Aurora Fox's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Aurora stood at the swamp's edge with Sam's map folded in her paw. The green smear sat somewhere ahead in miles of reeds and standing water. She had a direction and nothing else. Sam could be anywhere in it, and the ground between her and him would drop a fox to her chest without warning. She backtracked to a shack near the trailhead where a bored trapper rented gear by the hour. She traded her silver hair clip for two things: a vest sewn from overlapping lily-pad shapes, buoyant and ridiculous, and a slender cypress pole taller than she was. The trapper shrugged at her clip and told her Sam usually worked the north cuts this week, but he wouldn't swear to it. Aurora buckled the vest tight under her arms. She stepped off the bank and drove the pole down. It hit soft mud a foot under the water. She moved to the next tuft of grass and tested again. Hard root. She stepped. The vest bumped against her chin every time she bent. An hour in, the pole punched through into nothing. She jerked it back. The hole it left filled with slow brown water. She skirted wide and kept going. By the second hour she had a rhythm. Tap, tap, step. Tap, tap, step. The reeds all looked the same. The sun sat behind cloud. She could not have said if she was going north. She stopped on a hummock to breathe. That was when she saw the reeds ahead moving wrong. A patch of them shivered against the wind instead of with it. Small, jerking pulls, like something below was tugging the stems. Aurora remembered what Valerie had said about Sam. He watched for reeds that moved wrong. He walked these swamps hoping to reach the next person in time. She cupped her paws. "Sam! Alligator Sam!" The reeds kept jerking. No answer came. She pushed toward them, testing every step. Twenty yards out she saw a green snout above the water and a broad shoulder in blue overalls. