Dark Moon Walking (4 page)

FOUR

Walker used the storm as a gift. He rose early, stripped off his shorts, and hobbled outside into the rain. The heavy drops stung his shoulders, forming rivulets that ran down his body and pooled at his feet. Normally he bathed in the creek, but this was different; a cleansing rather than a cleaning. It cleared and focused his mind, made him feel more alive. It joined him with the creatures and spirits that inhabited the land with him. It heightened his senses and calmed his soul. Allowed him to hear the voice of
Dzunukwa
, the wild woman of the forest, carried on the wind that moaned through the cedars.

He spread his arms and tilted his face up to the sky, relishing a feeling of well-being. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt at peace with himself. This was not an easy life, but it was a good one and it suited him just fine.

The people had embraced him when he returned to his village. They knew his story, had seen it played out a thousand times as the legacy of loss created by the white man spread its diseased tendrils through the nations and tribes and clans. They had mourned his pain and celebrated his spirit. The elders taught him well. They shared their knowledge, gave him back his name and his clan, taught him new skills, honored his being, gave wings to new dreams. But it still wasn't enough. He needed a purpose, a place, a role to play in life.

He was helping two of his uncles shape a canoe, carefully adzing the wood to tease the boat out of the tree, when he'd first met Percy. Percy had been his salvation. Percy, with his simple philosophy and deceptively complex program, had taught him how to live again.

Breathing deep, Walker shook the rain from his hair and headed back to his cabin. He would spend the next few days doing chores: sort and store his food cache, make new fishing gear, repair the net he had made from strips of cedar bark. Then, when the storm had cleared, he would head out again in search of the fish that would see him through the winter.

The salmon that graced the crest of his clan, his
'na'mima
, had always been generous and gave themselves to him freely. Perhaps he would take some back to the village, give some to his grandmother and to old Joe. He hadn't been back since spring, and it would be good to see his people again. He could stop off at Percy's camp on the way. It would take him several days and more to get back, and the storms were already starting. He would need to go soon.

Two days later, shortly after sunrise, with both the wind and the rain still slanting noisily into the cove, Walker lifted his head from the net he was working on. He was not sure, but he thought he had heard a new sound. Not quite a sound, but more a change in the tone of the storm. He closed his eyes and reached his senses out into the swirling air, but nothing reverberated. Still, he thought there had been something.

He pushed open the door and walked outside, but there was only the steady hiss of the rain as it beat on the saturated ground, the angry howl of the wind in the trees, and the roar of the waves crashing on the rocks. He would have to wait till it cleared to load his gear into the canoe, and he could not launch until the water had calmed, but he was filled with a sudden sense of urgency. He had heard two ravens call at dawn and it had sounded like a message.

The cabin was a sanctuary of warmth and quiet, filled with the smell of cedar. Walker picked up the net from where he had dropped it on the floor and spread it out over his knees. Maybe it was nothing. Two days spent in the gloom of the cabin, surrounded by the noise of the storm, was enough to make anyone restless.

It was to be yet another day before the waves diminished and the storm surge released its grip on the cove, but by the morning of the fourth day he was out on the water before the sun had risen.

The boat hung suspended between sea and sky, the gray wood of the hull blending with the silver surface of the ocean and the soft gray gleam of morning light. She lay tilted on her side, the starboard rail and part of the cabin underwater. An eerie silence wrapped the bay. The morning chatter of birds, the soft rise of fish, the gentle drone of insects, even the sound of dew dripping from the branches, was stilled.

Walker edged the canoe closer to the wreck, sliding slowly past the bow. The knot in his gut grew tighter as he approached the stern. He already knew what he was going to see. Over the past few days, he had experienced a growing sense of unease. He had felt it first when he saw the black ship, but he had dismissed it as some lingering association with his old world. It had returned during the storm, when he had sensed rather than heard or seen some disturbance. He had dismissed that too. He should have known better. If he had learned anything out here, it was to trust his instincts.

The canoe bumped gently against the curve of the hull, and he reached out a hand to touch it. It looked undamaged, although that made no sense. If it had run aground in the storm, it would have hit the rocky bottom many times before coming to rest. Even if it had settled farther out and been lifted in by the tide, it should show the scars of its passage.

Slowly, heart pounding, he drifted toward the stern. The name was partially submerged, but it didn't matter. The letters were clearly visible. In faded yellow paint they spelled out the words
Island Girl
.

