The Cessna came down hard in a patch of black spruce. For a long minute Mara heard nothing but her own heartbeat. Then her cousin Dell coughed in the seat beside her, alive, his glasses cracked but still on. The radio was dead except for one thing: a clean tone, repeating, over and over, on an old frequency. A tower beacon. Somewhere out there, someone had left a light on.

Dell put a hand on the dash. "We don't leave the plane. They teach you that. Rescue looks for the wreck, not for two kids wandering the woods." He pointed at the bright wing sticking up through the trees. "We stay. We make a fire. We wait."

They built a fire in a clearing and dragged the bright seat cushions out to spell a giant H on the ground. All afternoon they fed the flames, sending up a thin gray column. Then, near sunset, they heard it: the far-off thump of a helicopter.

Mara fired a flare straight up. The helicopter banked hard, swung back, and dropped low over their clearing, its searchlight pinning them in white. A voice boomed from a speaker: "We see you. Stay where you are." Dell grabbed Mara and the two of them just held on, finally safe.