I pointed. "See the treetops above the fog?"
She nodded, then rubbed down goose bumps on her arms. "About earlier. I--I don't know why I blew up like that."
"Your dad just died."
"I know..." She nudged a submerged rock. "I'm still sorry."
"It's okay."
"Are you sure we should do this?" Hayley called from a few feet away. "It's so cold. Is it safe?"
I looked over at her and Corey and Sam, standing along the shoreline, arms wrapped around themselves, their faces as gray as the fog. Fear and confusion on every face. Terror on Sam's, as she stared wide-eyed into the fog.
Daniel and I went first. Kenjii circled me as I eased into the water. When she realized I wasn't just taking a walk into the surf, she leaped in front of me, barking, ordering me to dry land. I continued on, up to my waist now. She snapped at my fingers and tried to herd me back to shore.
"Maybe there's something out there," Nicole called. "Didn't someone catch a great white shark a few years ago? And we have plenty of killer whales."
"Great whites don't come this far inland," I called back. "And I doubt this stretch of water is deep enough for orcas, but even if it is, they don't attack in the wild. You're only at risk if you're jumping into their aquarium tank."
"Kenjii just knows Maya doesn't like to swim," Daniel said. "Here, I'll take her--"
He reached for her collar. She growled and he pulled back.
"Or maybe not..."
Kenjii lowered her head and whined, as if in apology.
"She's scared and confused," I said. No, we are, and she's sensing it. "Just give me a sec to calm her down."
I petted her and promised her it was okay. Once she'd relaxed, I told Daniel to go on ahead with her, so she couldn't see me. She glanced back a couple of times, but when I seemed to be staying put, she let Daniel take her for a swim.
Corey went in behind Hayley, herding her. She was on the swim team, so she should be fine, but she was still disoriented from her near-drowning experience. Sam went next, her chin up, expression unreadable. Daniel had asked Nicole--who was also on the swim team--to go last and help anyone who fell behind, namely me.
I'd estimated the strip of water to be about a kilometer. That's just over three thousand feet. Not a short distance. Not an incredibly long one either, or so I kept telling myself as I paddled through the frigid water. It was half of the distance from my house to the park gates. One sixth the distance of the Run for the Mountain event I did in Nanaimo every year. One twentieth the distance of the Harbour City Half Marathon I ran last fall.
Easy. Except for the fact that I loved to walk and run, but hated swimming. Part of my skin-walker heritage, I guess. When I get in water deeper than a bathtub, there's this part of my brain that screams at me to get out, and no amount of self-talk ever silences it.
But maybe this time that part of my brain realized, as a cougar would, that there was a difference between swimming for pleasure and swimming for survival. While I was cold and uncomfortable, I stayed relatively calm. Even managed something close to an actual breaststroke, which I'm sure made Nicole happy, stuck at my snail's pace as the others pulled away.
Every now and then I could make out Daniel's dark shape as he glanced back to check on us. No one said a word. Only the splash of hands and feet hitting water broke the eerie silence. I couldn't see how much farther we had to go. Couldn't see how far we'd come. Just fog everywhere, my friends dark blotches in the gray.
Sam was huffing off to the side. She liked to scrap, but she wasn't an athlete, and she sounded winded. I was about to veer her way when she stopped puffing, as if she'd gotten her second wind. Or stopped swimming. I opened my mouth to call to Daniel to check on her.
Before I could speak, my foot brushed something. A fish I presumed, but then it wrapped around my ankle and yanked me down.
I didn't fight at first. Something had my foot. Something was pulling me under. Just like a year ago, when Serena drowned. For a second, I thought, That's it--I'm having a nightmare. Everything that had happened today--the fire, the crash, Rafe--was clearly just part of a bad dream. It had to be.
Then I began to choke and the survival instinct took over. I kicked. I flailed. But something kept dragging me under.
No, not something--someone.
When Serena drowned, I'd been so worried about her that I'd paid no attention to what had me. This time, I could feel warm fingers wrapped around my icy-cold ankle, and when I kicked, my toes brushed what was unmistakably hair.
