It’s too late. Their fear is an electric sourness on my tongue. The crew are scrambling for lifeboats, being hurled against the metal of the ship’s interior skeleton. I’ll not let them go. It’s a gift, really. They fight so hard, when relief is so close, so close. Their panic pains me, almost as much as the dragonfly with its leg snapped off in the tree sap, more than the dark-eyed junco that struggles out of its cracked shell.
I’ve waited so long. Eleven months is a long time to go without the breaking of such creatures. I fed sparingly on the growth in spring, on summer greenery, but they are nothing to the feed of a wreck. I reach in the water to grasp the body of the St. Anne. The shattering of her is a symphony. Her two halves are uncleanly rendered apart, filling with water and sinking quickly. Within her fractured body, the sailors’ bubbled screams are silenced. The north wind’s penetrating strength has chilled the water and quickly numbs arms and legs punching through the depths, attempting to rise. Twenty of the crew have made it onto the rafts, but nine have not.
They are mine.
The sourness on my tongue changes to the iron tang of torn metal as the St. Anne’s bow hits the sediment of Lake Superior. The stern swirls and falls three hundred feet away, but it isn’t the boat’s demise that will fill me.
The nine are struggling within the crushing pressure of the lake’s depths. Metal crushes thighs and cracks rib cages; some float freely, corked and trapped beneath what was once a floor, now a casket’s closed top. The glacial water shocks their muscles, stiffens them prematurely. Water pours into their throats, their larynxes spasming, forbidding any last scream. I listen as the hearts thrill with a frantic rhythm before the lack of oxygen strangles each muscle into a slower pulse.
The first heart slows to a still. In that moment of savage surrender, its spent energy becomes mine. The trilling hunger in my bones is somewhat quieted, finally. I will be glutted before long.
Smiling, I barely notice the hand gripping my wrist.
Chapter Thirteen
HECTOR
Oh God. Where is she?
One second she was there, and the next, she was underwater. I surge toward the last place I saw her. The sky rumbles, and powerful wind spits lake water and stings my face. I squint, trying to protect my eyes.
My soaked clothes weigh a thousand pounds, and I hyperventilate reflexively from the gnawing cold. My sodden boots drag me down, and I can barely kick. Minutes go by, each one feeling like a century. Soon, the shoreline is frighteningly far away, and it’s an effort not to think, holy shit, I might actually drown today. It’s everything I can do to not panic. Drowning is everybody’s worst fear, but stupid Hector didn’t think of this before he dived in the water, of course.
The surface of the lake is prickling from raindrops. Swells that weren’t there before bob me up and down, and I swallow water once, twice. I spin around, kicking hard to stay afloat.
And then I see something. The tiniest smudge of white color pushing away the darkness, maybe about ten feet away, inches below the surface. Whatever it is, it’s sinking quickly. With a huge breath, I surge forward and kick, my muscles already burning. I reach forward, down, grabbing into the wet void at anything. My fingertips graze something soft. I lunge again, and burning skin meets my hand.
I grab wildly, and my hand closes around a thin limb—ankle or wrist, I’ve no idea. I yank and pull, trying desperately to bring her to the surface. I grab her small waist, jerking her up so her face stays above the water. Her eyes are shut. The lake splashes around us, and water pools in her open mouth. Oh no.
What’s more, I can’t seem to move her. Something’s snagged on her legs, as if she’s chained to the bottom of the lake. I kick harder, and a wave of water crashes over both our faces. I cough and sputter, fighting to drag her to shore. She’s still tethered somehow. With a massive grunt, I throw us both closer to shore, and something gives way beneath us. We’re loose now, our limbs flailing.
My muscles start to scream from effort as I kick my waterlogged boots and paddle with one hand. I end up flipping onto my back, arching my chest and kicking while towing her torso under one arm. It takes forever, we’re out so far from the shoreline. My feet finally touch the gravel bed of the lake and I drag her onto the narrow shore. I flip her onto her stomach to let the water empty out of her mouth. My heart is pounding so hard it’s going to bust out of my rib cage. I turn her onto her back, ready to do mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions, whatever it takes. Her eyes are partly open now, trancelike, but she’s breathing—miraculously. My cold fingers clumsily feel for a pulse in her neck. A tiny throbbing nudges stubbornly beneath my fingertips—her heart is beating. Her nightgown is sodden and clings to skin that burns beneath my fingers, hotter than cement in the summer.
She’s got a fever. She must be sick and delirious.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I hoist her into my arms. Before I head back to Windigo, I turn and stare at the lake’s horizon. That big freighter that was passing by is long gone, but its absence sends a chill down my spine.
I start carrying her back to Windigo. She’s a dead weight, and my heavy, wet clothes and the pounding rain don’t help. I’ve been eating barely half a fish a day for the last two weeks. I’ve lost a lot of muscle. So every footstep is an effort. My biceps and quads are screaming with pain when I finally make it to her little cottage.
As I reach for the back door, I’m sure it’s going to be locked. But the door is wide open, welcoming us.
The door is never, ever open.
I kick it farther open with a dripping boot. The cottage is really tiny. There’s a pair of old rubber boots and a collection of four skeletonized umbrellas by the door. Miniature piles of lake rocks—what are they called? cairns?—are piled here and there over the wide plank floors. A stone fireplace is dark and cold, facing a single lumpy couch and a braided rug. Just beyond, a cramped kitchen still smells of buttery fried things.
I heave her in my arms again and walk down the hallway, finding two closet-sized bedrooms. One is super tidy, with a single narrow cot topped with a neat plaid blanket. The other has no bed, just a little nest of twisted blankets, next to piles upon piles of animal bones, feathers, and more rock cairns.
I have a bad feeling that she sleeps in the nest of blankets, but decide instead to put her on the cot in the cleaner bedroom. Her body sags onto the thin mattress, soaking the bedding. Her eyes are still only at half-mast, seeing nothing. In the gloom of the cabin, I can’t see the difference between her pupils and her irises. Her eyes are all one stormy dark gray. And her skin is still burning hot.
After I withdraw my arms from her body, I hesitate. I miss holding her already, though my biceps are cursing from exhaustion. But that’s not why I’m hesitating.
I can’t let her sleep with these clothes, wet to the skin.