Cougar?
She can no longer hear the others. They’re upriver of Bridal Falls. They all went up to the camping area once the boats had been taken ashore at the pullout. They were around the campfire, waiting for their two male guides to prepare dinner, getting ready to drink and laugh and eat and settle in for the night. But she’d been hungry for more, just a few last casts before full dark on this second-to-last day of their trip. It was a failing of hers—always wanting just one more, of everything, not being able to stop. Perhaps it was not a good idea. Feeding time in the woods. She swallows and slowly turns her head, looks up at the rocky bank. Nothing moves in the dark shadows between the trees that grow shoulder to shoulder along the ridge. Yet she can still feel it—a presence. Tangible. Watching. With malevolence. Something is hunting her—weighing her as prospective prey. Just as she is hunting the trout. Just as the fish are hunting the insects. Nerves tighten. She squints, trying to discern some shape from the darkening evening shadows. A rock dislodges suddenly. It clatters down the bank, unsettling more stones, which rattle and knock their way down to the river and splash into the water. Fear strikes a hatchet into her heart. Her blood thuds against her eardrums. Then she sees it—a form. It shifts and becomes distinct from the forest. Human. Red woolen hat. Relief slices through her chest.
“Hey!” she calls out with a wave.
But the person remains silent, picking a determined route down the bank, making directly for her, something heavy-looking in hand. L—like a log. Or a metal bar, about the size and heft of a baseball bat. Unease slams back into her chest. She takes an involuntary step backward, closer to the water’s edge. Her wading boots slip on greasy moss despite the studded soles designed expressly for good grip on surfaces like these. She wobbles, steadies herself, and laughs nervously. “You spooked me,” she calls out, trying to chase away her own stupid fear. “I was just wrapping up here, and—”
The blow comes fast. So fast. She spins away, tries to duck out of the reach of the weapon, but her quick twisting motion sends her boots out from under her. Her rod shoots into the air. She lands with a hard smash on rocks and tumbles instantly into the river, entering with a splash. The shock of cold water explodes through her body. It steals her breath. Icy water rushes into her stocking-footed, chest-high waders, seeps into her studded wading boots, saturates her vest, her woolen shirt, her thermal underwear, the weight of it all dragging her down. She flails at the surface with her hands, trying to keep her head above water, struggling to grab at slippery rocks as the current moves her downstream. But her nails fail to find purchase. She gains momentum as the river sucks her toward its heart, where its currents muscle deep and strong toward the thundering boom of Plunge Falls, where mist boils thick above the tumbling water. It’s a deadly place, an area people have gone to commit suicide, and their bodies have never been found because the weight and pressure of the falling water traps them deep in pools and pushes them into submerged caves. She tries to kick, to swim, to angle back toward shore. But the Nahamish has other plans. It clutches at her with newfound glee, with impossible strength, tossing her about like a toy, drawing her down and into its churning bowels. Her lungs begin to burst.
With a teasing thrust, the current shoots her briefly to the surface.
“Help!” she screams as her head pops out. She thrusts her clawed hand up out of the foam, pleading.
“Help!” She chokes, goes under again, swallowing water, gagging. Again, the river gives her false hope and shows her the surface. For a moment she manages to keep her chin above water. She can see the person on the bank, growing smaller, face white under the red woolen hat, dark holes where there are eyes. Behind the figure an army of black spruce marches along the ridge, sharp tips like warrior spears piercing the fog.
Why? It’s all she can think. It makes no sense.
The Nahamish tugs her back under, smashes her into a subsurface boulder. Pain explodes through her left shoulder. She knows it will take seconds before hypothermia completely steals her brain function, before she loses all motor coordination, all ability to fight, to swim. Wildly, clumsily, she struggles against the current. She must halt her ride downriver before she reaches the falls. But her hands have frozen into cramped claws. Her waders and boots drag her down as if a monster is pulling her by the legs from below, down, down, down into its lair, into to a watery grave.
Lungs burning, she is roiled and bashed against more rocks. She no longer knows which way is up or down, which way to fight for air. But as she starts to pass out, the river once more tosses her to the foaming surface. As her head rises, she gasps maniacally for air. Water enters her mouth. She chokes as she is sucked under again. But she grabs for a fallen log wedged into the bank. This time her claw-hands find purchase.
Hold. Hold, dammit . . . Hold . . .
Her heart pounds against her ribs. She digs her nails into soaked bark as branches trap her like a thing caught in a strainer. But she can feel the spindly branches breaking, her grip slipping in the rotten log detritus. The river yanks insistently at her waterlogged waders.
Should’ve worn a life vest. W-would it have even helped?
She manages to take a breath, then another. Absurdly, she notices the indigo sky—the brighter points of two evening stars that hover like emergency flares. P—planets, really. Jupiter? Venus? No idea. But they give her a sense of the universe, of her tiny place in it. A sense of hope.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . It was nights like this, sitting at a campfire with her dad, who taught her to fly-fish when she was little girl—that was the beginning of a journey that has led her to this point, to this river where she is now going to die . . . Life is like a river . . . Life is absurd . . . The only constant is the water of change . . .