A/N: This fic keeps getting longer and longer. It was supposed to be a lot shorter than Scientist King, but that's looking increasingly unlikely. But, anyway, here's the next chapter -- enjoy!

As always, I really appreciate the reviews -- please review some more:)

Update A/N: I had barely posted this when I noticed the timing problems. They are now fixed, as best I could manage. Sorry about that.

Chapter 8: Back Country, 24–25 July

Daine's first reaction – she was rather ashamed of it – was relief: We can't walk anywhere in that. We'll have to stay put till it melts, and have a rest. She was sure now that a short rest was all she needed; yesterday's pessimism had been simply a product of fatigue and her annoyance with Numair.

Numair. She sighed loudly. She ought to wake him and tell him about the snow; he would be fascinated, would want to take photos of it before it melted, and make notes about the weather that had preceded it, and (for all she knew) keep a sample of it so that he could later analyse its trace-mineral signature, or some such exercise.

And if she got tired of that – Daine grinned suddenly, and was surprised at how much better it made her feel – she could always pester him into a snowball fight.

"'Mair!" she scooted back into the tent and shook him gently by the shoulder. "'Mair, come and see this!"

While Numair was outside, exclaiming at the snow on the ground and the brilliantly blue sky overhead, Daine (who was much less inclined to go out in the snow in shorts and a t-shirt) rummaged in her pack for her jeans, long-johns and woollen jumper. She pulled the jumper over her head and then, feeling warmer already, stripped off the shorts and knickers she had slept in – and made an unpleasant discovery.

"Oh, well," she muttered resignedly, digging out the packet of Tampax she had brought in anticipation of just this circumstance. "At least now I've got an explanation for the water retention, and the tempers, and the being tired."

When she re-emerged into the bright sunshine – she must, she realized, have slept much later than she had initially supposed – she was trying hard not to appear dejected. Numair turned round, shivering a little but wearing a broad grin; he sobered abruptly when he saw her and asked, "What is it, love? What's happened?"

Daine shrugged. "Nothing," she said. "I'm just a bit worried about how Aly's getting on with the beasties. You know how Griffin—"

"Griffin generally likes Aly considerably better than he likes me," Numair interrupted. "I'm sure they're all getting on just fine. What is it really that's bothering you?"

She ought to have known better, really; she never could put him off when he took it into his head to ferret something out of her. Wordlessly she turned back to the tent, ducked inside and came out again brandishing the freshly opened packet of Tampax.

"Oh," he said. Daine felt her nose tingle, the hated tears fighting to escape: he sounded even more unhappy than she felt. "I'm sorry, love …"

"Don't." She shook her head at him, scrubbing at her damp eyes with one hand. "Just … don't. There's nothing to be done about it, except to try and think about something else. Tell me …" she looked around at the snow-blanketed campsite, the dripping trees, the spiky shapes of grasses thrusting up through their damp white coverlet. "Tell me about whatever snow-ology it is you've been doing out here."

By mid-afternoon nearly all the snow had disappeared, leaving the ground underfoot squashy and everything else unpleasantly damp. The earth steamed a little in the afternoon sun, and the nearby river, swollen with snowmelt, was loud in the travellers' ears.

"Not much use in setting off again now, I suppose," Daine said gloomily. She was pacing back and forth across the campsite, and fretting. The feeling she had had during the night, of some unknown wrong thing that she needed to put right, had been nagging at her all day; she had tried valiantly to convince herself that the feeling meant nothing – that she was simply frustrated by their enforced inactivity, was depressed about the bear, was imagining things – but to no avail. Yesterday at this time she had been ready to drop from exhaustion; now she felt she would go mad if she couldn't go somewhere and do something about … whatever it was.

"I suppose not," Numair agreed. "Still, it's probably just as well we've had this day to rest—"

"I don't want any more rest!" Daine burst out, completely forgetting that she had voiced almost exactly the same thought earlier in the day. "I'm tired of resting. I'd far rather keep moving." She stopped pacing and flung herself down on the waterproof tarp they had spread out in front of the tent.

