Summer arrived in Springfield, Missouri, with droning cicadas and heavy, grass-scented heat. Carly was fifteen, anxious and pale, all elbows, wondering what was wrong with her. Half of her friends had Journeyed the summer before, and now, at every turn, the rest were heading north as though the decision to go were as easy as breathing.

Each time, it happened without warning. One day, the teenagers were still at home, like Jade and Anika, worrying over slights from their friends, taking humdrum summer jobs to earn spending money; the next, they had slipped away without a single word to explore the mysteries of the North Lands.

But even if the Call had come, Carly knew her parents would never allow her to go. All she had to do was exert a little self-control, they said. It was boorish, self-indulgent, and dangerous to run off like that, leaving your family to worry. After all, it was a well-known fact that not everyone who went came back. Look at the Donaldsons’ Ben, gone forever without a trace. Why, her very own parents hadn’t Journeyed when the moment had come, and their lives were all the better for it. Surely, they said, she could see that.

Then, one day, on her way home from a job interview as the Missouri sun blazed down like a great blast furnace, the Call surfaced between one step and the next, a great thrumming behind her breastbone. She trembled like a struck chord, her body playing music for the first time in her life.

She hurried home, but her thoughts were filled with the roar of cool winds, high promontories where you could look down at the whole world, waterfall spray on your face, submerged rocks that gave shape to rushing rivers. It all added up to a song just waiting to be sung. Her feet longed to dance but she couldn’t quite catch the rhythm.

Her mother looked up as Carly burst through the front door. She was a small, daintily made woman with a single streak of gray at the temple. Her lips tightened as she took in Carly’s flushed face. “I—see.”

The living room was cool in contrast to the heat outside. The antique grandfather clock ticked insistently on the wall. Carly dropped onto the couch, hands knotted. Leaves shifted behind her eyes, a million different shades of green. Her friends had already gone, but she might be able to catch up.

With a disapproving shake, her mother laid aside the newspaper. “Go to your room.”

“Yes, of course,” Carly said. “I have to pack!” She felt wild with anticipation. Out the window, she saw a pair of youths carrying backpacks, obviously already on their way. She wondered if she could get her things together fast enough to join them.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” her mother said. “We’ve already discussed this. You’re not going to that awful place.”

Carly bolted to her feet. Her skin itched from the inside and she could not be still. “I have to go! It’s not a matter of choice.”

“I said the same,” her mother said, “but my parents knew their duty just as I know mine.” She took Carly’s arm, then recoiled, staring at her hand. Her face paled. “If you go, then don’t bother to come back, even if you do survive. No true daughter of ours would behave in such a way.”

For a second, Carly almost gave in. She’d spent a lifetime being the good girl, trying to do as she was told. But then the Call surged, a vast aching wave of need, and it seemed she would die of it.

“It’s a terrible place!” her mother said, desperation invading her tone. “Everyone knows that.”

“No, they don’t!” Carly rubbed her arm. “No one can describe what happens there.”

“They don’t want to!”

“But they do,” Carly said. “When Heather came back last year, she said it’s wonderful, only words couldn’t contain it. She said I’d just have to see for myself.”

They gazed at one another, both hot-eyed and intractable. Her mother finally turned away. “Go and lie down,” she said. “We’ll eat dinner soon and then you’ll feel better.”

Carly paced the confines of her bedroom, stuffed her school backpack with clothes, emptied it out in a fit of despondency, then packed again more carefully. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw swift rivers cascading over stones, snow-mantled mountains rising up against a brilliant blue sky. The air here seemed stale beyond bearing. How had she stood breathing it all these years?

When her father came home, she heard her mother telling
him what had passed between them that afternoon. His voice, calm at first, became ever more agitated until finally he rushed down the hall and flung open her bedroom door without
even knocking.

The bulging backpack lay on the bed and he snatched it up. “You’re not to leave this house for any reason!”

They both stared at the backpack. Her hands shook and she crossed her arms to steady herself. “You don’t understand,” she said in a strangled voice. “I have to go!”

“No, you don’t,” he said. “Someday, you’ll understand that.”

A number of miserable hours later, she heard her parents go to bed and tried her door. It was locked. Her bedroom was on the second floor, but nevertheless she opened the window and leaned out into the heavy, sweet-scented summer air. She could hear frogs booming and the thin-edged whine of mosquitoes. The ache resurged, as though her heart were being torn out, so that it could go north while she was mired here.

