Chapter 2: Rivers That Move

Clara woke to find her camp on the wrong side of the river. She was certain — absolutely certain — she had pitched her tent ten meters from the eastern bank. She remembered the sound of the water on her left as she'd drifted off. Now the sound came from her right, and when she unzipped the tent and stepped outside, the river was flowing in a direction that defied the topography entirely. Reynard was already up, sitting on a rock with his arms crossed, staring at it. "Did you move my tent?" Clara asked. "I've been sitting here for an hour trying to decide if I'm still dreaming," he replied. She unrolled her survey maps. Yesterday's measurements were wrong. Not inaccurate — wrong, as in, the measurements described a landscape that no longer existed. A ridge she had marked to the northeast was now distinctly to the southwest. A grove of silver birches had relocated themselves to the other side of a meadow that had itself changed shape. Clara sat down slowly in the wet grass. "The forest is rewriting itself around us," she said. "You say that very calmly." "Because panicking won't help." She paused. "Also I think something is watching us and I don't want to alarm it." They both looked carefully at the tree line without turning their heads. Nothing moved — and yet the stillness felt intentional, the way a held breath is different from empty air. "It moved the river to wake us up," Clara said softly. "It wants something from us." Reynard swallowed. "What do we do?" She picked up her pencil and began sketching the new river position. "We let it know we're paying attention."