“Swim toward the side!” Cindy shouted.
“Help!” Ali yelled back.
“The side! The falls!” Cindy yelled back.
Her friend could do nothing to help her. The pace of the river was faster than any thirteen-year-old could run. Cindy began to fall behind her, growing smaller. Then the river went around a bend and she disappeared altogether. Rushing toward almost certain death, Ali was once again alone.
She had fallen into the side of the river but the currents had yanked her into the center. Altogether, the river was a hundred feet across; not too large, not really, yet it was still wide enough to keep her from the shore—at least until it could throw her body over the falls and crush her on the hard rocks below.
Ali tried swimming for the shore, toward the same side her friends were on, but her soaked pack and jacket felt like lead on her back and arms. Desperate, she reached down and unzipped the coat and unbuckled the pack, and watched them float away. But her improved maneuverability did not get her any closer to the shore.
In front of her, the sound of the falls grew louder.
Taking a deep breath, she put her face in the water and stretched as hard as she could with her arms, kicking her legs furiously. She had grown up by the sea; she was an excellent swimmer. Each summer, she spent hours at the beach. Unfortunately, nothing had prepared her for this. The fierce current cheated her of hope. She swam thirty feet toward the side, and got pushed back forty.
The water tumbled into a stone gully. That narrowed the river but also increased its speed. Ahead, not more than a quarter of a mile away, she could see foam blowing off the top of the falls. She had a minute, at most, to get out of the river before she would be killed.
Because the river had narrowed she was not as far from the shore. A few dozen vigorous strokes brought her to the side. But now the shore had transformed itself into an impenetrable wall. The smooth rock of the gully rose straight above her head. She could not possibly climb out!
Ali’s hand caught a sharp edge. Her fingers, almost numb, reacted instinctively and gripped the protruding rock, and she threw out her other hand and tightened her grip, and for a moment she was able to stop herself from moving forward, although the force of the current was overwhelming. She did not know how long she could hang on.
“Oh boy,” she gasped. Two days in a row: what were the odds of that? First she got buried and now something was trying to drown her. Nevertheless, she did not dwell on who or what had thrown her in the river. She had more pressing problems.
Her trap was an icy cauldron—the temperature of the water was barely above freezing. The falls were now only a hundred yards away. Raining mist blew off them like snowflakes in an arctic storm. The noise was deafening; she could not hear herself think. Plus the pressure of the current was relentless. She felt as if the cold hands of the entire mountain were trying to push her to her death.
She realized she had to make some tough decisions.
Cindy and Steve would not be able to rescue her. At best, they were only a mile away. It would take them at least thirty minutes to hike through the trees to reach her. Even then, they had no rope. Not that it mattered; she could not possibly hang on for even another ten minutes. Like yesterday, she was alone, she would have to save herself.
It was at that moment she spotted something promising. Hanging across the gully, a few feet above the falls, was a large dead tree. It must have fallen from the above ledge, perhaps last winter. The tree reached all the way across the river, a few feet above the water. But it was only in the center that a large branch hung down. The rest of the tree had been stripped clean by the current.
Ali thought frantically. To reach the branch, she would need to shove off from the side and swim like a madman—away from all hope of safety. Yet to stay trapped on this freezing side was hopeless. It was indeed a hard choice to make. If she missed the branch as she flew by, or if it could not support her weight, then she would go over the falls.
“But there’s no choice,” she told herself. “I’ll die if I stay here.”
Ali turned and braced her legs against the stone side. She knew she needed to swim straight out, get as much distance as she could from the side. The current would take her to the tree.
She shoved off. Immediately the current grabbed her. Here, so close to the falls, the river was narrow—thirty feet across at most; a first down on a football field. But that was not a bad thing. She was able to stroke only a dozen times before the branch loomed before her.
She had reached the center of the river.
Now she just had to catch the thing.
Ali reached up with both hands. Ten numb fingers grasping for life. Part of the branch slapped her hands. They were only strands; they sagged as she clawed at them. Cold horror swept over her. She felt herself slipping, the weak strands snapping.
The force of the water twisted her sideways. Water and wind rushed by. She could have been parachuting through a stormy sky. Still, she fought to catch something more substantial. Her fingers found a soggy branch. Yanking herself up, she let go of the strands and grabbed a second branch. Her feet continued to drag in the water, pulling her almost horizontal to the river.
Worse, she was so near the falls she could see over the edge. The white mist rushed toward her like steam blown from the cheeks of an ice monster. The crashing noise thundered inside her head. Her frozen body felt as if it weighed a ton, while the branches she clung to were like kite string. A few seconds more, she thought, and her hopeless situation would come to a bitter end.
Then she saw a rainbow, spread over the falls, a colorful half circle set like a bridge over the chasm below. It seemed to rise up as she stared at it, to touch her feet, to give her hope perhaps. For the last two days it had seemed the mountain had been trying to kill her, and now she felt as if it was trying to rescue her. Strength flowed into her from the colored light. Her frozen hands warmed and her head cleared. Suddenly, she knew she could make it.
