Neutral tones dissolved white into black. Clouds of tarnished pewter hid the moon. Not even a whisper of wind feathered the lake, its glassy surface catching what reflected light filtered down. Miles across the depths of the ancient meteor crater, twinklings of cottages rimmed the bowl like stubborn fallen stars. There was a brief splash as a Merganser led her paddling brood to shelter, the smallest perched on her wide back, struggling for purchase.

On a shelf of shimmering granite, a girl knelt, spilling the liquid crystal over her hands. She crooned to herself, holding up her arms as if bidding the moon disrobe and join her. Dressed in a simple white chemise, a slip perhaps, she seemed oblivious to the hum of ravenous mosquitos unfettered by the still night. Her hands crumpled the lacy needles of a tiny cedar sprouting from a rock cleft, and she brushed back her long hair with the rich perfume. A dark, irregular pattern spread across the lap of her dress, or was that a trick of light?

From the house far above floated the strains of a violin concerto, Paganini, the rippling, fluid tones of Itzhak Perlman. She nodded her head to the music. Sudden silence, then a raucous country tune faded in and out, interrupted by static. The radio snapped off, replaced by a hurried conversation.

"I don't know. She's not in her room."

"Find her. The way she has been acting....shouldn't have been left alone."

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, tentative at first, stopping, then heavy and deliberate across a wooden platform. "Come inside. It's late." A hand reached out to her, and the girl swayed as she stood. At last the moon found a chink in the drift and dyed the dress burgundy with the intrusion of a single frame of technicolour.

"Oh, my God. What have you....?"

She took the arm, leaning against it, and struggled to walk, blinking at the face as if emerging from a dream, or entering, confused and delighted, stunned and saved at one gesture. Her lips moving as she counted, she climbed the stairs, resting every three steps, sinking to her knees at the top where other hands reached out. The warbling sob of a loon, palpable in its search, echoed across the distance.

Chapter One

The Ojibwas called it Crust-on-the-Snow Moon, the full moon of the coldest month in a climate which suffered no fools. Technology had tried to even the odds, but people in Northern Ontario knew the illusory line between safety and danger. Snug behind triple-glazed windows, Belle Palmer scanned the lake to watch the bloodless sky ghost surrender to the sun. At -28 Celsius, the scene was dead quiet. No loons ululating, no rain pelting from the eaves, no crickets chirping on the hearth or anywhere else.

The harsh growl of a snow machine near the deck caught her in a customary tee-shirt, spoiled by the woodstove which warmed the house like a bakery. She yanked on sweatpants, opened the door, and was shoved aside as her German shepherd charged past like a Tijuana bull at a tall figure in a snowmobile suit. Then the man removed his helmet and the dog waggled up for a pet. "Hey, Freya, didn't you recognize me?" he asked.

"Jim Burian, you cowboy," said Belle. "Only the young and strong and crazy would be out in this. I haven't seen you since the blackflies were biting."

"I guessed that you were up. The smoke looked like a fresh morning fire. Shouldn't have gone out at this temperature, but I counted on stopping here on the way to the lodge." He dropped his heavy boots at the door.

"Coffee's on. Breakfast's coming!" Though Belle disliked unannounced visitors, Jim she could talk with twenty-six hours out of twenty-four. Ethical, hard-working, completely without pretensions, the Burians were golden currency in the region. Years ago she had discovered the family lodge at Mamaguchi Lake with its friendly charm, and after she had tutored Jim as a favour, they had become good friends. He was a crack wilderness instructor who paddled the local canoe routes like the familiar streets of a neighbourhood. His course at Shield University was demanding much of his time, so they hadn't talked since the summer.

"Jeez, what a sauna in here! Strip tease," he said, peeling off the suit, two sweaters and a pair of wool pants, leaving him in the same outfit as Belle, her mirror image, give or take a few decades. His face, chafed by the cold, had filled out from a gangly adolescence and recalled young Tony Perkins. He brushed a hand through his thick, curly brown hair and got comfortable on the sofa. Just one discrepancy marred his even features, the traces of a harelip operation, camouflaged by sprouts of a new moustache. At age three he had been sent to Toronto for reconstructive surgery, and at his maturity, further work repaired facial nerve damage. His crooked smile didn't matched his innocent presentation. "Selling anything lately? Or is the market quiet?" he asked, sipping his coffee with obvious relief and rubbing his stockinged feet back to life.

