After the Fire (5 page)

One more stroke and she was in the island's shadow, sliding from brilliant sunlight into a cool green world. She rested the paddle and glided the last few meters through a patch of green lily pads as flat as plates that rustled against the bottom of the canoe.

The water was clear and shallow. She could see the smooth humped backs of rocks and the long ropey stalks of the water lilies shooting up from the muddy bottom. She grabbed a low sweepy branch hanging over the water and pulled herself closer to shore. There was a scraping sound and the canoe bumped to a stop. She would have to wade the rest of the way.

She slipped her legs over the side and dropped into the ankle-deep water. Hanging on to the canoe, she picked her way carefully over the slippery rocks to the bow. She grabbed the rope and tied it to the branch. Then she scrambled up onto the bank.

Melissa grinned, exhilarated at being on an island for the first time in her life. She glanced across at the cabin. Sharlene, looking tiny, was standing on the end of the dock, waving both arms above her head. Melissa waved back.

She gazed around. It would be hard to go very far into the middle of the island. The trees grew close together and a tangle of underbrush, fallen logs and branches covered the ground. Then she realized that she was standing on a rough trail that looked like it followed the shore. She set off to explore, the ground prickly under her bare feet. The trail hugged the lake, gradually curving to the left out of the shade and into the bright sun. It was crisscrossed with tree roots and carpeted with brown pine needles.

Soon Melissa couldn't see their cabin anymore. Farther down the lake, a tin roof glinted in the sun. This end of the island was swampy, with tall bulrushes and more lily pads. The trail skirted the swamp and swept around to the left again, in and out of dappled sunlight.

In ten minutes she was on the other side of the island. Sometimes the trail disappeared and Melissa had to climb over boulders or around trees that had toppled half into the water, their massive branches blocking the way. She rounded a bend and stopped, her feet rooted to the ground in surprise.

A huge gray rock, as flat as a dining room table, jutted out over the water. In the middle was a striped beach towel with a backpack beside it. A paperback book lay facedown on the rock and a few other books were scattered about.

Melissa had been pretending that the island belonged to her, and she felt cold with shock. It was very quiet; the only sound was a bird chittering somewhere in a clump of willows. She didn't think there was anyone here but she couldn't be sure.

She swallowed. “Hello?” she called.

There was no answer. The bird fell silent, as though startled to have its peace disturbed.

“Hello?” she said again.

She waited for a few breathless moments. Then she climbed onto the rock and crouched down to examine the books. She scanned the titles.
The Last King, The
Warrior's Triumph, Siege at Midnight, Quest for Fire.
The books were thick, like something an adult would read. The covers showed weird monsters and people in armor holding shields and brandishing swords.

Melissa stood up. She had spotted something leaning against a tree at the edge of the forest. She jumped off the rock and walked over to look at it. It was a handmade bow, fashioned from a long stick that had been bent into an arc. The bark had been peeled off and the creamy yellow wood gleamed like satin. There was a piece of string tied tightly from one end to the other.

Was it a real bow? Melissa couldn't see any arrows. She glanced around, suddenly feeling nervous. Something caught her eye. She stared at a clump of reeds at the edge of the lake, taking a few seconds to realize what she was looking at—the side of a blue canoe.

Prickles shot up her spine. The person who owned all this stuff must be somewhere on the island right now, maybe even hiding close by in the trees, watching her. Melissa spun around and ran back along the trail, scrambling over the boulders and logs. She tripped over a root and sprawled on the ground, feeling a sharp sting in her knee. Shakily she got up and kept running, not stopping until she was back at her canoe.

She stood there for a moment, catching her breath. Then she untied the rope and climbed in, her heart thumping wildly. She hated the thought of someone spying on her. More than anything, she wanted to get away.

Six

M
elissa hugged her secret for the rest of the day. When Sharlene asked her about the island, she shrugged and said there was nothing much there, just a lot of rocks and fallen trees and thick forest. She might go back, she said casually. There were a few things she wanted to sketch.

