, saying she stole it. 

“Do we need to put out the fire?” She yawned, turning to look up at the galaxy above again.

He bunched the top of the sleeping bag under their heads.

“Usually, yes,” he said, “But we’re on stone, and the embers will keep us warm until the sun comes up.”

She nodded, wiggling onto her side as her eyes slipped closed. 

“Huey?” she mumbled.

“Hm?”

“I like being your friend.”

Huey glanced down at her. She’d tucked her arm under her head, and her face smooshed as her expression went slack. She looked a bit like Louie fifteen minutes into a film on the couch, and he smiled, looking back up to the stars. 

“I like being your friend, too.”

She didn’t reply, her breaths grown slow and deep, and Huey smiled a bit. The blanket smelled familiar, and it reminded him a bit of home as he curled up on his side, bringing it to his face.

He wondered idly if Lilah would be coming back next Buddy Weekend, and found himself sort of hoping the answer might be no.  

It was nice to have a friend. 

“Huey…” 

He batted Dewey’s hand off his shoulder. 

“Huey, wake up…” 

He flipped over, not bothering to wonder what had Louie up this early. 

“Huey!” 

Huey jerked awake, the dark world around him framing the face hovering right in front of his.

“Webby…what…?”

“Shut up,” she hissed, and Huey blinked.

His vision cleared, and Ellie clapped a hand over his mouth as he opened it again.

The fire had burned down to embers, the blackened logs crackling in orange veins as the glow just barely lit Ellie’s face where she still lay near to the ground. Her eyes were wide, though, her pupils huge as she looked off into the dark to the north.

He drew her hand from his mouth, and she shot him a warning look before he nodded.

“There’s something out there,” she breathed, and Huey rubbed his eyes.

“There’s a lot out there,” he whispered back, “Cougars, elk, deer–”

“It wasn’t a deer,” she whispered, “It was big.” 

“Black bears are native here,” he said, laying back down. “They–”

“I saw it!” she whispered, “It wasn’t a bear, it was walking on two legs…”

Huey closed his eyes.

“They’re frequently bipedal. Is the rest of the food in your bag canned?” 

She nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re fine,” he said, “I’m sure it’s interested in the leftover cans we hung up.  They’ll leave us alone.”

“It was looking at us!” she hissed, “I saw its eyes.”

Huey frowned.

“How far?” 

“Far,” she said, “I think it was a ahuizotl.”

“Lay back down,” Huey said, closing his eyes. “The woods are big, and it can be scary, but there’s nothing to worry about if you’re well prepared.”

“What if it was the Stump Man?” she said, gripping his sleeve. “Or the drowned ghouls from Mary’s Crib? The lake’s aren’t that far away. Or leftover Donners, they could still be hungry…”

“Ellie.”

“Someone was whistling.”

Huey opened his eyes.

“As in, you heard something that sounded like whistling?”

“No,” she whispered, “Like, actually whistling.”

He couldn’t help the chill that sank into his belly.

“I’m sure it was a bat,” he said.

“No, it sounded like a person-whistle.”

“There’s nobody out here,” he said, “That’s one of the best parts about being up here. It’s dark, and we’re so used to being around people that we hear something we don’t understand and our brain fills it in with people, because we’re used to people sounds.”

“I know what I heard.”

“Do you think it was a monster because you really think there’s a monster out here in a semi-populated island with a kid’s camp four hour’s walk away, or because you want there to be a monster because monsters are cool?”

Ellie scowled, but her hand was tense in his sleeve, and he sighed. 

“Go back to sleep,” he said, “I’ll keep watch for a bit.”

“We should watch in shifts so we don’t get ambushed and slaughtered in our sleep,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Huey yawned, “Let’s do that.”

She laid back down as he flipped onto his belly. He propped his chin up on his arms, and he felt Ellie tug the blanket higher up her shoulder as she curled in a bit closer. Her knees brushed his side, her bangs tickling his elbow as he scanned the blackness outside their camp. 

Her breath evened out, and he rested his cheek on his forearm. An owl sailed over the rocks some ways out, but other than that, no motion caught his eye. His lids grew heavy listening to Ellie’s slow snores beside him. 

Owl, Huey decided. They probably could make a sound like whistling.

An owl cried overhead, though, and his last thought before drifting off was that it really sounded quite like a normal owl.

Chapter Text

“Alright,” Huey said the next morning, “Not an owl.”

“I told you!” Ellie said, kicking the shredded sunscreen bottle. 

Huey knelt to pick up the punctured can of bug-spray. The broken metal on the inside caught the early dawn light, and Huey chewed his lip.

“Bears are attracted to almost any scent,” he said, “That’s why we strung them up at a distance. It didn’t come into our camp, and that’s a success!”

Ellie looked between the torn up remnants of the plastic bag they’d hung from the tree and their camp, some fifty yards away. She turned to the granite bedrock, and Huey watched her pace in a circle, widening her perimeter with each circuit. 

“We really should get going,” he said, “We’ve got miles to go, and I want to be able to get lunch by the Lakes during the heat of the day.”

She stopped, looking at the stone.

“Ellie?”

She pointed at the ground.

“Do these look like bear prints to you?”

Huey shook his head, padding over.

“Ellie, there’s lots of things out here, I’m sure…oh.”

She took a step back from the granite, stained with leftover, creamy sunscreen in the shape of four long, parallel streaks.

Huey swallowed.

“Those look like…”

“They look like fingers,” Ellie said.

“They’re way too long to be fingers,” Huey said. He held his own hand over the stains. “Look, each one is nearly twice as long as my whole hand. Whatever it is, if they were fingerprints, it’d have to be–”

“Enormous,” Ellie said, “Easily big enough to swallow us whole.”

“Nothing’s going to swallow us whole,” Huey said. 

“You don’t know that. There’s tons out there. It could be Old Ned, the serpentine, scaly, flesh eating boy– he could have followed us up from the lake, or the Mud Monger, a gigantic, bone crunching sasquatch covered in mud that reeks of the bodies he’s devoured, or the Grassman, a three-toed monstrosity from Ohio that eats stray hikers alive–”

“Don’t you know any vegetarian cryptids?” Huey brushed off his hands, turning her back towards camp. “Besides, how would a three-toed monster from Ohio leave four fingerprints in Calisota?”

Ellie huffed.

“Stuff ends up out of place all the time.” Ellie flipped her hair, but let him lead her back to their cold fire pit. 

“I’ll bet we could make it to the Lakes by lunch if we start now,” he said.

“We’re just gonna leave it here?” Ellie said as Huey moved to their blankets.

“What do you want to do?” he said, “Chase it down?” 

“Uh…duh?”

Huey shook his head.

“What would you do once you caught it?” He flipped the sleeping bag aright, zipping it. “Would you bring it back home?”

She crossed her arms, watching him roll up the sleeping bag.

“I know someone who could take care of it,” she said haughtily.

“So do I,” Huey sighed, “Arguably more qualified, if we want to split hairs–”

“Ha! Show’s what you know!”

“But we can deal with it on our own,” Huey said. 

“How?”

“By leaving it alone.”

“Ugh, come on–”

“This is its territory,” Huey said, “It was probably a bear that just made some weird streaks. It left us alone, so we’ll leave it alone. Here.”

She caught the sleeping bag he tossed, and he couldn’t catch exactly what she grumbled as she strapped it onto her pack, but he was sure it wasn’t particularly savory to his character. She shook out her hair, resettling her cap before propping her fists on her hips. 

“Do we need to restart the fire for breakfast?” she said, and Huey glanced at her pack.

“That depends on what you packed for breakfast.” He vaguely dreaded the answer.

“Um…”

He reached for her bag, but she darted forward, dragging it to her chest and digging through it. 

“We’ve got options,” she said.

“Let guess: more beans?”

She pulled out a jar.

“Pickles,” she said, “And I’ve got some dry mashed potatoes.”

“We were carrying around glass this whole time?”

She looked at the jar.

“Don’t worry, this bad boy won’t break. My granny pickled these herself. We’ve taken these jars everywhere.” 

She popped the lid as Huey sighed. He swung the pack onto his back, withdrawing his compass. 

“We should be careful of those,” he said, “The high salt content could lead to dehydration.”

“Boo.”

“Alright, due north from here.” He accepted a pickle. “Tiny Lakes, here we come!” 

The pickles were good, he had to admit. They tasted a bit like the ones Uncle Donald used to make during his pickling phase when they were younger, fresh and briny, and he and Ellie passed the jar back and forth as they traversed the granite bedrock flats. Speed aside, the hike the day before had been a walk in the park– literally– for Huey, and it seemed Ellie’s shorter legs hadn’t been deterred either. She skipped back and forth across the ravines in the stone, climbing up rocks when she could, all the while asking question after question after question.

She was particularly interested in his descriptions of Duckburg. He was careful to avoid any details about his particular living situation, not interested in a full-scale interrogation– but the pictures he painted of the town were vivid, and she took particular delight in Funso’s and its arcade. She told him about the farm she lived on– that checked out– and about the forests and fields around. After several of her stories, he found himself grateful that he hadn’t been born an animal on her farm, but she knew each and every one’s name, their favorite treats, and exactly how they liked to be petted, so Huey let it pass. 

She was better company today, at least. She seemed to settle a bit with the open space, and without the burden of her pack she spent less time attached to his hip. Untethered, she spent two full hours running ahead just at the edge of his vision, catching lizards, hurling rocks down the slope, and leaving him to take in the blue mountain range ahead. 

Traveling with Uncle Scrooge, he was one of the newbies, learning the ropes, taking in as much information as possible and after so long, he’d be lying if he didn’t admit it was nice to be the expert in the situation for once. Lilah Burkes had never been particularly interested in him, to be truly honest. She loved the campfire songs, and she loved canoeing, but any attempt he’d made to teach her proper technique, or explain the history of boating had left her dull-eyed, and without fail she’d disappear only to be heard laughing with the other little girls at the lanyard table. 

Ellie’d filled an entire hour yesterday grilling him about boat construction techniques used by stampeders in the Klondike. 

“Did they always have partners?” she’d asked as they stomped through gravel on a riverbank.

“Always,” he’d answered, skipping a rock into the fast-running current. “It was impossible to operate the whip saw alone, so stampeders had to team up.”

She hadn’t taken to that answer.

“There had to be some who did it alone…”

He’d shaken his head. 

“Impossible. Unless they carried their own lumber up the entire Chilkoot Trail, prospective miners had to cut down trees on the bank of Lindeman Lake for wood. They literally couldn’t make it to Dawson without help.”

“I bet someone could do it.” She’d tossed her own rock into the river. “If they were super determined and super smart.”

Huey’d cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Are you hoping to?” he’d laughed.

“Me? No, I…” She’d stopped to consider. “Yeah, I bet I could if I was older.” 

“They probably wouldn’t let you cut down the trees, now. And you’d need a partner.”

“I’d have a partner.”

“Your brother, right?” Huey’d said, “Your built-in partner?”

“Oh.” She’d blinked. “Yeah, him, too.”

He was drawn from his thoughts by a sharp whistle. Speaking of partners…

A downward slope in the bedrock ahead blocked his view, and Ellie had disappeared again beyond it. He shook his head, trotting forward.

“Ellie!” he said, “I told you, you’ve got to stay in sight!”

A sharp whistle, like the signals Webby was always trying to get them to learn, sounded off to his right.

He pulled up, frowning in that direction. The granite extended to the east just the same as the path they’d come, scattered with huge rocks and twisted trees. The forest had finally begun to near the stone, but Ellie had, at long last, acquiesced into taking switchbacks up the mountainside, so they’d elected to hug the treeline as long as possible, taking advantage of the flat landscape. 

He wasn’t quite in the mood for peek-a-boo, though.

“We need to be moving north,” he called, “This way!”

 She didn’t reply, and he could imagine her now, probably ducked behind the enormous boulder beside the sideways growing tree wedged over a tight, shadowy crevice, her hand clapped over her mouth as she giggled. 

He rolled his eyes.

“Ellie, come on.”

The whistle came again, from behind him this time.

She was fast. He spun to look at the barren stone behind him. 

“Ellie, I’m serious,” he called.

The whistle came again, three sharp, swooping notes from his other side, echoing over the rocks.

He whirled on his heel. 

Something shifted in the shadow under the boulder. 

“That’s a great way to get bit by a snake,” Huey said, stomping towards the boulder. “Or venomous spiders. People think wolves are dangerous, but it's actually much more common to accidentally reach into a web or– eugh!”

A foul smell washed over him, and he hesitated. Way worse than Uncle Donald’s B.O. at its absolute worst, or Louie after a taco night that Webby got to spice. It smelled like sandwich meat forgotten at the back of the fridge, or a sarcophagus that had been sealed properly and preserved a wealthy pharaoh a little too well. 

His eyes watered, and he sneezed, clapping a hand over his nose.

“Forget which way’s north, genius?”

Huey nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Ellie’s voice behind him. He spun so fast that he stumbled, leaping away from the rock to look at Ellie where she stood by the granite slope he’d last seen her disappear behind. Her hip was cocked, and she held her hands cupped together.

“Look!” she called, “I caught another blue-tailed one!” 

Huey turned to look back at the boulder with its deep shadow beside the crevice. 

“Did you find one, too?” she said, trotting towards him.

“No,” he said firmly, “I…no.”

Some racoon or possum probably crawled under it and died a long time ago, he thought. He didn’t need her poking it with a stick. 

“Come on,” he said, turning her by her shoulder back north. “Show me your lizard.”

“It’s a skink!” 

The sun was high in the sky by the time they finally crossed back into the tree line, and both of their skin had flushed a bright pink from the sun. Ellie’s cheeks and forehead were on their way to a true red red, and the warmth of the summer finally caught up with them as they trekked through the dappled shade of the alpine. He and Ellie both doffed their caps, and after a long debate, they shucked off their merit badge sashes. They were both heavily laden, they’d reasoned, and with so much further to climb, they didn’t need the extra layers to hold in the heat. Ellie’s bag was already heavy enough that the extra weight didn’t even register to Huey, and they popped open their collars as they walked. 

The bandanas stayed around their necks, though. It was important they were recognizable as Woodchucks, they agreed, despite the sweat that had gathered at their necks and back. 

Huey turned them westward for another quarter of a mile. They’d emptied their canteen an hour ago, their throats dry from the pickles they’d cleaned out this morning, and he was only running off of the map in his mind’s eye, but as they crested the grassy hill, they should be nearing–

“The Lakes!” Ellie exclaimed, and Huey couldn’t help feeling the same relief. 

Nestled in a tiny hollow spread the three Tiny Lakes. They were more like ponds, if he was being honest, just wide and deep enough to be called swimming holes with several granite boulder islands, but with the long, soft grass around the gully and swaying limber pines shading their banks, it looked like a haven. Frogs croaked as Ellie laughed, and then Huey was chasing her down the bank, their feet tripping in the cool grass as they tumbled into the glen. 

They were on the same page. 

Huey tossed her pack to the grass in a patch of sun, and they ripped the bandanas from their necks, stripping down to their underclothes faster than they could blink. Ellie’s tank top was streaked with sweat, and Huey was sure his shoulders and back would burn, but the promise of cool water after the summer’s heat and a reprieve from the sticky sweat was more than he could resist, and his longer legs carried him to the shore faster than her. 

Ellie hurled herself further past him, though, crashing headfirst into the water. She surfaced with a gasp, her bangs flat over her eyes.

“It’s freezing!” she shouted, and Huey, up to his thighs, took a deep breath before throwing himself in. 

The Lakes ran into each other before spilling out down a rushing stream, and the current was just enough to splash against. In the clear water, they could dive deep, their eyes wide open to scout the sunken logs and stones like they were abandoned temples, which the rainbow trout did not appreciate, but if they held still long enough, the minnows gathered to nibble their toes, delighting Ellie to no end. 

The sun crept ever higher, and Huey scouted for submerged dangers before they climbed granite islands to clasp slippery hands, counting down before catapulting themselves back into the lake with twin crashes.

They learned Huey was a better swimmer, but Ellie was a better jumper. They learned Huey could hold his breath longer, but Ellie’s eyesight was better, and together they held their breath and scrounged the submerged watergrass at the base of the boulder islands for bright rocks and utterly perturbed crayfish. They learned Ellie could shout louder underwater, but Huey’s longer arms weren’t necessarily an advantage wrestling, and she was quick to dunk him by his head and scramble up his shoulders.

They learned exactly how long they could swim before their limbs ached and stomachs rumbled, and only dragged themselves out of the lake when a particularly bold crayfish told Ellie what it really thought of her stray finger, and her opinion of them quickly soured as Huey utterly failed not to laugh. 

They didn’t have towels, but the sun did the job as they explored the hollow. Ellie was an excellent frog-finder and utterly rubbish frog-catcher, and Huey dragged her by the hand to an entire thicket of bright thimbleberry bushes. They descended on the soft, fuzzy berries, seeds sticking in their teeth as they gorged themselves on the fruit, fingers and mouths stained red with their juice, and staining Ellie’s tank top in smeared purple where they collected them. She said it looked like watercolors, and ate more. They followed bumble bees, drunk with their nectar, between the white flowers as the bees shared in the plants’ bounty, and Ellie deemed the pollen overrated as she spat back out a flower. Huey tucked one in his hair as they turned back to the grass, casting themselves down beside the pack.

He closed his eyes, the sunlight bright pink behind his eyelids, and his skin prickled in the warmth, cooled by the mountain breeze that swept through the trees overhead. Ellie breathed deep beside him. 

“I don’t think this is an adventure,” she said finally.

Huey cracked an eye open to look at her. Her eyes were open, tracing shapes in the thin clouds overhead.

“What do you mean?”

“My mom says challenges are what makes something an adventure. If there’s no challenge, it’s just a commune.”

“A commute?”

“Yeah.”

Huey hummed, turning back up to the sky.

“My uncle used to say the exact same thing,” he said, “But he was mostly just trying to make grocery store trips more exciting.”

“I don’t think this is much of a challenge,” she said.

“That’s because you’re good at it,” Huey said, “Climbing the mountain at your age would be hard for most people. My brother wouldn’t be good at it now, but it’s easy for you because you’re just…good at it. Starting a fire and climbing boulders and fighting crayfish is easy for you because you practiced. Well, maybe not the crayfish. But all that other stuff…It’s easy for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an adventure. You’re just a good adventurer.”

Ellie didn’t say anything, but grinned at the sky. 

“Someday you’re going to run into something you aren’t good at, though,” he said, “You’re going to be bad at it. Probably spectacularly. Things are going to go wrong, and maybe something you like gets broken or someone gets hurt. That’s going to be frustrating, but it’ll be okay, because you’re going to fight through it, and after you beat it, then you get to call it an adventure.” 

“After?” she said, “It’s still an adventure while it's happening.”

Huey shrugged.

“Anything you survive is an adventure,” he said.

“What if you mess up,” she said.

Huey ran his fingers through the grass.

“You can still fail and have it be an adventure,” he said, “As long as you come back. Otherwise it’s just a sad story.”

She hummed.

He looked over again, and she pulled her legs up again, gripping her ankles as she rocked side to side. 

“Do you really think I’m a good adventurer?” she asked the treetops.

Huey thought for a moment.

“Yeah,” he said honestly, “I do.”

He watched a grin deepen in her eyes, moving down through her face as her toes flexed.

She laughed, then, flipping onto her belly and leaping to her feet.

“I’ll prove it!” she cried. 

Huey squeezed his eyes closed as she leap-frogged over him, taking off back towards their clothes. He stretched, breathing in the deep, rich smell of the earth around him before pushing up after her.

They dressed lazily, their limbs loose with the sun and overuse and hair dried in odd directions. Huey felt oddly exposed without his hat, but he certainly wasn’t going to don a fur cap in the still-warm air, no matter the cool breeze easing down the mountain in gusts of relief. Ellie looked like she’d just been through an extra-long cycle in a dryer, her hair half-wet and tangled and skin pink from sun. She hissed as she pulled her pack over her burnt shoulders, and sagged with relief when Huey eased the pack off again, hauling it onto his own back. 

“It’s almost two,” Huey said as they hiked reluctantly out of the glen. “We’ve only got a few miles left to the peak, but there’s no knowing how long it’ll take to get over those ridges.”

“What ridges?”

Huey swept her up under her arms, placing her on a fallen log beside him, and she balanced a hand on his shoulder to stand on her toes. Huey pointed due north up the mountain.

“Those ridges.” 

“Yowza.”

Huey agreed. 

The stone was unforgiving, sticking out in sharp cliffs from the thick blanket of trees that continued up the side of the mountain. They stretched all along the mountain’s face, the trees jutting out in a resilient bid for the sun all the way up to Sabertooth Ridge itself. 

“If we swoop there,” Huey said, “We can follow that line up from the left across to the right and back over that rock that looks like a teddy bear. We can watch the eclipse from there, and we should be able to get there with plenty of time if we hurry. Sundown isn’t until eight twenty nine tonight, which leaves us approximately six hours to get up there and pitch camp.”

Ellie leapt from the log.

“Six hours is cuttin’ it close,” she said, “Better pick up your pace, grandpa.”

“Grandpa?” Huey spluttered, “I am three and a half years your senior! Respect your elders!”

She blew a raspberry as she passed, and he laughed, trotting after her. 

The shade was a welcome relief. Here, the towering pines sank deep into rich soil, their roots buried deep in the cool earth, and Ellie and Huey slipped and slid on the brown needles that carpeted the forest floor. Dappled sunlight lit their way, and Huey found himself thinking wistfully of the lake, now many miles below them and several hours past. 

