DARKNESS. Freezing.
The murmur of cascading water.
Reality bit at her cut and bruised body, enveloped her in ice, washed around her, cold and unrelenting.
Too tired to open her eyes, she couldn’t remember where she was. Her face lay against something smooth and cold. Her arms felt wedged. Something held her steady as the frigid water curled around her, robbing her body of its last bit of heat. With that warmth had bled all sensation, and all she could do was bob on the current.
Water. She remembered water.
A great wall of water.
And then…
Blackness.
Madeline exhaled deeply. She was so tired. At least her head was above water now. She could just breathe and lie there. But she wanted to sleep. Sleep sounded so good. To rest.
Madeline lay still and let the water toss her about as she breathed in the crisp air.
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, some distant voice nagged at her, told her to pull herself out of the glacial meltwater, but she just couldn’t muster the energy to move.
Water, spiraling, no air to breathe.
Hands clutching at her, dragging her down.
Darkness.
Blood. A dark-haired woman with sightless, staring eyes, throat gashed open, spilling blood. A man struck down in a street, the blood-soaked back of his long coat shredded violently. A feeble old man cowering in a corner, shrieking in terror-
Darkness.
Hands. Pulling her out of the river.
A room full of spinning dancers in ball gowns. A cobble-stone street filled with the sound of clopping horse hooves. A lone candle burning atop a small piano. An opera house filled with the music of Mozart.
Darkness.
Faint sun on her eyelids.
A deep, kind voice: “Hey, you’re awake. I was worried. That’s quite a nasty cut on your head.”
“Cut?” Madeline said groggily. All she could feel was cold. Deep, numbing cold. She brought a tentative, shaky hand to her forehead, but her hand was so numb it felt like it was asleep. She thought she detected water on her head, but it was slick, like blood. And if it was blood, her head was covered in it. “Nothing bleeds like a head wound,” came her mother’s voice from somewhere inside her, echoing from a time when things were much easier.
“You’re drenched through. You need dry clothes and fast. I didn’t want to move you-didn’t know if you’d broken anything. But you could be hypothermic. Are your thoughts clear?”
Madeline managed to open her eyes. They came open with a wet sucking sound, and cold water leaked into them from the corners of her eyes. As things came into focus, Madeline saw the stranger kneeling beside her. He was slightly older than her, maybe in his mid-twenties; semi-short, wavy blond hair; a slightly scruffy ill-shaven face with angular features; and haunting green, green eyes.
He left her side then. The first thing she checked, body moving stiffly, was that she still wore her bracelet with its precious silver box securely latched. She did, and it was. She also felt the weight of her pocket knife in her pocket. She hadn’t lost everything. She lay blinking in the fading sunlight, blissfully warm on her face. He returned a moment later with a first aid kit. Quickly he withdrew a silver emergency blanket and laid it over her, though she couldn’t feel the difference.
She tried to move, tried even to shift her weight, but she felt incredibly heavy and suddenly realized what they meant by waterlogged. She felt like the two-ton trunk of a tree.
Rummaging through the kit, he produced some bandages and Neosporin. He held them up and said, “Glad I always keep a first aid kit in my backpack.”
“Oh, my backpack…” she said faintly, full of regret, remembering shrugging it off desperately in the cold water. “My supplies…” But she knew wriggling out of it had saved her life.
“Don’t worry about that now.” He gingerly dabbed the bandage on the cut. “I’m just going to clear some of the blood away so I can have a better look at the wound.” After a moment of dabbing he said, “It’s stopped bleeding.”
“Where am I, exactly?” she asked, wondering how far she’d been swept away.
“You’re way backcountry. Don’t know how long you were in the drink.”
She squinted, swallowed hard. “Think I floated on a limb for a while.” She remembered feeling her arms lodged between branches.
“Probably saved your life.” He shook his head slightly. “I hiked about six hours to get out this far.” He affixed a bandage with tape and smiled amiably. “Luckily, this is the first backcountry camp on this trail. We should be able to make it back within a day.” His smile faded as he studied her intently.