She wasn't exactly sure why she didn't want to tell her mother what she had seen. It had something to do with Sharlene's eagerness to find her a friend. Sharlene would probably want to go over to the island herself and find out who it was and introduce Melissa and tell the stranger her whole life story.

Melissa had figured out that the owner of the books and the bow must be the boy from the ranch at the end of the lake. She was pretty sure Jill had said that the girl, Alice, had a brother, and the books and the bow definitely looked like boy stuff. Besides, there was no one else on the lake it could be. Jill had said the people in the other cabins weren't coming up this August.

That big flat rock would be a great place to go to get away from Cody's pestering. She could take her drawing book. She wondered if the boy went there every day. She hoped not. She formed a tentative plan to find out. She could paddle right around the island and then she could see the rock from the safety of the canoe.

Cody went to bed right after supper, exhausted, cranky and sunburned after his day outside. Sharlene dug through the boxes of games on the shelf and pulled out Monopoly.

“What are you doing?” said Melissa. She couldn't remember ever playing a board game with Sharlene. Besides, she had really gashed her knee when she had fallen and it was aching, and the tops of her shoulders were burned so badly they were scarlet. “I don't like board games, and Monopoly's no fun with two people anyway.”

Sharlene was undaunted. She put Monopoly back and pulled out another box and studied it for a minute. “This is called Boggle
.
It's not a board game and it's meant for two people.”

Melissa hated it when her mother got that overeager look on her face. She had planned to start another drawing for her bedroom wall, maybe of the mouse. She flopped down at the table. “One game,” she said. “That's all.”

Inside the box there were pencils, a tray with a clear plastic cover full of dice with letters on them instead of numbers, a tiny hourglass and a pad of blank paper. Melissa sketched a miniature log cabin in the corner of the top sheet while Sharlene scanned the rules.

“Okay, got it,” Sharlene said finally. She explained the rules quickly. It sounded boring. You had to shake the tray to mix up the dice and then look at the letters on top and write down all the words you could find before the sand in the hourglass ran out.

Melissa tore off two sheets of paper, one for her and one for Sharlene. Her mother put the lid over the tray and gave it a vigorous shake, scattering the little cubes. She wiggled the tray so the cubes would settle back into their holes and then removed the lid. She turned over the hourglass. “Okay, go.”

All Melissa could see were stupid little words like
it
and
saw
and
for
. She wrote them down, trying not to pay attention to Sharlene, who was scribbling madly. She glanced at the sand; there was just a trickle left. She looked back at the cubes and the word
settle
jumped out at her. She felt a spark of triumph as she wrote it down. Six letters—that might even be a record.

They tallied up the score quickly, arguing over Sharlene's word
bummer
. “It might have been a word when you were a kid,” said Melissa, “but nobody says that today.”

“Dictionary, we need a dictionary,” said Sharlene, but a quick hunt through the shelves didn't produce one.

“We're not accepting it,” said Melissa firmly. It turned out that
settle
gave her bonus points and she declared herself the winner.

“Rematch,” said Sharlene.

They played two more games, winning one each. The light inside the cabin grew dim, and Sharlene called a brief halt to light a couple of oil lamps. The soft flames flickered on the log walls, shutting out the night. Three more games and then Melissa, her eyes drooping with sleep, said she wanted to go to bed.

She packed everything back in the box and put it away on the shelf. Sharlene was humming and she looked happy. Melissa analyzed her own feelings. Boggle was okay. Well…even a little bit fun, she had to admit. She just hoped her mother didn't think she was going to play games with her every night.

At breakfast, Sharlene announced her plan. “You entertain Cody in the mornings while I'm working on my course. Then in the afternoons it'll be my shift and you're free to do what you want.”

Melissa looked up from her bowl of Cheerios. The ice had already melted in the coolers and the milk was lukewarm. “You're not really doing that course, are you?”

“I certainly am. English Eleven. I've got all the materials. They arrived just before we left.”

