by Pam Webber
Wade shifted his feet uncomfortably. “I . . . we just wanted to make sure you and Win made it up here okay.”
Walnut-size raindrops began falling. Slow enough to count, they hit the ground with audible splats.
“Get up here,” Nibi said.
“Naw, we don’t melt. We gotta get home. Pop doesn’t like it when we’re out too late.”
Nibi motioned to the boys. “No. Come. Get out of the rain.”
Reluctantly, they made their way up the steps, wiping fat drops from their faces, then drying their hands on their jeans. “Sorry, Miz Nibi. We didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“You haven’t.”
The giant drops started falling faster and closer together. Nibi opened the screen door and ushered everyone inside. “Win, Nettie, bring your dreamcatchers.”
Drumming on the tin roof marked the moment the thudding raindrops turned into a downpour.
Following Nibi through the house, Win and Nettie lagged behind, shocked to see the familiar rooms standing empty. The kitchen shelves were bare, the counters clear, the table and chairs gone, the constant kettle of simmering nettle tea absent from the cold woodstove. Even the fireplace in the sitting room harbored no glowing embers; the slight scent of sage was the only remnant of the home they knew.
Win ran her hand along the counter. “Where is everything?”
“Where it needs to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain later.”
The drumming on the roof grew louder.
Wade and Skip stood wide-eyed. “Miz Nibi, we’ve got to get home.”
“Not now. This storm’s too dangerous.”
“But we’ve gotta warn Mom and Pop.”
Nibi’s voice softened. “Tell me what your parents would say if you asked them what you should do right now.”
Wade’s gaze went from Nibi to Skip to the floor. “They’d say for us to stay put and do what you tell us to do.”
Nibi gently cupped each boy’s cheek. “I’ve known your parents for a lifetime, and that is exactly what they would say. It’s time for you both to be brave.” She looked at Nettie and Win. “It’s time for all of us to be brave.”
Win crossed to the rain-blurred window. “Someone’s coming.”
As they clustered on the back porch, the already intense downpour worsened. Blurred car lights inched down a driveway of streaming mud. Passing the barn, the lights pulled close to the porch.
Nettie recognized the car and pushed past the others to the door. “It’s Andy.”
The car’s interior light snapped on and off as Andy jumped out and ran for the porch. Soaked to the skin, he gathered Nettie in his arms.
Nibi’s voice forced them apart. “Inside. Quickly.”
Holding tight to Andy’s hand, Nettie wanted answers. “What are you doing here?”
“Ethan. He came looking for me. Said you and Win were headed up here and might be in trouble. He told me what Danes tried to do to you at River’s Rest. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, and beyond grateful that he was.”
A monstrous crack of thunder shook the house.
“We must go” Nibi said. “It’s not safe to stay here.”
“Can’t we drive out?” Nettie asked.
Andy shook his head. “I don’t think so. My car slid most of the way down here. The logging road was already washing out in places, and the Tye was cresting the bridge as I crossed. Sheriff Tanner was putting road blocks up when I got there. He wasn’t going to let me cross until I told him I was coming to get you all. He said to tell you to stay put, that he’s already had reports of flooding in the mountains west of here.”
Rolling thunder rocked the house again as rainwater began dripping from under the door of the woodstove and pouring out the sitting-room chimney, sending ashes and bits of wood flowing across the floor and into the kitchen.
Nibi herded them toward the kitchen door. “Win, Nettie, Andy, I need you to get the boys up to Lookout Point. The overhang is part of the mountain’s granite face, so it will be stable. Underneath it is a shallow cave. You’ll be safe and dry there.”
The rain’s roar surrounded them as Nibi opened the door. A wall of water obscured everything beyond the back porch. Lifting the lid of a storage barrel, Nibi pulled out strands of fairy fire wrapped in sinew netting; the green glow lit the porch. “Tie these over your shoulder,” she shouted. “They’ll help keep you from getting separated.”
Andy looked skeptical. Nibi touched his face. “Trust me.” Moving quickly to Win, she took off her ever-present moonstone cross and placed it around her granddaughter’s neck. Kissing Win’s cheek, Nibi held her close. “Do what you were born to do, daughter. And remember, you are not alone.”