Belle pooched out her lower lip in mock despair. "With Madame Quebec's constant threat to leave the marriage bed, nervous interest rates, and our perpetual recession, not much is moving. I did close two sales in the valley, just small bungalows, though."

As Jim leafed through Canadian Geographic, jade green eyes reflecting the sun through the walls of six-foot windows, Belle engineered a giant omelet filled with chopped artichoke hearts and mozzarella. Then with a quiver of guilt and some minor salivation, she ripped open a package of hollandaise sauce mix. "Been saving this for someone special. You're not a high cholesterol time bomb yet, are you, Laddie?" He shook his head. "Good, because after this concoction, your arteries will need an ice auger!"

Minutes later they forked into the fluffy pillows of mellow cheese oozing with the golden sauce, exchanging appreciative smiles instead of words. Finally Jim told her that his family had opened the lodge only a few weeks ago. "Too cold in January to bother. Seven weeks of -35 each night and -25 by day. This winter no one's going to get his money's worth from that hundred dollar trail pass."

"And the new tax on insurance," she added. "So what if licenses are free in the North."

He got up and popped bread into the toaster, asking her by gestures if she wanted more. "Come on out and see us. I've built a new hunt camp."

"I'm planning to, just value my toes and fingers too much. Where is the place?" "About ten miles north of our lodge, Larder Lake area." He rummaged through his suit and unfolded a topographic map. "Right here. Has a great stream, even runs all winter so I don't have to melt the snow. I've been recording virgin pines in the area, hoping to get evidence to prevent that new park from being built." "Yes, I was sick to hear about such a stupid proposal. Tell me what you learned. Put me on the inside track."

He gave her an unusual dark and serious look which surprised her. "It's an ecological disaster in the making. You know that country, Belle. Those dirt roads the tourists will use cross some pretty sensitive areas just starting to recover from the logging. Then the open heap ore roasting, and finally those forest fires in the fifties. We're having a rally at Shield March 15. I hope you can come."

"I'll spread the word to my neighbours. None of us wants any more action on Lake Wapiti. We like living twenty miles from the nearest convenience store. It concentrates the mind." Belle spooned up the last drop of hollandaise. "Well, on to happier topics. How's Melanie?" She wiggled her finger under her nose. "And very fetching, by the way, but is it Gable or Hitler?"

A blush crossed his face as he gave a cover-up cough and shifted his feet. He was about as virgin as the pines he was scouting, she imagined.

"Couldn't be better. Melanie's in the Nursing program, so we see each other for lunch or coffee. Study at night together, too. I took her on some of the old canoe routes in the early fall. Remember the Elk Lake loop?"

"When it rained for five straight days and I nearly got hypothermia? I'll say. We should have stayed in camp except that we were tired of salty rice and noodle dinners and the same Agatha Christie novel. I'd read a page, rip it off, and toss it in the fire to lighten my load," she said, laughing.

Jim pushed back his empty plate, wiped clean with toast. "Boy, can she carry a pack! Forty pounds is no problem." He rotated his coffee cup in reflection. "Taught that city girl everything she knows about the woods. Call me Caliban, the monster of the forest. 'I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries; I'll fish for thee and get thee wood enough.'"

Belle realized how much Jim had matured in the last few years. His parents had confided that as a boy he had been so insecure, especially of strangers, that he refused to meet anyone's glance. "I see you remember the Shakespeare we read for your finals. Here I thought that you hated it at the time."

He nodded at the reference.

"Besides," she went on, "Caliban was my favourite. He had substance, and he smelled out hypocrisy. Miranda was so boring with all that 'Brave new world' stuff." The back of her hand swept over her forehead in a stage gesture.