As the tide fell, Walker slid out of the canoe and worked his way around the hull, half swimming and half walking. He ignored the cold that puckered his skin and sent stabbing shafts of pain down his legs. He peered in portholes and checked fittings. He saw that the kettle had fallen off the stove and was floating in the water that covered the cabin sole. It was the only thing out of place. The switches on the electronics panel were all off. The anchor was winched tight to the bow, with the brake set. The life buoy was clamped firmly in its fitting.

None of it made sense. Claire would have had the engine running and the switches on if she had been fighting the storm. And if she was losing the battle, she would have tried to anchor. Unless she had not been aboard and the boat had come adrift from the dock. He glanced down to where the mooring lines floated in the water, undulating like seaweed in the waves. Maybe that was it. But where was the dinghy? And the kayak?

He pushed the canoe to shore, slipped behind a fringe of branches, and slid up on the rocky beach. He needed time to think, to absorb whatever information the boat could give him. As he clambered out over the rocks, one of his questions was quickly answered. Behind a mound of jumbled logs and flotsam, a small, bright-blue boat lay wedged tightly under an overhang, a gaping hole in its bottom. He had found the dinghy. Claire was not in it.

Much later, he let the canoe drift back out into the current and turned it toward the pass. He would take the long route to Shoal Bay. It would take him past the coves where Claire and
Island Girl
might have been seen if she had headed up to the big pass. It would also let him arrive after dark, and some instinct told him that might be a good thing.

By dusk he had covered more than twenty miles. He was tired and hungry, even though Annie had shared her meal of oysters with him when he had stopped to talk to her, and Old Tom had given him a handful of dried berries. He had told them that Claire was missing but not that he had found her boat. He didn't know why he had withheld that information. At first he told himself that he didn't want to frighten them. There was truth in that, but it wasn't the whole reason. That was something more personal. More raw. His grandmother would have said that his spirit was linked with Claire's. That perhaps held more truth, although he did not understand how that could be.

He had never really believed in the world of totems and spirits he had been born into, never called on the powers his membership in the Salmon and Raven clans gave him. Yet he knew the meaning that that world held for his people. Knew the beliefs that sustained them. He had seen the ceremonies, heard the stories, even danced the dances, but he had been too cynical, too hungry, too restless to listen. Now he wished he had. Now he wished he could turn into a raven and fly.

None of the water folk had seen anything of Claire, but he knew they would search for her. He had wanted to warn them to be careful but didn't know how to put into words what was only a gut feeling. Instead, he pointed them north and east, reserving the southwest for himself. There was something happening that had nothing to do with the storm. He could feel it. It was man-made and it was evil and somehow it involved the black ship.

Long after the sun had set he rounded the point of Benjamin Island, across the channel from Shoal Bay. He kept close to shore, steering the canoe gently among the rocks. Even before Shoal Bay opened up, he could see movement on the water. Three small boats moved back and forth, the narrow beams of spotlights focused on the water ahead of their bows. The sound of voices occasionally reached him above the sound of the motors, but he could not make out the words. Above it all, he could hear the rattle of chains and the harsh sound of metal striking metal. The sounds were punctuated by loud splashes.

Slowly he edged the canoe forward, using the rocks to propel himself so that the splash of his paddle would not draw attention. The black ship lay alongside the wharf. It was no longer silent. Bright lights lit the deck, where several men were maneuvering some kind of metallic cylinder over the railing using one of the davit cranes. As each dinghy approached, the crane swung a cylinder out and lowered it gently to the waiting boat. Two men in the dinghy then carefully settled the metal tube into some kind of device set near the bow before releasing the crane hook and heading over to the east shore of the bay, where they disappeared from view behind the point. The process was repeated for the next dinghy. And the next. Supervising it all was a man with hair so pale it seemed to be alight with its own luminescence.

Walker stayed motionless against the rocks. It was almost midnight when the activity in the bay ceased and the three dinghies were winched back aboard. An hour later the black ship was quiet again. Still Walker remained. He felt the current slow and then reverse, gently tugging him backward. Several times he thought about moving, but the occasional glow of a cigarette tip high up on the western point of the bay held him. Finally, his patience was rewarded as the thin beam of a flashlight pierced the darkness, moving slowly back down toward the ship.