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Very early in the morning before the sun rose, while it was still dark, Sano rose and went outside the spruce cavern to relieve herself. Searching around and on the other side of the spruce tree, she didn’t quite know what to do, and there wasn’t much in the way of privacy, as she saw for the first time how alone Mustard Seed stood on the mountain. The spruce tree seemed to her to emit a yawn and a shaking, but it could have been a breeze. She ignored her immediate need for relief and stood, shivering in the bitterness of high mountain cold, taking in the bright pink of the underside of the various snow squalls frolicking among the peaks in the distance. The last of the stars were holding the light steady for the arrival of the sun, especially that last, bright star of the morning. “Akenomyōsei yo, nante utsukushikute akarui nodeshou!” “O Morning Star,” she said, “how fair and bright!”

Fronds swished against her, and she turned to find a nice little space in the outer edge of the tree’s evergreen skirts, which, when she entered, closed about her, giving her just the privacy she needed. Upon exiting the space, she whispered, “Subarashī karashidane yo, O wonderful Mustard Seed.” The spruce tree bowed slightly.

She returned to the bower to an anxious Jason, whose eyes she assiduously avoided, and she took her place among the waking men and boys. After a few minutes of exiting and reentering, the basic human need for food and water took over the mental processes.

Umezawa said, quite innocently, “Isn’t this the part where we set rabbit traps?”

Lars and Blake looked at each other. Lars said, “Ume, have you seen any rabbits hereabouts?”

“Well, no, but don’t the rabbit traps attract them?”

“No,” said Blake.

Lars said, gravely, “We have to go back to the plane.” The party grumbled its disapprobation. “Yes, you know we have to. Did any of you notice the mountain lion pawprints outside the tree? He smelled us—she, most likely. She smelled us and wanted to eat us. We’re going to need to fetch our guns. On the other hand, if she’s hunting us, we’ll most likely get the jump on her in this territory, and we’ll eat pretty. Nothing like the back straps of a mountain line, let me tell you what…”

“Get on with it, Lars,” Blake said.

“Besides,” said Lars, “the truth of the matter is, survival is a matter of hours and days, and, well, we have some more bad news…”

“What is it, man?!?” Jason demanded.

“None of you saw the boot prints, neither, did you?” The teens shook their heads.

“We got real problems,” Lars said. “That lion probably ain’t hunting us—they don’t do that. They look for easy kills, and we’re not easy, not yet, anyhow. But look here, boot prints say someone tracked us here, got confused by ol’ Mustard Seed here, and went away to figure things about us, someone tough, to be out on this hill at night.”

The teens felt their heart sink. Lars felt it, too.

“It’s all right. Life throws you lemon curveballs sometimes. You just gotta swing away, no matter what, and you might just get lemon snow cones out of it.”

“Lars, what the hell are you on about?” Blake said.

“Right,” said Lars, wiping his face with his hand. “I got a few guns up at the plane, if we can get to the hold. Blake’s got his, plus we can ransack the galley.”

“The galley?”

“Where they make the food. Nothing spoiled yet, not in this breeze.”

“And coffee,” said Blake.

“Water, too.”

Umezawa was unconvinced. “Why can’t we just make some bows and arrows and go hunting?”

“This is just like the first arc of the second season of The Morose Alpaca,” Abe said.

“Oh yeah?” said Lars. Blake looked on. Jason rolled his eyes. Sano’s eyes grew wide. Umezawa was still trying to puzzle out why they just couldn’t make bows and arrows.

“Yeah, Nami thought she smelled food cooking in an abandoned peasant shack over a bridge at the edge of a meadow brook. The bluebird told her it was only a barrel of rotten apples, and from that distance it smelled like pie, but Nami was sure her nose was telling her the truth: it was roast beef. The premise of the thing seemed suspicious to me. Why would a peasant have a roast beef in the first place? Aren’t they poor? Well, Nami insisted, and Abigail came along, while the bluebird followed behind, singing a magical song so they wouldn’t get hurt by the frog ghosts—”

“The what now?” Lars said, interrupting.

“Aren’t we all hungry?” said Umezawa.

“The frog ghosts,” Abe said. “They were the first inhabitants of the meadow brook, and they all died peacefully of old age, but then the prince, a petulant boy, had decided to make the meadow brook into a farm so that he could have more peasants—again, this is where I think—well, I thought at the time—that the writers were taking liberties, but—” and Abe took a deep breath. “It turned out that the frog ghosts and the bluebirds were at war because the bluebirds made nests in the ancestral mating grounds of the frogs—back when they weren’t ghosts—”

“Before they were frog ghosts,” Lars said.

“Seriously!” Umezawa said. “I’m so hungry!”

“That’s right,” said Abe. “I thought the writers were bending disbelief too far, but the war of the bluebirds and the frog ghosts was a perfect setup for the reinhabited peasant shack! It wasn’t just any shack, after all! The frog ghosts, before they were ghosts, had contracted with the ancestors of the old king, the king before the father of the prince who cursed the land of the frog ghosts—”

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“Are you sure this is Josei?” Lars asked.

