-c- 2008 Mcgraw-hill Ryerson Limited -

And every year after, on the anniversary of that summer, Elias would walk to the tree and sit for a while. He never heard the loon again. But sometimes, just at dusk, he thought he felt a needle turning in his chest—pointing not north, not northeast, but simply home .

Standing in the doorway was a woman in a blue coat, dark hair, kind eyes. She looked exactly like the photograph on his father’s dresser. The photograph of the woman who had walked out of their house when Elias was three years old and never come back.

“Wedged inside a cairn of stones. Two hundred kilometers north of Baker Lake.” August tapped the compass. “The needle doesn’t point to magnetic north, boy. It points to wherever Tivon’s last camp was. I’ve tested it.” -C- 2008 mcgraw-hill ryerson limited

Not because he believed in ghosts or magic. Because his mother had left when he was three, his father worked double shifts at the pulp mill, and Grandfather August was dying of emphysema. Elias wanted one real thing before August’s lungs filled up for good.

Elias stood on flat, empty tundra. No valley. No cabin. No compass. Just him, his backpack, and the distant hum of a floatplane engine. And every year after, on the anniversary of

He packed a backpack: tent, dehydrated meals, a satellite messenger (his father insisted), a rifle for polar bears, and the compass. He left a note on the kitchen table: Gone to find Tivon. Back in two weeks.

She smiled, and her smile was perfect, and that was the problem—it was too perfect. No crow’s feet. No chapped lips from the arctic wind. She hadn’t aged a day in thirteen years. Standing in the doorway was a woman in

Elias laughed. “That’s impossible.”