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.

The sound faded. The helicopter passed without seeing them, and the thumping died into silence. Dell's face fell. But Mara was already throwing the last green branches on the fire, and a thick plume of smoke rose. "Come back," she whispered. "Look this way." The thumping grew louder again.