I tried to grab whoever was holding me, but every time I moved, my attacker moved. I couldn't see anything. My eyes stung and my lungs ached. But I knew it was a person holding me down. Just a person. I could fight that.
Only I couldn't. I kicked and I writhed, but those fingers weren't letting me go and I couldn't breathe, and when nails dug into my ankle, I shrieked and my mouth and throat filled with more water, and I realized I was drowning.
Then the toes of my free foot touched rock. The bottom. I pushed myself down even as my brain screamed that I was going the wrong way. I bent in half and reached to feel not fingers, but vegetation wrapped around my ankle. Seaweed. I ripped it off, then shot toward the surface.
After a few strokes, I wasn't sure I was still going up. All I could see was darkness. Then a scream sounded above me.
They were looking for me, yelling for me. I was going the right way. I was going to be fine, just fine. I put everything I had left into a few last strokes, propelling myself toward the surface, breaking through, then gasping for air too soon, water rushing in, choking me.
I went under again. I gave a tremendous kick, arms and legs flailing so hard that a cramp shot through my stomach and I screamed, swallowing more water.
I could hear Daniel shouting, then Corey. But no one was coming. Why wasn't anyone coming?
I broke the surface again, and this time managed to get a breath. Then I heard Nicole screaming for help--that something had her, was pulling her down.
A fresh cramp shot through me and I went under again.
My muscles pleaded for relief, but I managed to break the surface again.
"Maya!" Daniel yelled. "Where's Maya?"
Nicole shrieked and I wanted to shout to Daniel to forget me, save her before she drowned like Serena. That's all I could think of. How he'd saved me when Serena drowned. I wouldn't let that happen again. I couldn't.
Nails scraped my arm and I panicked, then felt wet fur.
Kenjii. I wrapped my arms around her neck and lay my face against her back, flutter-kicking as best I could. Daniel reached me then.
"Nicole," I said. "Get Nicole."
He hesitated. I pushed him toward Nicole, getting more and more frantic until Corey called that he and Hayley had Nicole and she was fine.
"Sam?" I croaked.
"Sam!" Daniel yelled. "Where are you?"
"She's--" Corey started. "Here she is. She's fine."
Daniel made me get on his back and we headed to shore, Kenjii swimming beside us.
FIVE
WHEN WE MADE IT to shore, Daniel didn't insist on getting to dry ground this time, just let us all collapse where we could, panting and shivering, Nicole crying softly, Hayley trying to comfort her, Sam hovering awkwardly.
We emptied the makeshift pack. It'd been on Corey, and he'd gone under in the search. We'd tied it as best we could, but there were openings. The clothing was wet. His pills had disintegrated. He said that was fine--he wasn't likely to get a migraine soon and if he did, he could tough it out. Which was a lie, but there was nothing we could do about it.
Daniel made the others put on their clothing, coaxing gently but insistently. Theirs were almost as soaked as Daniel's and mine, and they huddled there, shivering and sniffling.
The sky was so dark now it looked like night already. It smelled like rain, too. None for weeks and now it came and there was a small part of me that thought, It'll put out the fires, but I couldn't bring myself to ca
re. My forest might be saved, and all I could think was that night was coming and the temperature was dropping and if it did rain and we couldn't find shelter, get dry, and try to light a fire, hypothermia would kill us by morning.
We'd all be dead. Just like Rafe.
I pulled my legs up, wrapped my arms around them and shivered as I tried to get myself under control. Just beyond this rocky beach was the forest. I'd seen it earlier. I knew the forest. It was my home more than any house ever could be. I'd survive this. We'd all survive it.
But no matter how hard I stared to the west, I couldn't see the trees. Just fog and shadows everywhere, the six of us lost in it, as if we'd already died, stumbled into the afterlife and--
"What happened out there?" Corey asked.
I looked up. He was pivoting slowly, shoulders tight, on guard against... Against anything. Everything. Whatever could be lurking in that rolling field of gray.
"Something pulled me under," Nicole said. "It wrapped around my foot and I couldn't get away."
"That's what happened to you, too, Maya, isn't it?" Corey said.
I nodded. "It pulled me to the bottom, then let go."
