The drop was so quick and so sudden, it felt as if I had left my insides somewhere up in the sky. An overwhelming light-headedness washed over me and I didn’t even think about what was going to happen when we hit the ground. All I could think was that I had succeeded. I had won. The freezer chest was free and I had managed to get the president away from Hazar and Morris.

We descended like a landing plane, traveling down and forward at the same time, carried by the momentum of the helicopter that had been dragging us. Except we weren’t heading for a flat landing strip, we were heading for a muddy bank at the edge of the trees. And the freezer chest wasn’t built for flying. Or landing.

I lay spread-eagled on top of it as it came crashing down through the trees, but it was heavier than me and there wasn’t enough for me to hold on to. It fell faster than I did, the two of us coming apart as we hit an area where the trees were close together and the forest was a thick tangle. The outstretched branches pummeled the freezer chest, disturbing its flight path and sending it into a tumbling spin. I fell just behind it, colliding with a tree limb that hit my chest like a baseball bat, bruising my ribs and knocking the breath right out of me. I came to a very sudden stop and then dropped like a stone, crashing through the smaller branches. There wasn’t even time to grab hold of anything as I fell, my face and hands burning from the scratches and cuts that were opening up all over my skin.

I hit the ground facedown, with a painful crunch, and skidded on my front as the freezer disappeared from view, twisting and tumbling and crashing into the trees.

The helicopter passed overhead, its rhythmic thumping fading into the distance until it was nothing more than a faint heartbeat, then it was gone. The forest was silent except for the trickle of pine needles dropping in my wake, and the sound of my own breathing. There was a gash on my cheek, my ribs were bruised, my skin was scratched and cut all over, and every muscle was sore, but I had survived.

I sat up and looked about in a daze. “Holy crap. I’m alive.”

What made it even more incredible was that my right hand was still bunched into a tight fist, gripping the handle of my knife — and the bow and arrows were still secure across my back.

My arms and legs complained when I tried to stand, and my face stung from the cut. Blood ran down my cheek and neck, and my whole body was racked with pain, but I pushed myself to my feet and took the bow from my back.

“Still in one piece,” I whispered as I checked it over. “That’s a miracle.” I looked up, seeing nothing but the mist, and shouted to the forest: “Thank you!”

The fact that the bow and arrows were safe and that I had managed to separate the freezer chest from the helicopter could mean only one thing. I was right about the president being my trophy, and something in the forest was protecting me, encouraging me to take what it was offering.

There wasn’t much time, though. It wouldn’t take Hazar long to realize the president was gone, so the helicopter would be back any moment. I had to find that freezer chest first.

With stiff legs, I stumbled in the direction of the muddy bank I had spotted from the air. The eerie mist hung in the trees around me as if I was running through an alien world, but I knew where I was going and I knew it was close. I pushed on through the forest, struggling to stay on my feet as I brushed aside stray branches, wading through dense bracken until I burst out of the trees.

It was a relief to be in the open and see the muddy bank just ahead of me, a long, dark smear running from left to right, shrouded in mist. Inclining away from me, the bank sloped upward seven or eight yards, then appeared to fall away into an abyss on the other side. There was no way of knowing what was over the ridge. It might have been a gentle hill or a terrifying drop off the side of the mountain.

“President?” I called as I moved out onto the mud. “President?”

Nothing.

“President?”

In the distance, the sound of the helicopter slipped into range. Hazar was coming back.

“President!” I shouted, feeling my sense of urgency grow. The mist might hide us from view, but if they came low enough, the twirling blades would clear it away and they would spot us. And what about the president’s satellites? Could they see through mist?

“President?” I had to find him before they came back.

Slipping and sliding, I forgot about my aches and pains and scrambled across the mud, looking this way and that, searching for the white box.

“President?”

Then I saw a long, flat path scraped through the dark mud. The freezer chest must have landed here and shot up the gentle bank toward the tipping-off point. I set off toward it without delay, moving as quickly as I could, following the flattened trail of the freezer. The soft, wet ground squelched and sucked at my feet, so I bent forward, putting my hands on my knees to force my legs to work harder. There was almost no grip on the incline and my boots were becoming heavy with thick mud, making it difficult to move, but I battled on, slowly making my way higher.

