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“You heard it,” I say. “Before it went. You heard it coming.”

“The roots were snapping.”

I didn’t hear a thing. If he hadn’t stopped, we’d have been right underneath it.

“Thank you,” I whisper. I put my hand over his, and his fingers curl around mine. “Thank you.”

He doesn’t let go.

“Was that the quickest way down?” I ask.

“It was.”

“Can we cross it?”

“No.” He doesn’t even look at it. He looks at me. “That entire face is saturated. If it moves again while you’re on it, nothing will stop you until the bottom of the gully.”

“Back the way we came?”

“Three hours, in this.” He looks up at the sky. It’s getting darker by the minute. “And the switchbacks will run like rivers by the time we reach them.”

The rain gets heavier. Water runs off my hat and down the back of my neck. I’m shivering, and he sees it.

He looks at the slide. Then he looks uphill, toward the interior, toward the blank space on the map.

I watch him fight with himself. His ears go flat, then forward, then flat again. He breathes out hard through his nose.

“Through the interior,” he says finally. “I was saving it for last. We’ll go now. It comes out on the creek road below the slide.”

I don’t say a word. I just wait.

“Stay behind me,” he says. “Put your boots where I put mine. Exactly where I put mine. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

He holds my eyes for another second before turning and walking straight into the laurel.

Behind the bushes, an old wire fence and a stile appear. The stile is crafted from two flat, mossy stones and a split log. Holt steps over it in one stride.

The log catches me mid-thigh, so I brace a hand on the post, and his hand closes around my elbow, steadying me.

The forest changes on the other side.

The trees here are massive, far older than those on the trail, their branches knitting overhead to block the rain. The sound of hammering on the canopy echoes above, though only a few large drops land on the ground beneath us. It’s like stepping out of a storm and into a cathedral.

The air feels fresh, cooler. I don’t know what makes this place different, but even the birds stay silent.

Along the base of the trees, pale fungus grows in shelves and plates, the soft pink-white of a seashell’s interior.

“What is that?” I whisper. I’ve surveyed forests in four states. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“You’ll see,” Holt says quietly. “Root, stone, bare ground. Stay off the moss.”

Why am I whispering? I don’t know. It just feels like a place where you whisper.

I place my boots in his prints. Root, stone, bare ground. I keep my hands close to my sides. He chooses every step as if it matters, so I do too.

The ground slopes downward, and the trees open up around a bowl.