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Falling to her knees, she counts off seconds. No sign of him. She is calculating his pace and how long it would take him to reach the opposite shore. Perhaps a few minutes. Strangely, she is not worried about him. Maybe it is the drowsiness that is threatening to overtake her, or something in his manner, or how the water did not seem to affect him. She is quite sure that he will make it to the opposite shore, or that he is perfectly safe underwater if he chooses to remain there, and will be safe for a long time. Her head is heavy, and the black lake offers nothing to justify renewed interest. She is gathering the blanket around herself, lying on her side, gazing at the water. Within moments she is asleep, and this time she dreams of only black and a tangle of plants far underwater, undulating with slow-motion clarity.  |
*** The next morning, she is awakened by the pulsing white sun as it rises through the trees on the opposite shore. East, no doubt about it -- that is their direction home. She shakes her companion roughly awake, and they both stare at the tidy section of beach where the stranger had made his camp. There is nothing there now except the remnants of a fire, the circle of smoothed-out sand. She holds out her hands close to where the fire was, but there is not a hint of heat there, no sign of the meat they had eaten the night before; the flames may just as well have been extinguished years before. The stranger's backpack is gone. The carcass of the boat, too, with not even a crooked trail in the  |
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