She moved as quickly as she could, knowing they’d be after her as soon as they discovered her disappearance. They were probably behind her now. She thought about the hole she’d dug herself out of and knew it hadn’t been dug for her. It had been there. She was sure the two missing girls everybody at work had talked about had been in that hole. The guy’s a killer, has to be. She’d heard nothing when he hit her. No noise, only a sharp pain in her middle.
Dina paused and listened hard. She leaned against a tree, concentrating. This bush, she thought, it’s out some, no road noise, no gull cries so not near water, just bush. Best to push east or west. All the big roads roam up and down the island. East, she thought. The city’s east, and she’d know more once she found a river. Then she’d follow it for a while.
She knew how being lost in the forest could distort things, especially a sense of time. She’d been in places like this in Haida Gwaii many times, but she couldn’t remember having been this scared. When she’d been lost as a young girl and had to spend the night in the rain on Haida Gwaii, she wasn’t scared. She’d been found the next morning and carried back.
There’d be no carrying here. There was only what she could do for herself.
◆◆◆
She’d replaced her bark moccasins three or four times, and they needed replacing again. She’d look for another cedar, but for now she had to keep moving. There’d be cedar later. She had to get away from here.
She moved quickly, despite the terrain. What she wanted was a river.
She stopped and listened again. She heard nothing, but she knew she was travelling in the right direction. East was good and she was closer to open sky now.
She hurried on.
Suddenly she slipped and slid down a sharp decline of soft sandy soil where a portion of a ridge had collapsed. She fetched up against the back of a large fir root ball, the shattered ends of roots torn from the ground reaching up like fingers. It was one of three that had ended the slide, contained it, but the hold was precarious.
She crept around the edge of the root ball carefully, hanging on to the exposed root ends. She looked down, then up at the far side, a much higher ridge. She couldn’t see the bottom of the decline. She was part way down and could hear water. Using fern heads that cascaded down the steep decline, she slowly lowered herself. When she reached the bottom, she discovered a dying cedar and stripped strands of bark. She wrapped strips around her sore battered feet and the rest around her waist to use later. She could see water now, a small swift stream she could cross on some of the exposed rocks that littered its path.
Dina glanced up at the ridge. She could make the ridgeline easily and rest again under the tall firs. She began to climb. The top of the ridge was narrow, no more than fifty or sixty feet. She could see blue sky and a farther ridge, the distance making it a less vibrant green. What lay between the two was deep with a small river snaking along the valley floor.
She lay on top of a large protruding shelf of bedrock and watched the shore of the stream she’d crossed as far as she could see. Nothing moved. She hurt in more places than she could imagine; there were deep gouges on her legs and a few on her arms, and her feet had suffered the most, despite the bark. Her toes were bloody, her arches and heels becoming very sore.
She worked her way down the fern-filled far side of this ridge, coming out near two huge boulders beside moving water. There was a rock-strewn beach of sorts, narrow and filled with pockets of sand washed up in the spring runoff. Nothing grew on this stretch but twisted, stunted shrubs and the tenacious grasses that lined the crevices in the rock near the water line.
The river flowed smoothly, eddies forming and dissolving along its path as the land dragged at its edges. She could see through the stand of trees lining the river, the meadows of clear-cut on her side that the forest companies had left higher on the hills. There was movement on one of those, a shifting, flickering change at the edge of the tree line. Dina concentrated on that and saw it again; a suggestion of movement, nothing more, but it was enough.
He was there, moving downstream, but still above and upstream from her.
◆◆◆
Dina withdrew, sliding behind the two massive boulders, and considered her options. She could enter the river here, but she would certainly be visible. She could climb the ridge once again and make her way along the top, a slower but less visible route. She could wait where she was and let her pursuers move on downstream. Or she could go cross country, find another river to follow, and swim toward the coast.
For the moment, she would wait and watch. She saw no more movement, no sign of her pursuers, but they had been moving downriver, of that she was sure. With any luck, they would remain on her side of the river and continue downstream, but they wouldn’t do that for long. They weren’t likely to search beyond where they thought she’d be. They would know that she had either stopped or crossed over. She crossed to the far side and studied the river.
It was much bigger than the little streams she’d crossed, quite wide, more than twenty feet, but shallow. The way over was easy. Here, the bedrock was highly stratified and soft, so the stream had carved for itself a series of steps, leaving flattish little plateaus she could use.
She moved downstream, following the natural shelves in the streambed. Her worn bark shoes would hold a bit for this. She could make much better time and stay close to the dripping banks so she would be less visible. And down would necessarily be east, if not at the moment, eventually.
Everything went east to the Salish Sea this side of the mountains, but it was a winding twisting east on the lowest path the river could take through the forested ridges and foothills. There was the occasional deep pool as she worked her way downstream, but mostly the river ran in shallow, wide races downhill over layers of soft sandstone with pockets of clay.
