by Kathy Parks
My head hits a rock, hard. The rest of my breath sprays out of me, leaving a hurting place in my chest. The pain of not breathing is like someone’s foot kicking into my sternum.
Daddy.
He’d tell me to keep trying, but it hurts so much. That light above me is so real and so close I give it one last shot, lunging for the surface, but my hand claws nothing but black water. I claw and claw again but I’m weak now, slow. I’m nothing but leaves and tiny sticks, a package of nothing smothered by the same river that carries me along. . . .
Something strange is happening. The dull roar of the river is fading. I hit rocks but don’t feel them. And the water is warm. There is not just light above me but around me, orange and yellow. It’s like the sun fell into the river and melted and I don’t have to reach for it anymore. It feels golden and light. It’s summer down here. Summer inside me.
My body lets go. My lungs give up. They don’t work anymore. I don’t have to try to live, and I’m filled with a great peace. This is what my father felt when his heart line went flat and they turned off his—
A hand grabs my arm and pulls me out of the water and into an expanse of strange swift blankness, like sleep but less gentle, without color or sound. I wake up on the gray bank, soaking wet, my clothes heavy and cold, my body aching as though I’ve been beaten. At first I’m totally motionless and then I’m seizing and bucking as I cough up river water and take a goldfish bowl–sized inhalation of pure Siberian air, then another, then another, until the seesaw of life and death slowly levels.
Dan saved me. I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to swim to the bank and pull me out of the water. I turn my head and see footprints in the mud of the bank, trailing off into the woods. “Dan!” I call weakly, my voice echoing in the silence. “Dan!”
I manage to sit up. I taste blood in my mouth, and my tongue finds a space where a tooth used to be. I slide my hands over my body, up and down each arm, my legs, my neck, my face, bewildered at my wholeness, my breathing, my warmth and movement and thought. This miracle called living that just a few hours ago I was taking for granted.
Dan is nowhere to be seen. Where did he go? Slowly I stand, testing out my legs. The small of my back hurts. My knuckles are scraped. My face feels raw and my head swims.
I look down the river. The boat has flipped and is on its side, held between a rock and a fallen tree about a hundred yards away. I turn and follow the footsteps that lead into the steep woods, calling Dan’s name. I don’t understand why he’d pull me out of the river and then just take off. Maybe he’s injured or stunned or not in his right mind.
“Dan!” I scream. I’m shivering from the cold and limping. The ground slopes upward, and I struggle through the brush, stopping every few feet to call for my stepfather. I step on something and a vine swings out, lashing razor-sharp thorns across my face. I gasp and touch my cheek. My hand comes away streaked with blood. I give up and make my way back to the riverbank, moving slowly toward the boat.
“Dan!”
Nothing but the rush of water and the echo of his name. Up ahead, a tree has fallen across the river, between two boulders near the bank. I stop. I see something.
I see Dan’s red jacket.
I scramble toward the color, holding on to exposed tree roots and low-hanging branches to steady myself until I am parallel to it.
Dan’s body is pinned between rocks. His arms float. His face is underwater.
For a moment, I freeze. My cold hand grips a wet root. This can’t be. His eyes are open. The current lifts his hair from his head.
Enough breath gathers in me to scream his name. My shrill, broken voice echoes through the canyon. His arms don’t move. I can’t reach him. The water is too swift to wade in. Frantic now, I scramble around the bank, looking for a fallen branch to use as a lever to free him. Finally I find one, strip off the foliage to form a pole, and dip the pole into the water, trying to push it between Dan and the rocks that hold him down. The rocks don’t budge. The branch breaks in half. I find another branch, try again, keep trying long after it’s too late to help him.
I fall on my knees on the bank, crying. Dan is gone. There is only me, and somewhere, them. The sun is hot on the back of my neck. My clothes are drying.
I no longer doubt the danger. I no longer doubt my stepfather. I no longer doubt the family.
I am a believer.