How had her parents borne it? Had some essential part of them departed, leaving behind only shells to go about the boring daily business of living?

A dark shape stopped out on the sidewalk and stared up at her. Starlight reflected off a pair of glasses. “The Call is strong tonight,” it said softly. “Are you coming?”

The voice sounded male, but she didn’t recognize it.

“I can’t,” she said. “My parents locked me in.”

“Jump!” he said. “It’s not that far.”

She put one leg over the window sill, then hesitated. “I don’t have any money or my backpack. They took everything.”

A second dark shape joined the first. “You mean you didn’t make an emergency stash, like they teach you in school? That’s lame.” This voice was female.

“Tie some stuff up in a sheet and let’s go,” the first voice said. “That is, if you really want to come.”

“I do!” she said, then retreated just long enough to throw a few clothes into her top sheet. She tied it up, then dropped the bundle out the window. The night seemed mysterious, but welcoming, as though the darkness was alive. She hung on the sill for a moment, feeling the separation, her old life behind her, the new ahead. She laughed as she dropped, and though the fall wrenched her ankle, she was smiling when the other two pulled her to her feet.

They walked to the bus station several miles away, then applied for stand-by status. The ticket clerk, grizzled and bleary-eyed, scowled at them. “Journeyers, I take it?” He crossed his arms. “It’s late in the season. Most everyone has already gone. How do I know you lot didn’t go last summer and are just angling for a free ride?”

Roy, her male companion, shook his head. He had a thin chicken neck, but, behind his glasses, his gray eyes were
clear and steady. “It’s the law. Journeyers have the right to
unsold seats.”

The girl, Marta, edged Roy aside. She was a head taller than either Carly or Roy, sturdily built with a mop of untidy brown hair. “Give us the tickets,” she said, “or I’ll report you.”

A smile cracked his sallow face. “Parents after you, are they? Maybe we’re sold out on the next bus north. Maybe there won’t be another until tomorrow.”

“You’re not sold out,” Marta said. Her gaze was level, and Carly realized she outweighed the clerk.

She peered over Marta’s shoulder. “Did you go?” she asked shyly. “What was it like?”

“I went,” he said, sounding as though he were surprised
to remember.

“Was it wonderful?” she persisted.

“Not all of it,” he said. “We were hungry and cold, and one boy died. Stupid kids, you should turn around and go back home where you’ll be safe.”

“But what were the wonderful parts like?” Carly said. “What did you do up there in the mountains?”

His mouth gaped and for a second it seemed he would speak, then he shook his head. “Can’t nobody tell you that. It’s different for each person. You just have to see for yourself—and hope it don’t kill you.”

Marta held out her hand and finally he sighed, punched up the tickets and pushed them under the glass. “Stand-by only,” he said. “Wait until the driver tells you to board. Paying passengers ride before Journeyers. That’s the law, too.”

They heard the soft whuff of a hydraulic door two buses down and had to run, then pound on the door until the driver opened it again. There were a number of seats left, but not three in a row. Marta and Roy sat together, and Carly settled into one by herself, which suited her fine.

She thought she’d seen Marta at school, but Roy was a complete stranger. The few times she’d let herself daydream about Journeying, she’d seen herself traveling with her best friends, comfortable in their companionship, laughing and excited. This was already far different, and she had only begun.

In the morning, they had to change buses in Omaha with a five-hour layover. A stoop-shouldered man and a plump woman in a pink and green jogging suit approached the three when they got off the bus. “Are you Journeying?” the woman asked, her kindly face creased in concern.

Roy shouldered his backpack. “What do you care?”

“You’re endangering your immortal soul, if you are going to that place,” the man said. He shoved a battered pamphlet at Carly. She backed away, clutching her bundle.

“My dears, it’s the Devil’s Playground up there,” the woman said. “Go home before it’s too late!”

Marta knotted her fists. “Go home, yourselves!”

“Didn’t you Journey?” Carly said.

“Yes,” the man said soberly, “I did, and I’ll regret it the rest of my life.”

“Why?” she asked. “What happened?”

His blue eyes glistened with unshed tears. “They…” he began, but then his voice choked off.

“I didn’t go,” the woman said primly. “My parents took better care of me than that.”

Marta cocked her head. Her eyes glittered in her broad, plain face. “You didn’t get the Call, did you?” she said to the woman. “I can always tell people who didn’t.”

“I didn’t because the Devil has no hold on my heart!” the woman said. “I denied him utterly and you should too!”