The time didn’t pass dully. 

Ellie took special delight in Huey’s word games as they hiked, and kept him on his toes, leaving him doubtful of the validity of some of her words. They passed nearly an hour arguing over lyric comprehension of 60’s songs (“It’s not about clouds, clouds are just a metaphor for the simpler things, and then the singer expands her experiences into love, and then all of life itself!” “It’s literally about clouds.”), but more than anything, she seemed to rival Uncle Scrooge in her penchant for storytelling. Her voice even took on the same hushed tone as his, the same intensity seeping into her clever eyes, and her hands painting the pictures just as he did as she spoke.

“They lurk in the woods of Ohio,” she whispered, her fingers spread wide, “Evidence of the crippling hubris of man and his pride in the face of the ineffable.”

“Do you know what ineffable means?”

“Don’t interrupt. The rich doctor was overtaken by his arrogance, and the towns were helpless to thwart his wicked thievery, and every morning, townsfolk could hear the wailing screams of a mother who awoke to find her child snatched under cover of dark!”

“Every night?” Huey said, “How many kids are in this–”

“No one knows what exactly the experiments were that he performed on them,” she whispered, “But their heinous effects were seen by all the onlookers who snuck up to his laboratory to prove their bravery and stupidity. Their heads had grown bulbous and huge, misformed and cracked, their brains all but spilling out of their skulls and pouring out their ears with how swollen they’d grown. Their necks were spindly, and their heads rolled with the weight, causing the children to stumble, swaying this way…and that…and this way again…”

“And none of the witnesses called the police?”

“The police wouldn’t believe them!” she said, and Huey nodded. “But they needn’t have bothered…because one night, not too long ago, there was a revolt.” 

“Wow.”

“The misshapen kids had had enough. They were done with their torture, and realized the scientist was their captor, nothing more, and his flesh was at their mercy.”

“What is it with you and the word flesh?”

“They ripped it from his bones,” she said, miming the motion on her own chest. “They pulled out his guts, and used them as kindling for a fire that spread to his entire house, and he burned alive, crisped to ashes along with his lab- or -atory of evil and cruelty.”

“He died from the fire?” he said, “Not the disembowelment?”

“But when the kids wandered back into town, hoping to find their parents and family waiting for them with open arms, all that awaited them were pitchforks and burning torches. The town, their very own parents, didn’t recognize them, and chased them to the riverside along the edge of the forest, forcing them to swim for their lives.”

She pulled up short beside him as he inspected a particularly large tree, its trunk easily wider than he was tall, that’d fallen across the smoothest path they’d chosen. Its branches were sharp, jagged, and plentiful where they stuck out of the rotted wood. 

Huey tugged off a particularly large branch with a crack, clearing a path to scramble up.

“Most drowned,” she said solemnly, “But some of them lived, and because of the horrors enacted on them, their childhoods robbed in the violence, they wander the woods forevermore, searching for other children to take and keep, trying to regain any memory of the lives they used to be free to lead.”

“Watch out for the sharp bits,” he said.

Huey wove his hands together, and she pushed up on his shoulder as he boosted her up the side. He brushed off his hands as she ducked through the branches.

“So,” he said, “Do they just want to hang out with the kids…or?”

“No, then they eat them.”

Ellie leaped down the other side with a hup!

“Of course,” Huey said. 

“Woah!” she shouted “Look at that!”

He heard her footsteps take off.

“Wait!” he called. He scrambled up the rotted trunk, ducking under the spear-like, shattered branches. “Ellie, you can’t just– augh!” 

The wood collapsed under his foot.

He had just enough time to see her whirl back around towards him, her eyes wide, before he was plunging down, his foot sinking into the apparently hollow trunk. Before his brain caught up, his hands reached out, scrabbling for something to hold, and his calf burned as it dragged against the ragged bark. He managed to grab one of the spears of the branch, but it split under his hand with a crack. Pain shot through his palm, and he cried out as he tumbled into the deep belly of the trunk.

It was dark. 

“This is fine,” Huey said, “Absolutely fine.”

He turned his flashlight around the rocky cave. The hole in the roof, just wide enough to have tumbled him down and high enough to be well beyond any hope of reaching, let in a thin shaft of sunlight in a white beam, leaving the rest of the small cavern utterly dark. 

His ankle was stiff where he’d landed, his wrist sore and palms scraped. Something wet, sweat, probably, trickled down his temple as he brushed off his knees. He hissed at the pink that smeared across his hands. Scraped knees too, then. 

He gingerly made it to his feet, easing weight onto his ankle. It shook, but held. 

“It could be darker,” he said, nodding to himself. “The sun won’t set until eight twenty two, which gives me plenty of time.”

New Mexico’s sun burned hard overhead, and the cool air of the dim cave was actually a nice change from the brutal heat in the land above. Dewey, Louie, Webby, and Uncle Scrooge were probably sweating well through their clothes, and here he was, lucky enough to snag a respite from the sun. 

“Shouldn’t waste any time, though,” he said, “Just in case.”

A quick search of his pack, though, had him groaning. Webby had taken the coiled rope out of his bag this morning. The paracord might be useful, if he had anything to hook it onto above. Which he didn’t. A few fruitless tries proved that even after weighting it with a padlock, it was too short of a cord to reach the lip of the hole he’d tumbled through anyway.

“That’s fine,” he said again, “They know I was scouting the southern slope, and when I don’t make it back to camp by lunch, they’ll come looking for me. I mean, a hole in the ground is a perfect marker.”

He checked his watch.

“Eleven AM,” he said, nodding crisply, “That gives me exactly an hour and a half before they realize something’s wrong.”

A few more tosses of the rope, and he shook his head, settling down with his canteen and bandana, dampening it and dabbing his scraped knees and palms.

At three hours, the tension set in. 

It wasn’t a large cave, really. Yes, the shaft he’d fallen through was high enough to be beyond hope of reach, and sloped in a way that would discourage even spider-footed Webby, but most of the ceiling was lower, tan stones dipping in at sharp angles like teeth. Insects crawled across the stone floor, and Huey gave up sitting and letting centipedes and spiders and enormous black ants scuttle over his hands and legs in favor of stretching his ankle. He paced around the cave, ducking his head to avoid striking it on the stone at the lowest points. 

“They’ll know I’m gone by now,” he said, “Louie’s probably just dragging his feet. That’s what’s taking them so long. Classic Louie.”

His ankle trembled, and he rolled it out. 

At four hours, the hunger set in. 

He’d only packed snack-rations, a handful of dried apricots and almonds. He hadn’t expected to be out longer than an hour at most, and they did little to settle the unease in his stomach.

It was at five hours he realized his mistake.

He’d been sent to scout the peak of the great desert plateau. He’d gone alone. He’d been distracted by the rare rock formation far down the southern slope, nearly a mile away. 

They’d be searching the plateau. 

“Uncle Scrooge?” he called, his heart pounding in his chest as he watched the shaft of sunlight inching across the ground. “Uncle Scrooge! Dewey! Hey, anybody! Uncle Scrooge! I’m down here! Anybody!”

At hour six, he twisted his ankle again, losing count of the times he’d fallen from the wall in a desperate scramble for the hole.

It was then he discovered the crack.

It wasn’t large. Frighteningly small, even, wedged in a far corner where the uneven wall met the tan stone of the gravelly floor, but the flow of air that tickled Huey’s hair gave him a horrible idea. 

“When lost, always stay where you are,” he whispered to himself, “There’s a much greater chance of being found when you’re stationary, rather than a moving target for rescuers to find.”

The dim chamber had grown darker, though, the now weak shaft of sunlight nearly gone where it’d crept up the wall. 

At hour eight, he slipped off his pack, tucked his lit flashlight into his mouth, and squirmed into the crack. 

It was a horrible idea. He knew it was. It went against every rule he’d ever read. The stone seemed to push in at every side as he writhed forward, clipping at his elbows, biting at the crown of his head and chin if he moved wrong. His ankle pulsed as he toed himself along, and pebbles clawed at his belly. He couldn’t raise his head, his neck craning painfully sideways to stay low, and he gritted his teeth at the tickle of centipedes and silverfish and the endless stream of ants over his arms and legs, creeping under his shirt.

It took ten minutes. 

He couldn’t have gone far in the time, but one poor shift was all it took. A rock dug into his thigh, and he scooted backwards, rather than forwards. His left arm extended in front of him, his right snaked back and under to dislodge the rock.

The stone held him there, his shoulders wedged tight on either side. Rock kept his head low. He couldn’t raise his hips. His weak ankle seared. 

At hour nine, pressed flat like a dead and dried flower between the pages of a book, he wept. 

“Please!” he shouted, “Anybody, please! Help! Help me, please!” 

His voice echoed back on him. 

Dewey wouldn’t stop to look in a hole, he’d be moving too fast to even spot it. Webby would, but she left the rope hanging over the cliffside nine miles back. Louie’d never come in here after him. Uncle Scrooge might, but he wouldn’t fit in the crevice. He’d think he was nothing more than a foolish child for crawling in, anyway.

“Uncle Donald!” he cried, “Please!”

But Uncle Donald was hundreds of miles away.

At hour twelve, he had no more voice, only a rasping wheeze that tore his throat. 

At hour thirteen, he briefly wondered if he’d meet his mom when he died. 

At hour fourteen, he finally heard voices. 

“Here!” he croaked, “I’m here!”

He could barely hear himself. 

They called his name overhead from the surface, echoing through the cave behind him. 

“I’m here!” he wheezed, “I’m right here, please!” 

The shouting grew louder. 

“Please,” he whispered, “I’m here.”

Voices, behind him. 

Something grasped his ankle, and he gasped, kicking out. More sounds behind, and his skin scraped itself raw against the stone, his knuckles still trapped under his belly and dragging horribly, but then there was air, there were hands on his legs and then his back, on his arms and face. Voices, too loud after the quiet, pounded on his ears, and he heard his name over and over again as he was lifted off the stone into long arms.

“We’re right here,” Uncle Scrooge said, “I’ve got you, you’re right here.”

It was dark. 

Huey’s breath came in a gasp as his palms burned, his knees felt like fire as he rolled onto his belly. He shot his arms out in front of him in the hollowed log, spreading them as wide as he could. 

Centipedes scattered around him, and he cried out, shoving himself up and back. His head cracked on the inside of the log above him, and he shrank back, gasping.

Something grabbed the back of his shirt, yanking him backwards, and he jumped as it dragged him up. 

“Woah,” a voice said, “You look crazy.”

Huey looked around, turning to blink into the shaft of light. Ellie hung halfway in the hollow tree, draped over her belly on the edge and gripping one of the branches for support. 

“There’s a bug in your hair,” she said.

He yelped, smacking at his head. She laughed, offering him her hand. He snatched it, and she grunted as they hauled him out the awkward angle. The breeze was cool on his face, and he gasped for air as he pulled himself the rest of the way out, Ellie dragging unhelpfully on his collar. 

He stumbled down the other side of the tree, letting himself collapse to the prickly pine needles and staring up at the blue sky through the shafts of trees.

Ellie’s face appeared upside down in his field of vision.

“Wow,” she said, “You, like, really don’t like bugs, huh?”

He pushed her away by the forehead, and she dropped down out of his field of vision with a huff. 

He shook his head. 

“No,” he said, “I don’t.”

Open sky. Green trees. No cars to count, but he could feel the fresh air on his face, and he made due counting clouds in the sky as his heart pounded.

Ellie crawled around him, and he let her pick up his hand. She prodded it, and he hissed, but she held tight.

“This looks nasty,” she said in the tone of voice of a kid repeating an adult. “We’re probably gonna have to operate.”

Huey flipped his palm up. It didn’t look bad, but it certainly didn’t look great. A few splinters stuck out of his palm and wrist, the inside of his arm all scraped up from sliding down over broken bark. His other arm had a few scratches, but looked altogether unscathed. 

He let his eyes close as he measured his breath. In four. Hold seven. Out eight.

“What operation are you proposing, doctor?” he said between counts.

Ellie hummed.

“Stitches,” she said, “Amputation if that doesn’t work.”

“That’s a bit extreme.”

“We don’t want this getting infected.”

Huey snorted, closing his eyes and losing count in favor of feeling the soft ground with his toes.

“I’d rather take an antibiotic when I get home than go chopping off my hand in the backwoods.”

“Infections can be bad,” she said, “One time I had a bite that got infected and it turned green and I had to go to the doctor.”

“What bit you?” Huey asked.

“My brother.”

He huffed a laugh.

Okay,” he said, “Why don’t we start with tweezers and see how that goes first?”

“Oh!” she said, “You’re wounded, can I–”

He dug his multitool out of his pocket, passing it to her. His hands were still shaking too badly for fine work anyway.

“The tweezers are in the side,” he said, “Pull anything out at the same angle they went in.”

Ellie pulled his hand into her lap. She fell quiet as she concentrated, and though her fingers were tight, she was surprisingly gentle. The only one that really hurt was a particularly large one under his nail.

“Do we need stitches?” he asked as she let go of his hand.

“No,” she said, then, “I don’t know. How do you tell?”

“If the wound is more than a quarter inch deep,” he said, sitting up. “Or if you can see muscle or fat.”

“Gross.” 

She snatched his hand back, turning it over and running a finger over the scrapes on his arm.

“Ouch.”

“Nope,” she said, “We’re clear.”

“Thank goodness.” Huey pushed himself to his feet, testing out his ankle. “I’m not quite sure you’re ready for sutures, yet.” 

“We’ll see!” she said, rising as well. “Maybe you’ll fall in another hole, or cut open your hand on a can, or gouge out your eye on a fishhook–”

“I’m probably holding the fishhook wrong, then.”

She shrugged, turning back to their path.

“Oh!” 

She pointed.

“I forgot!” 

Huey winced as she grabbed his scraped hand, but he let her pull him through the trees.

“I saw this right before you wiped out,” she said, “How’s that for mysterious?”

She dragged him around a huge boulder and skidded to a stop. Huey felt a chill go down his spine.

“So it has been scouted,” was all he could think to say.

The jeep was absolutely mangled, its front crumpled like tin foil into the face of the boulder. Nature had clearly overtaken it, shrubs bursting through the open windows, its canvas top torn away and hanging in shreds for dust and dirt to gather. A sapling had crawled through the shattered windshield, and birds scattered from the open roof as they approached. 

What Huey wasn’t a fan of was the passenger door. Or rather, the lack of passenger door. 

He blinked, and Ellie was halfway towards the wreck.

“Careful!” he said, “Watch out for sharp–”

“You watch out for sharp.” 

Huey followed. 

“This must have been here for years,” he said, “Look at this upholstery, it’s covered in moss and mold.” 

There was a horrible creak, and creeping plants fluttered to the earth as Ellie grunted, hauling up the rusted hood to peer inside.

“Do you know engines?” Huey asked.

“Uh-huh.” She squinted at the corroded pipes. “I can definitely tell you what happened to this car.”

“What?”

“It crashed.” 

Huey rolled his eyes, moving to the trunk as Ellie let the crumpled hood slam back down. The back hatch stubbornly refused to swing open, and Huey tested the bumper before pulling himself up and into the bed of the jeep. 

“There’s crates back here!” 

Three large, wooden crates had been secured into the back with deteriorated webbing that stood no match to Huey’s pocket knife. The rusted hinges proved a bit more stubborn, and he threw the pack down in the bed as he grunted in frustration.

“I can’t get these open,” Huey said, “Pass me a rock or something.”

“How about this pickaxe?”

“This what?” 

Huey spun around. Ellie stood at the foot of the jeep, legs spread, hefting an enormous, rusted, industrial pickaxe. 

“Look at me, I’m a miner!” she shouted, swinging the pickaxe wildly. She spun off-balance, and she whooped as it slipped from her fingers to sink into the earth a few feet away. 

“Where did you get that?” Huey asked, straightening.

Ellie laughed as she chased it down, heaving it back up onto her shoulder. 

“It was over there under the tire, woah!” 

She tumbled backwards, overbalanced. 

“Careful!”

“Oh, ho, ho!” Ellie said in a ridiculous voice as she hacked at the dirt, “Ah’m off ta find me gold! Strike it rich, Ah will!” 

“Would you– give me that,” Huey said.

He leaned over the trunk, his arm extended, and she snickered as she passed it to him. She blew a raspberry before trotting off to inspect the grass or whatever it was she’d been doing. Huey hefted the pickaxe– it was heavy– and he used its point to wedge into the padlock. A quick tug, and the entire lock snapped off.

Huey threw down the pickaxe and carefully lifted the lid of the crate.

He peered in.

“Woah,” he breathed.

Ellie whistled at him from somewhere behind him, and he waved her off.

“One second.”

As his shadow fell across the contents, insects scattered across the heap of supplies, and he shivered. The tip of the pickaxe was perfect, though, to pull aside the moldy coils of climbing rope. 

“Look at all this stuff,” he said, digging through. “Headlamps, safety helmets, chisels, mallets, ooh, flares!”

He plucked up the two road flares with his fingertips carefully, tossing them onto the grass. They probably wouldn’t work after so long, but they were worth taking anyway. 

“Always good to have in an emergency,” he said, “Maybe when we head back, if they work, and if we’re safe about it, we can light them on the granite flats. If we don’t need them.” 

Ellie whistled again, three quick, swooping notes.

“Hang on, I want to see what else is in here.” He pried open the other two crates, poking through them. “This looks like…mining equipment. But there’s no quarry on this mountain. What would they be mining?”

He scratched his neck, stepping back to lean the pickaxe against the box.

She whistled again, and Huey rolled his eyes.

“What?” he said, turning back to look at the Ellie-less treeline. “Very funny. Please don’t wander off.”

Something shifted behind one of the rocks, nestled in the natural slope of the ground some twenty yards away. 

She whistled again.

“I don’t want you falling off a cliff or something,” Huey said, hopping down from the jeep. He set off for the treeline, shaking his head. “If you don’t come help me, we’re just gonna have to leave behind these super dangerous flares…”

“Flares?” Ellie exclaimed, just behind him.

Huey nearly jumped out of his skin, whirling around. There she stood, dirt smeared over her knees and hands, but solidly planted right in front of him.

He turned back to look at the treeline.

“How did you–”

“Come look what I found,” she said, yanking him by the hand. “It’s super creepy…”

Huey let her pull him back around the jeep, throwing one last look over his shoulder at the shadow under the rocks before it disappeared from view. 

“I found it all the way on the other side of the boulder they crashed into,” Ellie said, tugging his hand. “There’s no way it fell off.”

“No way what fell off?” 

She pulled up short as they rounded the great boulder, and she dropped his hand to pull back the copse of taller grass. 

“The door,” she said. 

There it lay, the corner still submerged in the dirt where it looked almost like it’d been plunged, stuck nearly flat like a frisbee that’d been flung into sand. It was barely recognizable, so overtaken with dust and rust, dented and scratched beyond belief with the passage of time. 

Huey moved to the inside edge, and his heart jumped a bit as he hovered a finger over the sharp metal. Ellie crouched over the opposite side.

“The hinges are broken,” he said, “Look, this didn’t just fall off…it was torn off.”

“Not torn,” Ellie said.

Huey rose, moving to bend over her, squinting where she pointed at the edge, right under the handle. 

The metal was wrinkled in four long divots, stretching from the edge in. Huey’s hackles rose as Ellie slowly reached out to touch it, and while infinitely smaller, her hand settled into the grooves.

“Fingermarks,” he said, “Something pulled this door off.”

“But this is old,” she said, “No way it's still around…right?”

Huey looked back in the direction of the treeline. 

“You heard something last night?” he said.

“Yeah, it–”

“I think we should go,” he said quietly.

“Wait, really?”

Slowly, he straightened, easing her up by the shoulders.

“Where’s your bag?” he whispered.

“You had it,” she said, “In the car.”

“Get it,” he said, “Fast.”

“What? What do you think–”

“Now!” he hissed. 

He grabbed her by the hand, and she squawked as he jerked her forward, but to her credit, she kept pace with him as he sprinted for the jeep. He could feel the blood pounding in his ears as he kept his eyes trained on the rock he’d watched before. 

The shadow was gone.

He all but hurled Ellie into the jeep’s open back, and heard her scramble around as he turned, fumbling in the grass. He snatched up the flares, shoving them under his arm. Ellie leapt from the jeep with a hup, the pack slung over her back.

Something whistled, low and slow, from behind the boulder and car wreck.

“What’s going–”

“Run!” 

He snatched her hand, and she matched him stride for stride as he bolted for the treeline, hedging left. 

“Huey!” she shouted, “Something’s–”

“Don’t look back!” 

Something crashed behind them, and Huey cried out at the horrible shriek of metal that split the air. Ellie yelled something– he couldn’t hear her over the savage roar from behind that sent birds bursting from the trees overhead. 

“This way!” Ellie shouted.

“No, I–”

She dragged him to the right, and Huey made the mistake of looking behind, just for a second, and his heart nearly stopped as they bolted up a rugged deer-trail. 

The creature’s eyes were huge. 

Enormous, and the most acid blue he’d ever seen, it’s wide, black pupils tracking his every gasp as it ran on all fours, just a few yards behind them. Its flat face looked more like a hound’s than his own, its broad, flat black nose scarred and torn, the black fur hanging from its whole body matted and dangling off in chunks, revealing the black scars underneath. 

