by J. R. Rain
“How did you know about this cave?” Faye asked.
“It’s a sort of home away from home for me.”
“It’s cozy, but needs some cleaning.” Faye kicked at a mound of dirt covering the floor.
We both saw it. Faye’s boot uncovered a small wooden pencil buried in the dirt. The sort of pencil found in libraries everywhere. I plucked it out of the dirt and studied it. The graphite point was worn to a nub, teeth marks on one end. Probably tasted horrible.
Faye reached out with a shaking hand, and I passed it over. She studied the pencil until her eyes moistened, gleaming in the firelight. “It’s my father’s,” she said. “I’m sure of it. And he’s always losing them, too.”
“And apparently taking them from libraries as well,” I said.
With a flashlight, I moved carefully around the cave. More footprints. All relatively fresh. I pointed to the larger of the two prints. Maybe a size fifteen. “Bigfoot lives,” I said.
Faye said, “Wally Krispin. He’s a smart kid who’s afraid of his own shadow. How father ever convinced him to climb this mountain is any one’s guess.”
“Big kid,” I said, running the flashlight along the length of the print. And it took a while to do so.
“Big and awkward, all knees and elbows,” said Faye.
“And feet.”
We were quiet, ingesting the new information. Outside, the snow streaked horizontally across the opening. A full-fledged blizzard. The wind made high pitch noises. The high-pitched noises failed to bring images of warmth and security.
“I would hate to be out in this weather,” said Faye.
“Even Frosty would agree with you.”
“Frosty?”
I shrugged apologetically. “It’s late. My humor’s on cruise control.”
We watched the storm in silence. Faye held the pencil tightly. She sat straighter and with a noticeable spark in her eye. The spark of hope. She waved the pencil in front of me as if it were a magic wand and she could make her father appear. “This is a good sign, Sam Ward.”
“True, but not an answer to your father’s disappearance.”
She lay back in her sleeping bag, clutching the pencil to her chest. She positioned her other hand behind her head in a fleshy pillow. “Answers can come later, Sam. For now, I will take what I can get.”
I lay back, too, and closed my eyes and listened to the shrieking wind and knew there was no argument for hope.
* * *
It was much later when I awoke to complete silence and darkness. The storm had moved on and the fire had died. Silver moonlight poured through the cave’s small opening, blanketing the dirt floor. There was enough light to see that Faye’s sleeping bag was empty and that I was quite alone.
An inexplicable dread came over me, constricting my chest, tightening my stomach.
I pulled on my boots and coat, and moved over to the cave’s opening. Faye’s small tracks led down the slope, disappearing. She was probably on a potty break. I moved back into the cave and rummaged through my backpack and pulled on a full mountain climbing body harness and attached a coil of rope to my hip. If she needed help, I intended to be prepared. And if she didn’t need help, I intended to be prepared.
I stepped out of the cave and into the cold and followed her small footprints. I moved carefully over the fresh snow. My breath fogged before me. The snow made crunching noises with each step.
I had one fundamental rule: no one leaves on their own, not even me. Faye had broken that rule, even for a potty break.
The wind was cold enough to hurt the bones in my cheeks. I was sweating inside my clothing. Far below, a river rushed over submerged rocks, frothing whitecaps glowing in the moonlight.
Faye’s tracks continued down the slope until they moved parallel along a wide rock shelf. To my right, the mountain rose majestically in a sweep of glowing white ice. To the left, was a three hundred foot drop to the river far below. Faye’s tracks continued as far as the moonlight would reach.
Fifteen minutes later I rounded a slight bend and found her sitting on a rock, crying silently. Between her fingers was the little yellow pencil. I moved towards her, boots crunching. She looked up, startled, and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Sam?”
“Faye....” I inhaled deeply, my heart pounding in my chest. When I found my voice, I said, “We need to get back to camp. It’s not safe here.”
“I needed to be alone with my thoughts…I’m sorry.” She paused and touched my arm. “Sam, you’re shaking.”
