LAKE OF THE SWANS
Book 2 of 3
Chapter 40
John lay half-awake, his wife sleeping beside him. A roll of thunder had driven him from a dream. He and Laureal had been three days and nights swimming and playing along the enchanted stream, laughing and cuddling under the summer sun and moon. Another roll of thunder came from the east, and John, now fully awake, thought he heard what sounded like an increase in water flow. Sitting up, he crawled from their tent to have a look.
“Laureal, wake up,” gently shaking her shoulder. “Wake up!”
Laureal came round slowly.
“The stream is flooding.” John's tone was urgent even as he remained calm.
“What?”
“We have to go,” he reiterated, gathering items and stuffing them into a leather bag.
Crawling out into moonlight, Laureal saw a monstrous cloud bank, its interior pulsing with snake lightning like so many blood veins. It rumbled as though ready to explode in anger, then fell dark, only to illuminate once again from deep within. It dominated the whole of the eastern sky. Rolling towards the moon and stars, it would soon snuff out their light. Beneath its great mass, the once peaceful stream had grown into a river, spreading up the beach like so much spilt ink, soon to overtake their camp.
“John,” she stammered in horror.
“I know,” pulling their bedding from the tent and handing it to her before turning to take their tent down.
With no time to organize, the lovers ran back and forth between campsite and canoe. First ankle deep, then knee deep in water, they loaded items helter-skelter into their canoe before splashing back towards camp for more gear. The water came around their feet as John snatched up a small bag, the last of their belongings. Then, as they made for their boat, he positioned himself to catch Laureal in the event she got swept off her feet. The water had become too deep, the current too powerful. Unable to reach their craft, they had to retreat.
Gaining what little remained of the beach, John handed Laureal the small bag of gear, “I have to get upstream of it,” referring to their canoe, “that way I can swim to it, and cut it loose before the river takes it.”
Laureal glanced at the widening river. Their canoe, moored on its rope, appeared a stationary shadow backset by moving shadows, themselves a train of debris out in the main channel where, largest among them, an uprooted tree, its smaller branches broken away, slowly bobbed and turned like a sea serpent ambling along.
“John, maybe we should forget the boat…just get to high ground. Then, come morning, we can make our way home along the lakeshore.”
“I can get to it,” John rebutted, entirely confident, his face momentarily illuminated in a terrific flash of lightning. “I’ll bring it to shore, and we’ll ferry loads into the woods,” speaking fast, “I’ll get the heavy stuff, you take the light stuff. We’ll move everything uphill, twenty paces at a time, keep it all together, and reestablish our camp…okay?” And not waiting for an answer, “Go downstream about two, no…three stone throws and find a suitable place to enter the wood. I’ll meet you there.”
Her heart in her throat, Laureal glanced down the narrowing beach. “John, I don’t know about this.”
“If I don’t go now, the river will take our canoe and we’ll lose everything,” as if there were no other way. “Don’t worry,” taking her hands in his, “this will work. As soon as I’m in the canoe, I’ll paddle directly towards our meeting point. If you don’t see me right away, start shouting…and I’ll do the same.”
No more had he spoken than John spun and dashed away into the shadows of night.
If for only a second, Laureal watched him go, then turned and took off running in the opposite direction. The moonlight showed the beach ahead of her. A narrowing band of sand and gravel, it illuminated in a flash of lightning, then fell dark as a peel of thunder very nearly shook the earth.
Running fifty yards upstream of the boat, John turned and splashed out into the shallows where, reaching deeper water, he dove in and swam. He knew he must position himself with adequate time to spot the canoe. Otherwise, he would be swept past it. He stopped swimming and let the current do the work, carrying him along while he kept his eyes peeled.
Several hundred yards downstream, Laureal splashed to a stop. The last of the beach had vanished. Ankle-deep water would soon be shin-deep, and then waist-deep. Already the river had entered the woods. The sound of water snaking around tree trunks and brambles warned of a deadly situation. Laureal glanced behind only to see a great wall of darkness rapidly enveloping the river and forest. She lifted her eyes to the sky and watched in horror as the massive cloud bank swallowed the moon and stars.
His plan vanished with the moon, John found himself afloat in darkness—it only heightened his determination. Focusing his every atom, he looked for the canoe’s cigar-shaped form in a murky panoply of shadows. He would have only one chance before the flood swept him past.