Its fingers were broad and long, longer than Huey’s whole foot, but the same shape as his own hand, and even in a brief glance, Huey could see the wickedly long nails, hear them scrape over the granite as they climbed. The beast roared again, spit flying from its mouth and Huey yelped, stumbling. 

“Keep going!” she shouted.

As if he needed the reminder. She let go of his hand to climb a narrow chute through the rocks, and it was precious time lost as the creature gained on them. Her feet scrambled, but she narrowed her grip, and then she was over. Huey leapt after her, halfway through pulling himself up, but the creature was faster. It roared again, and he glanced behind him.

It leapt. 

Huey closed his eyes. 

The creature yelped, and a hand dragged Huey by the collar up and over. He scrambled to his feet.

“You want some more?” Ellie hollered. She raised another chunk of granite in her fist. “Get some, ugly!” 

She let it fly, and Huey winced as it connected soundly with the creature’s temple. 

“Let’s go!” he shouted, and he turned to leap up the next boulder, higher than the first. 

The beast scrabbled at its head, black blood coursing from its brow into its eye, but it wasn’t dissuaded from its prey. 

Huey dropped to his belly, abandoning the flares beside him in favor of reaching for Ellie as she hurled her last rock. It fell wide, though, and she yelped as it turned on her. Her hands were sweaty when she grasped Huey’s, and he scrambled to his knees to flat out haul her up. 

He wasn’t fast enough.

The beast leapt, and for a moment it hung, suspended in the air, and all Huey could see were its palms as reached for her. 

Its hands looked like people’s hands.

Then Ellie was screaming, jerked nearly out of his grip. She shouted, kicking, and Huey lost hold of her with one hand. He fumbled to his right, snatching up one of the flares. The cap was dusty in his mouth, but easy enough to rip off, and he slashed the tip of the flare against the stone. 

Red, molten light burst from the end in a firework of color as Ellie’s shouting changed in tone, and he wasted no time. He shoved it down with one hand, dragging Ellie up with the other, and he watched the beast’s pupil’s shrink as the sparks rained down on it. 

Ellie grew significantly lighter, and then she was beside him, gasping.

“Go!” he shouted, and she gave him no quips this time as she flew deeper into the forest. 

Huey threw the flare to the ledge, and the creature squalled as it dragged itself up, only to be met with the explosion of sparks. It vanished back over the edge.

“Huey!”

He snatched up the last flare before sprinting after Ellie. She hovered, her hand extended, and Huey grabbed it as he passed. 

They dashed through the trees, dodging over rock and under sharp spears of branches. Ellie was lagging, her breath coming harder as they scrambled over pine needle-slick rock. Branches scraped at Huey’s cheek, and he did his best to block Ellie from the sharpest sticks as they crashed blindly through.

They burst out of the treeline, and he pulled Ellie to a stop, gasping. 

They’d reached the last leg of the mountain, the slope of solid granite impossibly steep before them, and the forest dense behind them. She fought for breath, and he pulled the heavy pack off her, diving his arms into the straps. 

“It’s a dead end,” he said, looking helplessly up the stone. “We can’t outrun it…”

The beast roared deep in the trees, and the screeching sound of tearing wood crashed far closer than Huey liked. Ellie whirled around, her eyes wide as she looked around at the rock under their feet.

“This way,” she said breathlessly, and she dragged him to the left along the rock face. 

A tree crashed down behind them, and the beast's scream echoed off the rock wall, just behind the treeline. Huey’s heart leaped into his throat and he redoubled his grip on Ellie’s hand.

“Where are–”

“Look!” She skidded to a halt, pulling him left.

His stomach dropped.

A gash, dark and wide and deep, was cut into the stone, a natural cave sunken into the mountainside and large enough that Ellie didn’t have to duck as she bolted into it.

Huey let her fingers slip through his.

“No.”

She whirled to look at him.

“It’s got a draft,” she panted, “Look how far it goes. I told you there was a cave system– we can lose it in here!”

He could feel the cold air.

“No.”

“Are you kidding me?” she snarled, “That thing–”

“I said no!” 

“I don’t care!” 

She grabbed him by the shirt to drag him in, and he balked, shoving her away. She stumbled back into the rock.

“You’re gonna get us both killed!” she shouted, “Why won’t you–”

Time was up.

The creature burst from the treeline on two legs, its enormous, electric blue eyes rolling as it panted, thick saliva hanging in ropes from its jaw. Huey gasped, and its hearing must have been extreme, because it whirled to look right at him.

“Oh, no.”

The creature’s voice shattered as it screamed, and Huey could have vomited as it dropped onto its hands and feet to tear across the stone at them.

“Huey, please!”

He squeezed his eyes shut, reached out his hand.

Her hand closed around his, and he let her pull him into the earth.

Nausea beat at his throat, acid on his tongue as they ran. Ellie’d dug a flashlight out of her pocket, and she chose branches with no regard as she dragged him underground, ducking sharp, grey stalactites where they hung like fangs from the low ceiling. 

“Right,” he gasped as they hit a fork, and she stumbled as they turned right, moving uphill. 

The beast was all too easy to hear behind them. 

Its pants rolled like waves through the stone walls and floor, and its hands and feet made sickening slaps against the stone, all too person-sounding as it beat after them. 

Huey could feel every step, the reverberation of every breath slamming off the walls and back into his skin as the passages grew tighter and tighter. 

Or did they?

Ellie moved through them just fine. 

No, the stone brushed his arms as he ran, now. He ducked his head to avoid the ceiling, now. 

“We can’t,” he pleaded, “Ellie, we’ve got to–”

“To what?” she gasped, “Go back? Are you crazy?”

“It’s too tight,” he said, “That thing is too big, it can’t–”

“Great! That means it can’t follow us.”

The creature had other ideas.

A body hit the stone wall several yards behind him, and Huey made the mistake of looking behind him. 

The creature fit. The creature crawled.

It looked like a spider, crawling on the wall sideways in the tight passage as it braced itself with one arm on the ground, the other against the side and its legs propelled itself along on opposite walls. Huey choked back actual vomit this time as its eyes rolled wildly, its tongue lolling and jaw in a wide grin to let out a wave of the most rancid smell he’d ever encountered. Worse than any forgotten sarcophagus. Worse than any rotting meat. 

It was fast. It was gaining on them. 

The tunnel wasn’t big enough.

Ellie wasn’t fast enough. 

The ceiling dropped abruptly, and Ellie scrambled on her hands and knees through. Huey’s hands shook so hard he nearly dropped the flare in his hand.

The flare!

He ripped the cap off, striking it on the wall in the same motion. The flame leapt, bright enough to blind him for a moment. 

The creature screamed, and if Huey thought watching it crawl forward was upsetting, backwards was downright disturbing.

“Come on!” Ellie called from the other side of the stone. 

The rock had turned red in the light, and Huey brandished it as a torch.

“Get back!” he shouted, hoping his voice didn’t sound as thready as it did to his ears. “Get back!” 

“Huey!” 

He hurled the flame down the tunnel, and the creature scrambled back farther, wailing. Huey didn’t wait to see what it did. He dove for the gap.

He made it up to his shoulders. 

He stuck.

The stone grabbed at the top of his shoulders, pressing in on his chest. His chin slammed against the rock floor and he choked on the taste of dust. 

“No!” he shouted, and his nails tore on the ground. “No, please!” 

“The backpack!” Ellie shoved him backwards, and his head cracked against the rock. “Take off the backpack, moron!”

Huey scrambled back, and the entire cavern was lit up a flashing red as he whipped his arms from the straps. The flare was too bright, the tunnel behind it too dark, but he could hear the wailing shrieks, gnashing teeth of the creature just beyond the flare. 

He shoved the pack through, and Ellie snatched it through.

The flare guttered behind, the initial burst burning off into a weaker, steadier light.

“Come on!” she called.

Huey closed his eyes. 

Someone was here. Someone knew he was here. He wasn’t alone, because someone had him. Someone was right here with him.

“What’s wrong with you?” she shouted, “Are you stupid? Come on!” 

Someone rude was with him.

He took the deepest breath of his life and dove forward, hands first. His shoulders caught again, and all the air left his lungs in one punch. His scapulae dragged on the stone, his knees kicked and spine ached. 

Someone was with him, though.

Ellie grabbed his wrists, and he closed his hands around hers. She threw herself back, and Huey kicked wildly as his knees scraped themselves raw, but his shoulders came free, his hips passing easily though. 

He gasped as Ellie dropped his wrists, and she stumbled as he kept his grip on her hands. 

The red light from the gap behind them guttered again.

“Let’s go,” she said, and he nodded wordlessly. 

He worked one hand free to sling the bag over his shoulder. The sound of the flare fizzed on, but the red light vanished, and Huey looked back at the crack.

A face pressed itself into the gap.

Its hairy skin was drawn tight against the rock, and its eyes had taken on a glow, pupils blown so wide Huey could barely see the blue anymore. It moaned at the sight of them, drool flecking onto their legs, and Ellie cried out, stumbling into Huey as its hairy hand lashed out at them, half wedged in the rock. 

The creature wasn’t discouraged. It writhed, twisting and hissing, and Huey was horrified to see it pushing itself forward at alarming speed, leaving behind chunks of hair stuck in the rock. 

Huey dragged Ellie back by the shoulders.

“What does it want?” she gasped.

“Us!” Huey shouted, “Come on!” 

He led her down the tunnel this time, and it wasn’t his imagination that they were still climbing up, up, up. 

The tunnel widened abruptly, and Huey let out an audible gasp at the huge cavern. He pulled up, and Ellie crashed into his back with a grunt. 

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“The edge,” he said, and she peered around him.

The cavern was vast, its ceiling towering above them in massive columns of stalactites, stalagmites taller than ten of him reaching up with jagged claws to meet them. They’d emerged onto a sort of shallow precipice, and Huey squinted over the edge.

Huge columns held up the ceiling, the chamber riddled with them, and he could hear bats scatter overhead at their movement.

The creature screamed again, much closer, and it was all Huey could do not to scream himself.

The running footfalls were growing louder.

Ellie spun him around, rummaging in the backpack. 

“What are you–”

She grunted, and the pack grew considerably lighter as she withdrew.

He could hear the thing’s panting, now, and he spun back, his palms sweating, to gape down at Ellie and the colorful, lunchpail-sized cardboard box she held.

“What is that?” 

“Give me the flint stick!” she shouted, and he scrambled in the side pocket as she shoved the box into the archway of the tunnel. 

She turned to snatch it from his hands, pulled a tab up on the box, and struck the flint stick with the key.

Nothing.

“Ellie,” he said, “What–”

She struck again.

Nothing.

“Is that–”

She struck again.

Nothing.

Feet pounded towards them.

“Ellie–”

“Help me!” 

Huey shouldered her aside, and she fumbled the flint into his hand. He struck it once, twice, three times quickly– as the instructions stated– and the tab fizzed. 

It hissed. 

He could see the creature’s eyes, now.

“Get back!” Ellie shouted.

She took his elbow, turned, and leapt off the precipice. 

Stone met his feet, and Ellie buried a hand in his shirt, jerking him forward. He grabbed her hand again, and together, they made a dash across the chamber. Ellie dropped into a shallow crevice, dragging Huey after her, and Huey had enough time to twist back to look at the tunnel before the chamber exploded. 

Green sparks shattered the stone over the tunnel, and the sound was deafening, like the mountain itself would crash down on them. Red, next, burst out in a waterfall of fire with a whizzing crash as a spiral of white sparks shot across the entire cave, then another, then another. Yellow and gold and orange exploded overhead, raining down over them in a cascade of light, followed by purple and blue sparks, crackling and hissing loud enough to make Huey’s ears burn. 

Blue smokey haze filled the cave, lit up nearly white by the firework display.

The crash wasn’t just the rockets, though. 

Stone crashed down in the tunnel with a tremendous smash, and Huey pulled Ellie underneath him, wrapping his arms around her as rocks rained down from the ceiling. Her fingers dug into his forearm. He’d be useless to protect her from falling stalactites, but the smaller stones bounced off his backpack, only a few striking his head, and that was better than cracking hers.

Then it was silent. 

He could feel her breathing hard, and he was sure she’d be able to hear his heart pounding in his chest. She eased her grip on his arm, and together, they slowly looked up.

The smoke and dust cleared, rocks settling into place.

The tunnel had collapsed completely. Where once had been a passage now stood a smoking wall of boulders and rubble. 

In the silence, they could hear a muffled, distant moaning.

“Fireworks?” Huey sat all the way back. “You had us carrying around fireworks this whole time?”

“What do you want?” she snapped, “You wish I hadn’t brought them, now?”

“That’s unbelievably dangerous!” he said, “What if they’d gone off?”

“Then you wouldn’t be around to yell at me, would you?” she said, “Do you think it's dead?”

Huey shook his head.

“Do you think we’re about to be?” she said.

He bit his lip.

“We’re trapped,” was all he could say, “This is…we’re going to suffocate…Oh…this–”

She slapped him.

“What was that for?” he shouted.

“That’s what they do in movies!” she shouted back, “You gotta keep your cool if we’re gonna live! That’s what they say in movies, too!”

“This isn’t a movie,” he said. 

“Yeah, tell me about it.” She shifted back off her legs, wincing. She prodded at her calf, and her finger came back red.

Huey looked down at her ankle and gasped.

“Oh, my gosh,” he said, sliding off the pack. “Ellie, you–”

“Am I gonna die?”

“...no.”

Her ankle had already begun to bruise in five long, wicked-looking finger imprints. Scratches, ugly, but not deep, trailed from the ends of four of them. The fifth, the thumb, Huey thought, bore a proper gouge from where a huge nail had sunk deep in a half-moon gash on the inside of her calf, dragging the flesh back in a thick, ugly flap. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said, “Should it hurt?”

“It's the adrenaline,” he said, “It’ll kick in in a second.”

“Like in cartoons,” she said, “When…when they don’t know they’ve walked off a cliff until they look down…”

“Exactly like that.” 

“Am I gonna die?”

“Again, no.” 

“Are we gonna have to amputate?”

“No, but–”

“Cauterize?”

“How do you even know–” He shook his head. “No, keep your leg, you’ll be fine.”

He dragged the canteen from the pack, tugging his bandana from his neck and wetting it as she slowly extended her leg.

He dabbed at the blood, and she grabbed his arm. 

“Does it hurt yet?”

She bit her lip.

“No.”

Liar, he wanted to say. 

More blood welled, though. 

“I’m going to wrap this,” he said, “And we’ll look at it when we get out, okay?”

She nodded, and for her credit, she didn’t make a sound as he carefully folded his bandana into a long rectangle, wrapping it around her calf and tying it tight.

He splashed water over his hands when he finished, and dried them on his shirt before pulling her to her feet. 

“Good?” he said.

She nodded, testing her weight.

“Good,” she said.

He nodded, turning back to the cave and oh.

Right.

Trapped.

Ellie seemed unbothered by their stone tomb, though. She pulled herself up out of the crevice and looked around the cave, cooing.

“Holy moly,” she said, and her voice grew quieter as she strode away. “Look at all this junk.”

Huey swallowed. He swung the bag onto his back before hauling himself to his feet and stumbling after her. She’d made her way to the wall of the cave. 

They were not, it would seem, the first people to set foot in this cavern.

“It looks like a camp,” Ellie said.

“Or a base,” Huey corrected.

The half-dozen crates lining the wall did look exactly the same as the ones they’d discovered in the truck. Several had large lanterns of cracked plastic, filthy glass, and rusted metal sitting atop them, and more tools were laid about– broken pickaxes, half-rotted shovels, coil after coil of climbing rope and several decrepit, metal drums.

Ellie clambered atop one of the crates. It creaked dangerously under her, but it held for her to lean over to peer into one of the tall barrels.

Her eyes bugged out.

“Okay,” she said, “I think I know what they wanted.”

Huey moved to the barrel, rising onto his toes to peek in.

“Oh.”

It was full, nearly to the brim, of silver ore. Huey reached in to lift one of the gritty chunks of rock. It looked almost no different than the rest of the granite they’d spent the last day and a half climbing over, but the sheen was unmistakable as he moved his flashlight over it, white light cast in rays back at them.

She turned her flashlight to the walls. 

At first, all that met their eyes was dull granite, rocky and pockmarked where it’d been scored again and again by endless falls of a pickaxe. He took the light for her as Ellie climbed down from the box, and she moved to the left while Huey paced to the right. The scarred stone stretched high along the walls, and Huey nearly turned back before his flashlight moved right, and light glinted off.

“Silver,” he called, “Ellie, look at this! Veins of silver. That’s what they were mining for!” 

Veins was the perfect word. Silver ran, fine and long, like spider veins through the length of the stone, spreading and twisting in hard angles in its dribble to the ground. Several chunks had already been torn from the wall.

“You know what’s cooler than silver?” Ellie called from the darkness.

“What?”

“Guess.”

Huey groaned.

“Gold?”

“No.”

“Diamonds?”

“No.”

“Oh, I don’t know! Another monster?”

“Nope!” Ellie said.

“Then what?”

“A dead body!” 

Huey fumbled his flashlight.

Ellie waved at him in the dark, and he picked his way as quickly as possible to where she stood. The wall wasn’t smooth, like the one he’d been following, rather looking more like a crumbled pile of enormous boulders stacked one on top of each other. 

At the bottom, indeed, laid a body.

Well. Most of one. The person’s legs, dressed in boots and thick, moldy denim, protruded from beneath the stones. 

“And here,” Ellie said.

Huey followed where she pointed, and he swallowed. This one, he could see a tuft of hair and an arm poking from beneath the rocks, thickly gloved hand extended. It looked like it was reaching for something.

His heart pounded in his chest.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered.

Ellie ignored him, reaching out for the hand. She plucked at a fingertip, slowly tugging the glove off.

With a horrible crumbling noise, the entire hand fell off. Ellie leapt back. 

“This isn’t a game!” he said, dragging her away by the shirt. “Look, these people were here just like us, and they died, smashed to death under a mountain of rocks! They were probably dead before they knew what happened!”

“I–”

“Or worse! They weren’t, and they were just pinned there, laid out, crushed and scared and waiting for someone to realize they were even missing!”

“I don’t think anyone knew they were missing.”

Huey dragged a hand through his hair. He missed his hat.

“Why?” he said.

Ellie jammed a thumb towards the barrels of silver.

“Because nobody would leave all that silver just laying around,” she said, “These were probably solo operatives.” 

“Galameseyers,” Huey said.

“Bless you.”

“No, that’s what they’re called,” he said, looking back down at the bodies. “They’re people who mine without official licenses or permission.”

Ellie frowned.

“You can’t just…dig?”

Huey shook his head.

“Yes, you can,” she said, “Tons of people did! What about the gold rush?”

“They could only dig on their land,” Huey said, “Haven’t you ever heard of someone staking a– ugh, we don’t have time for this right now. We need to get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, “Before that monster big foot gets the rest of the way through that rockslide.”

“Exactly, we– what?”

Ellie pointed, and dread sank into his chest as he turned towards the collapsed tunnel-their only escape.

A hand had worked its way through the stones, its long, filthy nails scrabbling and scraping at the rocks. Smaller stones tumbled away, and the creature grunted. 

A larger rock fell away from the top, and Ellie took a step back into him.

Huey turned back to the wall, swallowing back bile.

“Wow,” Ellie said, “That thing must be, like, really hungry.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said, “It–hang on…”

He looked back at the hand working on the stones.

“What?” Ellie said.

“Hungry,” Huey said, turning back to her. “You said it's hungry.”

“Uh, yeah? As in, wants to chew the tender meat from our fleshy, youthful bodies.”

“Gross. But that doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

“If a lion was hunting,” Huey said, “Who would it go for: a zebra that’s sick and slow, or a zebra that fights her back?”

“The slow one, duh. That’s why it's coming for us.”

“We’re small,” Huey said, “But we’re not weak. We hurt it, you heard it yelp. It’s afraid of the flares and the fireworks, but it's still chasing us.”

Ellie frowned.

“If it’s bloodthirsty,” she said, “There’s tons of other animals out there.”

“Exactly,” Huey said, “Deer and rabbits and even fish would be less dangerous for it.”

“So…” Ellie looked back as another large stone tumbled from the blocked tunnel. “So you think it just hates us?”

“Creatures don’t just hate,” he said, “They’ve always got a reason…”

The beast roared again, and now Huey could see the wild roll of its bright eye through the growing gap.

“Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes furiously. “Okay, okay, okay, so it found us by the jeep, and–”

“It found us by the stream!” Ellie said, smacking his arm. “Last night, I told you! I heard it whistling, and it was walking on two legs, I told you it wasn’t a bear!”

“By the stream…”

Another rock fell away.

“But it didn’t do anything,” Huey said, “It just sat there and watched us, but it didn’t do anything…”

“Until we were at the car.”

“No,” Huey said, “I…I think I saw it in the trees–”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“It didn’t start chasing us until…” Huey’s eyes widened. “Until I picked up the flares.”

“You think it knows what they are?”

Huey turned back to the rock wall behind him, granite stones piled high on the dead bodies.

“They were mining,” he said.

“Yeah, no duh, genius–”

“They were mining this cave,” he said, “She knew what the flares were, these holes were done by explosives…these galameseyers were tearing up the cave…it's not bloodthirsty, it's protecting it’s cave!” 

Another rock crashed to the ground, and the creature screamed as its head crammed through the gap formed, its arm bent at a horrifying angle to work its way through up to its chest.