Coming closer to the top, I began to hear another sound competing with the noise of the approaching helicopter. From somewhere nearby came the rush of cascading water.

Of course! The river.

We must be close to Lake Tuonela. As we came down, the trees had obscured it from view, but it made sense for it to be near here, and that noise was the river that fed it. It ran fast and white and fell into the lake in a frothing storm of tons and tons of water.

I stopped.

If the freezer had gone over the edge of this bank, it might have slipped all the way down the other side into the river. It might have splashed into the fast-moving water and washed down toward the waterfall. There was no way the president could survive that. He’d drown for sure.

“President!”

With a new surge of energy, I pushed harder and harder, struggling to the top of the incline where I stood looking down at the raging river. It rushed through the mist, flanked by mud and rocks and decaying driftwood, stopping for nothing and nobody.

And there, upside down on the riverbank, just a few paces from the water, was the large white freezer chest.

“President!”

I started to run, but without any grip my feet skidded out from beneath me, whipping backward so that I landed on my stomach and carried on down the slope like I was lying face forward on a toboggan. Thick, slimy mud gathered in heaps around my shoulders and piled up in my face as I went. By the time I came to a stop, my mouth was full of it and my clothes and boots were caked in it. The weight of the mud meant that it took a lot of effort to get to my feet, but I struggled on, wiping my face and spitting out the grime as I shambled over to the president’s prison.

The freezer was upside down and covered in muck and smears of my blood. Its corners were crushed in, and the sides were dented and scratched from its fall into the forest. I imagined how it must have felt for my friend to be trapped inside it, being tumbled about, not knowing what was happening. He must have been terrified — but as I came closer and saw the extent of the damage to the chest, I began to wonder if he could have survived his ordeal.

“Please don’t be dead,” I whispered. “Please don’t be dead.”

Closer still, and the roar of the river filled my head, mingling with the beat of the approaching helicopter.

“Please don’t be dead.”

When I reached the freezer chest, I put both hands on the side, dug my feet into the mud, and pushed as hard as I could to turn it. At first it refused to move, but with a little rocking and a bit more strength, I managed to tip it first onto its side, then upright.

I unlatched the old locking mechanism and threw open the lid.

The president was curled in the ice and bloody water at the bottom like a dead animal. He was battered and bruised, bleeding from his nose.

“President?” I whispered. “Please don’t be dead.”

He opened his eyes. “Oskari?” Covered in mud as I was, I must have looked like some kind of forest creature. “Is that you? What the hell just happened?”

“President!” I could hardly contain my excitement. “You’re alive!” I wanted to jump up and down, but there was no time for that. “Come on, quick, let’s get you out.”

“I don’t know if I can move,” he mumbled.

“Of course you can. I’ll help. Quick, before they come back.”

I reached into the chest and took his hands, helping him to sit up.

“I feel like I’ve been in a washing machine, not a freezer.”

“Anything broken?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“I figured it out,” I said, unable to contain my excitement any longer. I had to tell him what I had realized; why our meeting was so important. “I figured it out.”

“What? What are you …” He put his hands on his face and moaned. “Oh my God. Everything hurts.”

“I know why I found you. I figured it out when I was up there.” I pointed to the sky as all the adrenaline of the past few minutes raged through me, lifting my exhilaration. “The forest gives us each what we deserve. Those are the words. And it did give me something. Something big.”

The president looked at me like I wasn’t making any sense.

“You.”

“What?”

“You. The President of the United States of America. That’s what the forest gave me. You.”

“What? No …”

“Yes. And I listened to the trees, and I fought tooth and nail, and now I’m going to take you to my dad, and all my village will see.”

The president sighed and lay back down in the freezer. “Holy crap. Why is everybody hunting me?”

I looked at him for a second, then reached in to grab him again. “No, President, get up. We have to go. They’re coming back.” I pointed at the sky as the thud of the helicopter began to drown out the sound of the river. “Hazar and Morris are coming back.”

“I honestly don’t think I can do this anymore, Oskari. I’m beat.”

“No. We have to keep going. I have to save you. There’s no one to help us. Instead of looking tough, we have to be tough.”

The president sat up and put his hands on his face. He rubbed hard, then looked up at me. “Oskari, you’re more of a man than anyone else I know.”