Laureal faced a life-or-death decision. She could retreat to the woods, or swim out into the river, but she could not remain where she was. She was too close to the trees. A flash of lightning revealed the water there, flowing fast amid roots and brambles. If she waited a moment longer, her escape route would become a death trap. The power of the water would be too great. It would drag her into the undergrowth and pin her there. She and her unborn child would drown.
“John!” she called, looking to the dark river, “John!” A powerful gust came in reply, sweeping across the water to herald the coming storm.
Wondering if he’d passed the canoe, John was looking back when a drift log took him by surprise. He tried to avoid being swept beneath it but it was too late. Drug underneath, he scraped the length of its underside where, with only a split second to react, he realized it was the canoe! In a lightning-fast reflex, he snatched the tail end of the stern. Then, trailing behind, he pulled himself forward one hand at a time along the gunwale to reach the rope at the bow. He took out his knife and severed the tether, only to realize he should have gotten into the boat first. For no sooner was the craft freed than a powerful gust caught it like a sail.
“John!” Laural shouted into the dark, “John!’ The only reply: the wind in the eaves, the flood water that swept around rocks and trees. “John!”
“Laureal!” paddling for all his worth. “Laureal!” paddling towards shore only to have a flash of lightning tell the tale. The river had entered the wood!
His heart in his throat, John saw his terrible mistake. His love had tried to warn him. He hadn’t listened. Had she escaped into the forest? Had she drowned? In desperation, he called her name again and again. A crackling peal of thunder came in reply. A flash of lightning magnified the horror before him. The water had come up so fast! And with such power!
A flood of dread rolled over John. It seized him by his chest and pulled his heart into panic. His jaw agape, he glanced about in desperation. Then, with nowhere else to turn, he looked to the sky, “Please God,” his voice breaking like that of a child, “please…help me find her!”
Even before John could turn his face from the sky, the first raindrop landed on his cheek. John could not know the science of sound waves and how they actually travel better in the rain, but more drops followed, rapidly filling the air, and carried therein came a faint voice. He listened intently, then called out, “Laureal!”
The voice came not from the woods but out in the river. Faint, and yet, a bit clearer than before. “John.”
John spun in his seat, “Laureal!”
“John!”
“I’m here!” swinging the canoe around and paddling out.
“John!”
“Laureal!”
A flash of lightning illuminated Laureal’s face, still a stone’s throw out in the river, but standing out against the dark water. “I see you!” ruddering and padding like a man suddenly possessed with supernatural strength. Another flash of lightning helped him to reorient.
“I’m here!”
“I see you!”
John maneuvered into position as Laureal came swimming. Then, as she grasped hold of the gunwale, John was greatly surprised when she swung a waterlogged bag of gear up and into the canoe. With no time for astonishment, he scrambled forward, hooking a foot and hand over the opposite gunwale and reaching out with his free arm.
“John, I can’t come over the gunwale on my stomach.”
“Pull yourself up enough to hook a leg over my arm!”
With John’s help, Laureal rolled over the gunwale onto him. Breathing heavy and holding tight, they lay together amid their gear.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, are you?
“Yes, and…oh God, Laureal, I’m so sorry. I made a terrible mistake!”
“We’re okay now.” And in a positive little voice, as though to give him credit for wanting to keep their things, “We didn’t lose anything.”
Such was Laureal’s grace, John could have laughed with joy. Instead, he looked up to the sky, his face contorted, his chest shuddered, and, nearly choking up, he murmured under his breath, “Thank you!”
Wrapped in his arms, Laureal lifted her eyes, “John,” her voice filled with affinity.
“It’s only the rain,” wiping his cheeks, smiling with immeasurable relief.
As good as it was to be together and alive, our hero and heroine understood that death surrounded them. From the forested shoreline, the river could be heard sweeping through the undergrowth. Out in the main channel, a parade of debris appeared and disappeared in flashes of lightning. From the river bottom directly below came the hissing of shifting sands and the echoes of tumbling stones. From the darkness above, the wind rose with the rain.
The storm was upon them, and still, the canoeists had a few things going for them. They were young and strong. It was summertime, and the water temperature was near seventy degrees. And because the flood had entered the woods, the woods acted as a shock absorber, which in turn helped to dampen the tremendous energy of the flood and prevent a chaotic dynamic of reverberating waves. On the downside, as we already know, the flooded woods forbade the canoers from escaping the river.
“Laureal.”
“Yes,” turning to look back at John, her paddle in hand.
