Christine would always maintain that she'd have made it down the river just fine, thank you very much, were it not for the eagle.

Perhaps it had been shortsighted to canoe the trickier parts of the waterway in mid-November, but it wasn't unheard of, and she was hardly a novice.

Granted, it had been a good handful of years since she'd been up here. There had always been some reason or another not to join her dad at the cottage each summer, until he'd finally stopped asking.

How she regretted that now.

The riverbank this time of year was stripped of its vibrant green, but the air was crisp and fragrant with the sweet piney smell that she loved. The water was a deep, dull rust-brown under the gray sky. Its current was quiet, moving in ripples that trickled over rocks and gurgled softly around each bend.

She nudged her canoe around a fallen tree and sucked in a deep breath. There was still so much left to do before she headed back downstate: scrub the cottage floors, now that the furniture was gone. Clean the gutters and windows, sweep the shed, paint the kitchen, rake the yard, contact a local realtor. Was it worth staining and re-sealing the deck that had given her so many splinters as a kid? Should she sell the cottage now and get it over with, or wait until summer, when there would be more buyers?

No. She shouldn't think about those things just now. This would likely be her last trip down the river, after all. In fact, she should sell the canoe, along with its counterpart, both of which had made their home in the shed since long before she was born, back when Grandpa Daae and his brother had built the cottage with their own hands.

There were no homes or cottages lining this stretch of the bank, only wilderness. Likely she was in the national forest. She strained to remember how much farther it was to the landing in town, where she would paddle ashore and store her boat for the night before walking back to her hotel. It had been only mid-afternoon when she'd launched from the cottage, but perhaps she'd misjudged how much time she had, and how short the days had grown. Daylight was fading faster than she'd anticipated.

Christine paddled harder.

She'd begun sweating under her fleece jacket by the time she saw it: a bald eagle, arcing over distant treetops to fall in line with the river.

She hadn't seen an eagle since she was nine, before conservation efforts, when only one mated pair was rumored to nest along that stretch of river. She had thought the birds a myth until one cloudy afternoon when her dad called her out onto the wraparound porch. Spurred by the urgency in his voice, she'd tripped and stumbled over the door frame only to have a pair of binoculars pushed into her hands.

"Up there," he'd said, pointing. "Above the riverbend."

She'd felt a thrill run through her body at the sight of the raptor's massive wingspan. It had been clutching something in its talons: a fish, maybe, or a rodent.

"It's good luck to see an eagle," her dad had said. "It's a sign of change."

If only he'd lived long enough to hear about this one.

She stopped paddling just long enough to stare at its underbelly as it soared overhead: chocolate brown, almost black in the waning light, with large feathers at its wingtips as separate and distinct as human fingers. The white head and tail were unmistakable by contrast. Its breadth was as colossal as she remembered, and she gaped.

Without warning, the bow of the canoe pitched upward. She heard the terrible scrape of aluminum against rock as she was dumped over the side and into the icy river. The sharp cold seized her by the chest, tightening its grip until she thought she might never breathe again. Her leg rammed into something solid—the offending rock?—and the capsized canoe was right behind it, slamming her ankle against the rock's surface. Her cries were swallowed by a cruel and unflagging current.

She surfaced with a gasp and a searing headache. Miraculously, her glasses had stayed put, and her backpack drifted past her. She reached out to snatch it up, wincing at the white-hot strain of arm muscle as she curled her fingers around a strap.

The canoe lingered nearby: it had somehow righted itself, but now it was flooded. Her teeth chattered as she swam over. The paddle was gone; a cursory glance downriver saw it careening around the bend ahead. She'd never catch up.

Slowly, agonizingly, Christine dragged the hull onto the the riverbank, where she tipped it enough to dump out the water before dropping it onto the pebbled ground with an unceremonious thunk. Every inch of her body throbbed. It hurt to put weight on her ankle. Her shivering was near violent, the chill of the air on her wet skin robbing her of breath. She peeled off her wet gloves and squirmed out of her life vest, chucking everything into the boat.

She opened her backpack to survey the damage. The bagel she'd pilfered from that morning's continental breakfast had gone soggy, its hasty paper-towel wrapping having partly dissolved. She tossed it aside, along with a banana now slick with river water.

Her phone was surprisingly dry: she'd at least had the foresight to pack it in a plastic zip bag. She pulled it out with shaking fingers and turned on the screen.

The status bar drew a desperate whimper from her throat. Of course. She'd had no signal for half her stay so far; why would it be any different now, miles from civilization?

She turned in a weary circle, scanning the riverbanks for any signs of life. She was going to have to float downriver in a wet canoe, wasn't she? She could only hope she made it to the landing before it got dark and hypothermia set in.

But over the treeline behind her wafted a small sign of hope: smoke. It was a calculated risk, but she decided to follow it. She slung her pack over her shoulders and set off.

Leaves, dead and curled, crunched under her boots as she entered the woods. It was easy to see ahead, at least, among all the low shrub and strands of tall jack pine. The spindly trees were bare until almost two-thirds of the way up, where they erupted in a tuft of green needles. Growing up, she'd loved how the ample space between trunks made it it easy to spot deer and wild turkey from the road.