Numair sat down, more gracefully and less impetuously, beside her. "Something's worrying you—something else," he amended. "What is it? Can I help?"

"I don't know what it is," she admitted. "Cabin fever, I suppose. Tent fever. Campsite fever. I think I'll feel better once we're on the road again. At least, I hope so. I know it's stupid to set off at two o'clock in the afternoon, but …"

He looked at her, his dark eyes full of concern. "If you'd rather carry on, and you feel up to it—"

She made an impatient gesture.

"Well, then, I've no objection. We won't reach our next planned stop, obviously, but that needn't trouble us much out here." Numair got to his feet and reached down to give Daine a hand up. "Shall we?"

Having struck their camp in half an hour, they continued roughly northeast along the Clearwater River trail. Daine set an easy pace, not deliberately but because she was finding it hard to concentrate; whereas before she had been preoccupied by the wild beauty of her surroundings, now she went almost without seeing, tugged along by the feeling of wrongness in her mind.

"How goes it? Are you feeling any better?" Numair inquired, an hour or so after they set out.

Daine answered with a sigh and a shake of her head.

And another hour later, "I don't think it was cabin fever, after all."

Numair offered her his canteen, and she sipped gratefully before handing it back to him.

"What do you think it is, then?" he asked.

Another sigh. "I've no idea. That's what's sending me mad. All last night I kept dreaming that something bad was happening somewhere near, and since I woke up this morning I've had this feeling that I need to go somewhere and find something, but … It's so frustrating! I've got nothing to go on."

"What if you told me about the dreams?" Numair suggested.

"I'd love to, 'Mair, but honestly, all I can remember is what I've just said – something bad happening somewhere near. I think … I think if we got nearer whatever it was – is – I might have a clearer idea …"

He was silent for a long moment, apparently deep in thought. Daine watched him, finding his absorbed quiet oddly calming.

"Have you," he said at last, hesitantly, "any sense of which direction the something might be in?"

She shook her head.

"Do you remember anything from the dreams? Even some … tiny thing that might not seem important?"

Daine closed her eyes and tipped her head back, trying to clear her mind. "There is one thing," she said at last. "Well, not so much a thing … it wasn't 'dreams,' it was just the one dream, over and over. And …" she hesitated, feeling foolish. "Whatever it was, it kept getting more and more … urgent. Worse."

They had trudged on for a further half-hour when, suddenly, Daine stopped in her tracks, staring with narrowed eyes at some indeterminate point to the left of the trail. Numair, who had been trying to determine whether the white flowers that grew alongside the path were grass-of-Parnassus or some obscure type of buttercup and had just decided that he needed to check his field guide, walked into her, and they both went sprawling.

"Sorry, love," he said, as he helped her up.

But Daine was paying no attention. "We need to go that way," she said, pointing north, where Mount Malloch loomed in the distance above the treeline.

"What?"

"That way," she repeated.

"But, vetkin," he protested, startled, "that's off-trail. Not encouraged, and for very sound environmental reasons—"

"You asked whether I had a sense of direction," Daine said. "I hadn't, but I do have now, and this is it."

Numair sighed, very quietly: he knew that stubborn tone of old. His choices, at this point, were to go along with Daine's plan, whatever it was, or to spend an hour attempting to dissuade her and, in the end, go along anyway.

"At least wait till I've got out the compass and the topo map, so I can keep track of where we are," he said resignedly.

"I see something," Daine announced, sotto voce, signalling a stop with one hand.

"Something?"

"Look." She gestured at the ground just ahead. "Can you see those marks?"

Numair looked, but saw nothing but damp soil and the fallen needles of conifers. Daine shrugged and went on.

Before long she called another halt, this time to crouch in the undergrowth and sniff at something. Not for the first time, Numair was reminded of their cats. As they went on, threading their way through montane forest in a silence broken only by dripping water and the occasional sounds of birds, their pace grew slower and slower, Daine pausing frequently to gaze around as though searching for some particular clue that would set them on the right path.

