Geography of Water

by Mary Emerick

  Because I could think of nothing else to do in that moment, because hope was all I had left, I took his hand and took a few shaky steps before I let it go. Without speaking the three of us climbed to the next plateau and then the next, each one skinnier than the last until they ended abruptly near a hanging cirque.

  My breath burned in my lungs. This was the highest I had ever been and there was still higher to climb. Looking at Sam, I could tell he was as tired as I was, his head bowed as we paused for a moment in the raw air. With Birdman it was harder to tell. He kept whatever he was thinking deep inside and only pointed to someplace far in the distance.

  “That’s where the lake sits,” he said as the three of us stood together, shivering as the wind burrowed through our clothes. “See the dark rocks above us that look like waves about to break? The lake should be right on the other side.”

  This was the place, he said, that the glacier had bullied its way through a long time ago, leaving the depression that had slowly filled in with water. This was far above the refugia, that elusive place that the glaciers did not reach, a tiny sliver of land where the bears retreated and began to change. If we had been here thousands of years ago our feet would have been standing on solid ice, the slow rumble of the glacier moving beneath us.

  “Winter still in the air,” Sam said. It was true. I could feel it in the bite that came off the cliffs. I could see it in the desperate way that the pink monkey flowers reached for the nonexistent sun, growing in profusion, a tiny stream. There was so little time sandwiched between winters.

  A few stubborn trees clung with all their might to the rocks lining the cirque. Elevation and snowpack determined what grew here, and the trees were skirted with denser foliage near their bases where snow lay deep and long. Their ragged bark was punctured with tiny holes, places where wind-driven snow had burrowed in. Only the tough could survive in this transition zone, and the trees were stunted and twisted with effort, the brush a spindly mat.

  We were as far from the sheltering forest as we could be. There was a forest in miniature beneath my feet though: a rolling carpet of tiny, red-tipped moss; small, sweet pink flowers; low blueberry shrubs. Clusters of royal blue lupine formed dense mats, their thick fragrance filling the air. My feet sank deep into the tundra, leaving momentary impressions of where I had been.

  Ahead was a maze of rough-surfaced rocks. They looked like they had been dropped from the sky, meteors maybe, old stars, I thought. But they were glacial erratics, Birdman told me, rocks dropped there by a slow, lumbering field of ice as it rumbled through thirteen thousand years ago.

  “The garden of the giants,” Sam said, echoing my thoughts. “Only giants could feel at home here.” I could feel him watching me, seeking forgiveness. My thoughts about Sam were all jumbled together like blocks of ice pushed by wind. There was the man I thought I knew and there was also what had been hidden beneath the surface.

  Then I forgot about Sam entirely as I turned in a circle, looking around me.

  “What is this place?” I said aloud.

  “This is like walking into another country,” Birdman agreed. Even he seemed awed by it, pausing for a moment to glance around.

  On either side of our cirque, great-mouthed canyons spiraled away, ridges marching down to an unseen valley floor two thousand feet below. Patches of snow were flung on the hillsides like crumpled sheets. The sky hovered above me, nearly close enough to touch, the sun a pale smudge behind sullen clouds. There were no signs of anyone else living, no sign that anyone had ever been here.

  We stood in a row. I could see what I was thinking reflected in their faces. We were so small, so insignificant. We were no giants. We were no match for this place.

  “We’re so close to the sky,” Sam said, and he was right. Down by the ocean, whatever churned up above us was so far away that it took a while to make itself known: rain, snow, wind. Here, there was nothing to buffer us.

  “That way,” Birdman said. Slipping through a fortress of cliffs, passing through a slot that barely let us through, we finally stood on the island’s backbone. A row of nameless dark-skinned mountains made up a bumpy spine that stretched for fifty miles end to end. Here was where the snow made up its mind, falling more heavily on one side of the mountains than the other. Here was where water flowed in both directions to the sea, falling through cliffs and glaciers and into the big rivers that flowed to the ocean, rivers that salmon could smell from somewhere way out in the sea. Here was the difference between what I knew and what I would find out.