After a while, Dina could see a long slow bend in the river up ahead, the water appearing deeper and slower. She worked her way down the bank until she could see around part way. A second stream joined the first just before the shale layers ended abruptly in a huge rock face. The river became wider here, much deeper and deceptively slow moving. It wasn’t really slower, just deeper and calmer. Her swiftly flowing stream that crossed the layers of soft stone had been replaced by deeper, less talkative water that swirled, hissing quietly, around the great rocks in its bed. It curved slowly.
The far side was high and much closer, the valley having narrowed, the rock plunging into the water in an almost vertical wall. Clinging to the rock walls were stunted firs and the occasional cedar patch, all of them reaching upward, the trunks turning ninety degrees a foot or so out from roots that fanned out over the rock’s surface seeking the water seeping through the crevices and fracture lines in the rock face. Dina saw too that her side, although not as steep, was much harder rock running rapidly downwards toward the water. The trees here were upright, like uneven marching columns stepping downward. They too followed fracture lines in the rock face, filling every depression, every lunge the rock made as it plunged down. She knew she could not walk that slope; it was too steep.
She could swim, though. The river would carry her without much effort. If the walls did not narrow too much and cause a race of rapids, she could gain some time here. If the walls did narrow, she’d be forced through a gorge, the water angry and dangerous. She listened carefully but could hear nothing that suggested swift water, so she slid in, discarding her bark moccasins as she floated down. They would disappear and not be left behind to give her away.
The water came from the mountains, so it was cold. Dina swam hard to keep her body temperature up, but she knew she’d have to get out now and then to warm herself. As she floated around the great curve, the walls began to close in, and she could hear the water’s whisper deepen. Once she could see beyond the curve itself, she heard the water’s voice strengthen. The rock walls on both sides were closing in on the river and in response, it ran faster and faster. Its voice became an angry roar as it
tumbled through a narrow gorge. Dina knew the danger of great boulders hiding under the surface. When she could see from the water’s movement where they lay, she tried to avoid them, pushing into deeper parts of the swiftly moving river.
She had no idea how long the gorge was, but she knew if it narrowed any more, she would be trapped in a deepening, ever faster race of water powerful enough to pin her to opposing rocks or jam her into the cliff sides and hold her there. At the very least, she’d suffer a battering on the way through. And she did.
Mercifully, the gorge was short, and the river returned once again to a swiftly moving broad sheet of water, deep and much quieter. She swam toward the far side when she saw a narrow beach of water-washed rocks, round and jumbled together, thrown there haphazardly by the spring floods. It was an inlet for another stream that joined the river, and as the currents mixed in the tiny bay in a long loose circle along the beach of boulders, Dina found enough quiet water to pull herself in. She scrambled over the round stones, some as big as she was, and sat under a cedar at the high-water line, protected somewhat by drift caught in the battered, stunted trees that survived precariously along the river.
She curled into a ball to preserve what body heat she had left and let the sun dry her. She could not stay long, she knew. She would be tracked, she was certain. If she were found, she knew her fate. She’d seen photos of the sites where the girls were found and read the accounts of their brutal ends. She had no intention of joining them. She would move soon, after she had warmed just a little.
The sun was strong in the clean afternoon sky. The clouds kept to the tips of the mountains far behind the resting girl as if caught and held by the peaks themselves, like swirls of greyish hair on the bristles of a brush.
Dina soon succumbed to the warmth and murmurs of the wide river. She fell into a kind of dose, a half-waking, half-sleeping state while her body regrouped its defences. Had it not been for the insistent irritation caused by the rounded rocks as they met rib and hip, she would have fallen into a deep sleep. As it was, she shifted position now and then until the rocks won and she sat up. She examined her legs carefully, looking for the worst of the gouges and cuts, but the water had helped, and she was not bleeding anymore. Her legs and her arms were a network of scratches with additional slashes that ran across her midsection. She also saw two round burn marks, the skin rough and red.
◆◆◆
Dina studied the river, the banks especially, and the sloping ridges that kept the water in check. She saw nothing alarming, but she knew he was there. He was out there, tracing her, knowing the river would be her way to safety.
The forest and the great ridges would exhaust her long before she could escape. She knew and he knew that a river like this one would be her salvation if there was to be one. So he would be here, somewhere close, and he had weapons and clothes to protect him. She had nothing, only what the land offered her.
When it came time, she could find weapons. When it came time. Now she must watch and work her way downstream. As long as the river allowed, she could use a log or some other debris that the current carried or find something in the narrow windrows of debris that she could force into the water. She could float with it and save her energy, perhaps even climb on at times to warm herself. She checked the banks again and the ridges, saw nothing, and began to explore the detritus along the tiny flat mouth of the little stream that joined the river here.
In behind the first of the struggling trees in the stream itself was a fallen one, most of its branches gone, only stubs left and a root ball of whitened fingers that had fought the journey downriver. If she could move it into mid-stream again from where it rested beside the bank, push it out into deeper water, she could ride it fairly hidden. Her black hair would look like the blackened, water-rotted cavities where large limbs had been wrenched off. If only it weren’t caught on the bottom by the remnant of some limb she couldn’t see.