They were at least an hour away from the trail when, suddenly, she stepped back, nearly knocking into him, and clutched at his arm. "Look," she gasped, pointing.

Then she buried her face against his chest.

When Numair looked where she had pointed, he saw why: they had come upon a cougar, recently dead, caught in a highly illegal leg-hold trap. The trapped leg was bloody and torn; the animal had chewed nearly down to the bone in a vain effort to free itself.

Numair held Daine tightly in his arms, at once to comfort her and to keep his own smouldering anger in check.

"Where are we?" Daine demanded. "Find this place and circle it on the map. I want to be able to tell them exactly where this happened."

She had put aside her grief, for the moment, to concentrate instead on the burning rage that buoyed and fuelled her. Some person – some monster – had set this trap, and would eventually come along to check it; if she and Numair could give the Park authorities sufficiently accurate information, that person might possibly be caught. Prosecuted. Torn limb from limb.

Daine dismissed this thought as unhelpful, however satisfying it might be. Breathing slowly and deeply in an effort to remain calm, she crouched down to examine the body.

"Is it …" Numair began.

"Yes."

He didn't ask what made her so sure that this cougar was their cougar; he knew her well enough by now, she supposed, to realize both that she was right and that it was futile to press her for explanations.

"I'm so sorry," she murmured, stroking the dead beast's muzzle. "When I said I hoped we'd see you again …"

"I've got the spot, as well as I can," said Numair, who had also had his camera out, photographing their grisly discovery and such surrounding scenery as might help another person find this location. "What now?"

It was a little unnerving to have him defer to her so overtly, though of course he did so more subtly often enough. "I … I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know what the right thing to do is. I don't know what we can do. We could call in the map reference …"

"I hardly think there's any chance of a signal out here, love."

"Please try."

He did so, without success – hardly surprising, Daine supposed.

"The thing is," she said after a moment, "I've still got that feeling of needing to put something right. It's … different now, but stronger."

"We're not getting back to the trail today, then." Numair's tone was carefully neutral; she was sorry to have got them into this mess, but there was, she felt, no other real choice.

"I'm sorry—"

He cut her apology short with an impatient gesture. "Please don't."

From a great distance – or so it seemed to Daine – they heard a strange cry, a sort of chirruping whistle.

"What on earth was that?" Numair asked.

"Of course," Daine said. Everything made more sense now.

"Of course, what?"

"That," she told him, "since you ask, was a cougar cub calling for its mother."

They paused for a quick, cold supper once they had got well away; they sat on Numair's spread-out anorak, huddled together not for warmth but for reassurance. Their plan had been to stop for no more than half an hour before moving on, in order to get as far as possible before dusk; but before twenty minutes had elapsed, Daine was asleep.

Her dreams this time were vivid and insistent; she saw rushing water, a rocky outcrop, a dark, sheltered overhang – and always that eerie, pleading cry.

She woke abruptly and sat up, cracking the top of her head against Numair's chin. "Let me see that map," she said, and he handed it over, rubbing his jaw. "I know where we have to go."

It was past nine o'clock in the evening; the light was beginning to fade, and with it the day's heat. Walking almost due east for the past several hours, they had crossed the Clearwater River trail and the river itself; Numair hoped fervently that the next time their journey called for the fording of watercourses, they would be able to find a less hair-raising place to make their attempt.

"Are we—" he began.

"Nearly there? I think so." Daine raised her head and sniffed the air. Then, responding to some cue only she could detect, she plunged ahead again; he trailed along behind her, compass and map in hand.

They emerged from the trees onto the rocky bank of a small, swift-running creek. Daine crouched down at the water's edge and peered first left, then right, into the gathering dusk. Suddenly she appeared to spot something; springing up as energetically as though she had not been trailbreaking for hours, she beckoned him after her as she struck a precarious course southward along the bank.

They came to a heap of large rocks – A moraine, Numair thought, momentarily distracted – and Daine began poking about at its base. He was watching her, wondering whether he should offer to help her search or whether that would be courting serious injury, when that odd, chirruping whistle sounded again, echoing at a daunting volume among the rocks. Of course – how else could we have heard it so far away?