“Come on,” Roy said, lowering his head and ducking around the pair. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“You’ll be sorry!” the man called after them, then the pair were drawn off to confront another knot of Journeying teens from a bus that had just pulled up.

In the far corner of the seething bus station, there was a tiny Journeyers’ Aid station with a single volunteer handing out sandwiches. Carly’s ham-and-cheese was stale, but she settled in a seat between Marta and Roy and ate all of it.

Roy was still fuming over the well-meaning couple. “There will be more like them. We have to stick together.”

“Stupid cow,” Marta said. “You can always tell the ones who didn’t hear the Call. They look like dried-up old sticks!”

Carly’s eyes drifted closed and then she jerked upright.

“No, go ahead and get some sleep,” Roy said. “It’s hours before our next bus. I’ll keep watch.”

She huddled in the cheap plastic seat, pillowed her head on her bundle, and let the voices and smells of the station wash over her. A river surfaced inside her head, green-black and mysterious and there was skirling music. It was cold up there, she thought muzzily, but refreshing, not painful. Deep within, she felt the vast pull drawing her north, ever and true north.

“Carly Marie Simmons?” A hand snatched her arm and pulled her to her feet.

“Wha—?” she opened her eyes to see a florid-faced man of about fifty staring at her. “Who are you?”

“Baxter Reed,” he said, “commissioned by your parents to take you home.” Over six feet tall, dressed in black, he held a faxed copy of her picture out with his other hand.

“Let go!” She tried to free herself, but his fingers were iron.

“Hey!” Roy bounded to his feet. “Hands off!” His thin face looked determined.

“Son, this little lady is going home,” Reed told him, “and if you have any sense, you will too.”

Marta’s seat was empty. Carly looked around wildly, her heart pounding. “You have no right! You’re not my father!”

“I have your father’s authorization,” he said, dragging her across the station. People glanced at them, then looked aside, not wanting to get involved.

Roy followed. “That’s illegal!” he said. “You can’t interfere once she’s started her Journey!”

Reed grinned over his shoulder. “Tell it to someone who cares. Believe me, she’ll thank her parents for this someday.”

“So you never went?” Carly said.

The big man’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“The rivers up there are a green so dark, it’s almost black,” she said. “When you put your hand in the water, it feels like the heart of a glacier.”

“Right,” he said, forcing her across the threshold out into the heat of the Nebraska morning. Cars streamed past and the air reeked of gasoline fumes and hot pavement. He turned left and wove through the crowd toward the parking lot.

New images filled Carly’s head. “When it rains,” she heard herself say, “the drops are filled with dreams.”

“You have got it bad,” Reed said sourly.

Marta and Roy watched her from the door, but she knew they couldn’t help. She checked her watch. Their bus would be in soon and they would have to go on.

“The trees talk and the rocks,” she said, the words bubbling up from somewhere deep inside. “The mountains have a voice in everything that happens and even the wind knows your name. The rivers shine at night like the face of the sun so that you can see every fish and rock and plant on the bottom.”

He stared at her as though she were a dangerous snake. “You don’t know that.”

“But I do,” she said, “and you would have too, if you’d ever let yourself believe all those years ago.”

Suddenly, he released her wrist and backed away as though she were white-hot. “How in the hell did you do that?” he whispered hoarsely, staring at his hand. “For a moment, I heard music like nothing I ever heard before.”

“You did hear it once, when it was your turn to go,” she said. “You just wouldn’t listen.” Carly ran back to the station, then plunged through the doors. Just on the other side, Marta held out her bundle. “Did we miss our bus?” she asked the girl.

“No,” Marta said. “Roy is getting our tickets.”

“Even mine?”

“Yes,” Marta said. “He said he could see it in your eyes, even when that idiot was dragging you off. Nothing is going to keep you from the North Lands.”

From Omaha, they rode to Rapid City, and the bus was filled with Journeyers so that every seat was taken. The paying passengers looked at them out of the corners of their eyes.

“I wish I could go again,” a woman next to Carly said.

“What was it like?” Carly asked, but her companion only shook her head.

“You’ll see,” the woman said, “and it will be with you all your life. You’ll never be sorry you went.”

In Rapid City, the Black Hills rose on the western horizon, enticingly close. “They’re beautiful,” Roy said, “but nothing like the North Lands.”

Again, they secured food from the Journeyers’ Aid Society, this time crackers and tomato soup, along with small bags of toiletries. In three hours, they were on their way again, this time to Billings. Their numbers had increased, so that they had to wait a whole day in Billings to take a bus to Helena.

