TWO

Early morning bloomed gently in the small cove that opened along the shore of Clio Channel. A thin sea mist danced lightly on the water, the cedars along the shore lifted their dark skirts in the breeze and the iodine tang of kelp drifted on the cool air. Walker let his canoe drift with the slowing current as his eyes followed the flight of a gull against the lightening sky. He was in no hurry, content to wait for the surface ripples and eddies to show him when the ebb had turned to flood.

Further north, up on the mid-coast where he had lived for the past nine years, he would not have needed their guidance. He would have known the movement of the tides and currents by the height of the sun or the position of the moon, by the smell of the beach as the water rose and fell, by the sound of the waves as they moved along the shore.

But this was new territory for him, over a hundred and fifty miles south on the other side of Queen Charlotte Sound, and the patterns of the land and the ocean were different here. It would take him time to learn the sounds and the scents and to become familiar with the rhythm of the tides.

He had not wanted to leave the home he had made for himself up there in the maze of islands and channels that clung to the western edge of the continent. Hadn’t wanted to leave the few folks he had met in that remote archipelago, although he had been surprised to realize he was looking forward to being closer to his home village, the place where he had spent his childhood and where many of his relatives still lived. He had Dan Connor and Claire to thank for that. Their friendship had somehow restored his faith in people—or perhaps it was simply that they had somehow restored his faith in himself. Neither of them had hesitated to offer him both friendship and respect even when—at least when he had first met Dan down in the city—he had deserved neither. He smiled as he thought of the pair, Claire with her tangle of short, blonde hair and her love of the sea, and Dan with his constantly questioning mind hidden behind a lazy smile.

It was he, Walker, who had first introduced them and although he hadn’t seen them often since then, he had seen their relationship grow and strengthen until inexplicably, unexpectedly, it had swelled to embrace him as well. It was their open acceptance that had given him the strength to leave the solitary life he had carved out for himself and edge back towards a world filled with the complexities and responsibilities of family and relationships.

Not that he had chosen to move voluntarily. If it hadn’t been for a floating resort with its huge flotilla of noisy power boats and raucous customers moving into a neighboring bay, and a fish farm with its attendant traffic setting up in another, he would still be there.

A disturbance rippled through the water and a black dorsal fin carved through the waves. The orcas were coming to join the hunt. Like him, they knew the salmon would be following the current. Soon the narrows would be filled with racing water and hundreds of powerful silver fish would spill out into the channel.

Walker had built his life around the salmon. They were what had allowed him to survive since his return to the coast after a failed attempt at living in the city all those years ago. They had given him his independence, and their movements formed the measure of his days. They had always been the lifeblood of his people, a gift from U’melth the Raven, and in turn they gave themselves back to th. Each year they returned, their bodies strong and fat from their years in the ocean, and the people received them with thanks and rejoicing.

As the great fish swam up into the fast running water of the rivers, they fed everyone and everything along their path. The strongest among them fought their way upstream through the rapids and struggled up the falls until they reached the shallow pools of their birth where they would spawn and die. Even in death they continued to give life, nourishing the land and all that grew on it, feeding the eagles and the bears, the osprey and the mink, and even the earth itself. All of them depended on the salmon, and the salmon had always been there for them, but things were changing. No longer did massive schools of shining fish fill the coves and bays each summer, crowding together so closely that the water seemed to change into solid silver. No longer did thousands leap from the water in the early light of dawn, the first rays of the sun glinting on their scales. No longer did hundreds offer themselves freely to the people. Now the people had to seek them out.

There were many, including Walker, who blamed the fish farms with their overcrowded pens of alien fish. They had sprung up in coves and bays all along the coast, killing the ocean floor beneath them with a lethal mixture of excess food and waste laced with antibiotics. The fish they farmed there were mostly destined for processing plants and no one seemed to care if they were infested with sea lice and other parasites, but Walker had seen for himself what those lice did to the wild salmon smolts that had to swim through the murky water to get from the rivers of their birth out to the vast ocean beyond. Not many of them survived.

An absence of sound called him back to the moment and Walker turned his canoe towards the narrows. The current had stilled. It no longer held his canoe in its embrace and his paddle slid easily through the quiet water. Above him an eagle curved its wings, slowing its descent towards a tall spruce. Closer to the beach a seal lifted its sleek dark head above the surface. A second orca joined the first and the pair moved in towards to the shore, dorsal fins gliding in tandem through the water. The air grew heavy, filled with expectancy, charged with anticipation. It was as if the earth itself was holding its breath.

The spell was broken by the roar of powerful engines as a Coast Guard Search and Rescue boat burst out of the narrow passage. Within seconds it heeled sharply to starboard and disappeared around the point, leaving behind a heavy wake. Minutes later it was followed by a second vessel, this one a police boat travelling equally fast, and the resulting collision of heaving waves churned the water into a frenzy.

Walker fought to keep his canoe upright, and once he had it steady he sat back and watched as the last of the wake subsided, replaced by the first ripples of the building flood current. He was alone. The seal and the orcas had disappeared. Even the eagle had flown off, no longer able to see its prey through the disturbed water. Peace had returned to the cove, but for Walker the memory of the two speeding vessels remained. He had seen that same combination twice before and both times it had presaged bad news. Reaching down, he replaced his fishing gear into the cedar basket below his seat, turned the canoe away from the narrows and followed the wake left by the speeding boats.