We sat huddled together, quaking and whimpering, arms around each other, legs pressed together, like one four-headed creature. As if the river at night possessed the answers, we were quiet, listening to its pulse and hush. It gleamed with remnants of the day until it mirrored the moon in glittering shards. Then that too disappeared, as if the river had swallowed it, and the current folded into its nighttime self, braiding and turning like liquid metal in the green and gloom.
Full on darkness, and all its terrors. I suddenly understood cultures that believed in demons and chimeras, werewolves and gollums. With no walls around us, no light or source of warmth, what besides the monstrous makes sense? Every sound was a beast. Behind us, all around us, the forest throbbed with the call and response of insects. Rain pattered on the leaves and dirt, dimpling the water, tapping on our heads and shoulders through our silly pine-bough ceiling, taking its sweet time to steadily soak us through and make our misery complete.
“They won’t even be looking for us until Monday,” Sandra said.
“Try Tuesday,” Rachel said. “If we’re lucky.”
Pia’s stomach growled. “I’m so freaking starving.”
“I’m too scared to be starved,” I said.
“I’m just cold,” Sandra said.
“Then get in the middle,” Rachel said. “We should take turns being on the inside, staying warm.”
“We need to try to sleep,” Pia said.
“Not very likely,” I said, trying to rub some warmth into my arms.
“I’m serious. We take turns. Sandra, go to sleep. You too, Wini. Me and Rachel will watch out for a few hours.”
Sandra got up and tucked herself between me and Pia. I could barely feel her with her extra vest, but her bony shoulders poked into me and she folded her legs under mine. I thought I was freezing, but I shuddered at her meat-locker-cold calves and thighs. Pia, her arm practically around both of us, felt like a warm room in comparison, though every now and then an involuntary shiver passed through her.
“We have just one job,” Pia whispered. “To get through the night. Don’t think past that, okay? Just go a little at a time, minute by minute if you have to.”
Maybe because someone had told me it was my job to go to sleep, I felt my eyelids grow heavy and—unbelievably—found myself with my chin resting on the collar of my vest. To keep my mind off where we were, I pictured us in our seventies and eighties, and what each of our old-lady bodies might look like. Sandra and I would stay in pear mode no doubt, butts getting bigger and top halves tending toward scrawny, especially in the neck and shoulders. Rachel would shrink all over, just get tinier, while Pia would morph into a walking stick, frail and long, in danger of breaking a hip just crossing the kitchen floor. Nested in the overheated comforts of our assisted-living facility, we’d invite each other over for decaf and blond brownies, laughing as we recalled that silly trip to Maine when our guide drowned and we lost the raft but ultimately found our way to safety. . . .
? ? ?
Howling sounds snapped me awake. My heart blood leapt high into my throat. We clutched each other.
“Oh, dear God,” Pia said. “Wolves.” Her nails dug into the flesh of my arms.
A staccato of yips, followed by long, mournful baying and high-pitched barks. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. It surrounded us, ricocheted inside our heads, sliced up into the sky; it even silenced the insects.
The yelping stopped. Utter quiet now. The forest held its breath.
Strangled barks broke the stillness, now closer to us and more vicious, in the woods upriver.
“They’re over by Rory now,” Rachel whispered.
Pia stifled a cry. I pictured her long white hands laying leaves and flat river stones over his eyes.
Sandra’s shoulders shook so hard we could all feel it. “Come on, shhh,” Rachel breathed. “Don’t think, okay? Just don’t think.”
And so we listened. To the more terrible quiet that came next. In the black land behind my squeezed-shut eyes I saw teeth and bone and blood. How many were there? Impossible to tell. Why couldn’t we have gotten farther from him before night fell? Another impossibility.
Time passed in its ruthless way. The normal noise of the forest returned. And suddenly the most pressing of my bodily concerns was a full-to-bursting bladder. I considered going right where I sat, I was so terrified. I don’t know if anyone would have noticed, or cared.
“I have to pee,” I whispered.
A bullfrog at the riverbank answered me with a wet croak.
“I’ll go with you,” Pia said. “I have to go too.”