We had six hours before I was due at Sana and Donny’s place for dinner, so we walked a few blocks to a boutique storefront for one of the big high-end outdoor clothing companies. To my surprise they didn’t just carry their own brand, but actually had a good selection of hiking boots, climbing gear and so on, none of which they actually made.

Angela and Emmy were in shopping heaven, trying on this piece of gear or those boots. Eventually, thanks to the extremely star-struck sales staff, we walked out of there with a bunch of shopping bags full of ridiculously over-engineered clothing. We were ready to mount an expedition to the farthest wilds of the Alaskan rain forests- or at least look as if we could.

Personally, I thought it was a bit ridiculous, but what the hell. If it made the two of them happy, I wasn’t going to complain. Of course, one of the sales guys had let slip that several of their competitors had similar flagship stores in the immediate area, so we had to stop in at a few of the other stores as well.

By the time we finished our shopping trip we’d contributed mightily to the local economy and had enough bags with the Mountain Hardwear, Arc’teryx, and North Face logos on them to start our own camping supply outlet. We had base layers, mid layers, rain shells… You name it, we had it and were ready to face the cold and wet weather of the Alaskan coast.

Even Mia had gotten into the shopping frenzy, getting herself a fleece jacket and a pair of hiking boots. The sales guy that was helping her with the boots was taken aback when she pulled off her socks to don the provided wool socks and new boots. I don’t know if he’d never seen a prosthetic foot before or just didn’t expect her to have one, but he stared at it for a long moment before recovering his composure.

Mia had obviously experienced similar reactions before, judging by her amused, knowing smirk. In the end, she did choose a burly-looking pair of Merrell boots, which fit her butch style perfectly.

When we returned to the hotel I asked what Emmy and Angela had planned for evening, and Emmy replied that they were going to go to a place that Mia had suggested.

“I’ve never been to a lesbian bar before,” Angela said. “Mia said this one is famous, and should be a lot of fun.”

“Alright. You guys have a good time. I’ll see you later,” I said, giving Angela and Emmy kisses. Mia puckered up her lips, earning her a laugh.

“You know what to do,” I told Mia in a quiet voice so the others couldn't hear as I walked out.

“Under control,” she replied quietly, nodding.

My driver dropped me off at the little apartment building near the University of Washington right at seven. Giving it a quick look, I saw that the rhododendron bushes hugging the lower walls were well shaped and there were no obvious weeds in the little strip between the sidewalk and the brick walls of the structure. Somebody had tagged the corner, but thankfully it wasn’t on the actual brickwork, so it would be easy to paint over.

I rang the doorbell and a moment later the door buzzed to let me in. I took the stairs to the second floor, pleased to see the common areas being kept up nicely, too. Sana was mostly a stay-at-home mom these days, but managing even a small building like that can eat up a lot of time when you’ve got a toddler to take care of, too.

Sana was waiting at their open door with little Aaron in her arms, smiling broadly. I gave her a sort of side-hug and tousled Aaron’s hair.

“He’s growing so fast!” I said.

“Yes, like a weed,” Sana agreed as she led me inside their cozy apartment.

“I think it’s because we feed him so much,” Donny said, wiping his hands on his apron, which read ‘Kiss the cook’. “I’m pretty sure he’d stop growing if we just stop feeding him.”

“Probably so,” I agreed, holding my arms out for a hug from my best friend at Stanford.

After a good, long hug, Donny stepped back and looked me up and down. “Dang, Leah, it’s like hugging a marble statue or something! I’d swear you’re even bigger than you were back at Stanford.”

“I’ve put on a few pounds,” I admitted.

“A few pounds of pure stone,” he replied. “Hey, dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes.”

Dinner was really nice, just hanging out and talking with Sana and Donny about grad school (mine) and Med school (his), raising a kid, and how Donny’s parents were completely in love with Sana and especially Aaron.

“Me, they’re like, ‘whatever’,” Donny said with a laugh.

“Speaking of kids,” I said. “We’re trying for that now, too.”

“Seriously?” Donny asked. “Is Emmy pregnant?”

“This isn’t for public consumption, so don’t tell anyone, but we’ve been doing the whole thing with hormones, egg collection all of it. Hopefully we’ll have good news soon,” I said. “In fact, this little vacation is sort of a, ‘well, that round’s over, let’s take a break,’ kind of thing before we get into the next phase.”

