-c- 2008 Mcgraw-hill Ryerson Limited 🎉

Delilah circled once, landed on a small lake that hadn’t been there before, and taxied to the shore. She looked at him for a long time.

“Where did the biologist find it?” Elias asked.

“Impossible,” he whispered, but he climbed down anyway.

The first three days were easy. He took a floatplane from Cochrane to Churchill, then a rattling bush plane north to a nameless lake. The pilot, a Cree woman named Delilah, dropped him on a gravel beach. “Last plane until September,” she shouted over the engine. “You sure?” -C- 2008 mcgraw-hill ryerson limited

Elias made a choice.

The valley shuddered. The sky cracked. And then, like a dream ending, the valley folded in on itself—the steep walls collapsing, the black river vanishing, the cabin crumbling into dust.

Elias sat down beside him. The sun was setting over the hayfield, turning the grass to gold. A normal sun. A normal field. Delilah circled once, landed on a small lake

He stepped inside.

I am afraid.

The last entry was a single line, scrawled so violently the pencil tore the page: “Impossible,” he whispered, but he climbed down anyway

The compass needle now pointed straight ahead, no longer trembling.

Elias laughed. “That’s impossible.”