Part Two
* * *
In my study of the Osinovs, I found myself. I found the part of me that wanted to run away, to seek shelter in the wilderness, to leave everything behind me. Just leave.
Dr. Daniel Westin
New York Times article
* * *
Ten
I look at my stepfather submerged under the water and begin to scream. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that screaming is the worst thing I can do, that I need to be as silent and invisible as the beasts and the humans in the woods or they will follow my voice as well as my scent and find me here, defenseless.
I don’t care. I scream until I am hoarse, and then I finally stop, exhausted.
It’s warmed up a little, although my clothes haven’t fully dried. I stand up slowly. The boat is still resting down the river on some rocks. Even from here I can see the engine has been ripped off, leaving a gaping hole. All the contents of the boat spilled out when it flipped. I have no food or supplies, and the only clothes I have I am wearing.
I have no knife or weapon. No way to get food. No way to keep warm when night falls. And somewhere in the woods, the family lurks. The strange and dreamy father, the quiet mother, the wild children. The girls who coo like doves. I brace for the sound of that cooing, listen for it in the wind. Is one of them the ghostly little girl who appeared in my tent? And will she appear again, less friendly? Is she behind a tree right now? Is her breath on my neck? I raise my hand to it as though shielding it from the sting of a wasp. I force air into my lungs, count, hold it, willing my body to calm itself. This is no time to give in to horror. I have to get back to civilization. Back to where I belong.
Cold, fresh water flows a few feet away. A small group of silvery fish swims in the shallows. Maybe when I get hungry enough, I can catch one and eat it raw.
In the meantime, I have to walk. I know the impossibility of walking alone through the strange and mountainous wilderness for four hundred kilometers. Possibly I won’t make it. But if I die, I’ll die walking. My father would have expected that for me. My stepfather too. I almost glance back over at the place in the water where he lies just beneath the surface, but I stop myself.
It’s strange to me, this sudden feeling of wanting to live, having that be my only goal. I always took it for granted, this life thing. Even after my father died, I still just assumed my own life would be there, all broken up and full of anger and grief but there. And now, it’s dangling like a carrot at the far end of the river. Well, fine, carrot. Here I come. I’m going to do what Dan did: defy the odds. Believe in something despite the chorus of voices, real or imagined, that tries to interfere. I’m going to live. And I’m going to write that article. Not the one about Dan, my stepfather the idiot. But Dan, my stepfather the professor, the scholar, the hero. The one who never gave up. The believer who traced his belief to the source of it and found proof at last.
I never could do anything about my father’s story. How unfairly it ended. And the press made it less about him and more about the drunk sorority girl who killed him, whose name I won’t say because she doesn’t deserve to have it said out loud. But I can do something about Dan’s story. If I can only survive it.
The sun shows through a blanket of clouds and then disappears, leaving a chill on my face. My heart is still pounding and I know I will never stop being afraid until I am back in the civilized world, but I’m going to be afraid while moving, not standing still like a target or an animal of prey. My shoes are waterlogged and heavy, but I elect to keep them on to protect my feet. I start walking down the bank, putting
distance between myself and the dead, my body tense against some kind of attack that might come at any moment from the trees around me, or for that matter, from the river or sky. Everything is so foreign to me that I don’t even know the rules of nature anymore. A bird flies over the river, captures a fish, and is gone. I’m still shivering from cold and fear, and by noon a knot of hunger has formed in me.
As the afternoon wears on, rain lightly sprinkles, and the chasm of the river darkens. I hear the drops splatter against the broad birch leaves. When I reach the next turn in the river, I see that the bank is gone, and the forest grows right to the edge of the river. I will have to force my way through the trees and try to follow the river by sound.
“Great,” I mumble, trying to take comfort in how casual that word sounds when I say it out loud. Great. Like I’m talking about traffic on Route 36 or having to scrape a layer of snow off my car windshield. Great. How inconvenient.