“The last time I went looking for a woman I cared about, I found her dead.”
She stared up at me. Suddenly she lunged forward, throwing her arms around my waist, squeezing. A burst of air escaped from my lips. I moved my hands down her slender waist to the small of her back. When she spoke, her breath was warm on my neck, lips brushing my skin.
“I didn’t mean to worry you, Sam.” She looked up, her wet eyes searching my face. “You care about me? But I thought you hated me.”
“Why would I hate you?”
“For dragging you out here on this wild goose chase, for breaking the law—and because I can be a pain in the—”
“You didn’t exactly put a gun to my head.”
“But you would rather be anywhere but here, I just know it.”
“Right here is pretty good.”
“Yes, it is.” Faye squeezed me tighter. Suddenly, she cocked her head like a puppy, listening. “What’s that?”
I heard it too. A distant rumbling, like a runaway freight train. Gradually, the sound increased and became more distinct. Smaller rocks along the ledge bounced and rattled, and snow from above sifted down. Faye looked up into my face. “Sam, what is it?”
I set my jaw. “Avalanche.”
* * *
It was still too dark to see much of anything, but the avalanche was coming, as surely as if we were standing in the path of stampeding buffaloes. And it would only be gaining momentum, accumulating more and more followers like a Satanic cult.
We were completely exposed in either direction along the featureless rock shelf. Nowhere to run to, baby. With sickening dread, I realized there was only one option.
Faye suddenly pointed up, mouth widening in a silent scream. I turned and saw it. A billowing cloud of ice bearing down on us, moving impossibly fast. We were, of course, directly in its path.
I faced the river fifty feet below. Five stories, roughly. Could we survive such a fall into water? I didn’t know. The current foamed and churned like molten silver. I kissed Faye hard. Her blazing eyes told me she knew what we had to do. And as the thunder filled my head and the ground began to crumble away, we jumped out into the night air.
* * *
We fell at a terrifying rate, the walls of the canyon flashing by in a blur. I heard myself screaming, but never once did I lose my grip on Faye. Wind blasted over my ears. My jacket flapped like a failed parachute. Below, the river continued to widen rapidly until we hit the surface hard, feet first. Surrounded by tiny white bubbles, we plunged straight down to the sandy bottom, where Faye finally broke loose from my grip. We tumbled over and over like rag dolls, and as the powerful current swept us away, I glimpsed briefly a mountain of ice filling the river behind us like a frozen dam.
I pushed off the river bottom and streaked through the water, air bubbles escaping from my nostrils. A large chunk of ice flashed by like an albino meteoroid. I broke the surface, gasping. Fighting to keep my head above the frothing waves. I scanned the churning surface for Faye, calling out her name. The water was freezing and choppy. I gulped large amounts as I shouted her name.
To either side of the river, the water line was lowering, revealing glistening mud banks. A white chalky line indicated where the river had once been at its most abundant. Lowering rapidly, the source of the river dammed, the water was already a dozen feet below the chalky indicator.
Then I saw her, bobbing up and down in the currents, coughing. I kicked in
her direction, dodging a frozen cannonball hurtling through the currents. She saw me, shouted my name, then promptly disappeared below the black surface. I dove in and swam blindly until my groping hands found her narrow waist. I pulled her into me, and we broke the surface, gasping like newborns. She clawed at me as if I were a human buoy.
“Easy now,” I said.
I did my best to keep both our heads above the water. Mostly, I was successful. The shore was still thirty feet away, which was discouraging at best. But the river was rapidly diminishing with the accumulation of ice. I decided to hold our ground, so to speak, and tread water until the river ran itself out. Shortly we began to eddy, swirling in a sort of watery waltz. Then I felt bottom, or more accurately, a moss-covered boulder, and in another moment I was able to stand. As the river continued to lower, we ended up sitting together on the moss-covered boulder. Faye promptly vomited water, her body spasming with the effort. When she was done, she rested her head on my shoulder.