Nibi turned to Nettie next. Sliding the braided copper bracelet off her arm, she placed the malleable metal around Nettie’s wrist and squeezed it tight. Cupping Nettie’s face in both hands, she kissed her forehead. “You’re braver and stronger than you realize. Just as Win is not alone, neither are you.”
Win’s voice trembled as she fingered the moonstones. “Nibi, what are you doing?”
Nibi didn’t answer but turned to talk with everyone. “Wet skin is slippery, so don’t hold hands. Hold on to each other’s belts or clothing. Win, you go first. Skip, you hold tight to her. Wade, you hold on to your brother. Then Nettie. Then Andy. Keep going right until you’re past the barn; then turn uphill. Stay in the clearing, and keep going straight up. Lookout Point is just before you reach the ridge. The entrance to the cave is just below the overhang. Wait there until the rain stops, then make your way across the top of the mountain and down to Route 56.”
Nibi moved to open the screen door, but Win stopped her. “What about you?”
“I’m going to town to help who I can.”
“Let me go with you.”
Nibi took Win’s hand and kissed it. “Fate has other plans for you, daughter. You and Nettie hold tight to your dreamcatchers. Remember the lessons you’ve learned, and when this is all over, go to the church. Now hurry.” Nibi opened the screen door and pushed Win forward, motioning for the rest to follow.
Win stepped into the torrent, followed by Skip, then Wade. Nibi hand-signaled “Godspeed,” then hurried toward the front door as Nettie stepped from the porch.
Dense rain stole Nettie’s breath and drenched her with the first step. Feet sliding in rain-filled shoes, she held on to Wade and sloshed forward. It seemed to take forever for them to make it past the barn in the flogging rain. As they moved into the buffeting wind, Andy tightened his grip on Nettie’s waistband. When they turned uphill, ground-level, day-bright lightning exploded all around them. Nettie’s skin tingled with each sideways flash. Blinking hard, she focused on Win’s bobbing, rain-muted fairy fire leading the way through the darkness.
Loud rumbling from higher up the mountain penetrated the storm’s roar as the ground began to vibrate. Win and the boys swayed precariously, then tumbled downhill in a growing swath of sliding mud. Inches from the cascade, Andy made a grab for the boys as Nettie dove and snagged Win’s shirt. Getting to her knees, she pulled Win back and helped her to her feet. Rolling mounds of mud pushed between them, its thickness making it hard to move. Nettie pushed Win toward Andy. He pulled her out of the flow and reached for Nettie as a large bolus of mud and debris caught her in its downhill surge. She pushed forward, her fingertips brushing his.
Surprise turned to panic as the fast-moving earth swept Nettie down the hill, past Nibi’s barn, then her house. Digging into the mud, grabbing everything her hands touched to try to stop, proved fruitless. It all moved with her. An earsplitting crash from somewhere below burst through the storm’s clamor. She’d be torn up if she went over the rocky ledge at the foot of the mountain. Pushing her arms and legs as deep into the muck as they’d go, Nettie groped for anything solid and still to hold on to. Her feet dragged against something bouncy, a lumpy rope of some kind. She stopped sliding. Forcing her fingers dee
per, she found another one. Running cedar. She blessed the vine she’d cursed earlier.
Nettie lifted and turned her head back and forth, trying to take a deep breath as silty runoff splashed in her face and dammed up around her shoulders. The little bit of air she could find smelled of slag and outhouses. Unsure how long the running cedar would hold, she squinted against the downpour, looking for a stable tree or boulder she might be able to reach. What she saw didn’t make sense. A raging river thrashed right behind her, melting Nibi’s mountain.
“Nettie! Hold on.” A hazy Andy stood at the edge of the flowing mud, preparing to come for her.
“Don’t! Stay there!” she yelled. Sliding her hands and feet along the cedar, she inched toward him.
Dropping to his belly, he reached for Nettie’s hand just as the earth beneath her dissolved into the raging water. The intense cold shocked her mouth open; panic closed it as gravelly slush surged in. The hysterical, muddy current thrust her downriver at breakneck speed, splaying her arms and legs and twisting the rest of her in different directions. Wave after angry wave broke on top of her. She fought to find air, to keep from being pulled under. Putrid grit filled her nose and stung her eyes. Hard, unrecognizable things slammed into her, ripping clothes and tearing skin, then spinning off into the darkness.
