Out of the main forest around the lower part of Mount Akka, and farther up where the terrain was more rugged and the trees were thinner, I stopped to scan our surroundings. I let my eyes unfocus so I would notice any unusual movements, but there was nothing behind us. When I turned to watch the mountain ridge in front of us, though, I saw a rabbit hop once, then stop to look about. It was a perfect silhouette, exactly the same shape as the targets Dad made for practice.

I signaled to the president to stop, then lifted the bow and quietly nocked an arrow. I raised, aimed, and drew back the string. As soon as I started to pull it back, though, I began to feel angry. The bow was too big and too strong for me. It was almost useless and made me feel weak. I gritted my teeth and pulled with all my strength, but as before, I couldn’t get the string to my cheek.

I fired anyway.

The string twanged and the arrow skewed as it left the bow. It flew in an awkward curve, bouncing off the rocks to the left of the rabbit.

The rabbit didn’t waste any time making its getaway. One moment it was there, and the next it was gone.

“Tough break,” the president whispered, but I ignored him.

Annoyed and embarrassed, I lowered the bow and went to retrieve my arrow, slipping it into the quiver and looking back, seeing the forest behind us. We had climbed a long way, so now the thickest trees were below, and I could see the helicopter sweeping the forest. It wasn’t much more than a small red light, with a beam of white piercing down from it.

I shifted my gaze and looked at the president. “If I had a smaller bow, my own bow, I would have hit it. We could’ve had rabbit for dinner if this stupid bow wasn’t so big.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll just have to go without dinner tonight.” He started walking toward me, stepping from boulder to boulder. “Besides, I’m not a big fan of rabbit. I prefer a cheeseburger.” He stopped and looked down between two large, jagged rocks. “What’s this?” The president squatted and reached down to grab whatever it was that he had seen. “A shoe,” he said, holding it up.

“Yours?” I asked. There was enough moonlight for me to see that it was a black, shiny shoe, the kind a president might wear. It certainly wasn’t a hunter’s boot, and I’d never seen anyone in my village wear anything like it.

“Not mine.” He shook his head and let his hand drop to his side.

“Is it your size, then? Maybe it’s your lucky day.”

“Not that lucky. It looks about the right size, but it’s the wrong foot.”

“Oh.” I looked around, wondering where it might have come from, and spotted something sticking out from a rocky ledge at head height a few feet to my right.

“Stay where you are,” the president said.

“What?” I was surprised. Since leaving the site of the escape pod, I had been giving all the orders, because this was my forest and he was the stranger. I didn’t understand why he suddenly thought he should be giving them. But then, he was an adult, and adults always thought they knew best — probably even more so when they were the President of the United States.

“I said, ‘stay where you are.’ ” He put a hand on my arm and walked past, going to the rocky ledge and looking up. He stood there for a moment, then began to climb. When he put his hand on the top, ready to pull himself up, he snatched it back and looked at his fingers.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Just stay there.” He got a good grip on the rocks and hauled himself up, making a better job of it than he had earlier.

For a few seconds he said nothing. All I could hear was the wind and the distant thumping of the helicopter. Then the president spoke.

“Otis. Oh God, no.”

I watched him, deciding that he wasn’t in charge here. This was my forest and I knew it better than he did, so I hopped across the boulders and climbed up the rocks to see what he had found.

The dead man was wearing a suit, just like the man who had appeared from the trees where the pod had come down. He was lying faceup on the rocky outcrop, with one shoeless foot sticking out over the edge. He was twisted in an awkward way, so his arms were in strange positions, and one leg was tucked underneath him, but his face just looked like he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. There wasn’t a scratch on it.

I knew he was dead, just like Patu and just like the man by the escape pod.

“You know him?” I heard myself ask.

The president was crouched beside the body, with one fist to his mouth as if to keep calm. He swallowed hard. “Otis. Part of my guard detail.”

“Bodyguards, you mean?” I took a deep breath and looked out across the ledge, where other dark shapes were splayed on the rocks.

The president nodded.

“And there are others, right?”

“Yes.”

“Is it them?” I raised my arm and pointed.

The president turned to follow the line of my finger. He stared for a moment, then stood and went to look at the other bodies. I stayed where I was. I didn’t want to see any more dead people.

“Stanley,” he said looking at the first man. “And Clay,” he said when he came to the other. His voice was quiet and sounded like it was breaking. He stood with his head lowered and his hands on his face. “What happened to them?”

The president came back to me and rolled Otis onto his front to reveal the unopened parachute strapped to the man’s back. He crouched and looked at the fastenings.

“Oh God,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Oh my God.”

“What is it?” I asked again. “Tell me, President.”

He sat back and shook his head. “Cable tied. Someone has tied the parachute shut. They were murdered.”

“What? By who?” Even as I said it, though, I remembered the man in the suit saying something about the others being not “so lucky.”

“The same people who are after me, I guess.”