“Not my finest hour,” she said, wiping her mouth.
“Reminds me of prom night,” I said.
The night was silent, although the mountain still made grumbling noises. High above dark clouds swept across a star-filled sky.
“I feel like we’re on a tiny island in the middle of the river,” said Faye.
“Except there’s not much of a river now.”
Faye coughed up more water, finally emptying her lungs. She rubbed her chest. “God that burns.” Then she glared at me. “What took you so long, Sam Ward? I could have drowned out there.”
“A hero’s job is to save in the nick of time,” I said.
The river was nothing more than a trickling stream wending its way through the narrow canyon. My eyes followed it back to the ice wall. Water sloshed over the frozen fortification. The whole thing seemed unsteady at best. “C’mon,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”
We slid off the boulder and sludged through the muck. Snails crunched underfoot. Creatures, glistening in the moonlight, flopped frantically. Because we were soaked to the bone, the wind appeared colder than it was. I wondered if heroes shivered. I knew that the river, which wound through the bottom of the limestone canyon, was often banked by steep, towering walls. It was no different here. Finding a way out of the river might prove to be a problem, especially if we needed to do so quickly, which was beginning to be the case.
As we moved forward, I looked back over my shoulder. Water poured over the dam as it rapidly melted and crumbled away. The dam pulsated like a giant frozen heart.
I grabbed Faye’s hand. “C’mon!” We moved rapidly, slipping, looking for an opening within the bank. Long, wiry grasses clung to our ankles.
Suddenly, behind us, came the sound of a thunderclap, as if lightning had struck directly overhead. Or the boom of an ocean wave pounding the surf. The sound reverberated violently down the canyon’s steep walls. The ice dam had been compromised. Despite ourselves we stopped and looked back.
Water gushed through the ice with supernatural malignancy, the watery stampede spreading from bank to bank. Like a desert flashflood, it would obliterate anything in its path. I yanked on Faye’s hand, and we ran before the floodwaters.
There, to our right, the mud bank dropped to about fifteen feet. A tangle of roots grew out from the bank to dip down into the river. I grabbed a slimy root and stepped up onto the mud. Faye did the same, until she lost her footing and fell backwards into the muck. I looked behind us. Water ripped through the canyon like hounds on the hunt.
I jumped down and helped Faye back onto the mud wall, lifting first her hips, then her posterior until she had pulled herself to safety. Next, I jumped up onto the wall and grabbed a root and pulled. My boots dug into the mud bank. I could feel the water coming, sensed it breathing down my neck like something feral and hungry, feel the spray of water on my face and hands—
I ducked my head and closed my eyes and held onto a thick elderberry root as a tremendous force slammed into me—
Water filled my mouth and nostrils.
Instinctively, I reached up with one hand, searching blindly for the next root. But something hit my shoulder—perhaps ice—and almost tore me loose. I held on by one hand. I couldn’t breathe.
Maybe I should let go, I thought, and take my chances.
But to let go was to drown or bash my skull against one of the many rocks strewn along the riverbed. My hand searched for the next root. Found it, pulled. My next grab was not a root, but cold flesh. It was Faye, and with her help, I lifted my head out of the currents and flopped over onto the mud bank, gasping. There, I turned my head and vomited the water that filled my lungs.
“You’re right,” I gasped, rubbing my burning chest. “It burns like hell.”
I closed my eyes, exhausted, and wanted to sleep forever.
Chapter Twenty-one
Hours later, with the morning sun strong on our backs, we sat together and watched the river. We were both in our long underwear, which wasn’t as exciting as it sounds. Our jackets lay open next to us, drying, as were our boots and socks. Faye’s head was resting against my shoulder and I was chewing on a blade of grass, idly wondering how many bugs, sheep and goats had chewed on this same blade of grass.
“You okay?” I asked Faye for the tenth time.
“Yes,” she answered. “For the hundredth time.”