Dina worked her way up the little stream, her feet sore and cold, and found the root end wedged into a bit of sand and stone. She pulled. The trunk rolled over slowly, and once in water deep enough as she dragged its floating end, it came free. It had been the victim of the spring floods and had been stranded by the lowering water and left behind. There were no limbs left, only stubs and the black rotted holes she had seen on its side. She pulled as hard as she could, and the trunk moved slowly away from the bank, caught in the current, and after floating in the circling eddies of the broad river again and again, was finally pulled into the current by its root end. As long as the river would allow, she had a ride and a chance to keep a little warmer.
Dina floated beside the trunk, her black hair swirling behind her in the current. The river ran true and deep for as far as she could see. The sky was still clear and the sun warm. She knew a single trunk floating downriver was suspect, especially at this time of year when the rains had not yet begun and the river ran low. Most trunks would be stranded in the rapids upriver or hurled to the side by high water. Only a few, ones like this one, would be likely to have escaped, and most would have done so earlier. There were occasional strays, she knew, but they were few, and one convenient and floating, waiting for her, was unlikely. Were her pursuer to see such an object, he’d examine it carefully, perhaps swim out to be certain. Such thoughts kept Dina vigilant and less likely to dwell on how cold she was.
Occasionally, the trunk’s root ball tangled with a submerged rock and caused the trunk to roll or flip ends. At such times, Dina floated beside it, trying to anticipate what the river and the rock demanded.
Water this deep and swift must be close to the coast and the sea, she thought. Perhaps the tide was high and that would slow the river and deepen it. It would push on against the sea, but it would be gentler. Or would there be another gorge restricting the river and making it angry again, perhaps with a waterfall or series of them. Her ability to anticipate was limited this close to the water’s surface, her hearing less acute, filled as it was with the murmurings of the water that supported her. She would have to rely on a quickening of the river’s current, the tug of faster water beneath her, impatient to reach the sea. She continued to float, either on top of the log to warm herself or in the water to hide.
When she felt the tug, the undercurrent pulling at her dangling legs, she climbed onto the trunk and sat up. Ahead, the river curved once again, the banks narrowing, the ridges growing tall and straight. Another gorge, she thought, and as the trunk entered the curve, she could hear it, the roar of angry water cascading over rock. The trunk beneath her stopped twisting in the current and began to move faster as it straightened. The water raced now, the current too strong to ignore.
She left her trunk and swam hard toward the shore. There was still an edge of boulders rounded by the river, piled along the narrow shore downstream. She swam harder so the current would carry her at an ever-increasing angle toward what shore there was. Her knee and rib cage took a powerful blow from a submerged rock, but she reached the shallows in time and hauled herself up the jumble of piled rock into the tree line.
Here, there were no struggling stunted trees bent over by the power of spring floods, no windrows of high-water detritus. The rock face had been scoured clean by the river so that the tree line ran razor sharp along the rounded strata of rock that tumbled into the water. Only tiny oases of pebbles lying beneath trapped pools of rainwater and runoff in the striations and hollows of the rock were left. The rest was bedrock, rounded over time by the power of the water, like pods of humpbacks in the Pacific off the coast of Haida Gwaii.
Dina climbed carefully, feeling the ache of knee and rib, and found a spot of sun far up the ridge. She curled up there. She watched the far side, the side from which she’d come, but knew she’d see nothing even if he were there. As she rested, she scanned her ridge for cedar. She’d have to make shoes once again to move down- river. And she’d have to feed herself. There were plenty of roots and berries she could find. She knew these woods, had been taught well b
y her elders, and would survive. If the weather held, she’d suffer little other than from her nakedness. The river would lead her to where she had to go.
It would lead him as well.
XXII
The two men reached the river’s great curve and saw nothing of their prey. She could not have come so far, the older one thought, not with the gorge and the fast water, not with the cold that would numb her naked body. He signaled his brother and they crossed the river, swimming hard as the current carried them downstream into the beginning of the crescent the river made. Once over, they turned upstream and made their way back along the river’s edge, searching for any sign that the girl had made it to shore and up the ridge. Had she crossed the ridge successfully, his admiration of her would be immense, and his excitement almost unbearable. They searched carefully but found nothing until they were close to the gorge.
They found sign at the water’s edge and traced her route up the ridge. There they stopped. She had come out of the water above the gorge, that was clear. Why had she gone up the ridge again? Why not continue down the river? The gorge was steep but short. She could have found a way. That would have been the easiest for her and they would have found her. Then he thought, that’s why! Somehow, she must have known they were close. As he stood there, his brother beside him, he marvelled at her tenacity, her strength, her determination against all odds. She was truly worthy.
They followed her descent down the far side of the ridge. They heard the river before they reached the flats and realized their mistake. The river had turned on itself, the great curve downstream, the beginning of a massive oxbow. How had she known? How could she know? The older brother shook his head in wonder. As they approached through the flood plain, the river sounded deeper, less agitated. When they cleared the last of the bent and stunted growth and the water-washed rock that formed the base, they saw the river. It was broader and as deep as he had thought, and she had certainly begun again to follow its path downstream.
NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders Page 29