I don’t recall how many times she called it, or at what intervals, only that I kept hearing it repeated over and over. For a while I thought I might be dreaming, but reality slowly penetrated my slumber, telling me I should probably get up, something might have happened. Reluctantly I propped myself into a sitting position. It was light out. Not sunny-day bright. The gray, filtered light of another overcast morning. Mel was not in the tent. I never heard her get up, which meant I must have been pretty out of it. I was surprised by that, because after hearing the footsteps in the middle of the night, I rested only fitfully, kept semi-awake by the conundrum of the footsteps, the hard ground, and the frosty weather. Also, Mel had been tossing and turning and sleep-talking, something she never did. It made me wonder if she’d been having more of those crevice-related nightmares. I pushed aside the emergency blanket, rubbed my arms for warmth—and noticed that my right hand had swollen even more overnight.
