LISA!” Roger called, his hands cupping his mouth. An osprey crashed into the cove, lifting off with a salmon clutched in its sharp talons.
She’d gone to sleep beside her dad in their tent, but when he woke up, she was gone.
Roger called again. Shreds of mist hung like skin from the branches, slashed with spears of sunlight.
“Did she say anything last night?” Dad asked. “She seemed upset.”
“Nothing.” Roger pulled on his water boots; the usual twinkle in his eye was buried like a blackened coal. “We’ve got to find her.”
“Cassidy,” Willie said, snapping a stick for kindling. “What happened between you two last night?”
“Nothing happened. Chillax.” He was leaning against a tree, wrapped in his mummy bag.
Yeah, sure, I said to myself. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, is what happened. Or he said something that freaked her out.
But something else nagged my mind. Would she have gone looking for one of those burial islands she’d talked about? Alone?
I didn’t think so, but I didn’t know.
Roger ran back into the trees, then dragged Willie’s kayak out to the waterline. I said, “Dad? I’ll take our kayak. Two of us in separate kayaks have a better chance of finding her.” I wanted to find her. I needed to find her. Me. I couldn’t put into words—even to myself—why this was so, exactly. It was an impulse. I was driven.
Dad scratched his stubbly chin. His blue eyes shone deeper than the sea, and he looked haggard, as skinny as a scarecrow. “Maybe Cassidy should go, kiddo. He has more—”
“I want to go,” I cut in. I stood firm, trying not to tremble.
Dad took a deep breath, then let it out. “Okay, Aaron,” he said. “Watch your bow—without my weight in front, it’ll ride up and catch the wind.”
Willie, with his usual energy, was already getting a smokeless fire started. He asked Cassidy to gather wood. “Pronto!”
“Whatever,” said Cassidy. Then he slipped out of his mummy bag and let it drop at his feet.
“I’ll scout along the shoreline,” Dad said, setting off on his own.
Roger was already slicing through the water as I climbed into my kayak. I drew the spray skirt tight and pushed off toward him.
“Wait up!” Cassidy hollered. “I’m comin’ with you!” He was only dressed in his boxers, and I saw the tattoos on his pecs flex.
He just wants to be a hero, I thought. “Too late!” I yelled over my shoulder, and paddled like a windmill.
Maybe I just wanted to be a hero, too. But I wasn’t thinking.
I was just paddling. Hard and fast.
Soon I was out of the cove, finding my rhythm through the sea.
Dad had said these islands were once the world of the Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit. He said they were a sea people, paddling dugout canoes and living off the sea.
Lisa had said, before I’d even seen her book, that these people were still here, and up in Alaska, and down along the Washington coast, often on the islands—mostly fishing in modern boats, but some of them still hewing dugout canoes from red and yellow cedar. She said that their traditional burial islands dotted these waters, and that the spirits of their ancestors still lingered here. Like mist, I thought. Or the ever-present bald eagles, always watching from the trees.
And I thought of Lisa with her book of totems. Yes, this is what she was talking about last night. Maybe she would go look for one alone, after all. She wasn’t afraid of kayaking alone, and she was angry about not getting a chance to see what she’d been reading about.
And she seemed to be angry at Cassidy, too. . . .
Roger circled back to me, his red bandana blazing in the sun.
“She could be on any one of these islands.” He nodded toward a scattering of tree-clad islets to the north and west. Far off to the east, the snowcapped mountains of the mainland were almost lost in the mist.
“Maybe she’s exploring that burial island she showed us last night.” I said, hopeful. “She really wanted to go see one.”
“I missed that,” Roger said. “But I could hear her talking about it. She’s a strong kayaker, and yeah, she’s super into these cultures, but. . . .” He shook his head.
“I was closest to her,” I said. “I could see a map that pointed out a burial island not too far from here. I couldn’t read the name, but it was over toward Hunter Island. East.”
Roger took a deep breath and looked out in that direction. Hunter Island was huge and still far off, but between it and us there were a couple of green dots. Small islands.
“Okay, mate,” Roger said. “Let’s go take a look.” He turned his kayak and paddled off.
I followed, but had a hard time keeping up. I had to sit in the rear cockpit so I could operate the rudder pedals, and like my dad warned, that caused the bow to rise up and catch the wind. I struggled to stay on course, and at the same time I scanned the horizon for Lisa’s kayak.
And the Sea Wolf.
I heard a loon’s high, crazy, yodeling laugh and looked around. Sure enough, one was floating some twenty yards away. It watched me with its red eyes. A lone loon. Perhaps lost.
Like Lisa, I thought.
The sun was bright. It pierced our eyes. We squinted, and paddled.
We were searching. Hunting. Hoping.
I got a second wind and managed to catch up to Roger, and then pass him.
It was getting dusky. We’d been paddling all afternoon, in and out of coves, around the two small islands between us and Hunter Island.
Fear was a talon in my heart—fear for Lisa. And exhaustion was a haze drawing the darkness closer.
The white head of a bald eagle, glimpsed in the gloom, drew my attention to a hidden cove we’d missed the first time around. “Over there!” I shouted. “A cove! Let’s check it out!”
It was our last chance to find Lisa before dark. Adrenalin shot through me like a flaming arrow and I paddled like crazy.
I was first to round the point and coasted in.
And there it was. Lisa’s kayak! It was drifting away on the flood tide.
Empty!
Like an empty coffin waiting for a body.
We coasted, frantically looking for Lisa, calling her name. “LIIISAAA! LIIIISAAAA!”
The sun was setting in a blaze of clouds. “Spread out!” I yelled.
We spread out. I headed for the rocks that hugged the shore.
And there she was!
I paddled up to her. She was sprawled on her back on a boulder slick with algae, her eyes closed. The freezing water was lapping against her; one arm was floating limp, like a dead sea snake.
A surge of panic rose in me, but I forced it back down.
Is she dead, or just knocked out?
“Over here!” I shouted. “She’s over here!”
I snatched the bowline of her drifting kayak, then skimmed mine ashore and nosed it up to the trees, and pulled hers in. I jumped out—not bothering to tie the kayaks off—and something thumped and rolled to my feet. I stopped in my tracks and looked down.
A human skull.
Covered with moss. Its eye hollows—scooped out of darkness—staring up at me.