  Along one flank, the way we had come, the long ropy muscle of Turn Back Strait ran for more than a hundred miles east and west, more like river than ocean, finally dumping into the sea at Icy Bay. Along the way it was joined by the surge of Betrayal Sound, a freight train of flood tide that rushed into the bays and drained back out again like pulling a plug.

  This was the birthplace of storms, each one lined up in the Gulf of Alaska like shots in a rifle. The clouds, heavy with moisture and lashed by gales, dropped two hundred inches of rain on this side of the island, washing it down with such force that half-grown trees uprooted and slid to the water hundreds of feet below, a soupy mixture of mud and forest. Gashes broke the island’s skin at these places, thick brown earth like blood oozing down where trees had been.

  I paused, trying to read the landscape. The way we were headed, down the island’s meaty thigh, was where the lake hid from us. A band of sheer, slick cliffs circled the mountain we stood on, jutting out into the pale sky. Leaning over, I could see that the rock was split into deep grooves like folds of a blanket. Far below, low trees grew in tortured clumps. Snow still lingered in the shaded places, a layer of slippery white icing.

  I waited, hoping for a sign. Nothing moved below me but an eagle, hunting among the cliffs. Hugging the thermals, it floated, its white head standing out in sharp relief in the blur of green and gray. It dove finally, vanishing from sight.

  We followed, dropping off the divide and threading through the rocks in a tight passage that only Birdman could figure out. Climbing down slowly through the crumbling cliffs, we reached another hanging valley shaped like the palm of an upturned hand. Spindly yellow poppies, miniature suns, dotted the soft carpet of heather under my feet. A field of purple lupine scented the air with a sweet fragrance. This was a tiny garden, an enchanted, secret place.

  The country, gentle now, rolled toward a basin lined with stark gray rock. The walls of the basin slanted sharply down to something unseen.

  It had to be the lake. Without a spoken thought, we all paused where we stood. I wondered if the others, like me, had secretly believed that we could not walk here, that my father had been right. But here we were. What was I about to find out?

  Birdman wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go first.” He put a hand on Sam’s arm when Sam tried to follow. “This is her place to see first.” He gave me a gentle shove. “Go on, girl. We’ll be fifteen minutes behind you.”

  I left them standing there talking in low voices. As I walked, I briefly noticed little things: Clumps of heather with fragile flowers only an inch wide huddled in the lee of the wind. A plant Uncle Dean had sketched for me once called sky pilot, a plant I had always associated with him, which grew only in the most inhospitable high places. Patches of wind-hardened snow, crusted to a shiny patina. A small pond shaped like an eye, surrounded by a scattering of lichen-covered rocks. Ragged patches of blue in the looming sky, more sucker holes. The light touch of rain beading up on my head, almost too light to be rain but something else instead, a kiss, a sigh.

  As I reached the edge of the basin, my pace slowed. I had dreamed about this place for so long and I was walking up on it so fast. A part of me wanted to keep it the way it had been: a blue dot on a map, a story of a man and a cabin and blueberries.

  I took one step and then another. Finally I dropped over the lip of the basin, and I was there.

  Thirteen

  The Lake of
the Fallen Moon was not beautiful. Small and slate-gray, it huddled in a basin of sharp, dark rock. Saw-toothed cliffs guarded its edges. There was nothing soft about it. It was lonely, windswept, and barren.

  Still caught in the grip of winter, ice plastered half of its irregular surface. Snow lingered in grimy banks along the slopes. A low blanket of moss covered the ridge above where I stood. A few stunted trees clung to life in a scattered patch. They all leaned in one direction, as if trying to escape the constant wind.