Ellie yelped, and Huey whirled in a circle.

“What do we do?” he panted, “There’s no way out, it doesn’t matter if we know why! We know what happened to them because it’s going to happen to us!” 

“Not necessarily!” 

Ellie dragged him down by the backpack, and he nearly toppled over as she dug through it. Huey shook his head as she pulled out another cake of boxed fireworks.

“It’s too dangerous!” he said, “We have no frame of reference regarding the stability of the ceiling! You could bring the whole cave down on us!”

“You said it was afraid of them!” she snapped, “It’s got us trapped! What other escape do you see?”

The creature barked out a fizzing sound, saliva flying from its teeth as it writhed. 

“We wait for it to get out,” Ellie said, “And as soon as it's halfway to us, we light off the cake, it gets scared, we make a run for it while it hesitates, and get a head start all the way out! If it is trying to get us out, it’ll just let us go!” 

The creature wailed. Huey could hear its teeth gnashing from here. 

“It’s dark in here,” he said, “The flash will blind us, too. Don’t let go of my hand.”

He held out the flint stick, and she bit her lip.

“I won’t,” she said.

The beast shrieked as another stone fell loose. Ellie set the cake on the stone, yanking up the fuse tab.

“You’ve got to time it,” Huey raised his voice over the sounds of its screams. “The tab has a delay–”

“I know!” she snapped, “They’re my fireworks!”

She held the flint over the fuse. 

The creature was free up to its hips, now, and it was like ice water down Huey’s back as, with one final heave, the creature launched itself free. It charged them.

Ellie gasped, and Huey shouted “Go, go, go!” as if it might help, as if it might suddenly coax the flint stick that she still didn’t know how to use why did she have it to light. 

The beast ran on hands and feet, absolutely heedless of the horrible angle it’s elbow jutted out at, and it roared, its eyes nearly neon in the dark.

Ellie shouted, her hands moving quicker, and then, miracle of miracles, the fuse caught the rain of sparks from her flint, and she collided heavily with Huey’s knees as she threw herself back. 

“Come on!” he shouted, but she winced, gripping her leg over the bandana tied tight over her cut. “Ellie! Come on, we have to–”

The creature leaped, launching itself off a stalagmite. Huey dove his arms under Ellie’s and hauled her to her feet.

“Go!” 

He threw her, and she stumbled forward as the fuse fizzled out. Huey turned to look at the little cardboard box just as the room exploded with light.

He hadn’t been looking directly at the last one when it went off.

His whole vision went white, and the sound was deafening, like lances speared through his eardrums, and he cried out as he tumbled backwards, clapping his hands to his ears. Through the pale fog of his vision, he could see the whirling green sparks as they screamed upwards, colliding with the ceiling rather than bursting with their color and the explosion shook the stone under him. 

Rocks dug into his spine, and he shouted as his vision lit up blue with another terrific boom! 

He screamed for Ellie, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice over the shrill whistle of his ears. Spirals of red light swam across his vision as he scrambled up to his knees and then stumbled to his feet, and he reeled away from the explosion to his left. Something crashed to his right, and he ducked away from the wall.

The ground under him shook again, and this time the crash to his left came from the ground. 

He threw himself right as rock crashed to the ground beside him.

And behind him.

And in front of him.

The ceiling was coming down. 

“Ellie!” he shouted, “Ellie!” 

He heard someone calling his name, and through the foggy haze, he could just make out the shape of someone in the distance, sprinting towards him before his whole vision was overtaken with falling rock.

He had the sense to hurl himself backwards before something struck his head, and he remembered no more.

Chapter Text

“I said it!” Scrooge exclaimed, “Did ye not hear me say it?”

“I heard you say it,” Huey mumbled.

“Of course ye did!” Scrooge said, “Because I said it! Don’t wander off!” 

Huey winced, but despite the exasperation in Scrooge’s voice, his fingers were gentle as they bandaged the scrapes on the back of Huey’s hand. The antiseptic ointment was cool on his knees, arms, hands, and chin, regardless of the strong herbal smell.

Come to think of it, though, the damp gauze should really sting more than it did. In fact, it really felt like nothing.

The campfire flickered noiselessly, his brothers talking in absolute silence under the New Mexican night sky. Sitting on a low rock with the first aid kit in his lap, Huey looked up at the sea of stars overhead in the purple, swirling atmosphere as Scrooge knelt at his feet. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I just thought…”

“Ye were curious.”

Huey looked back down to where Uncle Scrooge had become Uncle Donald.

“You boys are always curious.” Donald moved on to bandaging his elbow. “That’s what gets you into so much trouble.”

“I don’t mean to find trouble,” Huey said. 

Donald shook his head. The bandages vanished from his hand, and Huey looked down to the writing up the inside of his forearms. 

Pluck a ditty on an arc.

Pluck a ditty on an arc.

Pluck a ditty on an arc.

Pluck a ditty on an arc.

Mrs. Beakley took his wrists, and the cloth she ran up them was damp.

“Ink is incredibly dangerous,” she said briskly, “Especially on your skin.”

“That was disproven,” Huey said, but his voice sounded wrong. It sounded like Uncle Donald’s. “It can stain your skin, but not poison you.”

“Ink leaves evidence,” she corrected, “Your thoughts are safe inside your head, however as soon as you write them down, they’re for anyone to take.”

She scrubbed at his arm, and Huey watched in horror as the looping cursive smeared. He couldn’t remember her letter. Dewey had shown it to them and Huey had poured over it for days, memorizing the words, running his fingertips over the curves of his mother’s script, but he couldn’t remember what it said. It was smeared all over his arms, and he couldn’t remember what it said.

“No,” he said, struggling to jerk his hands back. “No, I need that!”

The redwood statue’s hands on his were too tight. The smoothly carved fingers dug into his wrists, and his brothers talked silently on as Huey tried to twist free. He looked up sharply into the polished, wooden face of his mother.

Her short hair and wide eyes were just the same as Dewey’s old crumpled picture,  the same as the painting he’d shown them. Her mouth frowned though, as she spoke silently. 

“Mom?”

“Huey!”

His eyes snapped open and with a gasp, he sat up.

He immediately wished he hadn’t. Pain lanced through his skull, and he groaned into the total blackness, tipping forward to bury his face in his hands.

“Oh, my gosh, I was sure you were dead,” a voice said beside him.

At least Ellie seemed fine.

He dug his fists into his eyes and took a deep breath before moving a hand to the back of his head. A lump was already forming, but it only felt a bit tacky.

The cold had begun to seep into his skin.

“Are you okay?” he croaked, and Ellie nodded, “What happened?”

“Uh.”

There was a click of a flashlight, and Huey looked up slowly. 

He could barely see Ellie beside him, her hand cupped over the light of the flashlight to cast them both in a faint orange glow. She chewed her lip.

“So,” she said, “You have to promise not to be mad…because you agreed to it, so technically it was both our ideas.”

“Where’s the creature?” Huey said, and he really hoped his words weren’t as slurred as they sounded to his ears. “Where’d it go?”

“It’s…out there,” Ellie said carefully, and he squinted at her.

“Where are we?” 

“In…here…”

Huey swallowed hard as he reached for the flashlight she held. She grit her teeth as she passed it to him, and he slowly turned it to the wall of crumbled rock at his left.

The wall where there once was a cave.

He turned the flashlight behind them. 

More rock.

Ahead.

More rock.

The mountain had come down after all.

“I can’t believe we survived!” she exclaimed, “The whole dang cave came crashing down, and it was all booooooshhh, and I saw you in the firework light, all like ‘Aahh, noo,’ and then the ceiling was all bssshhhcra! And I ran for you, but the thing did, too, but then I got–”

“Ellie,” Huey whispered, “We’re– the cave…”

“Came down!” she said, “From the fireworks! I can’t believe I only paid six dollars for all of those– talk about a bang for your buck–”

“We can’t be…”

He twisted around. It wasn’t a large space, maybe twenty feet across. The ceiling hung low, and debris lay everywhere. He and Ellie lay in some sort of dip in the stone, and he could feel sand and dirt clinging to his elbows and legs from the ground, the skin ground away. They were being digested by the Sierras themselves.

“I’m trapped,” he whispered.

“We’re trapped, genius.”

Huey could feel his own heart pounding in his tongue as his ears roared. How much oxygen did they have? Was the tunnel still intact? That would be a huge factor in how long they could survive, but what was the point? 

The flashlight dropped from his fingers as he clapped his hands over his mouth. The room twisted as the light fell, and the stones looked like they shifted.

They’d snuck out. No one had any idea where they were. The camp would have noticed they were missing by now, of course they had, but they hadn’t left any hint of where they were going. They’d be another statistic, campers vanished without a trace in the wilderness. His brothers would never know what happened to him. He’d be gone, just gone, he–

“Hey!” Ellie said, “Maybe we slow down that breathin’ just a bit…”

Huey shook his head.

“We weren’t meant to be underground,” he whispered, “We didn’t even leave a note…they’re not going to know what happened to us…Oh, god, they don’t even know we’re missing… Help! Help, anybody! Please!” 

“Shut up!” Ellie snapped, and Huey clapped his hands back over his mouth, pushing himself up and stumbling towards the rockslide. “We’re gonna be fine, I promise! We just gotta stay cool.”

“I can’t breathe…”

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay! Look, some of these stones are loose, maybe we can dig–”

“I can’t– I can’t b…”

His vision swam, swirling at the edges as he pitched forward onto his scraped hands.

“It’s fine,” Ellie insisted, but her voice was foggy and like glass on his ears. “We’re gonna figure it out! Nothing–”

Huey shook his head, and this time he couldn’t stop the seize of his stomach this time, and Ellie’s “Eugh–” was drowned out by the splash of his sick on the stone. Blood pounded in his ears, in his wrists as his fingers flexed, and he heaved again as his belly spasmed, emptying itself on the floor. His elbows shook, and he could feel the tears and snot on his face, a foul smell trapped in his nose as he gagged.

Something touched his back, and he flinched underneath it. He fought to catch his breath, but it wouldn’t come, and the stench of vomit was overwhelming in the space, but the smell of wet dirt and rock was moreso, and he couldn’t hold himself. He reeled, falling back to sit and his head swam again. He squeezed his eyes shut, he couldn’t get air, he was light–

Something was pulling at his shoulders, guiding him back.

He shook his head as Ellie grunted behind him.

“Lay down, stupid.”

He shook his head again, digging his nails into his palms, but he let her pull him down onto his back. He squeezed his eyes closed, digging in his fists until he saw stars.

Ellie moved to his feet, lifting them with another grunt, folding his knees before pushing them up and leaning forward onto his shins. Everything was black, and his stomach felt like yawning static. His head pounded and his teeth felt awful, but he also felt a bit like an action figure, folded up in a Z as the little girl draped herself over his legs. 

Vasovagal syncope is the faint response when the body overreacts to certain triggers, such as the sight of blood or extreme emotional distress, his brain provided. It may also be called neurocardiogenic syncope. Passively raising or propping up one’s legs in the air is an immediate treatment for someone who has fainted or shows signs of fainting from vasovagal syncope. This will restore blood flow to the brain.

Ellie fidgeted her fingers on his knees, but breathed too deeply and too loudly through her nose, and Huey caught the flow of her breaths. He bit his lips to force air in through his nose, only letting them go to release the breath. 

“Hey, look at that,” Ellie said, “See, you know the drill.”

Huey kept his eyes closed, and the sharp point of pain in his palms felt good as he squeezed his fists tighter, clutching them to his belly.

Ellie shifted forward, rising on her toes to rest more of her weight on his legs. 

“Gimme your hands,” she said. 

“I’m not going to airplane you,” he managed between shaking breaths.

“Shut up and give me your hands.”

He felt laid bare as he raised his fists away from his core, but he let her catch them. Her fingers worked open his, and he was faintly surprised to feel her dig her thumb into the meat of his, rolling the muscle at the heel of his hand.

Uncle Donald used to do the same thing when Huey’d cried when he was little.

“My brother has a lot of freak outs,” Ellie said, “And you’re way more chill than him. Sometimes.”

She squeezed up his fingers, and Huey couldn’t help closing his eyes as he breathed, and imagined sitting back on the houseboat, perched in the booth of the kitchen nook as Uncle Donald massaged through his hand, speaking as quietly as he could after kicking Dewey and Huey above deck for a bit. 

“We’re gonna be fine,” she said firmly, “This is a real adventure now. Something had to go wrong, or it’d just be a commune.”

“Commute,” Huey whispered.

She dug a nail into his skin and he hiccupped. 

“We got a problem,” she said, “Now we just gotta use our heads to fix it. Junior Woodchuck rule twenty eight–”

“No problem exists without a solution,” Huey said, “It just may not be a desirable solution.”

“We just gotta put our heads together.” She bounced up on her toes again. “Don’t freak out, and stay smart.”

“Smarter than the smarties,” Huey said quietly.

“Yeah!” Ellie exclaimed, loud enough for Huey to jump, “I– yeah, exactly!”

He cracked open an eye to watch her face light up.

“Do we have the bag?” he croaked.

She pointed to the dusty pack a few feet away.

“Can I have the canteen?”

She let his legs fall heavily as she scooted away to dig it out, and he let her pull him up to swish out his mouth, gargling and spitting. 

“Okay,” he said, taking a few sips, “So what do we have?”

He shook the canteen.

“Quarter day’s ration of water,” he said, “At best. How much food?”

“There was a toaster strudel in there, but I think it’s probably breadcrumbs at this point,” she said, “But I don’t think that’s a problem.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’ll suffocate way faster than starve.”

Huey swallowed. 

“Okay,” he said, “We gotta get out of here. Empty cave–”

“Not empty,” she said, rising.

She plucked up the flashlight, turning it around the back of the little cave.

“Look,” she said, “Someone carved out the wall.”

Sure enough, there was a deep shelf set into the back wall, dried and crumbled sticks and branches laid out on it. Huey climbed to his feet as well, and promptly tripped on the ledge of the tiny ridge he had been sitting in. He brushed the damp dirt from his bottom, bending to dust off his legs.

He frowned at the ground.

“Turn the flashlight over here,” he said. 

Ellie blinded him with the light before lowering it with an apology. He reached out to touch the surface of the stone as he waited for his vision to clear.

“Look at this,” he said, “It’s been carved out here, too. Look at these, long parallel lines, coming from this…what is this?”

He pointed back to where they’d been sitting, and Ellie lit the area. 

Huey frowned.

“It almost looks like–”

“A riverbed!” Ellie exclaimed, and she wasn’t wrong.

It was only a few inches deep, but the distinction between the hard stone and softer, leftover silt and smaller stones was distinct. She followed it to their left, and sure enough, the dried creekbed met the face of the stone, disappearing into a gash in the wall. 

Huey held out a hand, she passed it over, and he turned back to the lines in the stone. They shot out like long, deep teeth of a comb from the riverbed several feet apart in straight lines, and the bed around each strip was soil, actual soil, packed down and dried.

Huey knelt, digging a hand into the hard-packed dirt. The soil shimmered a bit in his hand.

Ellie made a noncommittal hum somewhere behind him, and it echoed oddly. Huey turned.

She’d pulled herself into the rock shelf, and lay flat on her back, picking at the ceiling over her head. 

“It looks like a dog bed,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She plucked something off the stone, showing it to Huey. 

He let the dirt fall through his fingers as he crossed to her.

“Is that…”

“It looks like dog hair,” she said.

Pinched between her fingers was what looked like a clump of short, brittle black hair.

Huey looked up at the stone around her. 

“It’s everywhere,” he said, “Look, it is like a dog bed. In fact…”

He nudged her aside, and she sat up to let him look at the long-dead reeds and branches she laid on. 

“I think it’s exactly like a dog bed!” he said, “I think this is its nest!”

Ellie’s eyes widened, and she rolled out of the nook at double speed. Huey cleared whatever was rising in his throat, forcing himself to turn away from the stone bunk. He took a deep breath as Ellie’s mouth twisted, something working across her face as she looked at the ground.

Huey guided her away from the bunk.

“This dried up river,” Huey said, “Look, there’s dirt all along the sides of these branches. They almost look like aqueducts.”

“Aren’t most ducks–”

“They deliver water,” Huey said quickly, “They’re used in farming.”

Ellie looked around the cave.

“You think it was gardening down here?” she said, “There’s no sun!”

“Plenty of plants grow in the dark,” he said, “There’d dozens of species of moss, lichen, mushrooms, even some vegetables–” 

“The river dried up,” Ellie interrupted, “And the glamers–”

“Galameseyers.”

“Galameseyers came, and chased it out?”

Huey took the flashlight from her fingers, and he could feel her grab onto his shirt to follow him in the dark as he moved to the dried up stream. He stepped in, pacing over the silt to the mouth. 

“Or it didn’t have any reason to stay.”

Ellie followed him as he knelt, and the beam of light he flashed inside the close passage did nothing to assuage the tight curl of his stomach. The walls were smooth, worn down by centuries of erosion, and it rose steadily up and to the right. 

Ellie moved beside him to run a hand along the top. 

“It’s still damp,” she said, “Maybe it didn’t totally dry up?”

Huey flashed the light around them.

“There,” he said, and Ellie cast a long shadow on the rockslide wall as she crossed through the beam to the nearby pile of debris.

“Bricks!” she said, “And there’s more digging stuff over here, too.”

“What kind?” 

“Like, chisels and shovels and picks and stuff.”

Huey turned back to the low tunnel, lighting up the shaft.

“I don’t think the river dried up,” he said, “I think it was blocked off.”

He heard Ellie move back towards him in the dark. 

“It was an assassination attempt,” she said quietly.

“I– what?”

“On the innocent scouts and troop leaders of Woodchuck Island,” she whispered, “They bricked up the only water source for the garden of the beast of Woodchuck Island, forcing it out of its lair and setting it on the good people who simply desired to respect and live harmoniously with nature…but nature had other ideas…”

“I don’t actually think you’re too far off,” Huey said.

Ellie gasped.

“You think it was a real murder attempt?”

“What? No.”

Ellie deflated.

“I think you’re right about everything else, though,” he said, and he felt her perk up again behind him. “Look.”

He turned the beam on the slightly shimmering dirt.

“They came looking for the natural silver veins in the walls,” he said, “And they found silver in the stream, too.”

“So they dam it up,” she said, “So they could get under the water–”

“But in the meantime,” he said, “They also cut off the water source for the creature–”

“The Beast of Woodchuck Island,” she corrected quickly.

“Yes, that. They ruin its food supply and its water supply,” he said, “And oh my gosh, the strawberry patches!” 

“The–”

“Old Sue said there’s been a problem with bears in the strawberry patches!” he said, “The creature–”

“The B–”

“Ugh, the Beast of Woodchuck Island had to move lower down the mountain to find food and water! That’s why it's been getting into the camp’s gardens.

“Oh!” Ellie exclaimed, “And we were right by the river the first time I heard it, too!”

“It didn’t attack us,” Huey said, “It went through our stuff for food and left us alone.”

“Because we weren’t a threat,” she said, “It only started chasing us when we got near its cave, and when you picked up the dynamite.”

“Because it thought I was another miner,” Huey said. 

“Who does that?” Ellie said in disgust, “Who just…changes the mountain, ‘cause they want to? It’s a mountain, it’s history!”

“Looks like the mountain got the better of them, though,” Huey said, and Ellie fell silent. “And all of this doesn’t help us get out.”

“Or get past the Beast of Woodchuck Island,” she said.

Huey looked up sharply.

“Isn’t it–”

“Ooh, yeah…” she said, “I…heard it moving around while you were drooling on the ground. I think it’s okay out there.”

Huey took a deep breath, and Ellie tapped him on the shoulder.

“What?”

Ellie raised a brow.

“I have a really crazy idea.”

“No.”

“It’s–”

“No!” Huey said, “No way!”

She threw her hands in the air where she sat cross-legged facing him.

“It didn’t have a problem with us before when it didn’t think we were–”

“That’s ridiculous!” Huey said, pacing up and down the riverbed, “And it was way before! We blew it up! Twice!”

“Four times if you count the flares.”

“Four–”

“It doesn’t matter, though,” Ellie said, “If it was smart enough to be gardening, and making ak–aw–”

“Aqueducts?”

“Aqueducts, yeah. Then maybe it's intelligent,” she said, “And we could reason with it. Maybe it will understand.”

Huey looked back at the tunnel.

“I can do it,” she said quickly, “I’m not scared of–”

“I’m not scared!” Huey said, “I just…I…”

He kicked at a pebble, and it tumbled past Ellie’s knees. 

“I can…”

He looked at the black crack again, and it was like a void staring back. He had to close his eyes again, sinking to sit on the edge of the rock beside Ellie.

He bent forward to rest his head on his knees. 

“Did you get locked in a closet?” she asked seriously.

“What?” He was startled out of his fear, and looked up, but she wore a straight face. 

She shrugged.

“I got stuck once,” she said.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t get stuck…”

He took a deep breath. 

“I did,” he amended.

“Not many people put handles inside their closet, but my brother gets stuck a lot–”

“No, it wasn’t in a closet,” Huey said, “I got…lost, I guess.”

Ellie tugged on her feet, her knees moving absently, like butterfly wings.

“We were traveling,” he said, “I…I told my family I’d be in one place, but I wandered off, and…I got stuck.”

“Underground?”

Huey nodded.

“Well, you didn’t get too stuck,” Ellie said, “I’m lookin’ at you right now.”