Ali pulled herself up farther, took her feet out of the water. Kicking up high, toward the sky, she got one leg partway around the tree. Grabbing the tree and pressing it to her chest, she strained her leg to wrap higher, using the side of her ankle as a clawing hand. Again, unlooked-for strength flowed through her limbs. The damp wood slid below her like a fat metal tube. In a moment she was sitting on top of the tree.
The next few minutes were tense for Ali. It was like when she had found the bamboo yesterday, and not been able to use it at first. Safety was only a few feet away, but scooting along the top of the tree was not easy. The water had stripped away most of the branches, but there were still sharp stumps to contend with. She bumped into them with each foot forward that she took. To get past them she had to lift her butt off the tree, and loosen the grip of her legs, which increased her chances of slipping and falling. Twice she did slip, partway, almost giving herself a heart attack.
Finally, though, she reached the edge, and climbed onto the smooth stone. She did not stop to rest but hiked away from the waterfall and the deafening noise. The rainbow had faded. More than anything she longed to find a quiet place to sit down and warm her bones in the sun. But she worried about Steve. From the strangled cry he had let out, she knew whatever had grabbed her, had attacked him as well.
Ali had to wind through a maze of slippery gray stone until she found a semblance of a dirt path. The latter wound up and down, but she was not sure it was the same path she had been on earlier. She could hear the sound of the river, however, off to her right, although she could not see the water. She figured she couldn’t get too lost.
Ali had been hiking for about fifteen minutes when she became aware that something was following her. Stopping on the path and turning, she stood as still as possible. For an instant she thought she heard footsteps; the sound quickly vanished. Then she imagined she heard heavy breathing.
She tried blocking out the noise of the river. Like yesterday, her belief that something was coming was largel
y internal. She was not even sure if she heard anything with her ears. She tried to convince herself that she was just imagining things. But that was hard to do when she had almost been killed two days in a row.
Then she heard a loud snort. It did not sound human.
She turned and bolted, down the winding path. The incline was steep; as she ran her feet spent more time in the air than on the ground. She ran like the wind—too bad her terror did not give her wings. Pounding footsteps and slobbery breathing had joined the loud snorts.
Not one but several creatures were chasing her!
The path suddenly ended back at the river, on a sandy beach. The shore was only fifty feet long, and blocked at the far end by an impenetrable wall of smooth stone. To get past it she would have to backtrack, in the direction of whatever was chasing her.
She was trapped!
Paralyzed by fear, she paced back and forth on the shore. An entire minute was wasted while she tried to figure out what to do next.
That was all the extra time she was allowed.
Three creatures emerged from around the bend.
Ten feet tall, they had broad shoulders and lengthy torsos, so long their legs were not much longer than a man’s. They were more gray than brown; the hair on their bodies looked like flaking mud, or else they were incredibly filthy. With thick arms that reached to their knees, and legs like tree stumps, she had no doubt of their strength. Their blunt four-fingered hands looked like they could crush her skull with one snap.
The true horror was their heads. They had a dull cube shape. They could have been manufactured in the laboratory of a crazy scientist. Large yellow eyes glared out of the center of their huge skulls, and their wide and toothy mouths dripped green spit. Or maybe that was their blood. Maybe they were so hungry to eat her they had chewed on their long red tongues.
“I have a gun,” she croaked.
They did not believe her, or else they did not care.
Or maybe they did not speak English.
They approached slowly, grunting, licking their teeth.
Ali backed up. She backed into the river.
She could not cross it; the current would sweep her away. Nobody knew that better than she. Yet that was probably her only chance—to jump into the water, hope they couldn’t swim, and float down to the dead tree and pray for another miracle at the edge of the falls. Either way, if she lived or died, it would be better than being eaten by these creatures.
She sniffed the air. It stank.
They had bad breath on top of everything else.
Keeping her eyes on the creatures, she stepped into the river. Water swelled around her calves. The creatures kept coming, fanning out, making sure she could run neither right nor left. She moved deeper; the icy liquid rose to her waist, the current was cruel. She could not believe she was able to remain standing. But if she had been hoping that they were scared of the water, it was a vain hope. The first creature stepped into the river, and the second one quickly followed.
Only the third one stayed on the shore. Not as tall as the others, he had his mouth shut and was not slobbering. He seemed to want to study her more than eat her. Yet he was not doing anything to save her.
Ali waded out farther; the water reached her chest. The current was as strong as it had been earlier. Yet she stood against it without bending. How was that possible?
All of a sudden she felt incredibly heavy. The water rushed around her as if she were a statue made of marble. Even the cold was unable to penetrate her skin. She did not understand what was happening. Like when she had struggled on the log above the falls, a strange power swept through her body. The creatures stopped to stare at her and suddenly she was not afraid of them.
On impulse, she bent over, stuck her head underwater, and grabbed a rock from the floor of the river. Coming back up, she took aim at the first creature. She loved baseball; she played for hours every summer with Steve and Cindy. She especially liked being the pitcher. Yet she had never thrown a ball the way she threw this rock. It flew from her hand like a bullet and hit the closest creature right in the face.
