But it’s not snow that is coming. It’s rain.
I hear it before I feel it—the thrumming of huge drops against the parched ground. The skies above the beach open abruptly, and cold, hard rain falls with the power of a wave on the sea.
Two of the injured are well enough to stand—one of my cousins and one of the women. They climb to their feet and are helped to a sheltering spot among the brush that grows beyond the dune grass. Urar calls out for help in carrying the others to cover.
I try to help, responding to the healer’s shouted instructions from behind me, but in front of me, still lying at my feet, Pek screams at me, too. At first I think he’s screaming in pain, his open wounds exposed to the cold hard slap of water. But it’s not that. He is surely in pain, but he is screaming at me out of anger. Anger at me for not heading south as fast as I can.
“Leave us!” he seethes, his body twisting on the ground. Watching him, every instinct in me screams with a voice as loud as Pek’s to stay. “There are plenty who can help us.” He stretches and straightens his body, reaching for me, fighting the pain in order to look me in the face. “There is no one else who can warn them.”
No one else who can warn them . . . No one else who can warn you.
He’s right—I know he’s right.
I close my eyes tight and think back on everything my clan has suffered at Lo’s hands—the fire, the panic, the pain. I imagine the same scene playing out at your camp.
Pek’s right—I have to stop it.
It’s almost suicide to take a kayak out in a storm this strong—I know it; Pek knows it. But I can’t worry about the risks now. I just need to leave quickly.
I nod at Pek, whose hands have wrapped around my ankles. He releases me. Without another word—without a mention of the dangers I’m running into—I turn and run down the waterfront to the spot where my clan’s kayaks are stored. The assault of the pounding rain slows me slightly, as I struggle to keep the inside of the kayak dry while climbing in, pulling the straps over each shoulder, and tying the sash securely around my waist. Once I am in, though, I get away surprisingly easily. No one is watching the sea. No one is looking for me. There is damage to repair and injured to tend to.
I have no time to dwell on the guilt of leaving them. The sea demands all my attention. Waves swell on either side of this tiny kayak—a boat whose size seems to shrink as the power of the storm seems to grow. Paddling is all but futile. The water swirls all around me.
If there is any benefit at all to the power of the waves, it is the speed it gives me. Almost like the current on a river, there is a current on the sea, and for now it takes me in the direction I want to go—out to sea, away from land, south to the rocky point that borders our bay.
Just stay upright, I tell myself. A capsize now could kill me. Managing a roll in waves like these may prove impossible. I’ve never tried it, and I don’t want to try it today.
Water hits me from every angle—from left and right, from above and below. Sheets of rain mingle with rising waves until I feel that I am drowning in a mix of rain and seawater. I taste brine in the sheets of water that streak down my face from my hair. Water is everywhere. I whip my head around sharply, trying to clear my face enough to search the shoreline for landmarks, not daring to take a hand from my paddle for even the time it would take to wipe the hair from my eyes. The paddle may be all but useless, but without it I would have no hope at all.
The shoreline offers me no help either. Where is the point? I seem to have been carried by the waves to another coast entirely, as if the Divine has carried me away and dropped me into a world of water that has no boundaries. I search to my left frantically, seeing nothing but sea to the horizon. My heart burns with panic. Where is the shore?
This is my last thought as a wave hits me hard from behind, scooping under me and lifting me high into the air. When the wave drops me, I roll hard to my left and plunge headfirst into the sea.
Under the water or over the water, you have to stay calm. The terror of drowning out here all alone, of my lifeless body strapped into this kayak as it floats out to sea—these thoughts threaten to crowd out all others. But I push them away. I let in the voice of my father instead, teaching me how to right myself in a capsized kayak. You have to stay calm.