The English course had been Jill's idea. Sharlene had dropped out of high school halfway through grade eleven. Jill had urged Sharlene to upgrade slowly, a course at a time through distance education, and get her graduation diploma. English Eleven was a good place to start.

Sharlene had been uncertain. Melissa, skeptical that her mother could even do it, had forgotten all about it. Silently, she poured more Cheerios into Cody's bowl.

“It's going to be a lot of reading. Short stories and novels,” said Sharlene. “And writing essays I think.”

“Mmmm,” said Melissa. Did Sharlene think this was going to impress her? She frowned. She didn't really like the idea of having to look after Cody all morning. In Huntley there was the playground in the park to take him to and the little kids' story hour at the library. And of course there was always the tv.

“I even have to read a play by Shakespeare. My god, can you believe that? Me?” Sharlene sounded more excited than worried.

Melissa sighed. “I know what I'll do with Cody,” she said.

“What?” demanded Cody through a mouthful of cereal. Milk dribbled down his chin.

Melissa eyed him critically. “I'm going to teach you how to swim.”

Sharlene said she was going to run to the store for more ice. At first she wanted them all to go, but the thought of bouncing over that rough road again didn't thrill Melissa. Besides, she knew her mother. She would be there for ages, talking to her new best friend Marge. Finally Sharlene agreed that Melissa and Cody could stay at the cabin as long as they absolutely promised not to go in the water until she got back.

Melissa dragged Cody's box out of the bedroom and parked him in the middle of the floor. Sharlene had put a few new things in there: a bag of plastic jungle animals and a dump truck that he could load with his building blocks. Melissa prayed that, for a little while anyway, it would keep his attention. She settled herself at the table with her drawing book and her box of sketching pencils.

For once Cody was an angel, even thanking her and not spilling anything when she made him a snack of juice and cookies. She was absorbed in her mouse drawing and was surprised when she heard Sharlene honk the horn to say she was back.

Sharlene admired Melissa's drawing and said she had captured the mouse's fear exactly. She chatted while she put away some groceries. “There's a fair here every August,” she said. “I picked up an entry form. It's the old-fashioned kind, you know, where people enter their jars of jam and quilts and they're judged. Marge said there's a section for kids. You could put in some of your drawings.”

Melissa shrugged. Her drawings were private and she couldn't imagine displaying them at a fair. She didn't even like it when the teacher put all their artwork up on the wall at school.

“Well, we'll see,” said Sharlene, which was what she always said when she thought Melissa was being stubborn. “Now I'm going to get to work. Good luck with the swimming lesson.”

She needed more than good luck, Melissa discovered quickly. She needed a miracle. Cody refused to go in over his knees and screamed when Melissa splashed a tiny bit of water on his chest. He was mesmerized by the tiny fish and spent the rest of the lesson trying to catch them with a stick.

When lunch was finished, Melissa didn't feel at all guilty about handing Cody over to Sharlene for the afternoon. After all, it had been her idea.

Melissa's arms were still sore from the previous day's paddling, but the canoe behaved much better now. She headed right to the swamp at the far end of the island. She paddled through reeds that were taller than her head. It was like moving through a bowl of soup, she thought, as the canoe went slower and slower. She rested for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of being completely hidden in a green jungle. Then she gave a few hard long strokes and emerged on the other side.

The flat rock came up sooner than Melissa had remembered. She had planned to paddle out into the lake and observe it from a distance. But she rounded a bend and it was right there. At first, relief flooded her. Nobody in sight—just the bare gray rock gleaming in the hot sun. Then she spotted the blue canoe floating in the reeds. Before Melissa could turn around, someone waded out of the shade cast by the low boughs of a tree overhanging the water.

It was a girl in a red bathing suit, standing waist deep. She had long blond hair that hung down her back and a thin pointed face. She didn't look at all surprised to see Melissa. In fact, Melissa thought afterward, it was as if she had expected her.

When she spoke, her voice was firm and confident. “Do you come in peace or war?” she said.