  I thought of our stories of Uncle Dean and his cabin, the blueberries and ice cream. In the stories the lake was a shimmering blue, caressed by gentle winds. Trees grew there. Not these ugly dwarfed creatures but tall and sheltering trees where we would rest. In our stories the weather was warm enough to strip down to the last layer of clothing we wore. Warm enough to float on our backs even, like otters. Even though we knew it couldn’t be true, we had also decided it never rained at the Lake of the Fallen Moon. Now I knew that we had dreamed up a completely different place, nothing like this one.

  She was not here. She had never been here.

  Frantic, I ran clumsily around the lake until I was stopped by cliffs and snow. “Mother!” I called, my voice a ragged echo off the cliffs. I ran, hoping that I had missed some important clue, a tent tucked away in a nook, a fire. I ran, once falling on something hard. I could feel blood running down my leg, but I jumped up without looking, my hair falling into my eyes, my too-big pants twisting around my legs. Finally I slumped to the ground.

  Cold seeped slowly through my clothes and I shivered but didn’t move. I was a statue, cemented in place. Clouds scooted briskly across the lead-colored sky, on their way to somewhere. Leftover rain drizzled on my face, the remnants of another endless shower.

  “Where are you?” I called. My voice echoed around the cliffs again. There was no answer.

  On the far side of the lake, bear tracks punctured the snow in a loping gait. They were deep and big, a boar. Maybe the one chasing the sow and cubs around, pushing them higher than they wanted to be.

  “Hide, mother bear,” I whispered to wherever she was now. But I knew that this was an ancient story; it would spool out the way it always had. Either the mother and cubs would be wily enough to escape, to hole up somewhere, or they wouldn’t. There was nothing I could do. It was the way the world worked.

  My bones ached, deep in a place I could not name. My knee was swollen, hot to the touch, hurt from whatever I had fallen on. She was not here. Maybe she was in town, somehow improbably passing through all the obstacles with some kind of magic. Maybe, despite what Sam believed, she had already hopped on a crab boat bound for a different place. She could be anywhere. Maybe she had never made it this far at all.

  I watched the ice move around on the lake, pushed by the wind. It piled up in large transparent slices on one end, shattering as pieces broke with a tinkling sound. Then the wind would come from a different direction and the ice would scoot across the lake again, some chunks submerging below the surface and others breaking apart. It seemed restless, a constant war of water. Too thin to step on, too cold to swim across, the lake would never be a place of refuge.

  I was so tired. It seemed like years since I had left Floathouse Bay. Weariness burned through my veins like a strong drug. It would be easy to sink into this barren ground and sleep forever. The snow would drift over me, the wind eddying around me as it blew across the basin. Was this how my father had felt, poised on the brink between dock and sea?

  I would not be like him. I knew that I could not sit here and let the world get the best of me. There’s always some reason to get up in the morning. I had to find that reason.

  When I pulled myself up to stand, I heard something big approaching with a clatter of rocks and the thud of footfalls.

  The bear. I turned slowly.

  But it wasn’t the bear. It was Sam, with Birdman a few steps behind him.

  I walked to meet them.

  Sam squinted across the lake. “Is she here? Did you find her?”

  “No. She’s not here. She’s not anywhere. I was so sure she would be here.”

  Sam sighed.

  “If she isn’t here, then where is she?” he wondered aloud.

  “We aren’t ever going to find her, are we?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we aren’t.”

  Birdman turned in a circle, hunting for prints. There were none. There should have been some. Already ours took up most of the narrow space between tundra and lake, although I knew it was possible to pass through this type of country without leaving a sign. We all knew how to do it. You kept to the short bristly plants that would not bend. You clung to the copperbush. You stayed on rocks instead of land. You erased yourself with each step.

  “No sign,” Birdman said.

  “I know you believed she was here,” Sam added.

  “I believed everything they told me,” I said. “That we were the best people on the coast, and everyone else was crazy or against us or both. That how we lived was the best, most honest way to live. That she wanted me to find her.” I felt the pain of it deep in my heart, my stomach, even my toes.