Dizzy and faint from the relentless, debris-filled assault, she felt the bestial water burying her. Pawing frantically, Nettie felt something jerk her head back and up, keeping it just above the surface. Gasping for air, something hard and sharp hit her cheek. Through pain and panic she knew she’d drown if she couldn’t protect her face. An image of the beavers on Bear Mountain sliding through the window in the dam feet first flashed though her mind. “Their legs protect the rest of the body,” Chief Brannon had said. Summoning every bit of strength she could, Nettie pulled her legs together, then tucked her thighs to her chest. Forcing her knees almost out of the water, she pushed them straight, her toes pointing downstream. Her feet and legs became buffers against the relentless, murderous debris swirling in front of her. The hard pull on her hair stayed constant as she struggled to keep her legs up and find air in the relentless downpour.
Her strength failing, her lungs burning, Nettie knew it was only a matter of time. Surprisingly calm, she could feel herself letting go. Suddenly the current dipped, sloping her feet and legs downward and slamming her chest into something hard and rough. A tree. Sharp pain ripped from her ribs to her back as she dug her fingernails into the bark. Splinters gouged deep, but the pain did not lessen her panicked grip.
Wild, sludgy floodwater surged around her, but she and the tree weren’t going with it. Hooking an arm over the partially submerged trunk, Nettie found a small limb and pulled herself high enough to lift her left leg out of the water. Locating a dent in the bark with her foot, she anchored herself and worked to bring her right leg up. It hurt like hell and didn’t move as it should, but she managed to drag it onto the tree. She laid her forehead against the hard, slick wood and found a pocket of air amid the waterfall of rain.
Chapter 17
Minutes dragged into hours as water raged above and below Nettie; the brutal, unrelenting downpour battered her and made each guppy breath precious. Constant waves of gritty slush threatened to push her back into the river. Her tree rocked and bobbed violently as it absorbed blows from whatever the flood tide had captured. The muck filling her ears dampened the roar, but what filled her nose did little to quell the stench. Retching repeatedly, the gravelly sand scratched her gullet on the way out as much as it had on the way in. Despite numbing cold, her ribs hurt whether she breathed or not.
She prayed, over and over, that she’d survive the night, that Andy and Nibi hadn’t been pulled into the water, that Win and the boys were safe in the cave, that the people in Oak’s Landing would find a way to survive, that Amherst would be spared, and that help would come for them all.
After what seemed an eternity, the deluge lessened enough Nettie could lift her head. Blurry green patches dotted her tree. Turning her face into the rain, she flushed filmy grime out of her eyes and looked again. Fairy fire formed a glowing path along the tree’s massive trunk.
As the downpour continued to lessen, a razor-thin ridge of brilliant light cut the jagged blackness over the mountains in the distance. She’d survived the night. Changing to big plops, the cataclysmic rain stopped the same way it had started. Slowly, the massive beehive of ebony clouds lifted in rolls, thinned to gray veils, broke apart, and scurried away, leaving nothing in the sapphire sky but a few vivid stars. Dark water filled the valley like coffee in a cup. Oak’s Landing lay somewhere beneath. Scattered wisps of fog escaping the river disappeared upward, as if shadowing ghosts. Nettie laid her face on her arm, the heartache too unbelievable for tears. Something hard pushed into her cheek. Nibi’s bracelet. Nettie rubbed the braided metal embedded in her swollen wrist, marveling that the floodwaters hadn’t stolen it. “You’re braver and stronger than you realize,” Nibi’d said when she placed it.
Now that the sun was coming up, Nettie could figure out what was causing the arrhythmic tugging in her hair. It had lessened dramatically once she’d gotten out of the water, but it hadn’t stopped. Whatever it was, she didn’t need to drag it to shore. Forcing aching muscles to move, she looked over her shoulder. Bouncing on a leafy branch sat her dreamcatcher. Its long strands of sinew held tight to the arrowheads tangled in her hair. Though dirty and filled with river chaff, the web appeared intact. Near the middle, partially covered with mud, spun the spider mother.