“What is it?” she asked, uncomfortable suddenly under his gaze.
“Do you remember anything you said before you woke up?”
“Was I talking in my sleep?”
He nodded. “Were you having a dream?”
Madeline shook her head, which throbbed in protest. “Not exactly, I…”
And then, checking the tape on the bandage, the stranger touched his bare hand to the skin of her forehead, and striking visions flickered to life before her.
A masquerade party-costumed people whirling on a dance floor.
Tinkling notes of a harpsichord drifting down a grand hall.
Climbing inside a horse-drawn carriage on a busy cobblestone street.
Racing in a Model T along a dirt road in pursuit of another car.
Rain falling in sheets beyond a French window.
Fighting off the images, Madeline managed to speak. “No, I don’t remember any dreams.” She wasn’t about to go into detail about her wonderful “gift” with this stranger. Her head hurt too much to concentrate on those elusive visions, and they slipped away. “How bad is it?” she asked him tentatively.
“I don’t think you’ll need stitches. Just rest and someone to watch over you. Your pupils are a little dilated. Can you focus?” He held up a hand. She nodded. “Do you feel sick to your stomach?”
“Hard to tell. I just generally feel terrible.” She struggled to sit up then, suddenly aware of how uncomfortable the ground was. Once up, she realized she was lying on a vast stretch of bleached white driftwood, stripped of its bark over time by the river, jumbles upon jumbles of it carried down over the years and distributed along the bank by the same river that had brought her there. A particularly sharp limb had been under her back. The man watched her sit up, readying to grab her if she got dizzy.
“I spotted your green shirt in the white branches. You were in the water, tangled in those logs,” he told her. “I was a little afraid to approach you. Thought you might have been…”
“What?” she said, unsteadily getting to her feet. “Dead?” Her legs were positively numb, and she wobbled, barely maintaining her balance.
He nodded.
“And you pulled me out of the water?”
“Yes.”
Madeline crinkled her brow. She remembered hands grabbing at her in the water, pulling her down. Perhaps she’d dreamed it. Or maybe it had just been the limbs of a tree. She also remembered the dark visions that had accompanied them.
“When I got closer, I heard you gasping.”
“And talking.”
“Yeah, that, too, after I picked you up.” He smiled. It was a lovely smile.
“I said something embarrassing, didn’t I?”
“No, no,” he assured her. “Nothing like that. Just stuff about picking your nose.”
“Oh, no,” she mumbled.
“No, seriously.”
He touched her then, and a stream of visions came to her.
Weeping before a flower-strewn casket.
A covered wagon on fire.
Sunset over a meadow ablaze with vibrant wildflowers.
He was a source of powerful images, and she did her best to block any more input from him. It was rare for her to even pick up visions from touching people. Usually only objects gave her images.
One of the only other people she could remember picking up images from was Mrs. Ferrington, her neighbor, whose sister had been hit by a car in 1917. Mrs. Ferrington, all of six at the time, had been standing not more than ten feet away when it happened. Her sister had lived, with no permanent injury, but the incident itself had traumatized Mrs. Ferrington-left powerful pictures Madeline had picked up on suddenly one afternoon while helping the elderly lady in her garden.
But that was the only person. Except… that day in the forest when Ellie…
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look a million miles away.”
She came back to the present. “Yeah.”
“Anyway, you started talking when I pulled you out of the water.”
She tried to steady her mind. What if the terrible visions she’d received earlier were from this helpful stranger, as well? But no-those visions came from hands dragging her under, not out of, the water. Maybe she’d just been delirious.
Still, glancing away from him casually, she tried to see how tough the terrain was, if she’d be able to run from him if she had to. There was a lot of jagged-limbed driftwood and big glacial boulders in the way. It’d be a tough run.
But even if she could somehow manage to get away, she didn’t have any supplies. She had no way to purify backcountry water and knew she could catch some pretty nasty bugs from drinking it straight. She could survive long enough without food, but she’d be weak. And what if she had a concussion?