  Birdman set down his pack. He pulled a bandanna from it and held it out to me. “Cold air makes your eyes sting. Does it to me every time.”

  Sam gently put an arm around my shoulders. His body cut the wind and I did not move away. I could feel the beat of his heart through all the clothes he wore. Slow, steady, just like he had always seemed to be.

  “Why not just tell the truth?” I asked in a voice that seemed too fragile for this place. “There are no maps that the salmon read, just some homing instinct that nobody really knows about. Uncle Dean is under the sea somewhere. My father meant to hurt us, because it let out whatever hurt he had inside of him. Why not just say it?”

  Sam let out his breath, and I could feel it all the way down the length of his body. “Stories make life a little easier to take sometimes,” he said. “What do you think, Birdman?”

  Birdman shrugged. “Don’t know if anything makes life easier. Life is damn hard and don’t let anyone tell you different. But I do know it’s getting cold, and it will be dark soon. We’d best make a move if we’re going to.”

  “We could night hike,” Sam said. “We’ve got headlamps, there will be a moon. Our feet will feel the way.”

  Even though night hiking was dangerous, none of us wanted to be here at night in this strange and desperate place. Even the red cliffs would be better than this. Even dropping off the other side of the lake into the unknown would be better than this.

  I stared out over the lake as the others waited for me to decide. “Uncle Dean flew over this lake,” I said. “He’s the one who told us about it. He made it sound like paradise. There’s no blueberry patches like he said there would be.”

  Birdman kicked aside a patch of snow and examined the thick mat of vegetation beneath. “Might be, in summer. The low bushes, the sweetest tasting of all.”

  I bent down to look. The straggly bushes looked nothing like the blueberries I knew, but something like hope bubbled up. Maybe there was a strand of truth buried in every story.

  “I want to stay,” I said impulsively. “We can build a fire to stay warm and leave in the morning.”

  “You’re not quite done with this lake,” Birdman said, and I nodded. What if she came back in the night, drawn in by our voices? I could not leave yet.

  He surveyed the clumps of trees, scattered across the tundra as though thrown by a giant hand. “Old, old trees,” he said. “See how they shut everything down but one strip of heartwood? We’ll have to collect what they’ve shed; it will be good fire starter. We can build a small fire, but the trees won’t give us any more than that.”

  We crunched through the snow bringing back handfuls of twigs and bark. Birdman crouched to strike a match. As the fire blossomed to life, Sam trudged off to fill our water bottles. He did not look back.

  “I want to change my name,” I
said to Birdman. “I want it to be something other than a thing that kills.”

  “What shall we call you?”

  I thought for a moment. “I’m not sure yet.”

  I knew Birdman had been called by at least one other name long ago. “Take your time,” he said. “It’ll come to you. You’ve got years to get it right.”

  “Why are you called Birdman?” I knew I was treading into dangerous territory. For a moment I expected him to retreat into silence, but he checked to make sure that Sam was still crouched by the lake, bottles lined up beside him. Then he said, “When I was over there, in that place, I used to watch the birds. There were so many different kinds, and I didn’t know their names. Wading birds that looked like they walked on stilts, warblers, cormorants. Even odd little ones that only came out at night. I used to wish I could be like them, to fly the hell away from that place.”

  “Me too,” I whispered. “The cormorants. I used to watch them and think that too.”

  He nodded and went on, “The guys noticed and gave me that name. I didn’t mind much, it was better than some I could have gotten. When I came back my old name didn’t really fit anymore. So now I go by Birdman. It reminds me of that place, but not in a bad way.”

  We watched Sam pace the lakeshore, a stream of pebbles falling through his hands. He was only a shadow now, and the lake beside him was black marble.

  “Birdman, I want to forgive him. Can you teach me how?”

  He said, “Face to face with a bear, that moment of mutual recognition, it’s a powerful thing. Who can say what any of us would have done?”