Apparently, Faye Roberts was prone to exaggeration. Three hundred yards upriver, snow and ice continued to sift down over the ledge in a fine spray of sugar. These were the stragglers, trailing behind the avalanche. Some of the ice floated past us like miniature icebergs.
“Doesn’t look so scary when you see it one piece at a time,” I said.
Faye was silent. “Why did the avalanche strike, Sam?”
“Most avalanches strike either during or just after a storm, especially storms that dump a lot of snow. Add to the mix a slope with more than a twenty-five degree angle and high winds, and you have a very typical recipe for an avalanche. All of which were in place last night. We were in the wrong place at the right time.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “Ice under the bridge.”
She snuggled a little closer to me. “Where does this river lead?” she asked.
“The Ahora Gorge,” I said.
“How often have you traversed this river?” she asked.
“Rarely,” I said.
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s called Bear River for a reason.”
“What a mess,” she said, running a hand through her sun dried hair. “And it’s all my fault.” “So, Miss Roberts, what did we learn from this lesson?”
She stood and held her hand over her heart as if she were giving the Pledge of Allegiance. “No one goes out on their own, not even the great Sam Ward.”
“You college professors learn quick.”
She ignored me, concern suddenly crossing her face. “What about our gear?”
I shook my head. “We leave it. It would be another day and half to climb out of this canyon even with adequate climbing gear, which I lost in the dip in the river. No, we’ll follow the river to the Ahora Gorge.”
“But what do we eat?”
“Anything we can find.”
Faye made a face. “What about water?”
I undid a leather pouch attached to my belt, and laid out in the grass my pocketknife, a small first-aid kit, and a plastic hermetically sealed container with small pellets. I pointed to the pellets. “Emergency iodine pellets,” I said. “To purify drinking water. All good guides should have them handy.”
“Luckily, you just happen to be a good guide.”
“Luckily.”
* * *
With our jackets and boots dry, we followed an animal trail which ran parallel to the riverbank. Thick foliage lined the shore: rushes, reeds, tamarisks and even buttercups. The canyon walls, disappearing up into the sunlight, were salmon-colored and reflected the noon sun like a giant mirror. A nar
row strip of sky shimmered between the towering cliffs, like a blue sky river.
The path was heavily overgrown, and almost immediately I was forced to stop before a particularly dense section of reeds and rushes. A machete would have been nice. I suggested that we backtrack and search for a more accessible route. She said fine, you’re the guide. Faye’s hair was plastered to her sweaty red face. I concluded that a lack of food and water, and a general sense of hopelessness had gotten her in a foul mood.
The sun glinted off the churning water. Sunglasses would have been nice, too, but they were back in the cave, like everything else. We made good progress, despite frequent back-tracking. I used my forearms as a machete, parting long branches and thick reeds. Occasionally, when the foliage became too dense and the backtracking method failed to turn up an accessible route, we were forced into the river, wading with boots in hand.
With increasing regularity I was noticing how Faye’s blue polyurethane mountain climbing pants hugged her hips and buttocks. The muscles in her calves and hamstrings bulged through the material. I never realized how interesting mountain climbing apparel could look.
The river made pleasant gurgling noises, and the hum of insects filled the air. I continued to part the reeds and grasses with my forearm until finally we stepped out into an open field of dry grass. But we were not alone. I stopped, and Faye bumped into me from behind. “Hey, why are we stopping?”
I held up my hand. But it was too late. An adult female brown bear turned her massive head to stare at us from the shallows of the river. A partially masticated trout hung from her jaws. She was a huge creature, thick fur hanging down around her belly, dripping water. The trout dropped from her jaws and was swept away on the current.
That wasn’t good, because she was giving up one source of food for another.
Her head dipped down and swayed from side to side, as if looking at us with alternate eyes. And then she roared, a deep-throated sound that echoed off the canyon wall behind us. I grabbed Faye’s hand. “C’mon!” And we turned and ran back the way we’d come.