No-it would be best for now to stay with the stranger, she decided. Besides, if he did do those terrible things she’d seen, he certainly didn’t realize she knew. He had no way to know of her “gift.”
“Are you thirsty?” he asked.
Unless that is what she had been talking about while unconscious.
“Hungry at all?”
Unless she’d given a play-by-play account of his past crimes while lying half-conscious on the riverbank. That would explain why he was so anxious to see if she remembered what her “dreams” had been about.
“Hello?” he said.
“What?” she asked, forcing a smile.
“I asked if you needed something to drink.”
“Thanks, no,” she said, making herself talk evenly, calmly. She hooked a thumb at the river. “Had enough to drink today.”
He laughed at that. It was a good-natured laugh. “I guess so. Anyway, I’m Noah.” He held out his hand, and she shook it. “Noah Percival Lanchester.”
A ballroom. Dancing. Candles gleaming in the chandeliers. Warm laughter. No danger. No fear.
She pushed the images away. “That’s not a name you hear often,” she said, pulling her hand back.
“Yeah. Unless you’re building arks or something.” He smiled, and it was positively infectious. “The middle one’s because my parents are English professors. You know, as in King Arthur’s knight.” He smiled again.
“Right, but you’re missing your armor.”
He looked down, as if surprised. “So I am.”
“I’m Madeline. And thanks for helping me before I became an ice sculpture.”
“My pleasure, m’lady.” He bowed graciously, and she laughed. “Well,” he said, looking around judiciously, “we’ve got to get you into some warm clothes. It’s amazing you don’t have hypothermia. You must not have been in the water for very long. But that cut on your head-we need to get that looked at as soon as we get to the ranger’s station.”
“How far is that?” she asked.
“About ten miles, I think,” he responded. “But the good news is that it’s all downhill.”
Instantly she thought of her cell phone, of getting the ranger to meet them instead. But it had been in her pack. “Do you have a cell?” she asked him.
“No, though now I wish I did.” He regarded her, his smile falling away. “We are going to get you safely out of here.”
Noah suddenly glanced toward the river’s edge, then bent his head down in a furtive movement that was eerily quick, as if she didn’t actually see him move-suddenly he was just in a different position.
“What?” she asked, turning to follow his gaze.
Noah continued to stare in that direction. “Nothing. I thought I saw someone.”
“Out here?”
“Well,” he straightened up and looked back at her. “I’m traveling with someone else. He left camp this morning to go to a site higher up on the mountain. He’s a photographer-wanted to go get some sunset pictures. We’re supposed to meet back here in two days.”
She turned to regard the river, suddenly feeling scared and a long way from home. She thought about the icy water that had brought her there, shuddering at the memory. “I had just gone over Swiftcurrent Pass. The river just flooded so fast!” she said aloud. “I’d never seen anything like that before.” She watched it churn past now, overflowing its usual banks with roaring white turbulence.
“I know! I heard the boom and then bam! All this water and logs come tumbling down the mountainside. I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s a glacial lake up there,” he said, pointing at the snow-laden peak. “I think all this heat must have caused it to melt completely and break through its ice barrier.”
Madeline studied the glaciers on the peaks around her, their deep blue ice cracked in some places from the weight of accumulated layers. She loved glaciers, loved to see the deep black crevasses in the ice perched high on a precipice. But now she was afraid. Her brow knitted.
Noah saw it immediately. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said gently. “I’ve got plenty of food, plenty of water, and we’re going to hike out of here together.”
“Thank you for helping me,” she said.
His gaze was warm and genuine. “Of course,” he said. “I’m a knight, remember?”
“That’s right. Thank you.”
“Great. And if I’d just let you wander off, I’d never know how everything turned out. It’d be too much of a cliff-hanger.”
“Cliff-hanger?”
“Yeah,” he went on. “Something really serious happens and then cut! Straight to commercials, and they make you sit through all those cleaning supply ads with talking bathtubs and animated bald men appearing suddenly in your floor. I don’t know about you, but if my toilet suddenly grew eyes and started talking, I’d freak out!”
Madeline laughed out loud. “Well, no cliff-hanger here. I’d love your help.”