“Stupid Siberia,” I say aloud, and listen to my voice. I feel a tiny bit calmer. Encouraged, I keep going.
“Stupid boat.”
“Stupid Osinovs.”
“Stupid life or death.”
I shiver and shut up. I’ve gone too far. That word, death, is now outlawed in any tone of voice.
I push inward through the forest. The roar of the river is still audible, but it’s exhausting to try to make progress through the thick foliage and uneven terrain. If I think about it, I’ll be too scared to go on, so I try to think of something else, anything else, other than what might be waiting for me in the gloom. I’m making a racket, stepping on old branches and blundering through brush, with not much ground covered to show for it. Finally I collapse under a tree. My legs hurt and so do my feet. I feel a ravenous hunger now, and remember that in my pocket I carry a square of wrapped chocolate I’d found in my room at the hotel in Abakan. Miraculously, it’s still intact after my swim in the river. I fish it out, unpeel the shiny golden wrapper and eat it. It’s bitter and gone too soon.
I lean back against the tree and close my eyes. I’m not sure what time it is. Noon? Three o’clock? I can’t tell. The tops of the trees block the sun. It’s not only hard but borderline ridiculous to imagine that, this time yesterday, the biggest problem was navigating the river and trying to find a good place to camp.
The rain patters against the leaves but barely touches me. Exhaustion blunts my fear. Frogs around me begin to croak and I make note of one other class of familiar things that I join to the others: Frogs, trees, rain, chocolate . . .
I sleep. Or I must be sleeping, because the same little girl from my dream comes to me again, moving barefoot through the forest. She is easier to see now, wearing a dress of plain muslin, her shoes of the pelt of some wild animal, showing crude stitching. She is beautiful, with large green eyes and a perfect nose and a bewitching smile. A strawberry-shaped birthmark on one cheek. Still smiling, she kneels in front of me, although her dress doesn’t get damp in the rain.
Privyet, she says, and I answer her back without understanding what the word means.
“Privyet.”
Ty boish’sya? she asks, and I don’t understand, so I shake my head. This seems to perplex her. She bows low, tilting her head to look up at me, raindrops on her face and lashes and yet her clothing and hair completely dry. She seems friendly, curious, as though she had no desire to harm me. But what is she telling me? My Russian-English travel guide was in my backpack and, with the rest of my earthly possessions, has found some wild and useless resting place, pages pulled apart and caught on branches, there to dry and be taken by birds and tucked into their nests.
Ty boish’sya? She emphasizes the phrase, then repeats it again slower, louder, as though that will make me understand. Ty boish’sya?
“I don’t know!” My voice is a shriek now.
She shakes her head sorrowfully, her smile slipping a little. She leans in close, her face inches away. On idyot! she whispers. And the words suddenly come to me. They leap off the page of the travel guide.
He is coming!
I jerk awake, finding myself in a cross-legged position under a tree and the rain now stopped, the entire forest dripping and fresh, as though summer itself was a stalk freshly cut and leaking sap. Fatigue courses through every bone in my body, but I scramble to my feet and begin to run.
On idyot! Branches scrape my face. My heavy legs bog down and fight their way out of mud, my lungs heaving for breath. I finally have to stop, bracing myself against a tree, panting hard. Then suddenly, it comes to me, distinct and certain.
A footstep.
I freeze and listen.
Another.
I move back against the tree, fighting the urge to scream, my heart racing again. I can’t decide whether to bolt or stay still. I elect to stay still, and keep my breathing shallow, although every nerve in my body feels ready to explode.
Another footstep. Another. Slow and methodical. Closing fast.
I can’t stay. I have to run. He is coming, he is coming, and I plunge through the trees and the vines, branches scraping me, briars tearing at my clothes and face. Behind me, a crashing sound as the stranger pursues me. This is no animal. This is a human being. No bear or wolf or mountain lion runs that way. I’m shouting for my father, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” He needs to come back and help me, or I’ll be lost in these woods forever, pieces of me carried away by animals and birds.