He pushed down the anger that flared in his chest. 

“My family found me, eventually,” he said, “But it was…a bit…”

He shook his head. 

“They didn’t know where I was,” he said, “Nobody even knew I was…it took a while.”

Ellie took the flashlight from his hands, squatting to light up the tunnel.

“I’m sure they were trying,” she said.

“It’s not their fault,” Huey said, “I just– wait!”

He lunged after her as she clambered forward, making it halfway in before he grabbed ahold of her good ankle.

She squawked.

“I can do it!” she said, “Let me– ugh…” 

She crawled out backwards as he pulled, and she dropped onto her bottom, fuming.

“Why not?”

Huey pointed at the bandana tied around her calf. 

“We have no idea about the condition of that water,” he said, “Or what kind of bacteria will be in there, and that wound is going to be flooded with it. Infection is nothing to mess around with. Its one of the leading causes of–”

“It’s got a bandage!” 

“Ellie.” Huey took the flashlight back. “I can do it. Hand me that chisel.”

The first few feet of the tunnel were tight, and Huey squeezed his eyes shut to crawl his way forward until, surprisingly, the ceiling began to rise. A minute of crawling, and he was able to raise his head. Three minutes, and he could stretch his back. Four, and he could raise up onto his knees. 

He did almost bump his head on the ceiling when Ellie’s voice echoed down the tunnel, reverberating back ten times louder with each echo.

“How’s it going down there?” 

“This isn’t so bad,” he whispered, and apparently, his voice carried.

“I told you!” Ellie called back, “You’re doing great!” 

Huey snorted, but kept crawling. With every pump of his arm, the flashlight swung in his hand and the walls seemed to crawl along with him. He did his best to watch the stone below him.

“It’s interesting,” he said, “The striation down here is fascinating. You can see the lines from–”

Something tickled the back of his neck, and he shivered.

“The little ripples and lines in the rocks,” he said, “They’re from mineral deposits of glaciers moving over millions of years, and they can tell you all about the passage of time and geological events that happened in the area.”

The ceiling was lowering again, forcing his head down a little further. He dropped his hips, lowering his belly to the ground to scoot. 

“So, it's like trees?”

“Kind of!”

His neck tickled again, a little further under his collar, and he swiped at it.

“Like, each layer is a hundred years or something?” Ellie called.

“More like a couple thousand,” he said, “And certain lines tell about earthquakes, or volcanic activity–”

His neck tickled again, and grunted. He scrabbled at his neck, and something small met his fingers. 

It crawled up his wrist. 

“Agh!”

He writhed, smacking at his wrist as whatever but it was wriggled up his elbow.

“Get it off! Get it off!” 

He couldn’t get his arm right, and his elbow caught on the stone, scraping the skin. His heart pounded, and there was no way his body had any sweat left to give, but he could feel it prickling on his back. 

“Huey!” Ellie called, “Hey–”

Huey felt whatever it was squish under his finger, it’s juice and blood smearing over his skin. He gasped for breath, twisting onto his back, which was just about the biggest mistake he could make.

He stared up at the solid stone. 

The stone gripped him. 

“Huey!” 

“It–”

“What happened?” 

“A bug,” he said, “I…I’m okay, it was a bug…”

She was quiet for a moment, and then–

“Was there a volcano here?”

The stone felt like it was clinging to him, damp dust coating his skin.

“It doesn’t matter,” he snapped, probably harsher than necessary. “This isn’t the time–”

“Tell me about the strations.”

Huey opened his eyes.

“...Huey?”

The rock was interestingly lined from in here.

“There’s a…” He took a deep breath. “There’s a low salt deposit.”

“What else?”

“It’s…Ellie, I’m–”

“I’m right here.”

He took another deep breath.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “Somebody’s here. I know you’re here.”

Huey closed his eyes.

Someone knew where he was. 

He opened them, and rolled over onto his belly again. His flashlight swung around the passage, and it caught on a new color just a few yards ahead.

Brick.

“There it is,” he called, “I…I found it!” 

There it was, clear as day: a dusty, mildew-covered brick wall stood no more than three feet high, damming up the passage completely. The third brick from the left, fourth down was going to be their key. The top left corner had been chipped away, just the width of a hair, and he could see moisture seeping through the gap smaller than a pinprick.

After a few more scootches, the ceiling opened up again, too, and with more relief than he’d ever thought possible, he managed to sit up onto his knees.

“Okay,” he said, “We were right. They stopped up the stream to pan it.”

“Nailed it!”

He withdrew the chisel from his pocket.

“I want to go on record,” he said, “Saying that this is a horrible idea, and is more than likely going to get us eaten instead of crushed to death.”

“Better than suffocate slowly’n watch each other turn blue.”

Huey grimaced. 

“Okay,” he said, “Ready?”

“Born ready.”

He set the chisel right into the notch of the brick, and a fist-sized stone was easy to find within reach. He sat facing his feet down the passage, and crossed his ankles.

“One,” he said, raising the stone.

“You’ve got this!”

“Two.” 

He drew the stone back.

“Three!”

One, huge breath was all he could take before slamming the stone onto the head of the chisel with a vicious crack! The chip burst past his head as the metal sank into the brick, and it took all his strength to yank it back out, bracing for–

The trickle. 

A tiny stream of water the size of his pinky whizzed out, and Huey’s heart sank as he watched it drip down the brick.

“Well…” he said, “That was–”

The wall burst inward, and he gulped a single breath of air before the torrential wave crashed down on him, bashing him against the ceiling as he was swept into the passage.

Unlike Ellie’s assurances, it was nothing like a water park slide, and the stone bit at his bottom and elbows as he careened down the tunnel, fighting for the odd breath as patches of air burst past him. He twisted this way and that, and his lungs were pounding, ready to burst, and then there were hands. 

They gripped his wrists, dragging, and then he was flat on the stone and left to gulp down air as Ellie clapped him on the arm, whooping and cheering.

“That was awesome!” she shouted, right by his ear, “I could feel the air when the water came out, and then you were all ‘Aahh!’ and then the rock was like–”

“I was there for that part,” Huey spluttered, “Thank you for the summary though.”

“And I was right!” Ellie said, pulling him to his feet, “Look, it’s filling in the weird dips!”

He was soaked, and he’d definitely have to keep an eye out for swimmer’s ear in the next few days, but he stepped back beside Ellie to look at their work. 

The stream coursed through the tiny cave, its splashing and bubbling echoing off the rock. Untouched for who knows how long, the aqueducts filled quickly, and the soil around them ever so slowly turned darker with moisture. 

“It’s working,” he said, “Oh my gosh, it’s working!” 

Ellie dragged on his arm as she leapt up and down. 

“Who’s idea was crazy now?” she exclaimed.

“Just because it worked doesn’t mean it’s not still crazy,” he said, “Besides, now we’ve got the hardest part.”

“Au contraire,” she said. 

She turned, hefting one of the decrepit pickaxes onto her shoulder.

“Ah’m off ta strike it rich!” she bellowed. Huey had just enough time to scootch back before the pickaxe was whizzing over his head and sinking into the stone with a clunk!

“Careful!” was all he managed to get out before she was slamming the pickaxe down again.

“You can-nee stop me now!” she shouted, swinging again.

Huey rubbed his eyes, and counted backwards from sixty. He made it to thirty six by the time she threw the pickaxe down, gasping for air. 

The stone looked relatively unchanged.

“Anyway,” Huey said, “Now that you’ve got that out of your system, would you like to use the fulcrum?”

She swiped sweat off her brow, panting. 

“The what?”

Huey opened his mouth, but his intro to physics spiel was completely drowned out by the rock-trembling, blood-freezing scream from the other side of the rockslide. 

Ellie leapt back as a stone came tumbling down from higher up the wall, and Huey dragged her back further, snatching up the pack. He slung it on his back and clicked off the flashlight, stowing it in his pocket.

“On the bright side,” Ellie shouted over the roar, “It’s gonna do the work for us!” 

“Get rid of that,” Huey hissed, and Ellie hurled the axe away from them. 

Another rock came tumbling down, and Huey flinched as a hand, hairy and long-nailed, burst through the gap, scraping at the stones, but Ellie stood firm at his hip. Together, they stepped behind the stream and raised their bare hands. 

With one last screeching, furious scream, the beast hurled itself through the stones, and a small avalanche of dust and rock came crashing in after it. The smell of the thing met Huey’s nose like acid, and he gagged, but forced his streaming eyes to stay open. 

The creature shook itself as it rose, and it was taller than both of his uncles, taller even than Launchpad as it stretched onto its two legs. Its eyes gleamed in the dark, and Huey swallowed hard before pointing at the stream.

The creature pulled up short, her nostrils flaring. 

“We’re sorry,” Huey said, “For what those other miners did to your home.”

“Whistle,” Ellie hissed.

“What?”

“I can’t–”

“You–”

“I can’t whistle!” Ellie said, “Just–”

Huey whistled, three short notes, and the creature hummed a curious sound. 

“What did you say?” Elle whispered.

“I don’t know!” Huey said, “I don’t speak–”

The creature strode sideways, half-hunched, to the mouth of the stream, its eyes never leaving them, but it lowered herself to the stone to dip its fingertips in the cool water. 

It crawled forward like an ape, and Huey edged back to give it room, easing across the stream and towards the hole it had burst through. 

Ellie didn’t move, though. She stood stock still and wide-eyed as the creature approached. Its nostrils flared again.

Ellie made an odd hissing noise with her mouth, a poor attempt at a whistle.

The creature’s eyes narrowed.

“Alright,” Ellie said quickly, “Point taken, have a nice day!”

The creature didn’t move as Ellie scooted in a wide arc around her, towards Huey. Huey boosted her up onto the stones, keeping his eye trained on the creature as Ellie scrambled through, until he finally had to turn his back to push through himself. 

Nothing charged him, though, and he tumbled into the total darkness, rolling down the rocks on the other side to land on the stone with a thud. Hands fell on his face, slapping over his shoulders and down his arms until they found the flashlight in his hands, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight right as Ellie clicked it on. 

“Did you see that?” she shouted, “We communed! We’re best friends– I have a sasquatch best friend–”

“Yes,” Huey said, “I saw. Let’s get out of here.”

“Right.”

She set off boldly across the cavern, making for the tunnel mouth as she painted the high walls in hearts with the light-beam.

“Hey, good thing this flashlight was water-proof,” she said, “How long do the batteries–”

The flashlight sparked, and the light flashed once, twice, before the entire cavern fell into darkness.

“Whoops.”

Sopping wet clothes were not Huey’s ideal spelunking outfit, and he was shivering by the time they finally managed to stumble out into the open air above ground. The sun, by miracle of long summer days, still hung in the sky, and had Huey’s life depended on it he would have sworn they’d been underground for another fifteen hours, not the three they actually had been. 

He stripped off his still-dripping shirt, and Ellie let him borrow a worn spare flannel she’d found crumpled at the bottom of her bag. 

“All my brother’s clothes are big,” she’d said as she handed it to him.

Huey’d nodded.

“We got our clothes second-hand, too,” he’d said, but Ellie shook her head.

“He just likes ‘em like that.”

Huey’d dragged it on, draping his wet shirt over the back of the pack before they set off again, following Ellie the last push up to the mountain’s very peak.

Exhaustion set into his bones over the next few hours, the post-adventure adrenaline draining from their systems as they climbed higher into the quickly approaching twilight. As excited as Ellie had been on their climb out of the cave system, she had fallen quieter, hissing through tender muscles and grunting through the final scramble.

The smattering crops of trees and bushes had deepened to nearly blue as the sun sank, and their shadows lengthened as they heaved themselves up the granite until finally, finally, Ellie hauled herself out of sight, and Huey followed only to be met with a sight that had his breath stilling in his chest.

The whole valley stretched out beneath them. 

Huey forgot every word he knew in every language he knew as he let the pack slide from his back and moved to stand at Ellie’s shoulder at the edge of the mountain’s broad, flat top. 

Here at the peak, the late summer evening’s sun hung low in the sky, casting the whole valley in a scarlet orange and pink as it prepared itself to ease behind the mountain ranges beyond them. Alpine white granite shone like the silver it held deep below, the mountain’s rolling slopes dappled with deep green pines and bushes, a spring some ways below feeding the streams they’d sipped from in their long ribbons through the valley. 

“The Tiny Lakes…” Ellie pointed, and the grove had felt so big when they’d stood on the shores, dwarfed by spires of trees and lounging in the grasses, but from so high above, the oasis looked barely more than a pinprick. Lights caught his eye, and Huey leaned forward to look to his left beyond Ellie.

“The Village,” Huey said, and Ellie cooed.

“It looks like it could be a fantasy village,” she said, “With magic bulbs for torches and wooden taverns and thatched roofs.”

The mountain shaded the valley, and indeed, the Village’s lights cast a warm glow, nestled in beside the Big Lake. 

“We could be anywhere,” Ellie whispered, “Or anywhen.”

“Maybe not anywhere,” Huey said, and he wasn’t sure why, but his voice was hushed as well. “The combination of flora and geology isn’t unique to this valley, but it’s certainly localized to–”

“But people have been doing this for as long as there’s been people,” she said, “We could be from anywhere in all of history, and all we see is the little Village we started in, and the whole path we traveled over to get to where we are now. And now there’s trees and mountains that are older than we’ll ever be and they just started.”

Huey looked over at her. Her eyes were wide, and the sun that set behind her cast her tangled hair in a pink glow. Her breath was still settling from the exertion of their climb, as was his own, and her nose and brow would be a blooming sunburn tomorrow, but now, she bore the same glow in her eye Uncle Scrooge wore at the end of the journey, her mouth the same shape as his beholding the treasure at the end of a long journey, or grand magics, or spectacular sunsets from every corner of the globe.  For a moment, the resemblance was so startling that it took him a moment to realize she’d spoken.

“What?” he said dumbly.

She rolled her eyes.

“I said we need to set up before the eclipse.”

“The eclipse!” Huey exclaimed.

He’d forgotten. How could he have forgotten? That was the whole reason they were here!

“The other Woodchucks are set up on the east side to watch,” Huey said, “So we should–”

“Here.”

Ellie dragged him by a backpack strap away from the edge to the west. Huey protested, looking back at the valley over his shoulder.

“We don’t want to see them,” she said, “The Village is gonna be too bright even from here, and we need this tree.”

“For what?” Huey said, looking up at the lone twisted pine tree at their peak. “It’s going to block–”

“Venus.”

Huey frowned, and Ellie raised a brow like he was stupid.

“It’s gonna block–”

“Venus,” Ellie repeated, “It’s going to cause too much light pollution.”

“To see the eclipse? Huey said, “That’s not–”

“No,” Ellie said, exasperated, “If we set up here, the moon’s gonna disappear on our left in the open, which gets rid of that light, and we’ll have the tree to block Vega and Altair and the village leftover light if it gets here, cause the stars are too-”

“Bright,” Huey said, “You haven’t actually said for what.” 

She wiggled her shoulders.

“That,” she said, “Is a surprise.” 

Huey shook his head, looking around at their apparent campground for the night. Old branches from the ancient-looking pine would give enough fuel for a small campfire, at least, should they get cold– and it was a bit colder at the peak. 

Ellie pulled at the back of the pack, and Huey let her drag it from his shoulders absently. It slid off quickly behind him, and he felt it collide with her. 

She gasped. 

He turned quickly. 

She’d dropped the bag, her face screwed up as her hand hovered over the bandana he’d tied around her calf. It’d jostled sideways, and she bit her lip. Huey kicked himself for forgetting about that, too. 

“Here, sit down,” he said quickly, “Let me look at it.”

She shook her head, but her lip was slowly turning white around where she bit it, and Huey took a breath. He moved the still-heavy pack aside, and guided her to the flat ground, her legs splayed. He sat in front of her, and she let him pull her hands away from the cloth.

“I’m going to take this off, now,” he said, and she shook her head. “I promise I’ll be gentle, I just need to make sure there’s nothing in it, and we’re going to lose light soon.”

She took a deep breath. She nodded, and Huey nodded back.

“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath of his own before loosening the knot.

She stiffened instantly, kicking his shin soundly with her other foot. He apologized as he resettled, and she screwed up her face again as he eased the cloth back. 

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Ellie said quickly. 

She leaned forward, and Huey cupped a hand over the deep gouge in her calf. 

“It’s fine,” he said, but his stomach was already turning a little looking at the white in her leg that could only be fat, and the thick flap over it.

“Do we need to amputate?” she said, sounding far less sure than before.

“What? No, stop asking that,” he said, and she relaxed a bit. “Just…”

“Just what?”

“That,” he said, “Is what I call a laceration.”

She knocked his hand aside, and her eyes widened.

“Am I gonna die of infection?” she said.

“No,” he said, “Not before tomorrow, but…”

He squinted at the horizon line.

“You said you had a first aid kit?”

She nodded.

“We’ve got about another half hour left of sunlight,” he said, “And the eclipse isn’t until one.”

“So?” 

“Stay here,” Huey said, “I’m gonna get a fire going.”

It’d been a dry summer, and the dry pine boughs crackled in the tiny fire as Huey spread Ellie’s ‘supplies’ out on the rock beside them. 

Canned mini-sausages, a can of peach halves in syrup, and just…whole, raw yams. Three more cakes of fireworks. Allegedly clean socks. A pocket sewing kit. A small, bright yellow notebook drawn all over with marker, and a folded, battered, star chart that looked vaguely familiar. A map of Calisota, and a cheap compass. A chipped plastic magnifying glass. A small but surprisingly thorough bait and tackle kit. Their little water filter pump. A large tin camping cup he’d already filled and set in the fire to boil, and, of course, the first aid kit.

Huey rubbed his eyes, poking through the tin box. It wasn’t much, and clearly had been bought Because It Was Woodchuck Rules, but was clearly unused. He spread out its useful contents on the lid, picking out the wrapped wipes, packaged gauze, disinfectant ointment, and medical tape. 

He tried to be gentle. He sat with his legs splayed, and she rested her ankle on his thigh and did her best not to flinch as he wiped the grime from her whole calf with the bandana he’d boiled. She squeezed her fists, flinching as he dabbed the edges of the wound with antiseptic wipes, and he apologized, watching the antiseptic fizz in tiny bubbles at the sides.

“Just put a band-aid on it,” Ellie said as Huey shook his head. 

“We have a full day’s worth of hike out to get back for pickup on Monday,” he said, “And we’re filthy.”

“But you’re cleaning it.”

“This isn’t going to close on its own.”

She swallowed.

“Okay.”

She sat up straighter, and her jaw tensed, but she nodded.

“This isn’t like the splinters,” Huey said, “It’s going to hurt. Badly.”

“I can take it.”

Her mouth had that familiar determined set again. Undaunted and unyielding– one he’d only seen in Uncle Scrooge’s face. It was that resolved set of his lips when he thought no one else was watching, but he’d made a decision that fire couldn’t burn out of him.

Earlier, he’d laughed to himself at the idea of Scrooge having to drag her around through the wild. Now, he wondered if they’d get on. 

Her jaw stayed set as he quietly opened her fishing kit, and set a length of the thinnest gauge line to boil in the cup beside the finest needle from the sewing kit. It stayed set as they watched the sun dip below the mountains, and the sky eased from deep orange to a rich, rolling black. The full moon knew she would play a starring role tonight for all the world to see, and shone white and blue down on them to light up the stones in a ghostly hue under the endless stretch of stars. 

Her jaw stayed set as Huey once again raised her ankle to lay across his thigh, the flashlight held between his cheek and shoulder. 

“Ready?” he asked gently. 

“Can I hold your hand?”

“I need it right now,” he said, “But here.”

He eased his leg over her other, and she gripped his ankle tightly. 

“Okay,” she said, “Ready.”

Her voice shook, but looking up, all he was met with was unrelenting trust. He bit the inside of his cheek as he raised the needle.

She cried, because she was six and a half years old, and of course she did, and his hands shook horribly, because he was ten and three quarters, and of course they did, but she never drew her leg back, and he refused to let his stomach turn as he drew clear line from a four dollar fishing kit with bubbles painted on it through skin. 

Two sutures in, and she fell back, still gripping his ankle, to tell him in a strangled voice she could see the Summer Triangle. She told him Casseopia was supposed to look like a W, but she liked to call them mountains that got stuck upside down. She told him about the star magnitude scale, and how Deneb was the furthest first magnitude star at three and a half thousand light years from Earth. She told him her brother didn’t know anything about space, but from what she’d told him, he’d decided Beta Lyrae system was his favorite, because they were twin stars that shared mass, just like them.  

He nearly missed with the needle when she told him Pluto was her favorite planet.

“Your favorite what?” he said, and she frowned at the sky.

“My favorite planet,” she repeated, “It’s the only…only other planet with snowy mountains, and it’s smaller than the moon. It’s smaller across than America. I could walk it.”

“Pluto’s not a planet,” Huey said, turning back to his work.

“Are you stupid?” she said, “Did–”

Huey apologized as Ellie buried her face in her hands, and her foot shook terribly as he eased the needle through. 

“It’s technically a dwarf planet,” he said.

“So still a planet,” she hiccupped, and Huey shook his head.

“What makes the snow?” he asked, and the answer was long and stuttered and he could really only make out half of her words as she cried, but it kept her busy all the way through the last knot. He tapped her foot, and her face was tear-streaked, but she squinted at the wound in fascination.

“Will it scar?” she said.

