Paradise and Elsewhere by Kathy Page

counsellor told her. “Joshua Pearson is only signed up for the one class, yours.”
    That’s totally cool, he emailed her. Thanks for your concern. I know this is hard to understand. By this time, she had not seen him for almost six weeks and the course was entering its final phase.
    What are your intentions? she asked. Are you in some kind of trouble?
    Not at all, he replied, and then a girl called Angela dropped by her office to explain that Josh would not be in touch now until he finished. He had asked to be left alone for this final phase of his work.
    â€œWhy? What work, and where is he?” Paula asked.
    â€œWe can’t say any more at this point,” Angela told her. Her voice seemed to waver and her eyes were huge, the blue-grey irises floating in a sea of glistening white. “You’ll be the first to know. Please be patient.”
    Patient? She made a second call to Student Services to update them. The counsellor said that they would do their utmost to contact him, and to rest assured, the matter was in their hands. Then she heard nothing at all for several weeks and although it was in a way a relief, she knew that she was waiting.
    On the Friday when final assignments were due, she stayed late in her office to make a start on marking them. She had the blinds closed and a Bach violin concerto played softly in the background as she worked. Even through the music she heard her computer emit the soft chirp that signalled the arrival of an email, and without thinking, broke her rule about waiting until she had finished the current task before looking at the message.
    This was the last email from Joshua (or rather, as she was later to realize, the last one sent from his account). It contained no explicit message, just the scan of a hand-drawn map showing logging roads and trails in a piece of privately owned forest land that lay three hundred miles north of where she sat. Directions to the forest were sketched in and then a route within it was marked with neatly drawn dotted lines and arrows pointing towards the destination, a red X. There were a few brief hand-written notes on the terrain, but no hint as to what the X marked. Leaning back in her chair, Paula let out a long sigh, closed her eyes.
    I chose this class because of your reputation .
    He had said that, in this very same room… And now, crazy or sane, he was relying on her to answer his call. Because of your reputation . She was being summoned. Why? What for? Should she go? Telling herself she would decide in the morning, she sent the document to print. But she knew that she had already made a commitment—or was it that he had made her make one? Because of your reputation . He had chosen her, and then, bit by bit, enmeshed her in something she did not yet understand. And now there was no choice: unwise as it might be, she would follow through and find the place marked X.
    Early in the morning Paula packed her hiking gear and set off north, alone. It was a hard drive on twisting, hilly roads, much of it through managed forests in varying stages of growth. In some places, water ran down cliffs beside the road and covered it in a thin, shining layer. For miles on end, the road skirted a long, narrow lake. The farther she went, the slower she had to drive and the farther apart the occasional visible buildings were; exhausted, she put up on arrival in a motel mainly frequented by fishermen.
    At first light she took a coffee and a pastry from the table in the lobby and drove to the trailhead. It was marked, just as the map indicated, with yellow tape. Steep, it said on the map, and it was hard going along a narrow path that rose steadily up the side of the valley. Light filtered only gradually through the canopy. Soon she was deep in the forest and enveloped by the peculiar, alert kind of silence found among trees on a still day. Now and then where there was a clearing and some lower growth, groups of small finches skittered from one