“When we near the lake, I expect the river to spread out over its delta. I don’t know what it will do there, but when the force of all this water hits the shallow delta, it might shoal up and tumble in rapids. There might also be places where marooned logs pile up. If so, we must stay clear of them!” Then, taking a few more paddle strokes, “If the river has shoaled up on the delta, we should hear the rapids. I would think anytime now.”
In the silence that followed, there was only the waft of the wind, the seamless hiss of a million raindrops hitting the river, and the occasional pop, snap, and crack of a tree succumbing to the flood.
“John,” turning to him.
“Yes.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
Laureal seemed so calm, John doubted she grasped the danger. Nonetheless, he was impressed, for even at his young age, his training had been of an intensity meant to break all but the strongest and, in the crux of it, he'd seen grown men come unglued. He didn’t have to ask, he knew she was up there in the bow, praying and believing in the Great Spirit.
A flash of lightning provided opportunity to look ahead in the hope of seeing the delta and the lake beyond. Another flash confirmed they weren’t there yet. The storm intensified. Sheets of rain came with gusts of wind. Not gale force wind but stronger than before, pushing their craft and adding to their momentum in the swift current.
“BIG LOG!” cried Laureal, taken by surprise, stabbing and drawing with her paddle.
At once, John dug down and ruddered with a powerful J-stroke, then watched as a huge semi-submerged shadow passed just left of their canoe.
Straining his ears, John thought he could hear a distant roar amid the numerous sounds, but he could not be sure.
“Do you hear that?” his tone uncertain.
“Yes,” listening, “I think so.”
Drawing his paddle from the water, John rested it across the gunwales and bent his ears on the darkness ahead. The faraway sound could not be made out. Drifting in wind and rain, Laureal also listened.
Ever so faint, the sound of violent water called out like a distant voice to warn the travelers of what waited ahead.
A flash from the sky provided a momentary glimpse, then darkness.
“I didn’t see anything…did you?”
“No.”
Their human inability to see in the dark disadvantaged them even as the impending danger sharpened their minds. Like steel on the tip of a knife, its point to the business at hand, John focused his all on the way ahead. Laureal, meanwhile, prayed in silence.
As they rounded a slight bend in the river, the sound of the rapids became clear and, with a flash of lightning, the nightmarish scene was revealed before them. Then, in the blackness that followed, the roar of raging water amplified the horrifying picture yet vivid in their minds.
Such was their situation that dangerous lightning should become their ally. It snaked across the sky in a dozen fingers of fire to illuminate the breadth of the delta, a vast field of violent rapids, swirling vortexes, tumbling debris and scattered logjams—the whole of it appearing and disappearing in the natural light show.
“Aim for the center!” John shouted above the fray, ruddering hard from the rear, turning their craft to the right and paddling like a madman. “We can get through in the center!”
Seventy yards ahead and seventy feet wide, the river’s main channel cut a path through the heart of the delta—a deep and swift water shoot. Its wide-spaced crests and troughs did not tumble into rapids but foamed and peaked like undulating ocean swells. Too powerful to be clogged by debris, trees passed through it as though on a rollercoaster before being spit into the lake where they would be carried on wind and waves to the far shore or sunk along the way.
Racing for the center on an angle, our hero and heroine knew it was their only hope. They must reach the terrible opening of the water shoot. That or be swept into fields of rapids and overturned amid log jams, where vortexes sucked like giant storm grates.
Laureal could see the mouth of the shoot even as the current and wind pushed them toward the logs and debris. She poured herself into every paddle stroke. She shouted out to her God. She cried out for his help. Her voice never reached John’s ears, for nothing could be heard above the horrific roar.
John also cried out to God. And such was the power that went into his stokes—credit must be given at least by proxy to that which prevented his paddle from snapping in two, being the paddle-maker’s love and craftsmanship.
Fighting to hold an angle, the canoeists outran death by the thinnest of margins to reach the opening where the current of the main channel grabbed hold like an all-powerful arm. At once the bow turned down as if entering a spillway, and they were pulled into the shoot!
In the next instant, they reached the bottom of the first trough, then up they went to the top of the first crest. Down again, their canoe turned towards the bottom of the second trough, all the way bumping against a large drift log. Free of the log, the big canoe shot so quickly to the second crest that all but its stern went airborne.
