by Rae Craig
She reached out to grab the flash as it spun down to the rocks. It flashed first over Dana’s straining body before dazzling straight into her eyes, making her vision explode into motes of nothingness.
She hung in a place of blackness- no sound, no sight.
Below Harriet, a point of light grows larger, spreading into sunlight glinting off flowing water.
She stands on the bank of a horribly familiar creek. In front of her, the Harriet-she-used-to-be balances across a large tree that has fallen over the gentle stream.
Behind her on the bank, voices argue about whose turn it is next on the tree.
She turns to face them. “I’m next, but someone else can take my turn, because I need to check the babies.”
But the voice that comes out of her mouth is not hers; it is her brother’s.
Harriet’s mind freezes.
She is reliving her twin’s death from inside him.
The death she knows is her fault.
Through Clarence’s eyes she sees baby ducks gathered into a soft yellow clump on a rocky island upstream. The bedraggled runt of the clutch shivers down by the water, unable to climb the tumbled stones up onto the high center of the island.
The Harriet-she-used-to-be teases her brother as she climbs down from the tree through the upended roots. “Okay, Clarence, you big mama duck, go take care of that dim-witted baby of yours.”
Clarence smiles and wades through the knee-deep water. Harriet feels the slimy wetness through his hands as he scoops up the duckling.
“BOOM.”
They all look upstream. Clarence knows they are excavating up there, but that does not concern him, this baby needs him now. He cradles it to his chest.
Harriet feels the wet feathers through his shirt.
Reaching out, her brother nestles the baby among its siblings, herding them onto the top of the island with his cupped hands.
The Harriet-she-used-to-be stands with hands on hips over on the bank. “You know, those baby ducks can take care of themselves.” She shakes her head. “Afterall, they’re wild ducks.”
Clarence wades back to his sister, smiling up at her as he climbs the bank.
“Rumble! Crack!”
They jerk around to stare upstream. A churning wall of water bears down on them. Clarence spins and half runs, half dives to save his babies.
Harriet’s mind screams. “Go back! They’re not worth it!”
Can she change what happens? She has to try. She screams from her mind directly into his. “Listen to me, Clarence!
Listen to me!”
The rushing maelstrom sweeps up Clarence. Harriet feels the cold water rage over him. Fighting the torrent uses all the strength he has. Before his desperate need for air forces him to breathe water, the flood tosses him up into the air.
The Harriet-she-used-to-be yells. “Hold on! I’m coming!”
A dead tree whips by Clarence’s head, snags his foot and pulls him into nothingness.
<> <> <>
He opens his eyes. His back hurts where he hangs by his shirt from a broken branch on the crossing-tree. The creek below his feet is high, but calm. Harriet breathes a sigh of relief from inside her brother. Clarence is not dead.
The Harriet-she-used-to-be swims toward him, yelling the whole time. “You are a nut!” She grabs a branch hanging from the tree with one hand and points upstream with the other. “You almost died because of those useless babies.” Huddled under a rock, three drenched ducklings still cling to the top of their island.
Harriet feels Clarence’s lips smile with exhaustion. “There’s three babies left.”
“Okay, Okay.” The Harriet-she-used-to-be drops back into the water. “I’ll go rescue them, but you can’t tell anyone.” She swims upstream a few strokes, then turns back treading water. “I have a reputation to uphold: no saving babies and other kind and caring stuff like that.”
Scrambling up the rocky island, the Harriet-she-used-to-be scoops up three half-dead baby ducks, thrusting them inside her wet, buttoned up shirt.
“Rumble! Crack!”
The Harriet-she-used-to-be jerks up. A second flood crashes toward them. She sucks in a desperate breath and slices into the water with a flying dive toward her bother.
Through Clarence’s eyes, Harriet stares down at the water where the other Harriet should surface, but she knows: even someone who swims like a fish cannot save him now.
“Roar!” Boiling down the valley, water and debris sweep down on them.
The torrent crashes over Clarence, slamming the Harriet-she-used-to-be into him. He grabs her with both arms, his shirt still caught on the branch behind him. They hang suspended, the Harriet-she-used-to-be hanging like a rag doll.
“Crack!” The branch breaks.
Dodging debris, Clarence swims, pulling his sister toward a large culvert that drains a nearby pond. Inside is a screened barrier with just enough space in front of it for him to push his unconscious twin.