“Definitely.”

“Cool.”

Huey washed his hands with the hot water, and watched Ellie flex her leg.

“Get it checked out by a doctor as soon as you get home,” Huey said, “I don’t want to be the reason you get sepsis and die.”

“Yeah, if you’d left it, I’d have gotten gangrene from the Beast of Woodchuck Island’s nail gunk.”

Huey shook his head as he stabbed a stick into the raw yams, and Ellie watched with interest as he nestled them into the base of the campfire. He caught her eye.

“Baked potatoes,” he said, and she cooed.

“Won’t they– HUEY, LOOK!” 

He jumped, but she pointed skyward, and yes, the light-show had begun. He caught the tail end of the shooting star Ellie’d seen, but his eye was drawn to the greater colors.

He’d been wrong before– there was nothing black about the night sky. The great, flowering scar of the Milky Way stretched high above them as far as he could see, its blues and reds brighter than he’d ever seen before. He abandoned trying to open the can of sausages to sit back beside Ellie, and together they laid back and watched the sky rain stars on them. 

Time fell away, and Huey watched the stars dance their way over the vast expanse of sky. Ellie’s finger moved across the show, pointing out Venus and Vega and Mars, and Huey told her the ancient myths that named the pictures in the sky. She asked questions, but mostly she listened, and he learned she liked stories. 

He fell quiet after a while, and he only realized she had too when he heard her breath hitch a bit. He looked over, and the moonlight caught on the wet streak of her cheek. 

“Does your leg hurt? I’m sorry, I–”

She shook her head slowly.

“We’re really small,” she said. 

When they were much younger, the night they’d discovered stars weren’t flat but rather spread just as deeply as they were wide, Louie’d once said the exact same thing. He’d needed to abandon their drugstore telescope to disappear below deck, and they’d followed. 

Huey’d never forgotten what Uncle Donald had told him when they’d found him spiraling in Donald’s hammock.

“And how lucky are we,” Huey said, “To be able to live in a world where there’s so much big to see?” 

She smiled, and she raised both her hands in the air, grasping at the sky. 

Something in the fire exploded, and Huey rolled quickly to rescue the yams. Ellie clumsily laid out her sleeping bag without rising, and together they cracked open the blackened yam skins to eat the scalding insides. Hours passed as Huey explained infrared space telescopes, and the newest space projects. Their fire burned out, the last of their fuel expired, but Ellie looked ready to weep again as he described the near-completion of one that’d been started in the 90’s, and for someone who could name every constellation in the sky, she had surprisingly endless questions about the Hubble and how it worked. 

Huey jumped when his wristwatch beeped.

“One o’clock!” he gasped, “Oh, we–”

Ellie dragged herself up, and she hobbled quickly for their laid-out supplies. Huey looked between her and the round moon. A tiny sliver of blackness had already eased onto one edge of the pale surface.

“Ellie,” he said, “The– you’re missing it!” 

She hauled the whole stack of firework boxes a bit away from their camp, squatting and peeking around the tree to check their positioning. Huey went after her, and sure enough, the bright stars and planets had been tucked behind the tree, out of sight. 

The darkness crept across the moon’s surface. 

“Ellie, you can’t light off…is that why…did you make us haul these fireworks all the way up a mountain just to set them off from here?”

“Yep.” 

“That’s incredibly risky! We’re way outside the reach of help of emergency vehicles if we start a forest fire–”

“What forest?” she said, “It's all rock up here.”

“Still,” he said, “Good procedure–”

“You snuck away from Woodchuck Village without telling anyone or any supplies to chase somebody you didn’t know into a fight with a rabid bigfoot in a collapsing cave and then sewed my leg back on. What part of that is good procedure?” 

He opened his mouth.

“Besides,” she said, “You ever see a star nursery before?”

He closed his mouth.

“That’s what I thought.” She glanced behind him. “Also, if you wanna see your eclipse, it's happening now.”

Huey whirled around, and yes, it was the moon, and yes, it was disappearing rapidly, but the stars were growing brighter as the moon’s light diminished. Ellie laid out the cakes several feet apart, and a flash of light had him looking up to watch another star streak across the sky, brighter than any of the last.

“This is the most visible the Orion Nebula’ll be for ages,” Ellie said, “The last time it happened was twenty nine years ago, and–”

“I’ve seen pictures of that!” Huey said, “My uncle took them, he’s got them in his library!”

Ellie’s eyes lit up.

“You saw it?” she said, “I didn’t get– augh, I’m here now.”

“I can send you some pictures if you want,” Huey said, “I’ll get your number when we get back and I’ll text them to you.”

She frowned, but shook her head.

“Forget that one,” she said, “I don’t even care anymore! I didn’t even need to be there for that one anyway, because the lunar eclipse lined up with the meteor shower lined up with Orion’s orbit, and it’s happening right here, twenty nine years later. I’m sure this one’s way cooler, anyway!”

Huey frowned at her disjointed thoughts, but she wasn’t looking at him.

She pulled Huey’s hand, but he didn’t need her to point to the nebula. 

What’d been a pinprick of white light had grown to a tiny, nearly glowing cloud of pink and purple.

“I can see it…” Huey gasped, “I can…I can see it!” 

“Stars are born there,” Ellie said, “They grow up and then they get to go out into the world. Look!” 

Another shooting star leapt across the sky, but the angle made it look like it was a bright child leaping from the nursery to sail into the night. They weren’t connected, Huey knew they had lightyears between them, but as another light leapt from the nursery, and then another, he felt his own throat closing up for some reason. 

It was beautiful.

“Did you figure all this out by yourself?” Huey said, and Ellie preened. “My brothers could barely read at six–”

“Six and a half,” she interrupted, but she looked incredibly proud of herself nonetheless. “And I had a little help.”

“Did your parents-”

“Ha! Yeah, right.” She looked back up at the sky. “I may have…borrowed…some things…star maps and other stuff.”

“From the library?”

“Uh. Yes.”

“How did you know about this mountain, and the tree? You said you’ve never been here.”

Ellie’s eyes widened.

“I never came all the way up the mountain, but I…I’ve visited the Village before,” she said.

“Like, your troop comes up on retreats here, too?”

She nodded slowly.

“Absolutely.”

“But–”

“You can actually see it from the cabin roofs with binoculars,” Ellie said, “It doesn’t matter. The point is, we’re not just here to watch the show.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think it's really fair to the stars,” she said, “For them to have to do all the work. We’re gonna put on a show for them and send a little color back.”

Huey looked down at the cakes of fireworks in a neat little row, then back up to Ellie. She held the flint stick in her hand, and though the moon was nearly dark her eyes were alight by starlight.

“You’re right,” he said, “That’s not fair to them at all.”

He showed her how to properly use the flint stick, and the pounding of blood in his veins as they fled back from the fizzling fuse was nothing compared to the concussive boom as the first box launched. Ellie screamed with laughter as the sky exploded into red sparks, blue whizzing in spirals right on the tails of the red, and Huey couldn’t hold back his own as the white stone under them flashed scarlet and blue. 

They lit the next box, and the next, and the next, and it must have sounded like cannonfire from every mountain’s peak as the sound rattled the entire valley, and there was no way every Woodchuck couldn’t hear and see from below, but the booming was something Huey could feel in his chest, could taste on his tongue, the ozone and the smoke and the air and the open sky above him that rolled on further than the mind of mankind could ever imagine was like a drug. He wouldn’t forget this taste.

He spun in circles, looking from the whizzing silver rocket to the bleached moon that had returned from its eclipse behind his back and back to the fireworks. The sparks were nearly indistinguishable from the stars, and he turned to tell Ellie as much.

She stood a ways away, her arms reaching high over her head, and her round face turned skyward. Silver sparks rained down above her, dying long before they met her fingertips, but they cascaded down in a wild dance of captured starlight as comets sailed by overhead in broad strokes. 

She turned to look at him. The next rocket rained down a fair blue, and it lit her up as her tongue poked through the gap in her teeth as she grinned. She pointed upwards, and he smiled as he followed her gaze.

His ears still rang as they lay beneath their blanket, and Ellie’s breathing was slow and deep at his side, but the stars seemed to have appreciated their show. Huey traced constellations with his finger above him until his arm was too heavy to bear, and when his eyes closed, he dreamt of galaxies blooming.

“That’s the secret,” Ellie shouted over the rabble Monday morning in the crowded, dusty parking lot, “If the troop leaders are worried enough about you, they’ll be relieved you’re back, not mad!”

Huey adjusted his cap, but he shook his head. His pack was heavy, and he set it on the ground as he scanned the many cars.

“Lying to them and saying you got lost and had to be rescued because of a grievous injury had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“I was grievously injured!” she said, hitching her pack higher. “Do you know how hard you were stabbing me with that needle?” 

Huey’s eyes landed on a parked, familiar station wagon. 

“But what a story!” Ellie said, “My brother’s never gonna believe me. He always thinks I’m lying. So does my mom.”

Huey turned back to her.

“I was thinking,” he said, “You should talk to your mom about feeling left out.”

She pulled a face.

“She was already super mad at me before I left,” she said, “I don’t need to get her extra cranky about monster hunting, too.”

“I don’t know,” Huey said, “Kids get grounded, and kids sneak out, but I think moms care about their kids more than troop leaders. I’m willing to bet that when she found out you were missing, she was more worried than angry.”

Ellie scowled, biting her lip.

Someone jostled her from behind, and she winced as she stepped forward.

“How is it doing?” Huey asked, gesturing to her leg.

“Still hurts.”

“It’ll keep hurting,” he said, “We’ll make sure to bring painkillers next time.”

“Next time?”

“Well, you’re visiting, right?” Huey said, “There’s another Junior Buddy Weekend next month, and it’s closer to Duckburg, where you said your troop is. I thought that maybe we could talk to Gretta. I know buddy switching isn’t technically allowed, but I was thinking maybe we could see if there was a better placement for Lilah, and then of course I would need to find a new buddy...”

Ellie’s face fell a bit.

“Oh, I…don’t know if next month will work,” she said, kicking at the dirt.

“There’s always more!” Huey said, “And if you’re close, maybe you could come see me in Duckburg. Or we could come visit you! I think you’d really like my brothers, and our friend Webby would think you’re the best–”

“Yeah…they sound cool,” she said.

“Great!” Huey said, “Here, let me give you my phone number, and you can come over and I can show you my uncle’s pictures of the last eclipse. He’s got an awesome telescope in the library, you’d love it, and–”

“I don’t think I can.”

She still wasn’t looking at him, and his heart sank a bit. 

“Oh,” he said, “Oh, okay. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve got another buddy. I should have asked. Absolutely! Sorry, I shouldn’t have–”

“No!” she said, “I just– I don’t actually live…here. I live really far away, um, I’m just…”

She shook her head, looking frustrated. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off, throwing her arms around his middle.

“I really liked being your buddy,” she said.

He hugged her back, and her hat tumbled backwards off her head to the ground.

“Me too,” he said. 

He caught sight of Uncle Donald approaching over the top of her head. Donald waved, smiling a bit as he drew near in the crowd.

“You’re a really good friend,” she said, “I really, really liked being your friend.”

“Me too,” Huey said. 

He gave her another squeeze before pulling back. Uncle Donald stooped to pick up Ellie’s hat behind her where it’d fallen in the dirt, waiting patiently for them to finish.

“And you’re a great doctor!” she said. “It’s gonna get the coolest scar, I just know it, and then Uncle Scrooge will see I’m a real adventurer and he’ll have to take us!” 

Huey’s brain stuttered to a full halt.

“Uncle…”

“My uncle’s an adventurer!” she exclaimed, “Like, a real adventurer! He’s the best and bravest in the world! He won’t let us travel with him, but Mom said it's just probably ‘cause he’s so busy, and ‘cause we’re too little, but now he’ll see I’m already an explorer and I can take care of myself and he’ll have to take us!”

“You–”

Huey’s ears rang, but she turned abruptly at the choking noise behind her.

Uncle Donald’s face had grown deathly white, but his eyes–

They looked exactly the same as Ellie’s as she turned.

Exactly the same.

“Donald?” she shouted, “Ha! You’re so old! What are you –”

She gasped, whirling around to look at the crowd.

“Are you here to pick up your kid?” she shouted with glee, “Oh my gosh, eugh! Who’d wanna have a kid with–”

“Della Duck!” a woman’s voice bellowed over the heads of the crowd.

“Uh, oh,” Ellie said, flinching. “Time to face the music. Okay, bye, Huey! Donnie, give future me a high-five, I’m gonna go tell you you’re ugly when you grow up! Loveyouhaveagoodlifebye!”

She punched him hard in the thigh, and before either could speak a word, she pushed into the crowd. 

Speech was a distant memory to Huey, and from Donald’s expression, he was on the same page as they both turned to watch Ellie– Della. His mom. - worm through the campers and slow to a slink as she approached a very stern looking woman who wore a severe bun and a scowl. She stood with her arms crossed beside a man Huey would recognize, even twenty years younger and fuming. 

Uncle Scrooge looked about as furious as his sister beside him, the grandmother Huey had never met. 

They couldn’t hear what was said, but Scrooge didn’t speak as he shoved a hand out, palm up, and Della deflated. She withdrew something from her pocket that looked like a cross between an alarm clock and an oversized pocket watch. Scrooge snatched it from her hand, examining it as Della shoved her leg out, displaying the fresh white bandage for him. 

Scrooge didn’t look up from the doo-dad, but Della’s mother’s face smoothed in an instant, and she dropped to her knees to run a hand down the side of Della’s leg. She swept Della up in her arms, backpack and all, to hold her tightly. 

Della hesitated, but her face lit up as she wrapped her arms around her mom’s neck, burying her face in her collar.

Scrooge rolled his eyes in distaste before he reached over to pinch the back of Della’s shirt with two fingers. The doo-dad lit up with a shock of electricity, and the three of them vanished in a burst of light and smoke. 

A hand rested on Huey’s shoulder, and he turned to look up into Uncle Donald’s face, warm and soft and absolutely identical to the face he’d spent the last two days chasing. He still held Della’s outdated, real-fur Woodchuck hat, and it was soft on Huey’s sore fingers as Donald pressed it into his hands.

“It didn’t get infected,” Uncle Donald said, “And she called it her favorite scar her whole life.”

Huey looked down at the cap, and his vision blurred a bit.

“Come on,” Uncle Donald said, “Let’s get you washed up, and you can tell me what actually happened.”

Chapter Text

“Is it lead?” Huey said.

“It is not lead,” Della said, “But like lead, it is metallic.”

“Is it…a meteorite?” 

“It is not a meteorite, but like a meteorite, it is…dangerous.”

Pebbles slid out from under Huey’s foot as he picked his way down the steep granite slope. He dug in his toes, finding his balance before adjusting his pack and continuing down the sheer rock.

“Is it…is it a pickaxe?”

Behind him, he heard his mother grunt.

“It is not a pickaxe, but like a pickaxe, there is one in the house. A lot, actually”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Huey said, “Is it…blood?”

“Not blood, but like blood, it’s found on the battlefield.”

“Is it–”

“Son of a–”

Huey glanced back over his shoulder at the slope just in time to watch his mother catch herself on the branch of a crooked, broken pine. Pebbles clattered down after her, bouncing around Huey’s feet.

No person on earth had ever walked downhill with dignity, and Huey had never been more self-conscious of his own awkward shuffle down the considerably steep hill, but Della was quickly working herself up the ranks of Most Graceless Traveller Huey Had Ever Seen. And that included a concussed Dewey. Twice.

“You okay, Mom?”

“Doin’ great!” she said, “Ain’t no thing!”

Two short weeks wasn’t long enough for Huey to learn the intricacies of his mother’s tone, but it didn’t take an expert to note the tight grimace under the grin she flashed him. 

“Do you want to…take a water break?” he asked.

“Break? Ha! We just got started!” 

Huey hummed, turning his attention back to the granite. 

“Alright,” he said as they continued, “It’s metal like a meteorite, found on a battlefield like blood, in the house like a pickaxe, bitter like Uncle Donald’s spaghetti sauce, kind of pale like dust, and fatherless, like Uncle Donald–”

“That’s not what I said!” Della laughed, “I said it’s a bastard, like Uncle Donald.”

“Wouldn’t you also be an– Oh my gosh, is it a fifteenth century hand and a half weapon?” 

“It is!” Della laughed from behind him, “It is a bastard swor– shit!”

There was a scraping crack of stone, and Huey nearly lost his footing as Della collided with his shoulder before her feet went out from under her, sending her to her bottom. She dug in her heels, grabbing at foliage to slow herself as granite bits tumbled after her. 

“Mom!”

“All good!” 

Huey hurried down the slope to where she swore under her breath, looking at her scraped palms. 

“This gravity BS is the pits, huh?” she said lightly, but he could see the tight lines around her mouth as he pulled her to her feet. 

“It's the rock structure,” Huey said, “Look.”

He bent to pluck up a sheet of granite the size of his hand, thin and jagged.

“Granite’s made of layers,” he said, “It’s coming off because we’re applying pressure diagonally, and it’s probably taking more pressure from your–”

He stopped short, and she blinked at him.

He’d almost said because of your foot. What an idiot.

Della raised a brow at him, wiping sweat from her brow.

“From my–”

“Because you’re a grown up and heavier,” he said, too fast.

Della snorted.

“Did you just call me fat?” she said lightly.

“I–”

“Nah, I’m messin’ with you. I had three kids, that's fair.” She laughed, “Come on.” 

She picked her way down the hill again, rubbing her backside a bit, and Huey stumbled after her. 

She’d been home less than two weeks, and Huey still wasn’t sure what to make of her. Every time he came downstairs to see her at the breakfast table it was an incredible euphoria. His mom. He had a mom, and she was right there, and he called her Mom. 

He said it as often as he could.

Mom, can you pass the bread?

Mom, do you want to hear my newest cello piece?

Mom, how dark is night on the moon?

Scrooge had interrupted that one, but for a week and a half, they’d done nothing but orbit each other, along with everyone else in the mansion. It’d been a whirlwind of activity and questions and new games and old stories and midnight brownies and early morning breakfast table gossip and doctors appointments and phone calls and just absolute chaos. 

He’d loved every second of it.

So when she asked him if he wanted to go camping, just the two of them, of course the answer was yes.

He hadn’t anticipated it’d be different when there was no one else with them. 

He hadn’t anticipated the flurry of activity to settle, and realize he’d never spent more than a few minutes one-on-one with her in his entire life.

Dewey’d returned the day before from flying off to Norway with her, and he had nothing but raving stories of adventure and daring and cry after cry about how cool she was, how easy everything was. 

This was less easy.

He’d told his brothers about the weekend he’d spent with her, back when she was Della Their Lost Mother, Mom Who Was Dead, The Mystery They Were Hunting. Dewey’d been irritated, Louie had drawn into himself, but Huey’d had that. It’d been his. 

It was different now, though. She looked shockingly the same and she talked shockingly the same and she even moved shockingly the same, but Huey couldn’t stop the question from rising in his head. 

Do you remember?

Do you remember all the things I told you when you were a stranger half my age?

Do you remember when I said I didn’t know you?

Do you remember climbing and running and crying and lighting off fireworks for the stars?

Do you remember how I was the first son you hugged?

Do you remember me?

She said nothing, though, and he kicked himself. Why would she? It was three days thirty years ago. Everyone had best friends they made at parks or pools or camps that they never thought of again, but he couldn’t push it from his mind. She was the same. She was different. He’d never seen her before. She’d asked to hold his hand when she cried. She was an alien. She was his mom.

It was a confusing time.

He slid down after her, shaking his head, but the view of the sprawling Sierras was still breathtaking. Della still moved a bit gingerly, rubbing her backside as she led them down.

It didn’t seem to bother her once the slopes eased a bit, and yep, she was still the same person as they trotted down the last hill into the open granite flats. 

“Huey! Look!” 

And then she was off, her pack thumping against her back as she took off across the stone. Huey followed, and if he thought she was fast before…his legs burned as hers opened up like a racehorse who’d been spoiling in a stall, and it was like racing Webby, if Webby was twice his size and whooping. He wasn’t sure why she was running, and he wasn’t sure if she knew why, but suddenly he could feel it, something slipping loose in his stomach and chest and legs and his knees were pumping higher, his stride widening as the vast space around them stretched on under the bluest sky. There was no reason for it, and there was a laugh bubbling in his throat to match hers. 

His feet stretched far in front of him. He galloped after her, his breath wild with something wild, and the blood rushing through his ears was like a river as they wound their way down, down, down, and then up ahead, Della was gathering herself.

She leapt, springing over a crevice Huey hadn’t even seen. 

He didn’t hesitate, it didn’t even occur to him to stop as he widened his gait even more, gathering himself, tucking his elbows, pushing off, and–

It hadn’t just been his blood in his ears, there really was a river. It cut through the stone below him, weaving in a ribbon through the crevice, and then it was gone, hard rock rising up to meet his feet. He looked up, and Della was running again. He wasn’t sure if she’d stopped to watch, but his momentum carried him forward, and the chase was back on.

The ache in his legs was a familiar burn, his lungs white with effort as they dodged between crooked pines and crashed through low creeping greenery and weaving through enormous granite boulders until Della hurled herself at the largest stone they’d passed so far. 

She leapt off her metal leg, her flesh and blood foot pushing her up the boulder, fingers clawed as her momentum carried her up, up, up before she drove her metal foot back. With a crack, she drove it into the stone, propped up. 