Nicole and I compared stories. She didn't have much to tell. Something grabbed her leg and pulled her down. Did it feel like a bite? Seaweed? She didn't know.
Finally Daniel turned to me. "Was it like what happened with Serena?"
I nodded.
"Serena?" Hayley said. "How would she know that? No offense, Maya. I mean, I know you were there and it was awful but--"
"Something dragged Maya under that time, too," Corey said. "Daniel pulled her to safety."
Silence. I knew what they were all thinking. Daniel pulled Maya to safety. And Serena died.
"It was my fault," I said. "He didn't know Serena had gone under, too."
"Maya tried to tell me," Daniel said. "I didn't understand. It was my fault."
"It was no one's fault," Sam said. "Neither was this. Maybe there's something out there. Giant eels or whatever."
"Giant eels?" Corey let out a whoop of a laugh, too loud and too long. Desperate to cast off the fear and unease and find his old self again.
"Hey, I'm not the moron who was worried about great white sharks," said Sam.
"Um, that was Nic."
"It doesn't matter what happened," Daniel said, "only that no one was hurt." He looked at me, then Nicole. "You're both okay, right? Well, I mean... I know you're not okay, but--"
"I'm fine," I said.
Nicole nodded.
"Me, too." Hayley straightened, as if not to be outdone. Getting her footing, like me searching for my forest and Corey for a joke. We were all stressed out. We'd deal with it our own way. At least we were dealing with it, not curled up on the beach in fetal positions. Right now, that was the best we could hope for.
It was night by the time we'd gotten ourselves together enough to head out. There were no lights anywhere to break the fog and the darkness. We walked along the shore for a bit, but couldn't find any docks or boat moorings. So no cottages just across the water, as we'd hoped. We needed to head inland.
As we walked in silence, Kenjii whimpered, reacting to the tension. I could feel it myself, bristling through the air like electricity. Every time she made noise, the others would jump, and look around as if they expected grizzly bears to lumber out of the fog. Only Daniel stayed steady, assuring everyone that Kenjii was just nervous because they were.
I was, too. I think that's what got her going the most. I kept telling myself I was fine, that the forest was right there. I could smell the sharp tang of evergreens. But when the wind whined around us, I jumped with everyone else.
Finally, I saw trees and my heart stopped pounding. I walked faster, needles crunching under my feet, the sound, the smell so familiar that my throat ached, and I had to reach out, fingers brushing the boughs as we passed. The fog disappeared, as if kept at bay by the trees. Safe. I was in the forest, Daniel was beside me and I was safe.
"Uh, Maya?" Corey said behind me. "Maybe ... this isn't such a good idea."
I turned. The others were ten feet back, barely inside the tree line. Nicole and Hayley had moved closer to Corey. Sam hung back, looking into the woods as if I was asking her to jump off a cliff.
"The fog's gone in here," I said. "It was marine fog. It doesn't penetrate the forest."
"Yeah," Corey said. "I'm thinking the fog's not such a problem. It's very ... dark. We don't know what's in there."
"Yeah, we do," Sam said. "Bears, cougars, wolves..."
"None of which are nocturnal," I said. Actually, they were crepuscular, which meant they were most active at twilight--both dawn and dusk. In other words, right about now. But I wasn't telling these guys that. "They'll stay out of our way if we stay out of theirs."
"But how can we stay out of their way if we can't see them?" Hayley asked.
I turned and looked into the forest. I could see fine, but I was part cat. To them it would be dark. Very dark.
"I'll lead," I said. "Kenjii and I spend so much time in the woods that our eyes adjust quickly."
"I don't know," Hayley said. "It's really dark. And really spooky."
I turned again and saw a scene worthy of a tourist brochure--a rocky, natural path dotted with unfurled ferns and soaring, vine-ribboned redwoods. Somewhere to our left, a nighthawk trilled. Even the leftover fog was like fine lace drifting past on a cedar-perfumed breeze.
"I'm not seeing spooky," I said. "Dark, yes, but what's spooky about it?"
"What's not spooky?" Sam muttered.
Hayley pointed. "You can't tell me that isn't creepy."
I followed her finger to see branches draped in elegant, pale-green Spanish moss.