Some of their fellow Journeyers were animated, talking about the North Lands and what they would find, but most were silent. Why did Journeyers’ experiences vary so widely, Carly wondered. Why didn’t everyone find the same things, or feel the same way, when they came back? And why did some of them die?

Helena was mobbed, even this late in the season. She saw a few children as young as twelve mixed in with the crowds and a few more stunned-looking individuals as old as twenty. At fifteen, she was solidly in the middle, neither early, nor late as she’d feared.

“It’s a sacred time,” one earnest pimple-faced boy was telling anyone who would listen. “We have a responsibility to remember and spread the word when we come back.”

“But I’ve asked and asked, and no one who’s been ever can tell what happens,” Carly said. “What makes you think we’ll be any different?”

“They just didn’t try hard enough,” he said, “that’s all.”

The bus, when it was time, carried only Journeyers. Some were jubilant, cheering, but most of the rest just hugged backpacks or dufflebags, staring out the windows at the rolling gold and green plains that bordered the North Lands.

Marta, Roy, and Carly sat together, second row from the front. In the distance, the mountains emerged on the horizon. Carly, seated by the window, spread her fingers on the glass as though she could reach through and touch them. They were real. All this way, she had felt them drawing her ever north, but now to see them—she felt transformed in some inexplicable way.

Sometimes they passed Journeyers on foot, bikes, motorcycles, or even horseback. At first, the bus passengers called to them and waved, but after a while, they all fell silent, watching their counterparts fall behind.

Marta, who had seemed so sure, grew apprehensive. “Stop the bus,” she whispered to no one in particular. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to go!”

“No, it will be all right,” Roy said, but Carly thought he sounded far from certain. He had told them early on that both his parents had gone to the North Lands in their day and were now eager for him to have the experience. Never doubting, he had come, but now there was apprehension in his gray eyes.

Something prickled at her awareness as they rode, a thin-edged keening almost like music. Their bus lurched over the increasingly bad roads. The music grew louder and she found herself humming along. It had an insistent rhythm, but no tune, and wandered off first in one direction, then another. Marta stared at her from time to time, but said nothing.

Through the morning, the mountains grew, filling the horizon, granite peaks, rising far above the tree line, naked rock at the top, dotted with snow-packed cirques and glaciers. The trees were evergreens, pines and firs, green-black and tall, except where avalanches had created chutes for wildflowers.

Streams cascaded out of the snowfields, bounding down the sides of the mountains. Carly could feel their thrumming beat in her blood.

Just after noon, the driver pulled up before a rushing stream and a narrow footbridge. A large Journeyers’ Aid station stood on the near side. “This is as far as I go,” he said, opening the door. “When you’re ready to go back, you can board here, or there’s a number of other egress points to the south and west. The station has a map. I recommend you pick one up before you go in. It’s up to you to find your own way out. No one will come in after you—ever.”

The Journeyers filed off the bus, then milled before the station, some excited, others overwhelmed. The moment Carly’s foot touched the ground, the music inside her head surged. She felt aglow with it, as though she were playing the one true song of the universe.

“Let’s see what the aid station has before we cross,” Roy said. “It may be a long time before we get any food otherwise.”

Carly was staring up at the mountains, her ears ringing.

Roy took her arm, then lurched back, staring at his hand as though he’d been stung. “What—?”

Marta, who had sat next to her on the bus, edged away. “She’s been broadcasting music all morning like some kind of stupid radio. It’s driving me crazy. I thought we were coming out here to get away from all that!”

“I …” Carly put her hands over her eyes, fighting to turn away from the song. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

Marta shook her head. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Right.” Roy looked grim. He hoisted his backpack and trudged toward the aid station.

The air seemed somehow brighter than in the city, as though its molecules sparkled. Every breathful tingled all the way down into the lungs, as though it was not air at all, but something headier. Carly followed her companions, telling herself she did not hear the on-going song. Her bones did not resonate with it, nor her blood cry out with its melody.

A simple footbridge crafted of undressed wood crossed the cascading creek and many kids had already dashed over it, too eager to be practical and pick up supplies. Carly watched them, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead despite the cool air.

Roy returned with extra packets, which he handed her. “Concentrated trail rations,” he said. “Enough for two weeks, they said, if you portion it out carefully.”

“Thanks,” she said and unwrapped her bundle.