Huey skidded to a halt in the shade of the boulder, and she turned to grin down at him over her shoulder. She hauled herself up to the top, disappearing for a moment.

The surface of the boulder was flat, once an enormous round thing that’d cracked smoothly in half, split by expanding ice thousands of years ago, and he’d lost all momentum to mimic her jump. He caught his breath, scanning the rock for a handhold, foothold, anything. 

She reappeared over the edge, hair dangling around her face and breathing hard where she lay on her belly. 

“Shelf,” she panted.

“Wh..” 

“Shelf!”

“I… what?”

Della laughed, jabbing a finger at the divot her foot had left, a few inches deep and maybe two feet above his head.

“I made you a shelf!” she said, “To hold onto!”

Huey grinned, sliding off his pack.

Della reached a hand down, and he swung his bag back once, twice, and then let it fly. She caught it easily, flipping it back behind her before turning to look down at him again. 

Huey backed up a few steps, and for a moment, he remembered how hard this used to be. Back when he’d first started traveling with Scrooge, after running his legs would shake too hard to leap, his fingers too weak to hold him up, his knees and knuckles scraped and bruised from hours spent practicing at camp, leaping from boulder to boulder.

He charged forward, leaping, pushing off the rock, and his fingers caught the tiny rock shelf easily. Pulling himself up was a bit harder, his grip was narrow, just big enough for a hand and a half, but fingers appeared just over his head. 

“Grab on.” Della leaned over dangerously far, grinning even as sweat beaded on her hairline, glistening on her forehead. 

He wasn’t strong enough to hold on with just one hand. Her face was open, though, eyes sharp and grin wide and hand steady.

He steadied his feet on the rock, pushing up. He let go, shooting both hands towards her.

Hard fingers closed around his forearm, and he grasped hers in both of his hands. 

Her hands didn’t feel anything like Mom Hands, whatever that meant. Uncle Donald’s fingers were soft, gentle when they ran through his hair, or smoothed over his cheeks, or grasped his crossing the street. These were narrower than Uncle Donald’s square ones, bonier, like Uncle Scrooge’s, and littered with shiny, white scars. She leaned back, pulling him up with barely a grunt, and he kicked off the stone to help, all the while staring at the small chunk taken out of the heel of one of her hands.

They’d come a long way since the smooth, pink hands he’d pulled splinters from.

Then he was over the edge to the top, Della falling back on her backside as she let him find his feet. He stepped over his bag, still fighting to catch his breath as he paced to the far side.

The valley sprawled out before him.

The mountains stretched across the horizon in blues and purples, their thick blankets of trees creeping in long arms down their roots and towards them, like they were beckoning him forward specifically. The granite flats rolled gently downward, dappled with more boulders and crevices and narrower than the ones he traveled with her so long ago. These were greener, actual oases scattered throughout, croppings of trees gathered like beasts at a watering hole. A crumbled structure, maybe a long-destroyed wooden cabin, sat further to the north, nestled in the roots of the mountain and half-consumed by the forest.

“Wow,” he breathed. Della hummed behind him, and he felt her come to stand by his shoulder.

“That’s what I’m saying,” she said, “I’ve never been able to get up here, before. Used to try for hours. Who’s in charge now, rock?”

Huey looked up at her. She grinned back down at him. 

“Why?”

She shrugged.

“Wanted to feel tall.”

She bent, suddenly, with a grimace. Still watching the horizon, she dug a finger into her prosthesis, where metal met skin. 

“That’s the trail, there,” she said, nodding her head, “Our campsite’s a mile or so beyond that cabin– we don’t wanna stay there, it’s brown recluse city, but you’ll like the site.”

Huey’s stomach grumbled, then, loud enough to surprise them both. 

“Lunch?” she said.

“Sunscreen,” he said, “Then lunch.”

She laughed, and at least she didn’t protest like his brothers or Scrooge did as he rummaged in his bag for the sunscreen to squirt into her hand. She snickered at the sound, but, suitably blocked, she dug out the bear canister, passing him the bags of almonds and dried fruits. 

“There’s a kind of barn-thing off the trail that way,” Della said, pointing. “I don’t know what it used to be. There’s no house or anything, someone just had a random old barn out here. We used to stay there, sometimes, when it was stormy, but when we were teenagers the roof came down.”

She cackled, chucking an almond to the ground below. 

“Donald was so mad. He fought me for the good spot– there was some grass near the firepit we dug out in the middle– but the roof came in and just dumped, like, an entire roof-full of February rainwater on his ass, right in the spot he fought for. Scrooge and I were full dry!” 

“That sounds like Uncle Donald.”

“Sucked to be him. Next year, though, the whole roof was gone, and it was too far to go for just some walls.”

Huey chewed on a dried apple slice.

“You know this trail really well.”

She shrugged, taking the almonds he passed her.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, “We were out here all the time.”

“Looking for what?” 

“What do you mean?”

Huey swallowed his food.

“Was there something out here you couldn’t find? Why did you always come back?”

“Oh.” She shrugged again. “We just came out here for the hike. Couple days on the trail, it was kind of our thing, and I haven’t, you know, been in a minute.” 

Huey tried to pass her another almond, but she shook her head, still holding the first ones.

“Don’t you want to come out here with them?” he said, “How come you didn’t invite Uncle Scrooge?”

She scoffed.

“He’s busy.”

“I’m sure he’d find time.”

She threw an almond off the ledge, watching it bounce on the stone below.

“We can go later,” she said, and he could see her hedging clear as day. “Maybe when Donald decides to grace us with his glorious return. Besides, I’m sure Scrooge is bored of it now.” 

Huey dug out a dried apricot.

“Why would he be bored?”

“I mean, he’s got an extra decade on me for trips out here.”

Huey made sure to keep his head down as he looked up at her sideways. She kicked her legs out over the ledge, but her eyes had gone a bit flat, the mild expression a bit stale. 

“Pale Pass?” Scrooge had said with a smile, “Is that where she’s takin’ ye?”

Huey had nodded, carefully folding his socks into the bottom of his bag.

“Have you been there?” he’d asked, and Scrooge’s smile went soft as he passed Huey another pair of socks.

“Aye,” he’d said, “You’ll have a great time.”

“I don’t think he’s come out for long time,” Huey said.

“Hey,” she said abruptly, “Look!”

A bluejay swooped down to the granite below, hopping in a circle around one of Della’s discarded almonds. It gave an experimental peck.

“Cyanocitta cristata,” Huey said, “Some people think seeing one is good luck.”

“Like the opposite of a black cat,” Della said, “Not for that guy, though.”

Huey followed where she pointed. A chipmunk had emerged as well, and they both watched as it crept nearer to where the bluejay cracked the almond against the stone.

“It’s gonna stab him in the back,” Della whispered, “What a little bastard!”

Sure enough, the chipmunk moved too quickly, and the bluejay let out a cry, leaping to the sky. The chipmunk darted forward, snatching up the nut. 

“Are you gonna take that?” Della called to the bluejay, “Come on, fight for what’s yours!”

The bluejay dove for the almond, and then the battle was on.

Huey wasn’t sure he could condone it, making animals fight. Della kept it going, tossing another almond into the fray as more jays joined in, squabbling and screaming amongst themselves. Her cheers of “Finish him! Leave no trace!”  were fierce and loud, but her commentary really made it out to be much higher stakes than it actually was. Mostly the birds were just yelling. They seemed fine, so he let it pass. He rooted for the chipmunk, and Della threw an almond at his face.

She was nothing he’d ever have expected, but looking at their family, it was ridiculous to expect her to be anything other than this.

She pulled her legs in, criss-crossed, and her knee brushed his thigh, staying there. It felt weird, like it was sucking up all his awareness to the points that their skin touched. He wasn’t a touchy person, per se, and normally he didn’t mind, but something felt too much in the easy contact. Electric. He was made of her. Her directly. Her specifically. She made him.

How odd it was to feel odd about touching her when, at one point, he’d been inside her. He glanced sideways at her belly, soft through her shirt as she shouted at the birds. Her hips had moved in her body to make room to hold him specifically. He shook that line of thought and stretched out his legs, breaking the contact.

Eventually, the last jay took off victorious, and Della saluted it.

“Good match,” she said, “Get enough food?”

He nodded, passing her the bag.

“Did you?” 

She stopped, halfway through dropping her handful of almonds back into the bag.

“Sure,” she said.

He frowned, but said nothing as they disappeared into the bear canister and into her bag. She scooted to the edge of the rock.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

She slid forward.

“Wait!” 

Then she was gone. 

Huey scrambled to the edge. She waved back up at him from the ground.

“Throw me your bag!”

He slid it from his shoulders, tossing it down. She set it aside and held out her arms.

His eyes drifted down to her metal leg, where the hard metal met skin. He was high up, but he could still see the red where she’d been scratching.

“I…I got it,” he said.

“Are you sure?” she said, “I can spot you, but–”

“I’m okay!” he said, moving to sit on the edge.

“Not that I don’t think you can!” she called up suddenly, “It’s just far, and I’m longer, so–”

Did she not want to? She looked hesitant, suddenly, her arms wavering.

“I’m okay,” he called again.

She bit her lip, looking a little disappointed. Huey looked over the edge, and wow, it looked much higher from up here. 

Della shifted on her feet below, bending to scratch at her leg.

High impact activities can be particularly painful for lower limb amputees in prostheses, he had read, Additional bourne weight can cause pressure on the residual limb, and often leads to nerve pain. 

He slid onto his belly, turning carefully to slide his legs down first. Footholds were easier to find on this side, and hey, what was he worried about? This was fine, the rock was uneven, grainy on his soles, traction was–

The stone under his fingers sloughed off in a sheet, and then there was open air. He had time to open his mouth to gasp, shout–

Hands. Hands grasped him under his arms, swinging him to break the impact before hauling him back up to settle on his own feet.

“Nothin’ like a little dive-bomb in the morning, huh?” Della grinned.

Additional bourne weight can cause pressure on the residual limb, and often leads to nerve pain.

She cocked her hip, frowning at him.

“Huey?” 

“Nothing!” he said quickly, “We should…uh…”

He turned quickly, keeping his eyes forward as he set off north. He didn’t look back to see if she was following him.

What an idiot. What a moron. What an idiodic, insensitive moron! What was the point of all the research he’d done, all the resource books he’d gone through, all the forums he’d compiled and screenshotted, if he was just going to forget all of it? 

Louie had called him a freak the other night when he’d found him printing the compiled forum posts. 

“They’re for reference!” he’d snapped, slamming his binder closed. “They’re personal experiences from a diverse sample, and primary sources are the most important–”

“You’re making it weird,” Louie’d said, “She’s basically middle aged and she beat Dewey flat out in a race around the mansion.”

“Thirty six is not middle aged–”

“I watched her crash a skateboard going down Killmotor Hill yesterday and she walked away just fine–”

“But residual limb nerve damage can be–”

“Dude,” Louie’d snapped, “She’s had a fake leg for literally the entire time we’ve been alive. It’s just new to us. Have you met her? If Mom had a problem, she’d say something. Probably very loudly.” 

Huey’d sighed.

“I just want to do it right,” he said, “We’re the first people who she’s interacting with. I’ve been researching it, and you have no idea how much ableism is just baked into our everyday life that we don’t even think about! What if I say something wrong, or make her feel alienated, or weird, or–”

“You’re just gonna make her feel weird if you’re weird about it.”

“No one’s thinking about it!” Huey’d snapped, “She’s going to have different needs, we’re a highly active family with a high impact lifestyle, and we should know how to support her if she does need accommodations!”

“Dude, she doesn’t want to be babied–”

“That’s not what I’m–”

“Just go be normal about it,” Louie’d said, flicking open his phone. “Don’t do that thing where you get all obsessive, let her live.”

Huey’d spent the rest of the night googling traumatic limb loss. He’d just needed to know. 

Be normal. Be normal. 

This, of course, led to him kicking himself soundly for the next leg of their journey, and he couldn’t decide if he should be grateful Della left him alone or humiliated. She probably didn’t want to talk to him. 

Last time, she’d talked the entire way up the mountain. 

He glanced over his shoulder.

Her face was upturned, watching the silhouette of the mountain range as they plodded slowly on.

The trail was beautiful, even by their standards. There was a special thrill in the globetrotting adventures, seeing in a weekend deserts and plains and catacombs and peaks and towers he’d never dreamed he’d ever be able to see, but there was something about the beauty of home, Calisota’s sweeping mountains fading into blue as they stretched out in peaks and valleys to the horizon that set his heart swelling. It was home.

Della seemed to be on the same page. Conversation opened up more the higher they climbed, and he couldn’t help pointing out the fauna emerging from their dens with their young into the spring air, and Della couldn’t seem to keep herself from trying to get close enough to touch. She figured out the right questions to ask, listening intently as he told her the truth about Neverrest Ninny, or Duckburg’s new power source, courtesy of long-dead Atlanteans. 

The deeper they traveled, leaping crevices, scrambling up old rockslides, wading rivers, swinging across rivers, a thought in the back of Huey’s head began. He couldn’t look away from her foot, all gleaming metal and heavy dents, and every time she shifted her weight to the right for a moment too long, that voice raised its head. Every time she bent, wiggling a finger between where the metal met skin, it cleared its throat.

Excessive sweat of a residual limb can often lead to chafing in the prosthesis socket, one forum post had read. She’d shucked off her coat and scarf, and he eyed the sweat stains between her shoulder blades.

Over time, excessive use of a prosthesis can cause chronic swelling, especially after high impact activities, one medical journal had read. Now he looked, the skin around the metal might be a bit red.

Lower limb amputees burn considerably more calories compensating balance and performing every day activities, so nutrition should be carefully monitored and calories increased accordingly, one library book had read. Most of her almonds had ended up going to the bluejays. She hadn’t touched the dried apples once. 

He’d nodded too hard when she’d asked if he wanted to stop for water. Maybe he should insist on stopping more. For her comfort. Considerations should be taken. Was she sitting during a brief water break because of fatigue? Did she vault the log on the right side intentionally, or was she just right-handed? Did she secretly hope he’d choose one path instead of another when she offered him a terrain choice?

“Seriously,” she said, leaning against the mouth of the cement culvert that stuck out of the ground. He could barely hear her over the river as it crashed over where the tube dipped completely underground, popping up on the other side of the river. “Doesn’t matter either way, they’re both fun.”

“Honestly, it’s what you prefer,” he insisted, “The culvert will most likely keep the gear drier, but it’s a higher chance of cutting ourselves on rusted struts and spider bites, and I know crawling has a lot more impact than fording the–”

“Getting dirty ain’t a problem,” she said, “We usually take that under the river, anyway, it’s just…you know, I’m happy to take the long way around, there’s a land bridge maybe two miles south–”

“There’s no need for all that extra wasted energy! The tunnel is fine–”

“Are you sure?” she said, “I just, you know.” 

She cleared her throat, looking down into the dark. 

“Some people are…tight spaces, you know how it is. I didn’t know if you…you know–”

He eyed her sharply. The question burned in his mind again. It’d been thirty years for her, there’s no way she remembered.

“Donald hated it,” she said quickly, “He said it was his least favorite part, ‘cause of how gross it gets. River relaxes at the end of summer, though, so sometimes we could just walk across it.”

“Is the crawling…is it too high-impact?”

“High impact for what?”

He shook his head, flushing, and she stepped back to let him swing himself up onto the lip. It was dark, sure, but the concrete was smooth and mostly spider-web free, and he clicked on his flashlight before sliding down the curve. 

He heard Della say something to herself before something blocked the sunlight above, and he scrambled to the side to make room for her to slide down to join him. He winced at the scrape of metal on concrete, but she was grinning as she flipped to her hands and knees, taking the lead with her flashlight between her teeth.

“The adventure continues!” Her voice echoed in the tunnel. “Watch out for that black widow, there. Let’s go!”

The rest of the day was smoother, falling into safer territory of gossiping about Donald and Beakley, shaking their heads at Louie’s antics and griping about Scrooge’s idiosyncrasies. Webby and Dewey’s recent hide-and-seek rule developments. In fact, it was almost…easy. She laughed more, clapping his shoulder more, made silly faces and useless climbs up rocks and logs, and it almost felt like before. Slowly, it wasn’t as weird to take her hand as she ran down slopes, it wasn’t alien to tug on her sleeve to point at a bald eagle soaring overhead, imitating its own cry back to it, to play the most intense, rapid-fire game of categories of his entire life sitting hip-to-hip with her as they soaked their bare feet in a stream.

It was easy, right up until he botched it that night.

The campsite was just up the bank from an enormous lake, close enough they could hear the water lapping the boulders by the beach, but shaded by high, whooshing pines. A sandy slope led up to the small clearing in the tightly pressed, thin trunks, and Della showed him eagerly, dropping her pack on the pale dirt with a thud to run here and there, ducking through the branches and telling him how they always set up.

“Tents always go in the trees over here! We can bring some next time, when it’s colder!”

“This spot’s mine, by the mossy pit, and Donald’s over here, on the weird covered rock patch!”

“Uncle Scrooge’s is over here, so he doesn’t have to listen to us!”

“Careful, these branches are dangerous in the dark, they’ll put your eye out if you’re not careful!”

“That’s where we dig the latrine, behind that bend!”

“That’s where the trail picks up, just beyond that ridge!”

“This is where we hang up our water filter, right on this branch– aw, shit, it’s broke. Damn. Whatever, this one’ll do.”

“That’s where the loons come from, just around that corner of the lake! They live on the other side, in those reeds!”

“That’s where the kitchen goes?” Huey said, pointing to a distinct fire pit built up in the middle of a small clearing of trees. They overhang the pit just enough for a bit of shade, but the branches ended far above the reach of any stray sparks. The pit was deep, with old logs lain rotting in the dirt, and flat, wide granite stones neatly stacked in a circle around. Three large rocks had been buried in the dirt around the campfire.

Dining room for three.

“Absolutely,” she said, “And…”

She took his hand, dragging him down the slope a few yards towards a stream that fed into the lake, just at the edge of the trees. Boulders shielded it in on three sides, the bank on the far side and the open air of the quickly setting sun above them as they stood in front of another fire pit. 

This one was a bit smaller, set in the dirt with a long, flat boulder sloping up beside it. A log lay sunken into the dirt on the far side, and what looked like a chopped tree-trunk sat between them, near enough to reach the fire.

They really had spent a lot of time here. It was like a whole second home set up in the mountain peaks. 

They set about making camp, splitting up. Della set out the mess kit before she dragged out some enormous branches from the treeline, far too long to fit into a car, let alone their fire pit. Huey set off to gather more reasonably-sized wood and kindling, and took their water filter and canteens to the stream for good measure. 

He wandered for a while using the fire-wood hunting time to walk the woods his family had apparently grown up in. It was beautiful, quiet in a way trips with his family never were.

An enormous crash in the distance had him leaping to his feet. It came from the direction of camp. He raced back, stumbling on gravel and crashing his way through sharp branches to skid into the little hollow. 

Beside the lower fire pit, Della had figured out the branch situation. She’d leaned them, some thick as her leg, up against the enormous boulder, and Huey watched as she hefted a huge rock the size of her head above her. She braced herself under the weight before hurling it down on the branch, snapping it with another crash. She flinched back at the rain of wooden shrapnel that went flying, kicking the now manageable branch aside before setting up the next one. Huey watched her, humming to herself, as she shattered the next one, and the next. 

The last time he’d gone camping with her, she hadn’t been able to carry more than a branch or two, dragging them behind her, and it’d taken half an hour with a flint stick to even spark the tinder. She heaved the rock above her head again. 

Huey must have made some sort of noise, because she looked around at him, startled. 

He jumped. Was he staring? Would she think he was weird? People told him he’s weird sometimes, she got on so well with Dewey, and Dewey told him he was weird just last Tuesday.

She shifted her weight to her right hip, and he looked quickly down at her metal foot.

Oh, no. Did she think he thought she wasn’t capable because of her leg? What if she thought he thought she couldn’t handle herself. She could, right? Should he be helping more? He was helping, but he couldn’t lift that, and–

She hefted the boulder higher, then, roaring “Smash!” as she hurled the rock down. Huey jumped at the spinning bits of wood flying through the air, but Della turned back to him with a huge grin, almost like the one he remembers. 

It’s different, though. It doesn’t reach her eyes, but the light is dying, and he’s not sure what to do with the hesitance in her face, but it’s almost like a question. 

He gives her an answer in the form of a smile.

“Gimme some of that water,” she said, wiping sweat from her face, “I’m beat.”

“Oh, shit! I mean–”

Della lunged forward with her stick, knocking the biggest log off the pile in a burst of sparks. Huey leaned back on his log, pulling his knees out of the way as the shower of sparks drifted to the sand to fade. 

Della muttered something as she spread the fire out a bit with the Designated Fire Prodding Stick, dispersing the heat. It’d grown enormous while they’d eaten, distracted as Huey explained the new edition rules for Tabletop Legends of Legend Quest, and before they knew it, they were both leaning back as the flames licked high. 

She dropped back into her seat with a little huffed laugh, but she was suddenly very interested in her knee.

“I, uh, guess I haven’t done this in a while.”

She dug her stick in the ashes. 

“Gone camping?” he said, like an idiot. 

She shook her head.

“Built a fire,” she said, “I tried, once, but…you know.”

She waved a hand around.

“No oxygen,” Huey said, and she huffed that same half-laugh. 