“Terrific,” he said. “Hungry?”
“Waterlogged.”
“Of course. Well, I’m going to make some pasta. Maybe the smell of it will entice you to eat. Freeze-dried backcountry food certainly does that to me. Yum! C’mon,” he added, gesturing over a little hill. “My camp’s just on the other side.”
At his camp stood a little purple and burgundy tent, a tremendous backpack with a cup and pan hanging off it, and a little Therm-a-Rest chair. Next to it lay a bear-safe food canister.
“Nice tent,” she said, though she was looking at the chair.
“Have a seat,” he offered, noticing her attention. “You must be beat.”
“I am,” she responded, went straight for the chair, and sat down. She always thought Therm-a-Rest chairs were the best, lightweight and compact-just two great cushions, really, with straps holding them together. And they were comfortable as anything. Self-inflating, too. She’d had one in her pack, a lovely blue one. The kind that doubled as a sleeping pad.
“I’ll probably never see mine again.”
He sat down on a boulder near her and began filling his tin cup with filtered water from one of his bottles. She looked at it questioningly, wondering if she could even get it down.
“How about some dry clothes?” he asked.
She looked at him appreciatively. “Can you spare any?”
“Certainly.” He went to his backpack and pulled out a bundle of clothes, a small towel, and a pair of Teva sandals. “You can change in the tent,” he offered.
She placed her water on the ground and stood up, taking the clothes from him. “This is great,” she said.
The tiny tent, a one-person backpacker’s tent, was so small she couldn’t even kneel but had to lie down to change. She peeled off her soaked clothes, toweled off with the little back-packer’s towel, and put on a warm, dry turtleneck. Fleece pants, a polypropylene shirt and jacket followed, along with a woolly pair of socks. She knew the socks would get wet as soon as she put her boots back on, so she put on the sandals he’d offered her instead. They were too big, but the adjustable straps kept them on. When she emerged from the tent, he was still sitting down on the boulder.
She laid her wet clothes next to the tent and then returned to the chair. He looked at her with pensive eyes. The little crinkles around them told her he spent a lot of time out in the sun, probably hiking and enjoying the outdoors.
“You’re lucky to be all in one piece.”
“Yes.” She went silent, eyes huge, as she remembered gasping for breath, the cold, the tree branch slamming into her head.
“Are you okay?” he asked, studying her face.
She looked at him, trying to swallow back the lump of fear that welled up in her at the thought of the freezing water. She felt the bandage gingerly with tentative fingertips. It stung a little. But she was alive. “Yeah,” she said finally, meeting his eyes. “I think I am okay.”
“I’m glad,” was all he said.
He stood up then, rummaged through his pack. He began to set up his camp stove, screwing the fixture into a little tank of butane.
“Thank you,” she said, shuddering suddenly at what might have happened to her if he hadn’t been there.
“You’re welcome.” He smiled at her. He really was handsome. She stared a little too long. Then, to cover her staring, she averted her eyes and picked up the cup of water. She wasn’t used to people treating her like just another person. Anonymity had its blessings.
He looked satisfied that she was drinking and grabbed the food canister. She watched him move efficiently, rummaging through his pack for plates and cups. The sun dipped below the mountain, and now the blue sky deepened in hue. Before them lay a vast glacial field covered with yellow glacier lilies and vibrant pink and red Indian paintbrush, all wavering in the gentle breeze. A deepening shadow overcame the field as the light faded, taking on the soft shades of twilight.
Dinner was a slightly crunchy, gooey concoction-freeze-dried noodles in Alfredo sauce-and before they were finished, darkness had taken over. A full moon rose in the east, tremendous and yellow, casting light over the field and the forest of pines that lay beyond. Noah whistled, wiping out the dishes, while Madeline continued to sit and rest, finally feeling warm. Her long hair was almost dry, too.
As she watched Noah work, a sudden, furtive movement on her left caught her attention. She jerked her head to follow it and saw a dark shape darting across the white of the drift logs.