Abe paused. “Look, Lars, I know, right? But in order to get the manga into anime, they had to make it a fusion anime, so they incorporated fantasy into it, along the lines of The Ancient Magus’ Bride.”

“Fair enough,” said Lars. “That’s a pretty good one, that Ancient Magus’ Bride. My wife watched that one through a few times. I gotta admit: toward the end, there, when she and Acidophilus—”

“Cartaphilus!”

“Right, riiight, Cartaphilus. My wife says it the same way. Anyway, when she and Cartaphilus made that deal, I remembered it got dusty in the ol’ TV room, and I had to keep wiping my eyes.”

“CAN WE GO GET SOME FOOD NOW?” Umezawa was beside himself now. “Can’t you guys work out the arc-lines of these stupid Josei anime series along the way?”

“But our situation and Nami’s situation are the same!”

“THE BLUBBER DOESN’T CARE!”

Blake stood up and led the party out of the spruce cavern. Abe turned and bowed to the tree. “Thank you, dear Mustard Seed. May your days be peaceful and…uh…peaceful.” The tree bowed slightly, and its lower boughs relaxed, collapsing the cavern. “I really don’t know what a tree desires from existence.” The tree gave no further indications.

“So why can’t we just make bows and arrows?” Umezawa implored.

Blake patiently explained, as they walked, the effort required to create a bow, to create an arrow, to garner proficiency with them, to find prey, to stalk the prey, to kill the prey, to track the prey, to butcher the prey, and, finally, to eat the prey. Lars interjected on occasion to explain how many calories each step would require, and how few calories they had on hand. So, yes, they would have to leap the chasm again, but, in the first place, it wasn’t that big a leap, and, in the second place, they apparently had the help and aid of trees.

By the time Blake finished his explanations to Umezawa, and Umezawa had become satisfied with those explanations, they had reached the chasm and forgotten all about Nami’s deceitful nose and the war of the bluebirds versus the frog ghosts.

The DC-9 was still smoking, but after a night of magically protected sleep, the little dancing fires were not so sinister in appearance, and they hadn’t made much progress. The wreckage of the plane still hulked, however, dominating their sight and the consciousness. They shuddered at the sight, unable to control the evocations of the horrors from the day before.

“I’m glad it’s cold,” Blake said. “Those corpses smell bad enough as it is.”

Abe spoke to the sapling. “Hello, little sapling. We met your friend the spruce tree last night. Thank you for reaching down to save me yesterday. We need to cross over and back, with your help, we hope.” Without hesitating, and without a running jump, Abe leaped. The sapling responded immediately, giving Abe a kind-of push, ensuring a safe landing.

Abe had forgotten that the shelf was very narrow, but he realized quickly enough that he had to get down on his belly.

Lars and Blake stared incredulously. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s red-headed stepsister,” said Lars. “Listen here, Abe, we hadn’t really planned anything yet, but now that you’re there, you just stay put while we put together a scavenging plan, okay?”

Abe blushed. “Okay,” he said. He looked at Sano. She thinks you’re an impulsive dum-dum now, for sure, mister stoic. She had no distinguishing expression, not of surprise, admiration, or anything else, which was even more disappointing to Abe. You make no impression, not even that you’re a dum-dum.

Standing against the starkest of natural landscape, a bare mountain cliff high in the sky, she gave the impression that she was the incarnation of a North American wind spirit, one of those cold and beautiful creating spirits, whipping unlike things into an unlikely relationship to make new things happen. Her perfect proportions and unsearchable expressions were just right for the scenery, wild and un-tooled, but contrasting each other: the angular youth of the mountains against the curves of the ancient sign of woman. Sano wasn’t sure he understood what he was seeing.

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Lars said, “Just the one more of us go over, and we do some quick recon, and if it works out, we start tossing vittles and supplies to yous guys.”

“Lars is right,” Blake said. “What do you think, Jason?”

Jason was surprised by the question. He stammered, “I do say…uh…it’s all…I think it’s a good idea.”

“Good,” said Blake. “Let’s make it so. Who’s going over to Abe?”

“Well, shoot,” said Lars. “That should be me, what with my long, skinny arms and legs.”

“Are you calling me fat?” Umezawa said.

“Will you hush for two seconds, Ume?” Lars said.

“Not now,” Jason said. “Come on, Ume.”

Umezawa lowered his head. “I’m just trying to keep the mood light.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Ume,” said Lars, grinning. “You keep it light by staying here and letting us use you as a pack mule, seeing as how we ain’t got one.”

Umezawa smiled. “Keeping it light for the rest of you.”

“Abe and I will throw anything useful, and you all take the time to get it arranged for carrying.”

“Sure thing,” Umezawa said.