Just beyond the dreamcatcher, Nettie met the scarlet eyes of an albino moccasin, its torn and bleeding body wrapped tight around the bobbing branch. Head flat against the bark, mouth closed, it didn’t challenge her with its eyes. As she was, it seemed grateful for the respite.
Nettie’s cold hands were locked in a claw position, her fingernails split by dirt and bark. She managed to loop her fingers around the dreamcatcher’s outer ring, then pull it onto the trunk in front of her. It had helped keep her head above water while she’d been in the river and had kept her awake, gripping the tree, throughout the horrific night. One way or the other, they’d finish this together.
On the riverbank, barely visible in the predawn, stood a semicircle of boulders, some upright, some pushed over by sliding mud and trees. Despite the carnage, she knew this place. She and Win had hiked up here with Nibi the day they’d found the red willows and grapevines to make their dreamcatchers—the same day Nibi had introduced them to the Gospel Oak and fairy fire. The flood had brought the river halfway up the mountain.
The Gospel Oak’s wide trunk and rough bark had saved her. Now, most of its spidery roots were dancing in the air or bobbing erratically with the current, the few still buried in the bank pulled taut. She had to get to shore before they surrendered. Aligning herself with the path of fairy fire, she pulled forward on her elbows. Burning pain seared her right leg. She sucked air as her vision filled with sparks. If she fainted, she’d fall in and die. Pressing her shredded fingers harder into the wet bark, Nettie concentrated on breathing until the worst of the pain subsided. When her vision cleared, she looked over her other shoulder. Most of her clothes were gone. Her battered right leg lay at an odd angle.
Startled by a sharp crack, Nettie tightened her grip as the limb that had held her dreamcatcher splintered and surrendered to the flood, taking the apathetic, red-eyed moccasin with it.
Clenching her teeth, she braced and pulled forward again as someone called her name, the sound muffled but loud enough to slip through the din. Nothing moved on the bank or above the blurry incline of boulders. She called out but made no sound. Hocking and spitting river dreck, she tried once more. She could barely hear her own rasp. She strained but didn’t hear the voice again.
Pushing the dreamcatcher farther ahead, Nettie pulled herself after it. Inching only a couple of feet, she trembled as if it had been miles. She laid her head on the bark to rest, then jerked it up. Amid the green gl
ow of fairy fire, tangled in the debris along the shoreline, hung the bulging, distorted body of an old woman. Her clothes were gone. Her elbows and knees straddled branches at odd angles, her head was twisted, her tongue protruded, and sandy grit trailed from her open mouth and eyes. Mrs. Loving.
Nettie vomited the remaining river slush at the horror of the sweet woman’s death. Lying in the reek and roughness of her own spew, she forced herself to crawl forward again, determined to reach the bank before the flooding river took her tree, to know who called her name. When she reached the base of the old oak, her heart sank. The only way to cross the six-foot span to the bank would be to hang from one of the remaining roots and drop into the angry river. If by some miracle she managed to hold on and make it across, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to climb out with only one leg. Another root snapped as she deliberated what to do. She had to go.
“It’s you and me, God.”
Pushing her dreamcatcher over the edge, Nettie gripped the closest root with both hands and slid her hips off the tree.
“Nettie! Don’t!”
Andy’s voice cut through the fear and surging pain as Nettie’s legs followed her into the water; the ragged current twisted her back and forth, up and down. She tried to keep him in sight as he ran to the river’s edge, dug his heels into the muddy bank, and slid to a lower ledge. Wrapping a snapped root around his arm, Andy leaned over the water as Nettie released her grip enough to slide toward him. Catching movement at her side, she flailed helplessly as another uprooted tree careened toward her oak.
“Grab my hand!”
She made a frantic stretch for Andy as the trees collided. The oak lurched wildly, snapping her root and dropping her into the convulsing current. Gritty darkness pressed against her as a tangled web of submerged roots captured her legs, pulling her down and away. Wild with panic and pain, she struggled to get free. Every hair on her head was suddenly pulled taut. Her descent stopped, and she began moving upward. Kicking free of the rough tentacles, she broke the surface, coughing and gasping for air. Angry water slapped at her as she continued to be pulled toward shore. Feeling the rocky riverbank against her shoulders, she raised her arms, grasping for anything to hold on to.