“Um, you know I don’t mean to pry, and if it’s none of my business, let me know, but how does Angela fit into this?” Donny asked, getting a puzzled look from Sana.

“Angela?” she asked.

“I didn’t figure this was something, well…” Donny said, looking nervous.

“Sana, has Donny told you about Angela?” I asked.

“Who’s Angela?” Sana asked, becoming more and more convinced that there was a big story she hadn’t been told.

“Let me start at the beginning…” I said, and gave a fairly complete rundown of how we’d met Angela and then how she became part of our lives. I explained that Emmy and I both thought of her as another wife in the relationship, and loved her very much.

“It’s um, like a polyamorous marriage,” Donny said to Sana.

“Yes, I get that,” she replied. “So this brings us back to Don’s question- how does she fit into the parenting thing? Will she be some sort of surrogate mother?”

“No, not in the sense that she’d carry Emmy’s baby to term. Here’s the thing- Emmy and Angela are hopefully both going to get pregnant at the same time, and the two girls will grow up together as sisters, and Emmy and Angela will both be their moms,” I said.

“And what, you’ll be the dad figure?” Donny asked, trying to understand how it was all going to work.

“More than you could imagine,” I said, sipping my wine.

“What do you mean?” Sana asked.

“The lab will be using my genetic material to fertilize both their eggs,” I said.

“Wait- what?” Donny asked. “Is that even possible?”

“It’s purely experimental right now, but the lab has had some success so far. We’re the guinea pigs for the whole thing, and they want to keep it on the QT,” I said.

“What Leah is saying is that she literally will be the father to Emmy and Angela’s babies. Like, it’ll be as if she was a man and got them pregnant,” Donny explained to his wife.

“That can’t be true,” Sana protested, but Donny came to my defense.

“No, it makes sense,” he said. “Really, when you get down to it, eggs and sperm cells are just the carriers for the DNA inside, right? So if they strip that stuff out of Leah’s egg and inject it into Emmy’s egg, then it’s like…” he said, his brain running ahead of what he was saying.

“I’ll literally be the father,” I said.

“Mind officially blown,” Donny said. “I mean, I can understand how it could be done. Conceptually it’s easy, but it’s gotta be really hard in practice.”

“The lab needed twenty eggs from both Emmy and Angela, and forty from me. They’ve been working on getting their technique just right. They’ve succeeded with rats and sheep in the past, but we’ll be their first human subjects and they need to be absolutely sure they have it down. They have managed to get cell division going in one egg so far, but they only let that one go long enough be able to analyze the genome and make sure there were no problems,” I explained.

“Jesus, Leah, this is some serious shit,” Donny said, his usual goofy grin missing. “You’re starting to get me worried for the future of the males of our species. We may not be needed at all anymore.”

“Don’t worry, Don,” Sana said, patting his arm affectionately. “I’ll still need you.”

Unable to stop myself, I broke out laughing at Donny’s forlorn expression. “Donny, I’ll still need you, too. Nobody can make me laugh the way you do.”

“Job security!” he crowed, his smile reappearing.

Turning to little Aaron, who’d been watching all this with wide eyes, I said, “I hope you’ve inherited your daddy’s sense of humor, little man.”

“You haven’t seen it tonight, but Aaron does like to make people laugh,” Sana assured me.

“It’s true,” Donny confirmed. “The little dude abides.”

“Donny, you’re out of your element,” Aaron said quite clearly, and yes, it did make me laugh out loud. I can’t imagine that Aaron had ever actually seen The Big Lebowski in his two short years of life, but somehow he managed to parrot that phrase at exactly the right moment.

“See?” Sana asked proudly.

I left at about eleven in a good mood, happy to have reconnected with good friends. I promised we would all have dinner when we passed back through Seattle in a week and a half, and Sana and Donny said they would be looking forward to it.

I was the first one back to the hotel room- Emmy, Angela and Mia were still out. I took a quick shower and climbed into bed, not really waiting for the other two. I wasn’t worried about Angela and Emmy as far as their safety goes, only a little bit concerned that it might be hard to get Emmy out of bed for the morning breakfast meeting. Despite that, I quickly fell asleep.

I glanced at my watch when Emmy and Angela came to bed. They had tried to be quiet, but it was obvious they’d both had a few drinks and were just a little bit drunk, so their sneaking abilities were somewhat hampered.

