Lily was awakened by something around dawn. She thought it was someone sneaking, or maybe talking. She lay very still and listened to the morning sounds. The dawn chorus of birds was singing. The bushes and trees were loud with them.
Finally Lily decided that the sound had been her imagination. Still, she was awake. She thought she would get up and watch dawn rise over the Four Peaks. Carefully she unzipped her sleeping bag partway—the zip trundling slowly, tooth by tooth, down the seam. She folded back a tri-angle, pulled her legs out, and rose.
She had not gone two steps, however, when Katie stirred and whispered, “Hey! Lily! Are you up?”
“One sec,” said Katie, and she also got up. Jasper and Bntno didn’t move.
Katie and Lily walked a little ways away from the camp and sat on a hill of grasses, watching the sky lighten. The grasses waved around them. The sky went from navy to a strange, simmering white.
The mountains turned red with the first sun.
Lily thrilled at the sight of that dawning. It seemed to her like the world was beginning again, like there was something pure and fresh about things. It didn’t matter, somehow, that most walls were covered with dirt and that people punched each other in the lunch line. There was hope for the world, she felt, so long as there were mountains and forests and morning light.
Soon they could see the features that Jasper had mentioned on the mountains: the one farthest from them coated in white glacier; another with a lake on it, surrounded by grasses and trees; another draped in a deep pine forest; and a final one, with only occasional thickets on it, but with a giant pillar that could be seen from their roost several miles distant.
“So we don’t know which one is which?” said Katie.
“No,” said Lily.
“And Jasper really doesn’t know? He’s not just being a pain?”
“He was unconscious when he was taken up Tlmp.”
“So what are we going to do?” said Katie. “We don’t even know where we’re going anymore. And we may be being followed.”
Lily thought about it. They watched flocks of white birds soar above the forest. They watched a distant family of mountain goats—just brown specks on the rough stones—jump along the mountain trails.
Suddenly Lily said, “I have an idea.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I just realized—I think we might be able to figure out which mountain is which.”
Katie looked at her. “Okay,” said Katie. “Be my guest.”