“Yeah, it wasn’t my best moment,” she said, “But I was pretty sick, so I’m chalkin’ it up to the fever.”

Huey pulled his feet up cross-legged on the log.

“Germs can’t survive in space,” he said, “How did you get sick?”

“I mean, apparently they can,” she said, “Or whatever gives you a super bad infections that make you super sweaty and pass out and hallucinate and shit–sorry, shoot.”

“Did you get cut?” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he could feel the blood rushing to his face. What an idiot. She scratched at her leg again. He wasn’t sure she knew she was doing it.

“The med kit was pretty stocked. What was left of it, at least.” She snorted. “I guess they really did build it for me. Didn’t find it for a couple of days, though, but the penicillin was still good.” 

He didn’t know what to say. 

Wait, yes he did.

“It probably came from earth.”

She glanced over at him.

“The penicillin?”

“The bacteria,” he said, “It could have come over on your clothes, or the metal, or the knife.”

“What knife?”

He felt his face flush again.

“The one, uh. You used?”

She frowned at him before her face lit up in understanding.

“Oh!” She laughed. “I didn’t have a knife.”

A dozen images flashed through his mind, and he couldn’t stop picturing any of them. He knew what she’d looked like back then from that picture taken of her, and he knew what her flight-suit looked like, and now he could see how her face moved, and in his mind’s eye she was trapped under a whole rocket in a cave of still-burning metal, and he remembered vividly her face last year as he’d passed a needle through her skin. 

He couldn’t stop seeing it in his head. He wondered if she’d cried. But she hadn’t used a knife. 

You shouldn’t ask. That’s what all the forums and reference books said. You shouldn’t ask an amputee, because they’d tell you if they wanted you to know. You’re not entitled for their life story, the internet had said. 

He hummed, and left it at that. Della glanced at him under her bangs. She worked a finger back into the cup of her prosthesis, fidgeting. 

“I’m gonna hit a bush,” she said brusquely, tossing down her stick.

He watched her plod off into the trees, and he dropped his head into his hands.

Now she was probably embarrassed. Why was this so hard? He’d never had these awkward moments with Uncle Scrooge when they were getting to know him. Scrooge had always been fine with silence-he probably enjoyed the rare occurrences. 

His mother, on the other hand, just seemed to vibrate with tension every time their voices fell quiet, and for some reason, that was just so much worse. She’d talked non-stop as a kid, and nothing he could say was the wrong thing. She’d just rolled with it, barreling along. Now, though, he felt like he was being examined after every sentence she finished. 

He couldn’t get the images of her impromptu surgery out of his head, and he dug his fists into his eyes. Sometimes pictures got stuck in his mind, and these were not his favorite.

“Hey!” 

Huey jumped as Della came trotting back into the circle of light, holding something aloft and grinning.

“Check it out,” she laughed, “This must be so old.” 

Huey leaned over to squint at the absolutely filthy square glass bottle. She wiggled it, and through the grime, he could see something slosh around inside.

“I thought people didn’t come up here,” he said, “And why would they litter? It’s so easy to pack out!”

She snorted, squinting at the bottle.

“Go ahead and ask Uncle Scrooge when we get home,” she said.

Huey’s eyes widened.

“That’s not–”

“Sure is,” she said, “Laphroaig Single Malt, right from his secret storage that we totally don’t know about in the upstairs library.”

“He…Uncle Scrooge doesn’t drink.” 

She laughed.

“Are you kidding?” she said, “Who have you been traveling with?”

Huey blinked up at her.

“Oh, okay, not kidding,” she said.

“But–”

“This was opened,” she said, “Do you think it goes bad?”

“Alcohol?”  

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, I’m eleven.”

“Right.” Della shook the bottle. “It says ‘Aged twenty five years.’ What’s an extra ten? Should I bring it back for him? Doesn’t that make it extra good?”

“I don’t think that’s how–”

“Meh.”

Della cranked the cork lid off with a pop, and sniffed it as she glanced at him. He had no idea what expression he wore now, but she hesitated. 

“Right,” she said, “Kids.”

She cranked the cork back into it, and it disintegrated in her hand. She cursed before shrugging and setting it aside. Huey did his best to look relaxed as she took her seat again.

“You’ve really never seen Uncle Scrooge drink?” she said suddenly.

“No,” he said, and Della whistled. 

“Things really have changed,” she said to the fire.

“Did he…used to?” 

Della picked up her stick again.

“Sure,” she said, “I mean, not on big adventures, but if we were just traveling–”

“He’d drink outside?” 

“Like, out of the house?” Della said, “Y…yeah…” 

Oh, man, now he wasn’t being cool. He was always the lame one.

“I mean,” Della said, “He didn’t a lot when we were little, but if he didn’t have to pay for it, he was all in. We used to keep a stash in some of our favorite vacation spots–”

“We?” 

Della gestured to the bottle. 

“Sure,” she said, and Huey felt like an idiot again.

They were grown ups! They didn’t have kids with them, so it wasn’t weird. It was just three grown ups-

Wait.

“Vacation spots?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, “Well, vacation’s a strong word. Mostly just places we went ‘cause they were pretty.”

“Like this trail?”

Della glanced at him.

“Yeah,” she said, “We’d come here all the time.”

“For what?”

She shrugged, scratching at her prosthesis.

“It’s nice. Donald liked it ‘cause it was quiet. Uncle Scrooge always said it reminded him of Dawson ‘cause of the trees or something, I don’t know.”

“What about you?”

“Does it remind me of Dawson?” she said, “I mean, kinda, but it's way colder–”

“No, why do you like this trail?”

“Oh.” Della grunted for a minute, digging at her prosthesis again. “I liked it ‘cause we’d…I don’t know, just…hang out.”

Huey watched her wiggle her finger under the metal.

“For a while,” she went on, “It was one of the only places Donald would go with us. He got banged up real bad once, and there was, like, a year where we could barely get him to go camping, let alone proper adventuring. So we’d come out here and hike the trail for a few days. Sometimes if somebody got in a fight or there was a bad vibe, we’d come out to hash it out on the trail. Or when Don went away for school, I was a mess, and Scrooge brought me out here for, like, two weeks. I didn’t want to go home.”

“So…it’s for bonding?”

Della looked up quickly, looking more than a little like a deer in a headlight.

“I…yeah,” she said, “I guess it– AAHRG!” 

Huey nearly jumped out of his skin as she roared. Her hands flew to her metal leg, fingers twisting screws until there was a small hiss, and she flung it to the ground with one hand, clawing wildly at her residual limb with the other.

“What’s wrong?” he exclaimed, and he was just full of the most idiotic questions today! She would think he’s a freak, a moron with no sense of reasoning, because of course she’s hurting, and she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him! He hadn’t taken her disability into consideration, and she probably thought she could go as fast as she did when she was younger, but now she’s hurt. How would they get out if they needed to evacuate? He could help support her, but they’d traveled miles, and he’d pushed her, he’d hurt her–

“Got eaten alive last night,” she snarled, “Stupid mosquito got me right where the edge of my leg is and it’s been driving me crazy all day!”

Huey blinked again. 

“Oh.”

She pulled her thigh up into her lap, scratching at the end of her leg in fury, and Huey couldn’t help watching. In the two weeks he’d known her, she’d just taken it off once, and even then only to adjust something and slip it back on. He’d never really seen her leg before.

He looked away. You weren’t supposed to stare. That’s what all of the online resources said. Amputees weren’t a museum piece on display, they were simply trying to live their lives in peace. Or, in some cases, sitting on a low boulder doing their best to claw off what was left of their limb.

“You shouldn’t scratch,” he said, “It enhances the irritation and can cause infection.” 

Della scowled as she pulled it up, leaning over to squint at the back side.

“It might have been a spider, actually,” she said.

“Can you see the indentation from the fangs?”

“I don’t know, it’s on the wrong side.”

“Here–”

Huey was on his feet before his head caught up with him, and he hesitated. But Della was scooting sideways on her rock, holding her leg out to him to look, and he couldn’t turn back, or he’d look like he couldn’t be normal or something.

He crossed to her, and as he bent, he kept his eyes on the little red welt on the side of her leg. He couldn’t help noticing her thigh sloped oddly and unevenly, pulled and wrinkled with silver scar tissue.

Normal, he thought, be normal. 

“Mosquito,” he said quickly, “It’s splotchy, spider bites are round.”

Della hummed. He glanced up, and with a start, realized she was already watching him. 

“At least I can scratch this one,” she said casually, “Sometimes I just get the craziest itch, right here.” 

She jabbed at the air, right where her ankle would have been.

“Phantom limb sensation,” he said automatically. 

“Yeah!” she said, “I spent a whole dinner last week with a papercut between my toes. The ones that I don’t have.”

“It’s a neurological disconnect,” Huey couldn’t help saying, “The nerves–”

He froze. Don’t tell disabled people about their own disabilities. That’s what one forum poster had said.

“You already know that, though,” he said quickly.

She scooted back on the rock to make room for him, leaning back on her hands.

“Tell me anyways.” 

“It’s a neurological disconnect,” he repeated, moving to join her on the rock. “The severed nerves used to go further, so they still have the pathways to tell the brain about that area. So the brain tries to communicate something to the limb through the nerves, they come up short, and the brain doesn’t know how to interpret the signals.”

“And I get to have ghost pins and needles.”

“Phantom.”

“And it’s all twisted up, too,” she said, “Look–”

She pointed to the tip of her leg, near the top, and Huey leaned in.

“Poke that.”

Huey hesitated, but she was nodding encouragingly, so he reached out and gently tapped her skin.

“So I swear,” she said, “That you just touched the back of my knee.”

Huey’s eyes widened.

“Because the nerves are still there,” he said, “Even though they healed somewhere else…”

He reached out again before snatching his hand back. 

Della was still grinning, though, waiting, so he reached out again to prod the side, this time a little harder. 

“Top.” 

“Woah.” 

It was soft, almost squishy, which surprised him. It looked a bit like the soft bit of his tummy, below his belly button, but wrinkled in some places, smooth and shiny with scar tissue in others. The end hung a bit off the bone.

“It’s a common surgical technique,” his mouth said.

“Cutting off your–”

“When performing lower limb amputations,” he said, “Very often surgeons will sever the muscle much lower, and then fold it up at the end of the residual limb to provide padding over the bone for prosthesis in the future.”

“Woah, did you just know that?”

Huey bit his lip.

“Y..yes.”

“You’re lying.”

Huey bit his lip.

“I looked it up.”

Della cocked her head at him.

“When?”

“Last week.”

She was going to think he was a freak. Louie had said he was a freak for looking it up, but he just needed to know. 

“That explains a lot,” Della said easily.

“I didn’t mean to–”

“It doesn’t usually hurt,” she interrupted, “But since I got home, it’s started getting tender after a while, but only over here.”

She pointed to a dip on the end of her limb.

“It’s probably the gravity,” Huey said, “If it’s pushing you down harder than before. And if one area has less padding–”

He paused.

“Wait,” he said, “Did you already know all that stuff?”

Della shrugged.

“I didn’t know people did the folding it on purpose thing,” she said, “But I kinda figured that’s what was happening. The gravity thing bites, though.”

Huey’s heart had started pounding, though, and he could hear it in his ears.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly.

She pulled a face.

“What? Honey, why–”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said quickly, “The internet said you’re the expert of your own experiences, and people shouldn’t over-explain things to you, because you’re…you’re the expert–”

“Of my own experience?”

He nodded, and she hummed. 

“You know what the worst part of this is?” 

She gestured, and Huey shook his head.

“I lost my favorite scar.”

The fire crackled a bit in the silence.

“Your…”

“All-time favorite,” she said,  “Right here.” 

She waved a finger vaguely where her calf would have been.

Huey swallowed. 

“What made it your favorite?”

“Got it as a kid at summer camp,” she said, “Well, technically it wasn’t my summer camp. I was visiting.”

Huey nodded. Uncle Scrooge always said Della was clever, and Louie always said Huey told the worst lies. She could probably see it all over him.

“Did you…fall?” he asked, “At camp?”

She shook her head, drumming out a rhythm on her thighs. 

“Got scraped real bad,” she said, “While I was caving one summer. My friend really helped me.”

Huey glanced sideways at her. She chewed her lip, staring at her thigh as she wiggled it.

“Was genuinely sad to lose it.”

“Really?”

“Mh-hm. I mean, not exactly the first thing I thought of, but I definitely was sad about it when I was burying it.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. The question bubbled again to his lips, but she still wasn’t looking at him, so he just nodded. 

“Sorry, too gross?”

“No!”

“Cool,” she said, idly scratching at her leg again. “Scrooge told me I was gettin’ ‘ too graphic’ the other night about arteries. I mean, it's chess, you’re basically pretending to slaughter everyone on the battlefield! You think in the heat of battle a few pawn arteries don’t get fu…uh…messed up?”

She snorted.

“Seems a teensy bit hypocritical to me,” she said.

The fire snapped, a log splitting down the middle to send sparks arcing to the sky, and Della bent to pick up her prodding stick. She passed it to Huey, and it took him a moment to realize she wanted him to stoke the fire. He slid forward to kneel on the rock ring.

“Chess?” he asked the fire.

“I forgot my board.”

“No, I meant…you were playing chess?”

He nudged the still-smoldering logs criss-cross.

“Sure,” she said, “Scrooge used to make me play when I was a kid, said I needed to learn focus or something. He did mysteriously get too busy for a bit once I started beating him once in a while.”

“You beat him?”

“Sometimes. He gets really cranky, but I think he likes the challenge.”

Huey shook his head. 

“I always lose,” he said, “I always wonder if he asks me to play just so he can feel better about himself.”

Della made an incredulous noise.

“No way! He said you were really good!” 

Huey looked back over his shoulder.

“He said that?” 

Della nodded, and Huey turned back to the fire.

“But I always lose. Pretty badly.”

The fire took easily, creeping up the new logs, and he leaned back from the heat.

“He's got a bit more practice,” she said, “He was probably there when the dinosaurs invented it.”

“Chess evolved from chaturanga fifteen hundred years ago,” his stupid mouth said, but his mother snorted.

“I’ll teach you that one, too, if you want,” she said, “But let's start with kicking Scrooge’s butt. We were playing on my board up in the library, and I think our game is still laid out, unless he cleared it. Let’s take a look at it when we get back, he’s got some weird moves, but maybe we bust out the travel set, set them up side by side and–”

“Wait,” he interrupted, “Your board?” 

“Y…yeah?”

“The board in the library was yours?” 

She kicked her foot closer to the fire, and he cleared his throat.

“Is,” he corrected, “Is yours.”

“Sure,” she said, “Fifteenth birthday. No, sixteenth. No, fifteenth. No-”

“The one with the stickers?”

She looked delighted.

“Yeah! I was sure they’d’ve fallen off.”

Huey looked back to the fire. He and Scrooge had spent almost a year playing at her chessboard, all ornately carved dark wood and fine marble inlays with peeling stickers on the underside that he’d just assumed were Webby’s.

The little stars and planets made a bit more sense, though. He had just enough time to wonder why that piece hadn’t been swept away under the rug with the rest of Della’s things before she cleared her throat, leaning back.

“That trout wasn’t too bad, huh?” she said abruptly.

“It was good,” he said, “When you said you could catch them by smacking them out of the water, I thought you were kidding, but they grilled up really nicely.”

“Well, I was thinking,” she said, “If you still got room…I did pack us a lil dessert. If you want.” 

“It’s a bit late for sugars for me…”

Her face fell.

“Right,” she said, “No, you’re right, I forgot–”

“But we’re camping!” he said quickly, “I…house rules don’t count on the trail, so…I’d love some, if you packed it special!”

Della’s legs squirmed uncomfortably a bit as she shrugged. 

“Yes, please,” Huey said firmly.

She slid her foot to the ground, snatching up her metal leg to use as a hook and dragging her pack over. She dug in it for a moment before something crinkled in her hands.

She hopped back on the rock next to him, turning to face him cross-legged and holding her closed fists between her thighs. 

“Close your eyes,” she said, “And hold out your hands.”

There were very few people in the world he would ever consider obeying that particular order from, and exactly zero of them were in his family (learned from experience, of course), but there his mom was, new and older and changed and wearing the exact same face Uncle Donald wore on Christmas morning with a gift behind his back, or Uncle Scrooge’s face when he was just bursting for someone to ask about their destination so he could make his grand reveal. 

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and held out his cupped hands. Della moved, and something light and plasticky dropped into his palm.

“Can I–”

“Open.”

Huey opened his eyes.

There, laying innocently in his palm, sat a small, silvery package of Roll-Up Fruit Tape. 

He looked up. Della watched him with sharp eyes, leaning forward with her own package gripped tight in her hands. 

“You do remember,” he said. 

She opened her mouth for a moment before closing it abruptly, sitting back. 

“How long did you know?” he asked.

She plucked at the package in her fingers.

“Couple of days,” she said, “I…Scrooge and I’ve just been…he’s been telling me…we’ve been talking about you guys, and he..he said something about you seeing the eclipse a few months ago, and I…I guess I put it together.” 

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Della shrugged, picking at the wrapping.

“You didn’t either.”

It was a childish argument, and it looked like the same thought was crossing her mind, too, because she sighed. 

“Scrooge said you were…kind of off when you came back,” she said, “I guess I…I was embarrassed, I guess.”

“Of what?”

“You were sad when you got back,” she said, “I spent thirty years thinking of it as my favorite summer camp adventure, and you were sad about it, because I–”

She shook her head. 

“Sorry.” 

She’d remembered. He barely remembered anything from being seven, it felt like a decade ago at least and they hadn’t ever done anything in comparison to the life they lived now. She’d lived more, done more than most people did in their whole lives by the time she was his age, and some silly scar from an abnormal camping trip was worth mourning on a whirling gray rock in space. 

Then again, he supposed, they were all on a whirling rock in space. 

All the things he’d said came rushing back to him with a wave of humiliation. He’d corrected her grip. Scrooge painted her as the most capable adventurer, bold and brave and skilled, and he’d corrected her climbing grip. He’d chastised her and plucked splinters from her palms and snapped at her for not being able to use her own flint and shut her down about caves and monsters she’d been right about from the beginning, and she was half his age.

He’d led her around by the hand and told her he knew nothing about her.

They fell back into that unnerving quiet again, the kind she’d filled last summer relentlessly and easily as breathing. Now, she traced the prickly, sharp edge of the fruit tape over the skin of her leg in patterns.

He wondered, just for a moment, if she had silences like this with Dewey. He’d bragged unendingly about how incredible their first trip to Norway had been, how cool she was and how reckless she was and all the amazing things they’d talked about, from the Andean dancing bears at the peak of Machu Picchu to underwater surfing techniques to creative things to blow up in a microwave. 

She listened to Louie talk for two hours straight last night about a reboot of some old 90’s show and the internet drama that came with it. 

She’d spent an entire breakfast telling Webby about her family tree, pausing only to let her take notes.

In the two weeks she’d been home, he’d yet to walk into a room with both her and Scrooge and not find them talking, her arms flying animatedly and him laughing wide and open like she was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. And apparently, they gossiped about the kids over a twenty year old chessboard.

“Did you tell Uncle Scrooge?” he asked suddenly, “When you found out it was me?”

She blinked.

“Sure,” she said slowly, like she was dissecting his words. “Of course.”

“Right, of course. Because he was there. Silly me.”

What a ridiculous question! And of course she’d tell him anyway! She probably talked to him about everything. It occurred to him for the first time how little she actually said, rattling on about crazy stuff, past adventures, asking the boys and Webby endless questions about themselves, but for the kid who’d talked for hours about the stars who had such an incredible adventure on a different celestial body, she never actually talked about it. 

“He was so mad,” she said, bringing him back abruptly.

“Who?”

“Uncle Scrooge!”

“When he found out it was me?”

“No!” She ripped open her fruit tape with a flourish. “When I stole his Back-Pocketwatch to time-travel. Mom grounded us, but she made us still go to Thursday Dinner that night at the Mansion, so–”

“Thursday Dinner?”

“Sure.” She unrolled the tape, ripping a bite out of hers, and Huey copied. “Mom and Dad wanted to make sure the family was close even if everybody was busy, so she was always trying to make sure we did Thursday Dinners as a family. Didn’t really work out, Uncle Scrooge usually canceled, or was out of the States, so we didn’t go more often than we did, but we were never allowed to plan things on Thursdays.”

“That’s…so cool,” Huey said.

“It was awesome!” Della said, “The food was always great, and Uncle Scrooge let us play in the yard, I think so he probably didn’t have to watch us running around the house.”

She snickered.

“Later on, though, Mom and Dad got busy with their stuff, so Thursday Dinner kind of turned into Thursday Sleepover turned into Scrooge babysitting for the weekend.”

“I’ll bet he liked that.”

“Oh, you know it.”

“Hey,” Huey said, “You know what day it is?”

“Uh, Wed–”

“Thursd–”

“Thursday! Right, I knew that.”

“You know what that means?” Huey said.

“It’s…almost the weekend?”

Huey held out his fruit tape, the strip dangling.

“Happy Thursday Dinner, Mom.”

She looked up quickly, her eyes wide as saucers. 

For a moment, he was ready to kick himself again. That was different, that was their thing, not yours, and–

She bumped his fruit tape with hers in a cheers, grinning wide. She brushed the back of her other fingers over his cheek, and there was no weird buzz, no electricity. Just a soft touch.

“Happy Thursday Dinner, baby,” she said, “I really, really like being your friend.”