“But you don’t know who they are? Are you sure you didn’t recognize any of them? They said they were hunting you.”

The president didn’t look at me. He turned away and bit his bottom lip as if there was something more than our situation on his mind.

“What about that man Hazar?” I asked. “You know him?”

He shook his head.

“The others, then? Did you —”

“I’m the President of the United States, Oskari; there are a lot of people who would like to kill me.”

A terrible shiver ran through me, like spiders crawling over my skin, but I told myself that standing around feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to get anything done. “Crying never helped anyone” is what Dad would have said.

“Get up, President.”

“Hmm?”

“I said, ‘Get up.’ ”

The president shook his head. “They were murdered, Oskari, don’t you understand? I’ve been betrayed. Someone sabotaged Air Force One so that it could be shot down, then they sabotaged my bodyguards’ parachutes. They sabotaged the escape pod, too; that’s why I couldn’t open the door.”

“I know. I heard the man in the suit say that.”

The president looked up at me. “You know that help I told you about? I’m not so sure it’s going to come.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” I could hardly believe I was saying it, but I could see the president was losing heart. I had to try to keep him going. “Stand up and let’s go.”

“They have guns, Oskari. They have a helicopter. And they’ve got information, too. I mean, how the hell did they do all this?”

I looked down at Otis’s body. “Does he have a gun?”

“Hmm?”

“This bodyguard. He has a gun?”

The president seemed to realize what I was saying. “Yes. Yes, he does.” He shifted and took a deep breath before reaching inside the man’s jacket and pulling out a pistol.

“Now you have a gun,” I said. “And I have my bow.”

The president didn’t look too impressed by that, and after my performance with the rabbit, I could hardly blame him. He tried to smile, but it just looked desperate, as if he felt sorry for me and knew we were already dead. Then his face fell as something else occurred to him.

“Phones,” he said. “They’ll have phones.” He dropped into a crouch once more and, with some effort, rolled the body onto its back. He turned his head as he patted Otis’s clothes, not wanting to look at his bodyguard’s face. When he came to the hip pocket, he stopped and looked at me with an air of triumph. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said, fumbling his hand into Otis’s pocket to retrieve the cell phone. He lifted it toward the moonlight and turned it around in his hands, pressing buttons, becoming more and more agitated. “Damn it. Broken.”

He threw it out onto the rocks and went to the next bodyguard, checking his pockets until he found another broken phone. “One more try,” he said to himself. “One more chance.” When the third phone lit up in his hands, he looked like a child. His whole face became one big smile and I felt so happy for him. He really seemed to think that the phone would save his life. He could phone for help, and we would be rescued.

But his happiness did not last long. He began to shake the phone. He turned around. He held it up to the sky. He lowered it. He held it at arm’s length, then began jumping from boulder to boulder. Eventually, the air went out of him and his whole body sagged.

“What is it, President?”

“No signal,” he said. “After all that, there’s no damn signal.”

“Well, we are in the wilderness. I thought maybe the president’s phones might work, but …” I shrugged.

He put the phone in his pocket and sat down, rubbing his face with his hands. “Being the president doesn’t count for much out here in the wilderness, I guess.”

“Not really.”

“Out here, I’m just like everyone else.”

“Maybe not even that,” I said.

“Thanks, kid.”

“Well, can you hunt?”

“No.” He seemed to shrink under the weight of our situation.

“Build a shelter?”

He shook his head.

“Can you even start a fire?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then you really are lucky I found you. I know how to do all those things. And tomorrow this forest will be full of hunters from my village, and the first place they will go to is my dad’s hunting ground. That’s where he’ll come looking for me if I don’t return by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow might be too late.” He looked back at the helicopter sweeping the forest. “Who the hell is doing this?”

“The helicopter won’t do them any good. They’re looking in the wrong place. Because you have me.”

The president sighed.

“If it wasn’t for me, Hazar would have you by now.” It was a good feeling to think that maybe I wasn’t such a bad woodsman after all. “Haven’t I already gotten you this far?” I asked.

He nodded. “I guess you have, kid.”

“I told you, my name is Oskari. I’m not a kid.”

“No. I guess you’re not.”

“Don’t worry, President. I am going to look after you, okay?” I spat in my hand and held it out to him.

The president looked at me, then at my hand.

“Spit and shake,” I said.

He hesitated, then spat in his palm and grasped my hand. When he did, I gripped it as hard as I could and pulled, making him get to his feet. “There,” I said. “It is a promise now.”

The president gave me a look that made me feel proud and strong like never before. A sparkle came back into his eyes and I could see it was the look of a man who had chosen not to give up. Maybe he thought that if I could be brave, then he should be brave, too.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Good.” I let go of his hand and shifted the pack on my back, then started up the mountain once more. As I walked, I looked over my shoulder. “Oh, and you know why else you’re lucky?”

“Why’s that?”

I nodded at Otis. “Right size, remember? At least his other shoe will fit you.”