“It’s one in the morning, babe,” I said to Emmy as she settled in beside me. “We have to be in south Seattle by eight, which means five, maybe five and a half hours of sleep.”

“You didn’t tell me you had to be up in the morning, Em,” Angela said reproachfully. “We could have left sooner.”

“It will be fine,” Emmy assured both of us. “I will be able to wake up.”

“If you say so,” I said, kissing her, then Angela. “Good night.”

“We had a great time tonight,” Angela said. “I wish you’d come with us.”

“Next time, babe,” I said and gave her another kiss.

I woke Emmy up the next morning, and even though she was dragging a bit, she took a shower and got dressed in time for us to make it to the meeting at the appointed hour. Samuel and all four of the newbies were already seated and waiting for us, but when Emmy and I entered they all stood up respectfully.

“Please, sit, everybody,” I said, and they all did. “Emmy, this is Samuel, our local liaison. These are Robbie and Joseph,” I said, indicating the two. “This is Kay, and that’s Darrin. Of course, you all know that this is Queen Emmy De Lascaux.”

“It’s a great pleasure to meet you in person, my queen,” Samuel said, clearly awed.

“Samuel, Queen Leah has told me good things about you. I am pleased to finally meet you, as well.”

I gave the other four meaningful looks, which Robbie was quickest to pick up on.

“Queen Emmy…” she breathed, staring at Emmy’s snow-white hair. “I never imagined we would get to actually meet you.”

At this point the hippie waiter made his way over to our table to ask what we wanted to drink, so I ordered a coffee and Emmy asked for an espresso. He stared long and hard at Emmy, but didn’t actually say anything other than the usual waiter stuff.

Once he’d gone, Robbie continued. “I almost thought you weren’t real… I’ve seen you on TV and in pictures, but it just never seemed like you actually existed,” she said, unsure of what to say.

“I think that what she means is that you seemed more like a dream than somebody we could ever actually meet,” Joseph said.

“I am very real,” Emmy said with a disarming smile.

The waiter came back with our coffees and took our breakfast orders, which were remarkably similar to the day before. Emmy, of course, ordered nothing more than toast with jam. There was no secret how she stayed so thin, I thought for about the millionth time.

After our meals were set in front of us and we had a bit of privacy again, I got down to business. “Well, you’ve had overnight to think about our offer. I want to reiterate that this is an offer freely given, and if you choose to not accept, that’s fine. We part on good terms and we wish you well, and that’s all there is to it. We aren’t forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want. Is that clear?”

The group nodded, but I said, “I want you to say it out loud, so there’s no misunderstandings. Do you understand everything that I’ve said this morning and yesterday? Darrin? Is it clear?” When he nodded, I pressed him. “Please say so, if it is or isn’t.”

“Yes. It’s clear. I understand what you’re offering,” he said, nervous about being put on the spot.

“And is it clear that if you choose no, we’ll leave you in peace?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s clear, too,” he said.

“Excellent. Robbie? Joseph?”

“Yes, we understand it all,” Robbie answered for both of them.

“Kay?” I asked of the man who hadn’t really said much of anything so far.

“I understand. It’s clear,” he confirmed. “But I don’t think I want to- I don’t want your shadow.”

He looked extremely unsure of himself, but Emmy reached over and patted his arm. “That is fine,” Emmy said. “If you ever change your mind, you know how to get in contact with Samuel here. The offer is open. In the meantime, or if we never see you again, we both wish you a peaceful, safe life. Remember, us coming into the light is to benefit all of our kind the world over, so we can all live freely among the day walkers. I would like it if you stopped hiding your nature, but if you are not ready to do that, that is fine, too.”

“Remember, the offer is freely given,” I said.

“We do,” Robbie said, holding Joseph’s hand. “We ask that you give us your shadow.”

“So do I,” Darrin said. “Please.”

I nodded, looking at Emmy. She looked around the table, finishing up on Kay. “Are you certain you do not wish this?” she asked.

“I just want to be left alone,” he said.

“But yet you contacted one of our people, who put you in touch with Samuel, and came to these meetings,” Emmy said. “You must have been interested.”