He hangs on the lip of the culvert catching his breath. A deep rumble so loud Harriet can feel it through his chest makes Clarence slowly turn his head upstream.
“Roar!”
Around the upstream bend thunders a tangle of broken trees, blasting down the valley in a wall of water.
Harriet feels her twin relax. He has saved his sister. He is content.
He reaches into the culvert, resting his palm on his sister’s wet head.
He smiles.
The torrent sweeps him away.
<> <> <>
Harriet floats in nothingness.
Spinning motes of blackness became swirls of water. Harriet felt the current of the outlet channel tug at her and grabbed the flashlight before it hit the rocks.
No time had passed.
Pointing the flashlight at Dana, she squeezed his trapped ankle, letting him know she was there. She clutched the light between her teeth and grabbed his ankle with both hands. Leaning back against the current, she pushed her feet forward against the rocks to either side of Dana’s foot.
She jerked her arms back as hard as she could. Dana’s foot shot back at her, knocking her on her butt.
The flash flew out of her mouth and lodged in the rocks below. She spun away with the current. A suction in Harriet’s belly pulled hard; she was desperate to breath.
Her t-shirt yanked up on her neck, strangling her and she shot up out of the water like a leaping fish. With his fist clutching the back of Harriet’s shirt, Dana held her up while she gasped for air then swung her around so she could hang onto the stone wall. Light from under the water cast a weak glow around them.
Clinging to the wall with one hand while he gulped air, he wiped down his face and stared at Harriet. “Exactly how long can you hold your breath?” For once he spoke in quick jerky words, his voice a rasp.
“A couple of minutes.” Harriet took a ragged breath, turning to face out into the channel.
She whipped her head to the left. With a splash Tomas and Ella popped up just inside the barrier doors. Holding the channel wall, Ella slapped the water next to her, making her bob up and down with each smack. “Yes!” Smack, smack. “I did it!” Smack, smack. “No one can say I’m afraid now”
They pulled themselves out. Dana lighted the niche lamp with his matches. Suddenly, Harriet dove back into the channel without a splash. They watched in fascination as Dana counted off the seconds. Tomas and Ella looked at him in confusion.
Tomas asked. “Why are you counting?”
Dana held up his finger in a wait-a-minute gesture, but kept counting. “Twenty four, twenty five---”
Harriet reached the channel’s rocky bottom, easily pried the flash out and gripped a rock as she swayed with the current.
Did she remember her brother’s death? No. Only the part that was his memory, not her own. Maybe the concussion had wiped that out.
Had she tried to save him? Yes. She had tried. He had survived the first wave of the flash flood and after that she had thought he was
safe.
How about him saving her? Yes. He had to. Because, instead of getting him off that tree like she should have, she had gone to save his stupid ducks.
But--- she had not known the rest of the flood was coming, had she?
Harriet let go of the rock, the current pulling her closer to the waterfall.
Even now, she could almost feel Clarence’s cool hand gently touch her head. How she wished she could remember that last touch.
She kicked and sliced up through the water to her friends.
Dana counted. “One hundred thirty one, one hundred thirty two…..” Harriet erupted from the water, twisting to land sitting on the channel wall. Dana smiled like he had won a price.
Tomas’ eyes popped. “How long can you hold your breath?”
They watched her.
“A little over two minutes. Grandpa Hoier taught us how.”
Ella interrupted. “Teach us!” She smiled to include Dana and Tomas. “We can explore underwater!”
They settled around the hearth in the first chamber as if it held a comforting blaze. The room was warm and their clothes dried quickly.
Tomas asked Harriet. “So. What about Fread’s hand?”
She had promised they would talk about that and now there was no way to get out of it. Dana caught her eye and turned to Tomas. “Vani Stratt sells the grotto water at Market.”
Ella said. “I heard a lady say it cured her dog’s rash.”
Tomas said. “There’s a big difference between a rash and a deep cut.”
Harriet sat cross-legged with her hands resting palm up in her lap. In the fleshy area below her thumb, the shiny scar of her own instantly healed cut looked up at her. “I had a cut heal instantly in the grotto.”
Dana looked at her in surprise.
Ella’s expression smoothed out like she was trying to remember something that had happened to her in the grotto.
Harriet lifted her head and looked at them. “I think it has to do with the rose crystals.”
