“My dad told me it’s a complete waste of time,” Zach added. “He said it’s not even worth the trip.”
“Since when do you listen to your dad?” Sonnet asked.
Daisy regarded the hanging cliffs, their silhouettes carving mysterious shapes on the untouched snow. “Let’s go check it out,” she suggested.
“Are you serious?” Zach looked apprehensive.
“She’s right.” Sonnet got up and tapped her snowshoes together. “Look at that blue sky. We should at least go to the top of the mountain, right?”
“Agreed.” Zach stood. “No point in getting this close and then not going all the way.” He shrugged into his day pack and led the way up the trail.
“We’re like the first pioneers,” Daisy said. “The first to find the mountaintop.”
“I doubt that,” Zach said.
“Me, too,” Sonnet agreed. “My uncle Sal told me they found Indian artifacts in some of the caves, and stuff from pioneers, too. Before refrigeration, the caves were used for food storage.”
“Nature’s deep freeze,” Zach said. “Seems like a long hike to get there.”
The path became steeper, the snow forming deep-rimmed bowls around the bases of the trees. Daisy felt a little breathless and wondered if that was just her, or the pregnancy. Her doctor had said she could and should keep up with her usual activities, although she shouldn’t do any extreme sports. Was this extreme, hiking up a mountain? No. Rockclimbing, like she’d done last summer with Julian Gastineaux, a.k.a. the most amazing boy on the planet, was extreme because it involved scary harnesses and sheer rock faces and risky Spiderman maneuvers. Compared to that, hiking was almost, literally, a walk in the park.
Sonnet reached the summit first, turned and waved at them. “Okay, so we’re not first.” She indicated a decidedly man-made structure—a fake totem pole with a plaque that said, “Meerskill Mountain. Elevation 4016 feet.”
Sets of initials and words, dating back to 1976, had been gouged into the totem pole. A whole history of area kids, rendered meaningless by the passage of time.
“Look,” Sonnet pointed out. “‘Matt was here.’ Maybe that’s your dad—Matthew Alger.”
Zach shrugged. “Could’ve been. He used to work at the camp when he was in college.”
“My dad, too,” Daisy said. “It was a family tradition for all the Bellamys, until the camp closed ten years ago.” Daisy was glad Olivia had moved up from the city last summer. Daisy had spent last summer at the camp with her dad and brother, helping to get the place ready for her grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary celebration. Her mom hadn’t come; she’d only dropped by the camp to deliver divorce papers and to pay her respects at the Bellamys’ anniversary. Daisy wondered if the four of them had stuck together in the wilderness, would they have figured out a way to stay together for good?
One good thing had happened last summer—they’d met Jenny. Uncle Phil’s illegitimate daughter.
Illegitimate. Daisy stuffed her hands in her pockets and angled them across her lower belly like a shield. She hated that word, illegitimate. Like the baby had done something wrong.
Sonnet snowshoed to the edge of the hill where the snow was thick and deep. “This is where the avalanche came down. Let’s find those caves before it gets dark.”
They each had a set of ski poles, which they used to sink into the snow to make sure there was solid ground before they stepped. Zach found a granite wall rising up, its face striated and gouged by indentations.
“I’m going to check them out,” Sonnet said, reaching down to unfasten her snowshoes.
“No way,” Zach said. “You’re not climbing this rock.”
“Watch me.”
She was good, Daisy recognized, watching Sonnet. Having done a little rock-climbing in the past, she recognized a good technique when she saw it. However, Sonnet had zero safety gear.
“Hey, don’t climb any higher than you’re willing to fall,” she cautioned.
“Just fall on your ass,” Zach said. “That way, you’ve got a big cushion.”
“Ha ha,” Sonnet said, breath puffing from her in a cloud.
“A gi-normous cushion.”
Daisy elbowed him. Then she took some pictures of Sonnet’s progress.
Sonnet came to a shadowy spot in the rock face. “Well,” she said, “it’s a cave, but there’s no ice in it.” To illustrate, she dropped a handful of stone and dust which littered the snow like a stain. She found a couple more from her perch on a rock ledge, but they were just hollows and indentations in the rock. Each one was empty, except there was a bird’s nest in one of them.
“You might find some bats,” Zach called to her.
“Some what?”
“Bats.”
“Sure,” she said. “Good one, moron.”
“Swear to God, this is a bat habitat,” Zach insisted. “They hibernate in the caves. If you disturb one, it could bite you and then you’d get rabies.”
“I’m so scared.” Sonnet was on a deep ledge about fifteen feet above them, exploring the series of indentations in the rock. “Hello,” she said. “What’s this?”
Daisy aimed the camera. Maybe Sonnet had found something.
“This might be an ice cave,” Sonnet said, standing on tip toe. “I can’t quite see.” She jumped up a little.
“Hey, take it easy,” Zach said, looking genuinely worried.
“Why, Zachary.” Sonnet put on a phony Scarlett O’Hara accent. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“I just don’t want to have to carry your fat ass down the mountain.”
“Ha,” she said, reaching into the cave again. “I’ll have you to know I—”
Her words dissolved into a yell. By sheer reflex, Daisy pressed the shutter of her camera. At the same instant, something—a bat? A bird? An angry demon from another realm?—burst from the cave on a whir of wings