He staggered back and fell on his butt with a loud splash.
“Better leave me alone!” she shouted, dunking down for another rock. This one she aimed at the other creature in the water. He stood there stupidly and took the stone in the gut. The blow must have hurt. He let out a yelp and doubled up in pain.
Ali reached down for a huge rock. This one was so big it must have weighed fifty pounds, yet she had no trouble lifting it. Taking aim at the creature on the shore, she let it fly—and fly it did. The stone flew a hundred feet through the air before it smashed into the creature’s leg. The impact was loud—she thought she heard its leg snap. It sure let out a loud cry. Limping back up the path, it called to its friends in monster language.
The others had seen enough. Chasing after their injured friend, they disappeared around the bend. Ali heard them growling for several minutes before the forest fell silent. She felt confident they would not be back any time soon.
Ali got out of the water. It was a day of miracles. The sun shone bright and felt good on her face. Yet the cold continued not to bother her. Even her wet clothes did not make her shiver.
Filled with amazement and relief, she hiked away from the river and sat down in a meadow filled with long grass and yellow daisies. Peeling off her soaked sweatshirt and pants, she lay down in the grass and let the warm sun sink into her stiff muscles. The minutes drifted by; her breathing began to calm down.
For some reason, in that moment, she forgot all about her friends. She closed her eyes. She felt so at peace. . . .
CHAPTER FIVE
When she opened her eyes it felt much later. Looking up, she could not find a cloud in the sky. The sun seemed unusually bright.
Ali stood and put on her clothes. They were completely dry. She must have slept for hours—it was the only explanation. She had been dreaming . . . something about a magical realm. No, that had been last night.
Why did the dream only come back to her now? She remembered the green light glowing inside every tree and plant and blade of grass, the joy of soaring through the air—most of all the enchanting ice mountains that drifted across the sky, cold white glaciers in the heavens.
There had been a scary darkness at the end of the dream, although she could not remember exactly what it had been.
But she remembered Steve and Cindy, and the thought alone should have brought anxiety. Something had thrown her in the river—probably one of the bigfoots. There was an excellent chance the same creatures were after her friends this very minute.
Yet, unlike before her nap, she was suddenly not worried about Steve and Cindy, and she puzzled over the lack of concern. It was not that she didn’t care about them—she was just certain they were fine. The conviction ran deep. It was another one of those gut feelings she occasionally got, like yesterday, when she knew something was following her without hearing or seeing anything.
It was then Ali saw the tree.
It stood at the edge of the meadow. A fat redwood amid a family of skinny pines. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Redwoods were rare in the forest, and this one was extraordinary. It was no taller than a three-story building, yet it had the circumference of a small house. Was there such a thing as dwarf redwoods? It did not look as if the tree had burned down before, or been chopped down and regrown.
Walking toward the tree, Ali felt a tingling sensation at the back of her neck. The redwood drew her much as the top of the peak had drawn her the previous day. She was not surprised, when she got closer, to see that there was an opening on the side.
The hole was round and narrow, set three feet above the ground. She thought she could squeeze inside but wasn’t positive. She sure would hate to get stuck with her butt sticking up in the air. But she figured she had to risk it, and finally poked her head in the opening.
“Hello?” she called. “Any bears in there?”
She half expecte
d to hear a flutter of tiny feet. A few squirrels, at least, should have made the tree their home. All was silent, however. Indeed, her words seemed to be swallowed by the inside of the tree.
Ali pulled her head out and looked around. She still did not understand how she could have missed the tree before. Although short, it was still the single most impressive object in all the woods. But here it was, there was no denying that it was real. As real as the creatures that had attacked her.
Ali crawled inside—what the heck, head first—her back down low. The bark of the tree was six feet thick. Then the hole burst through into a hollow space, a dome shaped room in the center of the tree. Yellow light shone through from the outside.
Ali was in awe. The domed ceiling was smooth; it could have been cut with fine tools, polished over many years. Covered with sawdust, the floor felt springy under her feet. The interior was perfectly still, the peace as soft as her mother’s smile had been; and the air was fresh, not the least bit stale, rich with its redwood aroma; and she could hear nothing except the sound of her breathing and her heart. Even the noise of Mercer River, close at hand, could not be heard.
Ali sat in the center of the room, her legs crossed, her back to the opening. She felt safe inside the tree. For some odd reason, she did not fear that anything would dare to attack from the outside. More, she felt at home, as if she had visited the tree before, in her dreams perhaps, or even in a body that was not her own. The peace of the chamber sunk into her chest like a hot drink. She was not sleepy, but she felt the urge to close her eyes.
So much peace, inside and out. The silence was so strong she half expected it to speak. What was also true, she realized with a start, was that she wished to speak to it. What a strange idea, to have a conversation with nothing.
“Hello Mr. Tree,” she said softly. “Who are you?”
There was a long pause. She waited for an answer. Once again, she knew it was silly, trees did not talk, but she expected this one to talk to her.