They discussed their theories, everyone coming up with different ideas. Harriet felt she had shared enough. Dana looked at her with questions that he did not ask.
After they talked for a long time about the valley, the outlet tunnel, the focusing music, and their worklearners assignments, Tomas stretched out on his back gazing up at the corbeled stone ceiling. “These ancient people sure were good with stone.”
Ella stood and turned a slow circle, surveying the room. “They lived right here.” She spread her arms toward the ceiling. “We are in their home.”
Quiet settled over them. Harriet laid back and felt the others doze off.
Clarence had saved her. She was alive because he had sacrificed himself. Maybe Stevie was right, maybe she was only half a person.
When Harriet closed her eyes, she saw Clarence touch her head that last time. She heard the flood pounding down to sweep him away. Pounding, pounding, until it became a rhythm beating at her mind.
BEAT-----beat--beat. BEAT----beat--beat. BEAT----beat--beat.
Like the focusing music at its deepest tone.
She sat up, her palms against her chest. A deep rhythm thrummed through her, filling the air around her. Rosy light spilled out from the inner most chamber; the chamber without a hearth.
She stood. The rhythm pulled her through the second chamber and into the smallest, the chamber where Dana’s bi-colored eyes could not look without weeping, the chamber that was filled with a rosy light, like the warmth of a perfect sunrise.
Dead center, with the walls folded around her, she dropped to her knees, her forehead resting on her thighs. She rocked forward, backward, forward, backward with the rhythm, pulsing light surrounding her.
Her mind opened to the light
Light surrounds her so bight she sees the bones inside her hands.
She floats with the light. She does not feel the stone under her legs. She does not feel anything. She is the light.
Clarence floats beside her. He turns his head and smiles at his twin. “I am here.”
Harriet answers the only way she can. “You are dead and it is my fault.”
“There is no fault.” He reaches over to cradle his cool hand over the top of her head. “I am where I want and need to be.”
The guilt she has lived with since his death floats away, replaced by the knowledge that she too is where she needs to be.
Calm flows through her. This is where she wants to stay. Here she is complete.
He smiles at her. “You are doing so well in Shi-octon. I am proud of you.
His fingers lift off her head one at a time, his palm the last to break the connection.
She floats away into darkness.
Pain!
Harriet moaned and retched from deep in her belly, staggering past her startled friends. She doubled up beside the outlet channel, sweat pouring from her face. Between her sobbing moans, everything that could possibly be in her stomach retched out into the water.
Ella kneeled beside her, holding her forehead. She looked up.at the others. “Can we get her back to the tent?”
Dana walked over to the downstream tunnel entrance.
Ella yelled. “We can’t swim out! There’s a waterfall and too many rocks.”
Dana didn’t answer. He walked up to the doors and ran his fingers over the wood.
Tomas pointed. “There’s light coming through that crack.”
Dana’s hand outlined a small separate panel within the door, then pushed a dark knot in the wood. A door just big enough for a goat opened up, sunrise light streaming in.
It was a challenge getting Harriet through the opening. Dry heaves interrupted them every few feet, curling her into a ball.
Through the still sleeping village they half carried, half dragged their friend, trying to quiet her deep sobs. Finally in the tent, they flopped onto their sleeping bags to catch their breaths.
Harriet gradually quieted.
She rubbed her belly for several minutes and sat up, hugging her knees. “Okay.” She felt their eyes on her. “What’s for breakfast?”
Everyone groaned and rolled over to face the tent wall.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Homecoming
Seated around the picnic table, they filled up on Menja’s eggs and pancakes. Ella sat sideways so she could see the creek. “Squirrel, where did you get those snails?”
“On this side of the creek, True, where the culvert empties out.” Tomas looked at their bikes leaning against the big maple. “Are there any bike trails in the valley?”
The two of them chattered back and forth; Ella focused on her nature collecting and Tomas trying to interest her in bike tricks and trails. They both enjoyed the lively discussion, although neither one listened to the other too much.
Dana watched them, focusing on each in turn, but he had made sure he sat directly across from Harriet. His friendly eyes watched her as she waited for a quiet break in the conversation.
Pulling her shoulders back and her chin up, she pushed back her empty plate and spread her hands flat on the table, connecting with each of her friends, eye to eye, until she had their absolute attention.
A cool hand settled over the top of her head.
Harriet smiled. “I want to tell you about my twin brother Clarence.”