“I was. I mean, I am, but it’s just too much,” Kay said, nearly stammering with nerves. “I thought it would be easy, to do this,” he said, making a vague gesture that seemed to encompass everything. “But coming here yesterday and today, on the bus, in the sunlight, with all the day walkers staring at me… I nearly had a breakdown.”

“It can be terrifying,” Emmy said, her voice soft. “It gets easier with time, doesn’t it, Samuel?”

“It does. It was very scary at first,” he said. “But now I’m used to it.”

“If we could find a way to make it easier, would you accept?” Emmy asked, her hand still on his arm.

“How? Queen Leah said that the most important rule was to not hide,” Kay said mournfully.

“It is,” Emmy agreed. “That part is mandatory, but would it be easier for you if you were not alone? If you were in the company of others of our kind? You would not have to face the day by yourself.”

“Remember,” I said, my voice gentle. “If it doesn’t work for you, you can tell us and we will release you. All you have to do is to say something.”

Darrin said, “I would like that. To be with others, I mean. Strength in numbers, right?”

“Darrin, how, um, fixed are you here in Seattle? Kay? How about you? Would you two be willing to leave the area if it could make this happen?” I asked.

“I have nothing here,” Darrin said, reinforcing Samuel’s assumptions about his living conditions.

“I really don’t, either,” Kay said.

“We would like to stay here in Seattle,” Joseph said. “This is our home.”

“Alright,” I said, but was interrupted by the waiter asking if everything was O.K. After he left again, I said, “Robbie, Joseph, we’d be happy for you to stay here in Seattle and be part of our ever-growing community. Darrin, Kay, if you accept our shadow, you can be part of our, um, contact team. They move from city to city seeking out Night Children like you. They always travel in groups, never alone. Does that sound like something you could do? It wouldn’t have to be forever, just until you get used to day walking and decide where you want to settle down. Maybe come back here, maybe settle in Phoenix, or Chicago, or Atlanta- wherever. How does that sound?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to do,” Kay lamented.

“We would train you,” I assured him.

“Traveling is very hard,” Darrin said. “I don’t have any paperwork, no ID.”

Looking at Kay, then Joseph and Robbie, I asked, “Do you guys?”

Robbie and Joseph said they did, but Kay admitted he didn’t.

“We can sort that out,” I said. “That’s something we do for a lot of our people.”

“And we can quit if- if it’s too hard?” Kay asked.

“Yes, you can, but I would suggest that you try and do your best to make it work,” Emmy said, her voice still very reassuring. “This really is a better life we are offering you.”

“It is,” Samuel said. “I can promise you that.”

“So, what do we do now?” Darrin asked, and Kay looked at me expectantly.

On our way back to the hotel, Emmy asked, “Is it like this every time?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I said.

“And how often do you do this? Give your shadow to new strays?”

“They come in clumps, usually,” I replied. “These are the first in a little while. A lot of time I do it using FaceTime, over the phone, if Michael is there to handle matters.”

“Leah,” Emmy said, turning in her seat to face me. “This makes me realize that I have not been paying attention at all to any of this. How many Night Children do we even have in our new nation? What is it even called?”

“That is what it’s called. We’ve been calling it the new nation, and that’s become the more or less official name. The New Nation.”

“You are joking,” Emmy said, looking at my face to see if I was pulling her leg.

“I kid you not,” I said. “It’s usually accented on the ‘New’ part.”

“That is a terrible name,” Emmy said with a groan.

“It kinda is, but also kinda isn’t. Yeah, on the surface it’s completely uninspired, like we couldn’t come up with anything better, but really, it drives home that this is a new thing, not like the old nations,” I said, maybe a tiny bit defensively.

“I guess it does,” Emmy conceded.

“So, to answer your other question, just a little bit over a thousand now. Almost eleven hundred, actually,” I said.

Emmy looked at me for a long moment, completely floored. “How is that even possible?”

“There were a whole lot more strays here in North America than your parents ever imagined, for one, and we’re just getting started in on the East Coast, where there are tons. For two, a lot have been seeking us out, like these four. They see the signs, or they see another Night Child showing their face, and they reach out. It’s really starting to snowball,” I said.

“Incredible,” Emmy breathed, stunned by how much she’d missed.

“We have something like seventy-five in our contact teams,” I said. “Enough that we can flood a new medium-sized city fairly quickly, or a big city over the course of a few months.”

“So the team that I saw in Chicago, when we-” Emmy said, but then shut up when she realized that Mia could hear our conversation.