I turn around and see him. I take in his features with a shock: young, bearded, hair around his shoulders, pale skin, eyes blazing, coming at me. I scream and turn back around, desperately trying to outrun him, but he’s gaining on me. He’s going to catch me.
“Daddy, Daddy, Dad—”
I fall off the edge of the world.
Eleven
Slowly I open my eyes.
I’m lying inside a hut. A rough blanket covers me. My right arm hurts terribly, and I pull it out from under the blanket.
I gasp.
My sleeve has been cut away. There’s a purplish hump between my wrist and elbow. The pain subsides, then comes back fiercely, and I draw in my breath, inhaling the scents of mulch, ashes, pine shavings, and something more pungent. The last odor is familiar. Suddenly I place it. Hemp. Strands of it are mixed in with the shavings on the spongy floor beneath me. Gritting my teeth, I manage to put my injured arm back under the blanket. My eyes adjust to the light coming through the windows, which are just holes cut into the walls. I look around the hut.
A table made of halved logs. Long, straw-covered benches on either side of the table and more benches lining the walls. Rolled animal pelts and spears stacked neatly in a corner. A crucifix on the far wall, next to a cold stone fireplace.
I try to rise, but the pain in my arm turns sharp and I cry out. The sound I made must have stirred someone, because I hear quick footsteps entering the hut and I hold my breath, terrified and helpless.
A girl stands over me. She’s older than the girl who appeared in my dream, probably at least sixteen. She is small boned and tiny and shares the girl’s delicate features and shy smile. Her hair is the color of sand and long around her shoulders. Her dress is made of sacking material, covered with patches of different colors, and reaches her feet.
She says something to me, in a language I immediately recognize as that of the little girl in my dreams: that strange, lilting collection of sounds, so much like the cooing of a dove.
“What?” I ask.
She giggles. Shakes her fingers in front of her in some kind of fit of delight, and motions to me with a tiny hand, then back to herself.
“I don’t understand,” I say, and again the giggles, the delighted squeal, the shaking of her fingers. Like a child playing in a sprinkler made out of language. She gestures, her hands motioning back to herself. She wants more words, and so I give them to her in a voice I hope sounds harmless and reasonable.
“My name is Adrienne Cahill. I come from America. We were looking for your family. Everyone’s dead.”
It
must be my expression and my flat tone and the way my voice throttles on that word dead that makes her throw her hand over her mouth and look at me with wide eyes.
“Day.” She says, and I realize she’s trying to repeat it.
“Dead.” I say.
“Day.”
“Never mind.” I pull my good arm out from under the covers and point to myself.
“Adrienne,” I say. It’s strange how utterly calm I feel in her presence. She and her family might eat me for dinner, but right now, in this sliver of a moment, in this soft flood of window light, I feel welcomed and consoled. She radiates goodwill and seems just seems too friendly, too sweet, to have been a party to the murders at the camp. She might’ve helped carry off some of our supplies, but she seems incapable of harming anyone.
I say it again. “Adrienne.” I then point to her. “Kak tebya zavut?” What is your name?
She suddenly turns shy, sweeping up her arm to cover her face. Only a red-lipped smile is visible. Her lips move but no sound comes out. She takes her arm away and shrieks, “Clara!”
“Clara,” I repeat. She whoops, delighted, and points at me. “A-drum!”
“Right,” I say. “A-drum.”
She comes closer to study me, eyebrows arched. She touches the silver strand of the necklace Margot gave me, holds it between her fingers, and lets it trail until she finds the pendant. She touches the smooth jade with the first letter of my name inlaid in silver. There is nothing to compare it to in her world, perhaps, besides a stone polished by the river or the smooth shell of a fallen egg or the fangs of some dead beast her family cut up for dinner.
“My friend gave me that,” I tell her in English, and she laughs. I keep talking, trying to calm myself. “She said you didn’t exist. She’s going to feel pretty bad when I send her a selfie.”
