The Light Pirate(84)
The wind hasn’t begun to scream yet, but when it does she’ll have to seek shelter wherever she can find it. She hopes there’s time to make it home before that happens. Usually, she doesn’t need to hope, because she knows these things. Not tonight. Tonight, all of these little voices that have been guiding her since she was a child—the whispers that usually tell her where the fish are swimming, whether her traps are full, when the winds are coming, how long they’ll last—have gotten lost. Or worse, were dismissed. She’s been working so hard to silence her mind as it brims with thoughts of Bird Dog that she’s silenced everything else, too. Now all she hears is the cacophony of the storm. Rain smashes into her knuckles and drills down on her scalp. The bottom of the canoe begins to fill with rainwater and the current catches hold of her, trying to pull her in the wrong direction. She refuses to be scared, not yet. Without the wind, this is only a storm. The hurricane isn’t far—this much at least she knows. Her aching body, still healing, is reticent to provide the strength she needs to battle the waves, but this will not do. She pushes herself harder, to the brink, a torrent of adrenaline coursing through her veins to match the roaring canal on either side of her.
She pilots her craft by instinct and memory, the water slamming into her from every direction. All around her is darkness, the moon and the stars sewn shut. Water continues to accumulate at her feet, glimmering now, sloshing in over the sides and pounding down from above. She gives the paddle everything she has, and just as she feels the bow of her canoe break free of the current the paddle snaps in two. A sharp crack and then she’s left holding one piece, the other washed away, the splintered end slicing into her palm. The canoe slips back into the current’s grasp and there is nothing she can do but let it carry her wherever it wishes.
So she lets it. She huddles in the bottom of the boat, still holding the broken half, the glimmering water growing brighter as it swirls around her. Curled like a child in the womb of her canoe, the water cupping her like amniotic fluid, she squeezes her eyes shut and wonders if this is the end. The canoe is wrenched back and forth by the current—whitecaps break over the bow, rocks slam against the underbelly, and the water pulls her, faster and faster, toward the ocean maybe, or away from it. She’s lost all sense of direction now. She could bail out and take her chances swimming, but even at her strongest she is no match for a current like this. She could try to grab hold of a branch or a rock as it rushes past, but she can’t make anything out, it’s all going by too quickly, and the part of her that wants to survive is too tired to fight. The wind comes to bear as she thinks all this, loud and jagged and riotous. It’s here. While the storm churns all around her, trying to penetrate this little pocket of stillness she has created in the slim space between her face and her drawn-up knees, Wanda finally hears the voice she’s been missing. But it isn’t a whisper; it’s a shout.
Wind snatches it away before she can make out the words. Nearby, the sound of a thick tree trunk cracking in half and an enormous slap as its weight falls into the water. The air is full not only of rain now, but of branches and leaves and whatever else the wind can pick up. And then—the canoe jerks and spins, caught on something strong. Wanda can feel the water rushing past, but the canoe isn’t pulled along with it.
She uncurls, opens her eyes, and there is Bird Dog, her face lit by the glow of the water Wanda’s vessel has taken on, holding the edge of the canoe, her mouth open. Shouting, Wanda realizes, shouting her name. Bird Dog reaches in and grabs a fistful of Wanda’s shirt. She pulls her out and keeps hold of the boat at the same time, dragging them both up onto a narrow spit of land. Bird Dog pushes Wanda down on the ground and in one smooth, steady motion she flips the canoe over them both.
The change in sensations is so fast, it leaves Wanda breathless. Rain thrums against the hull but cannot reach them. The wind howls overhead but cannot touch them. The mud is slippery, the air dense. She can feel Bird Dog’s body against her, warm and alive. It is shocking to be this close, but all she can think about is how much she’d like to be closer still. The darkness should be complete, but it isn’t—the water coating Wanda’s skin still glows ever so slightly, just enough to illuminate Bird Dog’s face.
“How?” she asks, and her voice is louder than she intends. Her ears are still recovering from the roar of the storm. There is more to this question, but she can’t find the words. Bird Dog exhales and she can feel it on her cheeks.
“You’re your own goddamn spotlight, you know that? Storm come up outta nowhere. Smashed the raft to pieces. I haul myself up onto the bank and what do I see just about ready to pass me by? A goddamn spotlight.” They’re quiet then. The canoe shudders overhead, the wind trying to claw it from the ground, but Bird Dog holds it tight by the bench seat and the gust moves on, slipping over the smoothness of the hull. The glow that clings to Wanda’s skin dims and goes out. She is braver in the dark.
They move toward each other in increments: an inch toward the other is an unspoken question, the next inch its answer. Above, the hurricane shrieks and wails through the trees, but below, here, inside this dark cocoon, two women say yes with these tiny movements, again and again. Crushed between them now, Wanda’s fear has no space to protest. Her body tells her what to do and she does it, pulling Bird Dog toward her until there is nothing separating them but fabric and skin.
It’s hard to say how long they spend huddled together beneath the overturned canoe, but eventually the wind quiets. The rain stops.