Jim's smile widened as the sun brightened the room. "I'm happy with Melanie. And it's easy, so easy that it's a miracle."

Belle knew him well enough not to pry further about his plans; he guarded his privacy like a Cayman Islands bank account number.

He downed the last gulp of coffee. "Got to go now, but how about a tour? I haven't seen the place since it was framed."

"The computer room," she said, leading him down the hall. "Watch this." A flip of the modem engaged the connection software. A high whine, a squawk, and the screen flashed a welcome. "At your service, the information highway. I belong to several forums, tropical fish, mystery, classic films. But don't ask about alt.sex. It might as well be old.sox at my age." "I'd kill for an Internet account at school. Our research facilities are pretty feeble."

Belle escorted him to the tv room where she trained her Chaparral system on Ted Turner's sanity-saving TNT classic film network. "How long have you had your satellite dish?" he asked. "It's quite the piece of art on the dock."

"Ha! Art would be cheaper. The cement base was poured in September, but I finally saved enough this month to add the electronics. Too bad aerial reception is so poor out here. Cable's a century away. Maybe man wasn't meant to live in the boonies."

On a sturdy stand by the window, her fish family splashed in their fifty-gallon aquarium, banging the glass in hungry frustration. She turned off the pump, sprinkled on some dried shrimp, and dropped a few food tablets. "It's always Tanganyika or the Amazon rainforest for these lucky brats," Belle said. Mac, the African knifefish, paraded his spots, eight on one side and thirteen on the other. Li'l Pleco the plecostemus leisurely rolled onto his back to suck food from the surface like a boat turned turtle, confident that a stray pellet would drift into his sucker maw in payment for rasping the algae from the tank. In contrast, Hannibal the needlefish lurked at the top in imaginary weeds. Prisoner of his genes, he ate only live prey and had been spoiled by the summer's excellent minnows, now reduced to an occasional goldfish. "He was a #2 pencil; now he's a pregnant Orson Welles," Belle said.

After the tour, Jim reassembled his clothes with a sigh. "Hate to go back into that cold, but I think I'm stoked enough to ward off frostbite for another half hour to the lodge. Thanks for the meal, even though I feel like sleeping it off. Drop by if you can. I'll be out at the hunt camp during break week to work on my paper." He started to fasten his helmet, then paused. "Say, I wanted to ask. Have you seen any small planes around the lake, seen lights in the night?"

Belle cocked her head, trying to recall. "Maybe once. I thought it was a fluke because I know they're not allowed to land after dark without instrumentation. What's up?"

"Nothing good." He rubbed Freya's ears and the dog gave an imitation of a purr. "I spend a lot of time in the bush, especially at odd hours coming back from the hunt camps. I've heard small prop jobs at night and seen signs of ski landings on Obabika, Stillwell, places no one should be."

"See any people?"

"Are you kidding? They're in and out in minutes. And why go there anyway? Those lakes are way off the main trails, too shallow for fish. It's a transfer, Belle, and I'm talking about drugs. What else?"

She nodded. "Used to be that was just an American problem. Then a big city problem. Everything's twenty years late up here. We've been lucky."

Jim's long hands trembled as he pulled on his mitts, and his voice grew cold. "They're going after kids now. Ted's in grade nine, for God's sake, and several of his classmates have used that junk. If anyone ever tried to turn him on, I'd take care of them." He punched his fist into his leather gauntlet. "I love that little guy."

As his machine faded into the distance, Belle found herself worrying about this new side of Jim, a personal rage against drugs. Violence was so alien to him that he might not use common sense if anything tricky came up. Well, he was a grown man now, not a high school student. Shrugging off her concern, she beamed into the weather channel. It always cheered her to see that compared to the Arctic, her world was relatively tropical. All right! -45 in Rankin Inlet up in Hudson Bay, -40 in Resolute, and a whopping -48 in Iglulik. For a sweet minute she felt toasty...until she noticed a monster blizzard sweeping down from Superior. Another day of grace before the plowing would resume.