Yet suspended, Laurea glanced over the gunwale as a flash of lightning showed the water four feet below—that split second in which one’s insides float between going up and going down, she felt it in her gut. It lasted but a second, seemingly frozen in time. Then, the bow came down with a crash! Up went a great spray! And down they went to the bottom of the third trough.
Clearing the next crest, John glanced over his shoulder. Close behind them, a floating island of leafy limbs sailed like a catamaran on the wind. It would soon overtake them and, entangled within it, they would be unable to control their direction. They would be turned sideways and rolled over.
Seeing the terrible danger, John had only turned back to the way ahead when he saw Laureal stabbing and digging wildly with her paddle. Unable to see what she was about, he followed her lead and ruddered hard to the left.
Simultaneously, there came a violent echo as if a giant spear were thrust into the gravelly river bottom. The trunk of an enormous spruce then burst from the water and cantilevered skyward! It hung high above the canoe like a shadowy giant, seemingly suspended in the wind and rain as angry chain lightning flashed across the sky. Paddling frantically to escape it, Laureal shouted for her God, then ducked and screamed as the spruce’s rootball came down like a mighty mace, slamming into the river just off the bow!
Engulfed in a watery shockwave, Laureal disappeared, then reemerged, crying out and paddling for her life. It cannot be known how John did not break his paddle, so hard did he stab into the initial wave, digging for all his worth to keep it from flipping them over. The spruce, as fortunate would have it, turned sideways behind them and snagged the leafy island, slowing and preventing it from overtaking their canoe.
Escaping by the skin of their teeth, the canoeists still had as far to go as they had come. Up and down from crest to crest, always on the edge of disaster until, at last, the river spit them into the lake.
They were not out of danger. The wide opening of the delta in the forest only increased the wind, which in turn rolled the surface of the lake into white-capped waves. To gain the safety of the lakeshore, the canoeists needed to turn south, but if they turned their canoe broadside to the wind and whitecaps, they would be tossed over. But if they did not attempt the turn, they would have to go with the wind for a distance of fifteen miles, riding whitecaps and fighting for hours to keep from being swamped. Then, if their strength held and they made the far shore, it was anyone’s guess what they would find. Perhaps a gentle shore. Possibly crags and cliffs on which their boat and bones would be dashed upon the rocks.
Fifty yards out from the delta, the lovers paddled at a forty-five-degree angle to the waves. Glancing over his shoulder, John timed his paddle stroke to catch the next whitecap, just then rolling up from behind. It struck hard and lifted the stern like a toy. John slammed his paddle into the heart of it—
“Haw!” he yelled as if to kill it, pulling and pushing with all his might, making the most of the wave’s power, a portion of which transferred to the canoe, causing it to gain momentum. Then, at the end of his stroke, John twisted his paddle to act as a rudder, and the whitecap continued to the bow where it shot out from under like a rolling volley of smoke from a line of cannon fire. The bow turned down, and Laureal paddled as though her life depended on it.
“Are you ready?” John shouted, glancing back to see they’d gone far and wide enough of the delta to attempt a turn towards the lakeshore.
“Ready!”
Hero and heroine ruddered hard, turning their boat to the left as they dipped into the next trough. The bow came around, although it still pointed to the lake as the whitecap struck them semi-broadside.
Crashing and spilling over the gunwale, the wave would have rolled them over had they not shifted their weight like a pair of cats. Stabbing and digging with their paddles, they pushed and pulled at every opportunity, fighting not only the waves but the wind as it tried to turn their craft like a weathervane atop the crest.
Into the next trough, they fought to bring the bow further around before the next wave hit, which, in lifting the canoe, broke directly broadside and nearly capsized them. Down again they went into the next trough but this time with the bow aimed slightly towards shore. Then, crashing over the next whitecap with some sense of control, they managed to gain the angle they sought.
Now paddling against the wind and rain, their progress became painfully slow even as they fought for all their worth. Each wave seemed to exist for nothing other than to deny them the safety of shore. Truly, they had expended what remained of their strength when, at last, they reached a narrow band of calm water in the wind shadow of the forest along the lakeshore.
It may have seemed a small thing, but at such a time, in the pouring rain, it was good to know one’s bedding and tent were dry inside leather bags waterproofed with mink oil.
Laureal glanced back at John.
He broke into a desperate smile.
Smiling back, she turned to the shore, laid her paddle across the gunwales, leaned heavily upon it, and breathed out a deep sigh of relief—
“Oh Lord!” lifting her face to heaven with great emotion, “Thank you!”
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