Daine had moved out of his sight. "There you are," he heard her say. "There, now. It's all right. No, I'm sorry, I can't take you to your mum, but I'll look after you, little kitten. There we are, that's right."

And she emerged from behind the moraine.

A large-eyed feline face, its white muzzle outlined in black below comically over-sized ears, regarded Numair solemnly from the circle of her arms.

"She ought to have a name, I suppose," said Daine. She addressed the cougar cub: "Will it hurt your feelings if we go on calling you 'Kitten'?" It raised its head very slightly and licked her chin. "Kitten it is, then."

"We can't keep her, you know," Numair warned. He was pitching a bare-bones camp, in the dark, on his own, the cub having refused to be parted from Daine even for a moment. They had given her a meal of milk (made up from the powdered they had brought to put in their tea) and part of their emergency ration of tinned sardines, and she was drowsing in Daine's arms, apparently content.

Peering at him over her charge's furry head, Daine looked scandalized at this suggestion. "Of course we can't!" she said. "Kitten's a wild animal, she belongs in the wild. I didn't say we ought to keep her, I said we've got to take her with us the rest of the way."

"Yes, but—"

"We can't leave her here on her own, Numair. She's a baby. She'll starve, or die of exposure, or—"

"You're putting words in my mouth," he protested. "I certainly didn't suggest leaving her here. I'm simply concerned about your … becoming attached."

Daine rolled her eyes. "Of course I'm not going to get attached," she said. Then, after a moment, "Not more than usual, at any rate."

Numair, thinking once more of their domestic menagerie (particularly Griffin, whom Thom Cooper had once, aptly, called "a beast only the Beast Whisperer could love"), gave vent to a quiet groan. "'Usual' is precisely what concerns me," he said.

Numair slept badly. Shortly after dawn he dreamed of being trapped underwater with a crushing weight on his ribcage. He woke, gasping for breath, to discover the source of this sensation: Kitten was curled up on his chest, purring thunderously.

"Gerroff," he protested indistinctly.

"What?" this was Daine, who sat up in her bedroll, brown curls sticking up in all directions. Focusing on the scene before her, she put up one hand to hide her laughter.

"Your new friend appears to think that I make an excellent bed," Numair remarked dryly.

"Well, and no wonder," Daine said, regarding his naked chest with ill-concealed amusement. "It's so lovely and furry …"

"Thanks ever so."

Daine leaned over and gathered the still-sleeping Kitten into her arms. "There now," she said. "You can come and sleep with M— with me."

She burrowed back into her sleeping-bag, cougar cub and all, but not before Numair had seen the guilty flush of her cheeks. Oh, dear, he thought. I was afraid of that.

As best Numair could determine by means of compass and map, they were within a kilometre of the Divide Creek trail, to the head of which their original trajectory would have taken them some time late on Tuesday afternoon. It was anyone's guess whether, from this point, it would be quicker to go back the way they had come or to go forward, trying to rejoin the trail at the first opportunity. If they went back, some of the terrain would be familiar, which might make the going easier. On the other hand …

"Well? What's the verdict?" Daine inquired.

He looked at her and sighed. She had been too busy caring for their refugee to take much care of herself; yesterday's clothes, which she had also slept in, bore the marks of their scrambles through dense undergrowth and over rocks, and her dirt-streaked face was lined with exhaustion. She was also cradling the sleeping Kitten, slung across her chest in a carrier she had improvised from one of Numair's shirts, and smiling beatifically.

"Forward," he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

He half expected an argument – surely Daine could see that he was making things up as he went along? – but she simply nodded and looked up at him expectantly, waiting for him to take the lead.

A/N: Readers should note that at this point the story has left the geographical area with which I am personally familiar, and I am working from maps that are not very detailed. I know approximately where the trails, the major rivers, and some well-known peaks are, but the rest I'm making up. If it should happen that anyone reading this has more accurate knowledge of the area in question, please speak up -- I'd appreciate the input.