Interpreting Emmy’s quick glance at the driver’s seat, I said, “Mia knows everything.”

“I know all, I see all,” Mia said from the front seat in a cheesy spooky movie voice.

“Of course you do,” Emmy said with a laugh. “And, it seems, I know nothing and see nothing.”

“The team we had a year ago in Chicago, that was just our, um, paramilitaries,” I said, for lack of a better word. “Most of our contact teams are, well, non-confrontational, let’s call it. We have less than twenty that are able to go into battle.”

“That night in Chicago,” Emmy said, remembering back. “It was… I hated that.”

“Yeah, I didn’t like it, either,” I agreed. “But remember, we went there in good faith. All that happened was on them.”

“From what I hear, it happened to them, too,” Mia said, unhelpfully.

“Mia, how much do you know about what happened there?” Emmy asked.

“I’m pretty sure my briefings have been complete, ma’am,” Mia said.

“Who told you?” Emmy asked.

“Leah and my dad,” Mia replied, turning the rear view mirror so she could make eye contact with Emmy.

“Did they tell you - Did you hear about Leah…” Emmy said, unsure how to phrase it.

“From what I gather, you all went to a meeting with this ‘Boss’ individual, who’d set up an ambush for you, but you guys were better prepared and wiped ‘em out to a man.”

“Leah, she…” Emmy said, still at a loss.

“My dad told me that Leah accounted for four Tangos- four hostiles,” Mia said.

“Did he tell you that she killed one of them by- by stomping on his head?” Emmy asked, clearly still bothered by the image.

“That’s fucking brutal!” Mia said. “No, he never told me that little detail.”

“She knocked him down to the ground, then crushed his head with her boot,” Emmy said, her voice quiet.

“That’s one hell of a stomp, ma’am,” Mia said, glancing at me in the rear view mirror with what might have been a new level of respect.

Emmy was quiet for a while, so I just held her hand and let her work through whatever issues she might still be feeling from that night over a year before.

“I do not think I am… as prepared to be a queen as I had thought,” she finally said in a near-whisper.

“Em, baby, you don’t need to be that kind of queen for your people. You need to be their shining light. I can’t do that, but I can be the hard-ass if that’s what’s needed.”

Emmy didn’t say anything in response. She just squeezed my hand a bit harder, that’s all.

In the elevator back at the hotel, Mia asked if I could talk for a few minutes, so we walked Emmy to the door of the room, then went back down to Mia’s room.

“Leah,” Mia said nervously, rubbing the back of her neck. “Would it be O.K. if I stayed here in Seattle while you guys are in Alaska? That way I don’t have to fly back to New York, only to have to come out to the West Coast again in a week and a half.”

Doing my best to read between the lines, I asked, “Did you connect with somebody last night?”

“I got a phone number, yeah,” she admitted, surprisingly shyly.

“Alright,” I agreed. “I’ll let them know at the front desk that you’ll be staying, and I’ll call the car rental place, too.”

“I can stay here? Seriously? And drive the Range Rover?” Mia asked, stunned at the windfall.

“Yeah, but I’m gonna put you to work,” I said. “I’ll tell Michael that you’re here in Seattle and can handle what he needs to have done here.”

“Like what?”

“That’s for Michael to determine. He’s the one that deals with all the nuts and bolts concerning the Night Children. Whatever he needs to have done, you take care of it so he doesn’t have to come out here.”

“It’s a deal!” Mia said, thinking she got off easy. I thought it was a win for me, too, because Michael had other things to do, and dragging him up to Seattle to deal with our four newbies would be a hassle. It was going to cost me a whole lot less to pay for Mia’s hotel and car rental than it would be for me to fly Michael in and rent him a car and a place to stay, too.

“You know Michael, right?” I asked, suddenly worried that she might have never met him.

“Well, I mean, no. We’ve never actually met, but Dad talks about him a lot so I certainly know who he is,” Mia said.

“Alright. I’ll send you his contact info and send him yours, and you guys can work out the details. You have the numbers of the phones we gave the newbies today, right? Give all that info to Michael when you talk to him, and we can get the ball rolling,” I said, pulling out my phone and texting Michael.

“Thanks a lot, ma’am,” Mia said. “I’ll tell Luisa I won’t be home for a while.”

“That took a long time,” Angela said, looking up from her packing.

