The plague had scattered Big hairy's family, and now he stood at the mouth of his misty cave with no idea where to run. Three of them had lived here once. He remembered the three beds, the flickering old television, the table stacked with deer meat. Now two beds sat empty. His brother and sister had fled the dead land in the night, chased by the sickness that rotted the trees black. Big hairy had to find them before the plague found them first. But the dead land stretched in every direction, and every direction looked the same. He took ten steps south. Then he stopped. The wind carried no scent he knew. He turned back, chest tight, red eyes burning. One wrong turn could cost days. The plague spread faster than he could walk. If he chose blind, he might wander while his siblings starved in some far corner. He went back inside the cave. He pawed through the empty beds, searching for anything they had left behind. Under his sister's pillow, his thick fingers found something stiff and dry. He pulled it into the gray light. It was a torn piece of hide, cracked and creased and brown. Big hairy almost dropped it. Then he saw the lines. Someone had scratched marks across the surface. Thin cuts branched out from the center like roots. He knew these marks. His sister used to drag her claw through mud to show him where the good mushrooms grew. This was her drawing. This was the dead land, cut into skin. He held the hide close to his nose. Under the smell of old leather, he caught it. Her scent. Faint, but real. And below her mark, near a jagged edge, she had scratched a small clumped shape. Round tops on thin stalks. A cluster of mushrooms. Big hairy's breath came fast. He knew that place. A tangle of mushrooms and green vines grew far to the east, past the black trees, where the ground stayed wet. His sister had drawn where she was going. She had left the map for him to find. He pressed the hide flat against his palm and looked east through the drifting fog. No more guessing. No more circling the same dead ground. The scent on the hide and the marks in the skin pointed one way. Big hairy stepped out of the cave and did not turn back. He walked east with the torn hide gripped tight. His sister was out there, somewhere past the rotting woods. But the hide showed only her corner. His brother's beside stayed empty, and no mark on the skin told where he had gone. One sibling had left a trail. The other had left nothing at all.