When Lars made the short leap, aided by the sapling with a kind thanks from Lars, he made a quick survey of the situation. “I’ll hoist you back into the plane, Abe, trusting that the fires are pretty much played out. In fact—” He paused from his lecturing to give the fuselage a good whack with his hand and a swift kick with his booted foot. The plane didn’t budge. He rocked against it, taking care not to fall backwards, trying the weight and stability of the plane. “In fact, I think she’s settled, and I mean it this time. I’ll hoist you inside, and I want you to make your way to the cockpit and look for anything that might help us understand what our plight is.”

Lars made a basket with his hands, and when Abe put his foot in it, Lars added, “And lookit, Abe.” He looked Abe square in the eyes, the two of them so close together, and he continued, in a low voice, “I think you’re going to see some awful things in that cockpit. Are you ready for it?”

Abe sucked in a deep breath. “If I’m not, I’ll be ready afterward.”

Lars checked himself. “That’s a good one, young man. Up we go.” Abe got a grip on the threshold to the emergency door, Lars gave him one last tap on the foot, and he went aft to search for the hold.

Abe wrestled himself through the door and landed. He paused, looking around, so that his eyes could quickly adjust to the little beams of bright light crisscrossing through smoke and the dim, battery-powered emergency lighting. An occasional breeze made its way through the cabin, clearing the smoke and giving Abe’s lungs a swallow of fresh air. That same smell of recirculated air, however, permeated throughout, after ages of long flights had imbued it into every fiber of the cabin furniture. The smell of recirculated air was still preferrable to the growing odor of charred human flesh. Abe tried to quell the very thought, but smells are what they are: the most powerful and evocative sense, the primal sense, beyond the pale of civilized sight, which is under the auspices of the pre-frontal cortex.

The thought crept in from his medulla oblongata: Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Sano will hear it even if she can’t see it, and she will know you’re not a man. But you leaped across the chasm without fear. It doesn’t matter. Vomiting is so unromantic.

“Gotta get to the cockpit.” He worked his way forward. The memory flashed. Yes, the man with the stiff arm, executing first class passengers. Why? Because they were first, that’s all. He was bound to execute everyone on the plane. All other guns were in the hold. But don’t Americans have a federal flight marshal on every flight? Of course they do! He was the federal flight marshal! Abe shuddered. The memory continued to play: over the din of the rollicking plane, he could hear the pistol discharge with regularity, the screams of murder filtering through the screams of panic. Suddenly, the memory wound forward to the end, and Abe came back to himself in the midst of all those murdered people. He dared not look.

But he did look.

Their eyes were open. Some had one gunshot wound. Others had two. One, an elderly lady, had three. Why aren’t they dismembered? Like the others? “Gotta keep going forward!”

He came to the cockpit. The door was locked. How is that possible? I saw him come out! He couldn’t possibly have come back to lock the door, not wh—where is he, anyway? Where is his body? Where is his pistol?

Abe, his pre-frontal cortex now overcome by smell, fear, confusion, and anger, banged with both fists against the cockpit door. To his great surprise, it gave in at one corner. The framing had very little remaining integrity. He kicked at the weak points, delighting in the sound of metal tearing, until he could shove his head and shoulders into the cockpit.

This is just like that episode from season one! He thought. Nami was trying to get into Abigail’s bedroom when she had it locked and padlocked to keep her out! Abigail hit her on the nose, but only because Nami had actually breached the doorway. What a great anime!

At first, Abe didn’t know what he was looking at. Two uniformed, mangled bodies lay across the instrument panel, impaled by throttles and steering levers. The cockpit was broken from the rest of the airplane, pointing up. The pilot must have wrestled the plane to hit the mountain with the nose up, belly first. That action must have slowed the plane so that it didn’t entirely disintegrate upon contact.

He finished crawling in, like a paleontologist crawling into an ancient Egyptian tomb. It smelled of frozen blood.

After taking a deep breath, he stood, bracing himself against gravity, to examine the bodies, not that he knew what he was looking for. He gasped: bullet holes were in their heads. But they were dead already. He was making sure. Abe looked around, up and around. The narrow cockpit windows were entirely smashed against the mountainside, but he noticed that, in one small area to one side, the cockpit windows emptied to a recess in the otherwise solid rock face. That little recess must be related to our narrow shelf. He got out, the bastard: he got out. But why did he lock the door?

Frantically, he looked the cockpit over trying to discover a clue. Nothing made sense. All those instruments, the broken glass, the metal, the dead flesh: it all added to chaos, so that nothing stood out as important or significant. There were no clues. We did not wake up in another world. We are in Idaho, and Idaho, apparently, is complicated.

Then he remembered all his video game experience: Ransack their pockets! Surely he already did. The assassin isn’t that dumb. Ransack their pockets anyway! What if he didn’t know what to look for either?

He heard a shot ring out. Gunfire! What? “Abe! Abe! They know we’re here! Hurry!”

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