“Mia’s gonna stay here in Seattle while we’re in Alaska,” I said. “So, sounds like she had a good time at the club last night?”

“We all did,” Emmy said. “Perhaps too good a time. I have a terrible headache today.”

“I told you to drink more water last night,” Angela chided.

“I do not know what was in those drinks,” Emmy groaned. “They did not taste like much, but I am really feeling it today.”

“You hid it well this morning,” I said. “I would never have guessed you had a hangover.”

Emmy gave me a grateful smile at the compliment, then went back to covering her eyes with her arm as she lay on the bed.

“Nobody should ever drink anything that color,” Angela said. Turning to me, she said, “Emmy was drinking these drinks, frozen like Margaritas, but bright pink. Like, glow in the dark pink.”

“Sounds like some sort of ninja drink,” I replied. At Angela’s puzzled expression, I said, “They sneak up and get you before you even know it.”

“That is it exactly,” Emmy agreed.

“Well, my poor, sweet suffering honey, we have to be at the airport in about an hour, so we do need to get moving,” I said, tapping Emmy’s foot.

“Why so early? I thought the flight was not until a little after noon?” Emmy protested.

“We’re flying commercial, so we need to go to Sea-Tac Airport and check in at least an hour before our flight,” I said.

“Commercial? Really?” Emmy asked, aghast.

“Sad, but true,” I said.

A lot of people stared as we walked through the airport, since Emmy was so famous and so very distinctive. One teenage girl did ask for a selfie with Emmy, and of course Emmy was as happy to oblige as ever. It was strange going through the whole TSA checkpoint thing- I’d gotten used to flying private jet or executive FBO flights, and those were, well, a lot more casual. I hadn’t flown commercial in almost two years, since my last trip with the Stanford volleyball team. I was reminded why the extra cost of the executive flights were worth every penny when I had to take off my high-top hiking boots with about a mile of laces to undo.

Waiting at the gate for our flight to board, Emmy struck up a conversation with a kid who was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, traveling by himself. I didn’t pay any attention to what they were talking about, since I was busy answering work emails, but it seemed that the two hit it off pretty well. Of course, this came as no surprise, since Emmy could charm anybody, any time, anywhere.

The jet to Juneau was small, with two seats on either side of the aisle. This meant that Angela and I sat together, while Emmy sat across the aisle from Angela, next to a young woman who had a small baby in her lap. This was like catnip to Emmy, who wound up holding and bottle-feeding the baby for most of the hour and a half the flight took to get us to the capital of Alaska.

“How long do we have until our next flight?” Emmy asked when we deplaned.

“A little over an hour,” I said, checking my watch. “But we have to go to the seaplane terminal, wherever that is.”

“Seaplane? Like the kind that land on water?” Angela asked, her eyes wide.

“Exactly like that,” I agreed.

“Can we go into town really fast? I need to buy a guitar,” Emmy said.

“A guitar?” I asked, surprised.

“Kathy, the one who sat next to me on the flight? She asked if I brought my guitar, and I realized that I had not.”

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s grab a taxi and find you a guitar, but we need to be quick,” I said, slinging my duffel bag across my back like a backpack and picking up Angela’s and Emmy’s, too.

Juneau is the largest city in the United States by area, according to the in-flight magazine I’d thumbed through on the plane from Seattle, but it’s not actually that big a place in reality. For whatever reason the city limits are basically the entire county. The actual town itself was only about thirty thousand people.

The music store turned out to be only a few blocks from the airport terminal- we could have walked there almost as quickly as we’d gotten there in the cab, but I paid the driver to wait for us to drive us back anyway, just to save the ten minutes each way.

Thankfully Emmy didn’t get roped into playing a mini concert the way she usually does at music stores, and so just a few minutes later she’d gotten herself an acoustic guitar and soft case. We made it back with plenty of time to board the float plane to Sitka, to my relief.

We could have taken the normal commuter-plane flight, but I’d booked the seaplane to add to the Alaska experience, and the money was well spent. The pilot did an excellent job of showing off the channels and islands of the area before flying us to the small town of Sitka.

Angela and Emmy were giddy with excitement when we stepped onto the dock in the mid-afternoon sunlight, happy to be there. Personally, I was, too, but I was a bit more concerned that the driver I’d arranged didn’t seem to be waiting for us.