She squinted and leaned forward in the chair, trying to make out what it was. The figure was squat, low to the ground, moving too quickly to be a bear, but way too big to be a wolverine. Its wet fur gleamed in the moonlight, but she couldn’t even make out the basic shape of the animal. Wolf? she wondered.
“Noah,” she said quietly, “look over there.” She pointed toward the jumble of tree trunks where the dark figure crouched, now immobile. She had the familiar feeling that it was watching them.
Noah stopped cleaning the dishes and turned to face the spot. “What is it?” He sounded alarmed.
“Not sure…” She studied the spot but now couldn’t make out the animal at all. After years of wildlife watching, she’d trained her eyes to take in the slightest movement. Sometimes that was all that alerted her to a lone pika gathering grasses along an old lichen-covered rockslide, or a herd of goats leaping about on a mountain slope. But now she didn’t see any movement.
“What did you see?” Noah asked more nervously now, abandoning his dishes altogether. He squatted down beside her and peered intently at the logs.
She glanced at him, seeing his worried expression. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It wasn’t a grizzly. It might have been a wolf, but I’m sure you know it’s just a myth that a wolf will attack a human-”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” He held up his hand in a gesture of silence and studied the trunks along the riverbank intently. “Was it moving quickly?”
“Yes,” she said, bewildered about his worried state. The only animal that could potentially do them harm was a grizzly, and it certainly had been no grizzly.
“Stayed low to the ground?” he asked, peering out into the deepening shadows.
“Yes. Look, what do you think-”
“Shh…” Now Noah was listening intently, too, though Madeline didn’t know how he could hear anything over the roar of the river.
But she listened, too. Wind in the subalpine firs. The high cry of a night bird. And always the roar of the unrelenting water.
“I think you’d better change into your hiking boots,” he said.
“But they’re wet and-”
“All the same,” he insisted, never taking his eyes off the jumble of logs. “I think you’d better put them on. I think we need to leave.”
She studied his face, bewildered. He was alert, nervous.
She looked around. Her boots lay on the other side of the chair. Beyond lay the alpine meadow, the wildflowers now lost in the darkness. “We can’t hike down now in the dark.”
“We’ll have to. There!” he said, so suddenly that Madeline started, causing her heart to pound.
And she saw it.
The dark, hunkering shape crept through there again, darting in and out of the logs, furtive and quick, weaving closer and closer to them. She could see now it didn’t have wet fur at all, but oily black skin which glistened in the brightening moonlight. The animal was lithe and muscled, moving efficiently, though she still couldn’t see enough of it to tell what it was.
“Quick,” Noah urged her, placing an insistent hand on her shoulder.
Madeline shucked off the sandals and pulled on her wet boots, knowing they’d soak through the dry socks in a matter of seconds. Quickly she tightened the laces.
With her boots on, she turned her eyes back to the logs. The creature had stopped, and Madeline felt eyes burning into her. And then she watched as it put a paw on one of the logs. It was dark against the white of the wood, distinct in the gleaming moonlight.
And Madeline saw immediately that it wasn’t a paw at all, but a hand. A hand as black as charcoal, with impossibly hooked claws that bit into the wood.
“He’s got the advantage,” Noah said grimly.
“He?” Madeline asked with bewilderment. “He?”
Noah didn’t seem to hear her. “I can’t fight him like this. I can’t endanger you. If I could find someplace for you to hide…”
“Fight him-What’s going on? What is that thing?”
He turned to her then, his eyes full of fear. “I’ll explain on the way down the mountain. But right now, we’ve got to get you somewhere safe. C’mon!” He stood up and gestured for her to follow. “There’s an abandoned skiers’ hut just over that rise.” He pointed to a cluster of trees on a hill. “It’s not the greatest, but we’d be more protected than we are now. Okay?”
Madeline nodded, feeling bewildered.
Moving to his pack quickly, he threw everything inside haphazardly and zipped it up, leaving the tent standing some distance away. He grabbed the chair with one hand as he slung the pack over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said, and she caught a glimpse of his eyes in the moonlight, haunted and terrified.