"Lala!" I say.
"What?" Father says. "Who?"
"A dog from the forest park," I say. "She just ran past us. Didn't you see?"
"There's nothing out here," he says. "Just keep walking. Are your feet cold?"
"They were," I say. "Now I can't even feel them."
"That's good," he says. "That's a good sign, as long as you can keep walking."
"This is a slippery kind of thing to have on your feet," I say.
"Better slippery than wet. Trust me on that."
The trees open up and then close in again. It's gotten darker, it's not even lighter when we're out of the trees. I don't know if we lose the road because of the snow or before that.
"We could start a fire," I say. "No one would see it."
"Everything's too wet out here," Father says. "What would we burn?" He says something else but I can't hear it.
"What did you say?" I say.
"I don't even think we have matches," he says.
"Do you really know where we're going?" I say.
"I think so. It's been a long time." He turns all the way around and then we head in a slightly different direction. "Also," he says, "it's snowing and it's the middle of the night. That complicates matters."
If I walk close behind him it blocks some of the snow. We keep on without talking. A little later we come to a stretch where there's strips of black in the ground like roads or water so the snow stands out white like islands around them.
"Yes," Father says. "Very good." He takes off his glove and puts his bare hand on the ground. "We're in luck," he says.
"What?" I say.
"How much do you know about volcanoes?"
"Some," I say.
"There's heat inside the earth," he says, "and some places it comes up."
"Look," I say, pointing over by some trees, where there is smoke. "Someone has a fire over there."
I can feel the bottom of my feet again, warm as we run across the black rocks. When we get there though it is not a fire but a pool of hot water. Steam cooks up into the sky. The air smells like eggs. Father stares down at the water then sets down his pack. He holds his bare hand against the water. He touches the water with his finger and jerks it back out.
"Hot?" I say.
"Oh, yes," he says. "Sit down like this, here, Caroline. Stretch out."
All the ground is warm. I can feel it through my jeans, all along down my legs. Father rolls over from his back to his front, he stretches out his arms.
"These black rocks are broken up lava," he says with one in his hand. "They used to be liquid. Isn't that hard to believe?"
"Where are we going?" I say. "What are we doing?"
"If you keep asking me these questions," he says, "that really throws off my judgment."
"Sorry," I say.
"Everything will be a lot easier in the daylight," he says. "Our focus right now is just making it through the night. And that's no problem. We're lucky. This will be a night we'll remember. It's an adventure, our adventure. Hey, if we had a tarp we could make a kind of tent and catch all this heat and it would be like spending the whole night in a steam bath."
"We always have tarps," I say. "Blue ones."
"I gave them away," Father says. "I lost them."
We wait like this. We turn over and turn over again. I warm up my back until my front is cold and then the other way around. The wind blows and the snow is still falling but it melts as soon as it lands on the warm stones around us. Trees grow around the clearing and it's black beneath them. Someone standing there could easily be watching us if they could see in the dark. I am thinking of the lady on the bus and all the other people and where they are now. Bend? I wonder what we would have been doing now in Bend, where we would be spending this night.
"Are you asleep, Caroline?" Father says.
"The rocks are too hard," I say, "and half of me is always cold."
"I'm thinking of getting into the water," he says. "To raise up the temperature of the core of my body."
"Go ahead," I say.
"I think you should, too," he says. "You don't want to catch cold. Be sure to take off your watch first and put it in your pocket."
My clothes are warm and damp and heavy. The plastic bags have melted off my feet so there are just scraps held onto my ankles with the rubber bands.
"Hot!" Father says behind me, splashing.
It's been since we lived in the forest park that Father has seen my whole body and I know it's changed but he doesn't say anything and it's dark. Still the way my body looks makes me want to get under the water faster even though it's so hot like needles with only my foot in. The bottom is gravel, not sharp gravel. The pool is maybe two feet deep and not so wide. Father and I both fold our bodies around so almost everything is under. His hairy legs are pressed soft against mine. I slip deeper in the water so it makes a hot circle around my neck, rising up.