"That? Seriously? It's moss, Hayley, not an alien life-form. We just escaped a helicopter crash and a death brush with something in the water. That was scary. This is the forest. This is where we're going to find shelter and water."
"Shelter? I don't want a damned cave, Maya. I want a house, and we're not going to find that in the middle of--"
Daniel stepped between us. "All right. This isn't helping. We have to get through these woods in order to find help. That could mean holing up for the night, but we'll be okay. Maya knows her way around the woods and so do I. You need to trust us to look after you."
He spoke to them, but it was for my benefit, too. A reminder that they didn't have our experience and they were not going to see the forest the way I did.
I led everyone for a while without any sign of light or noise from a road, then I veered south. Instinct, I guess. On Vancouver Island, like anywhere in Canada, the population tends to shift south. Most times that's for warmer weather. The island, though, is temperate rain forest, meaning we rarely see the white stuff. We gravitate south because it's simply more hospitable land. While my sense of "where" we'd crashed was vague, I knew it was north. Probably a long way north. The pilot's goal, I suspected, had been someplace more remote.
It wasn't a stretch to think that the people responsible for this--and for setting the fire that got us out of town--were the scientists my birth mother had escaped sixteen years ago. Yes, Sam seemed to think they might be after her, but I was sure I was the target. That meant I had to rescue myself. Get to a phone, call my parents--my adoptive parents--and tell them everything. Yet my escape couldn't jeopardize my friends. If it came down to it, I'd need to get away, separate them from the danger I posed.
For now, they needed me to navigate the forests and find help. Heading south was easy so far--I could hear the crash of waves and smell the ocean to my left, meaning we were going the right way. We hadn't walked very far, though, before Corey stopped as we were circling around an outcropping of rock.
"Is anyone seeing lights anywhere?" Corey said. "Because all I see is bushes. We need to get higher."
He started scrambling up the rock pile. The stones were dark. Covered in lichen. Slippery lichen.
"Stop!" I said.
His foot slid
and the leg he'd hurt in the crash buckled. We jumped to grab him, but his knee cracked against rock as he fell. He let out a yowl and a string of curses. His jeans had split and underneath, his knee was bleeding. When I tried to touch it, he grabbed my hand.
"I need to check it out," I said.
The skin had been scraped from his kneecap. It felt whole underneath, but he gritted his teeth at my touch, meaning it was probably badly wrenched.
"We're going to need to wrap it," I said. "Or you won't be able to walk."
The only thing we could spare for wrapping was socks. Daniel gave his and I tied them together. When the socks were wrapped around Corey's leg, he could stand, with effort and Daniel's arm for support.
"Figures," Corey muttered. "Survive a forest fire, helicopter crash, and killer eels, only to slip on a rock."
"That's what you get for trying to take charge," Hayley said.
"No kidding."
We made it to a grassy clearing, but Corey was in a lot of pain. Walking was only making it worse.
"Getting to a higher spot to look around is a good idea," I said after we sat him down. "We'll find a tree while you rest--"
"Whoa, wait." Corey started struggling to his feet. "I'm okay. I'll be slow, but I can move."
"He doesn't want to be alone," Hayley said. "You know how he is. Leave him alone and he discovers he's not as much fun as he thinks he is."
Corey shot her the finger. She was right, though--Corey really wasn't one for enjoying his own company. People seemed to feed his bottomless well of energy.
"I'll stay with him," Nicole said.
Daniel nodded. "Hayley and Sam, you guys should stay, too. Maya's going to be the one scaling a tree. Kenjii and I will stand point, but everyone else should rest. We won't go far. Plenty of trees nearby."
Hayley agreed to stay behind. Sam did not. Daniel seemed annoyed, but she didn't get the hint. In the end, it was easiest to let her come.
"There's something I need to talk to you guys about," Sam said once we were out of earshot of the others. "About what happened on the helicopter."
"You did an amazing job," Daniel said. "If it wasn't for you..."
"None of us would be here," I said.
She went scarlet at that, and trudged along for a few minutes before she continued, "It's not that. It's about ... when the pilot was knocked out. What you did, Daniel."