Her skin was starting to numb beneath the wet clothing. Her wet curls hung limp, darkened to a dirty blonde, and plastered themselves to the sides of her face and neck. She could barely feel her fingers. She was limping now, socks squelching in her boots all the while, and dusk was already setting in.

Christine tried to imagine herself in one of the wilderness survival books she'd loved as a kid—Hatchet, My Side of the Mountain, Island of the Blue Dolphins—but she was far too cold for that kind of effort. The final straw was when she tripped over a jutting tree root and went sprawling across the forest floor, scraping her palms in the process. Tears streamed down her face as she pushed herself up and stumbled forward.

She had half a mind to head back to the canoe when a clearing appeared ahead, and within that, a cabin. It was made of dark wood and had no lights on, its silhouette ominous against a backdrop of darkening forest. But smoke curled out of the chimney in tendrils soft and fragrant, so she pressed on.

She came upon the back of the cabin first. Some distance from the back door, a pit ringed by rough-hewn slabs of rock held the charred remnants of an earlier bonfire. Off to its side, an axe rested on a tree stump. A neat wall of firewood, likely chopped on that same splitting block, was stacked against the back of the house. There was a distinct snap under her boot as she circled the fire pit to reach the front of the cabin, and she lifted her foot to investigate.

It was a bone. Or at least, it had been a bone, about the length of her hand, but the force of impact had cleaved it in two. It looked like it might be a rib, too small to be a human's. Or so she hoped. The pit of her stomach churned.

A crow cawed loudly in a tree overhead, and she jumped with a gasp.

It took a few seconds of recovery before she could will herself to pull it together. Animal bones, birds cawing: these were normal things that occurred in the woods, after all. But when a sharp gust of wind came whistling through the trees, her skin prickled and she clutched at her shoulder straps with white knuckles. She walked forward with her heart pounding anew.

The windows were darkened at the front of the cabin, the only sign of life a pair of muddied black combat boots drying on the covered wooden porch. On the opposite side of the porch was a small work table of weathered pine, cast into shadow by the sloping roof. Gingerly, she set her palm on a splintered handrail and climbed the steps.

She had just raised her knuckles to rap at the door when she saw the large knife atop the work table. It was flecked with dried blood.

No. No, she would just go back to the canoe and float the rest of the way, and she would figure out how to generate body heat through sheer force of will, like those Tibetan monks. She was already edging away from the door when it swung open.

The figure that met her was tall and angular, with black tactical pants tucked into military boots, and sinewy forearms exposed by the rolled sleeves of a navy blue shirt. The stranger's hands, sheathed in black fingerless gloves, were clutching a shotgun.

It was his face, however, that ripped the air from her lungs.

The skin was red and puckered and leathery, with waxy, misshapen ridges where the eyebrows should have been. His eyelids were partly melded with the thick skin around them, leaving narrow openings for the dark eyes that watched her with wild intensity. One side of his nose was twice the size of the other, as though a chunk had gone missing. And the right ear: that was missing completely. The only feature with some semblance of normalcy was a dark crop of tousled hair.

She knew how terrified she must look. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her teeth still clacking. "My canoe—I was—"

Get out, screamed the voice in her head. Get out get out get out.

"You know what, never mind. I think...I think I'm good." Without waiting for a response, she stumbled back down the steps and took off in the direction of the river.

A moment later, there was a squeak of hinges and a slam of the door behind her. The crunch of heavy footsteps followed her into the forest. She broke into a run.

Only once did she dare glance back. The same dark figure trailed her through the brush, long legs striding at a brisk clip, shotgun still in hand. She ran faster. She winced at the pain that shot through her ankle with each step, at the burning in her lungs.

She was going to trip; she knew it. She was going to trip and go sprawling across the forest floor like every standard horror-movie victim, and her only legacy would be to have her mysterious disappearance featured in a true-crime documentary series and subsequently picked apart by amateur sleuths on the internet. Was her choice of an everything bagel at breakfast indicative of some larger dissatisfaction with her life's trajectory? Could her viewing of Top Gun the night before have meant she intended to join the Church of Scientology?

The river was within earshot now. But even if she made it to the canoe, she realized, she was still a sitting duck out on the water. She had no paddle; he had long limbs and a gun. She choked back a terrified sob as she stumbled into the clearing at the riverbank, and then she froze.

About twenty yards away was a bear: a hulking, mangy black bear, snuffling at the dirt around her canoe. Next to its front paw was a damp paper towel, the remnants of her discarded breakfast. She could have kicked herself for being so careless—but then, when did she ever need to worry about bears in the city?

The bear stopped foraging to turn on meaty haunches and look at her. She screamed.

Or at least, she started to scream, but a gloved hand at her mouth cut her off at a small shriek. A second hand clamped down on her shoulder, rooting her to the spot.

A man's voice curled into her ear, quiet and composed despite its inherent threat: "I would not do that if I were you."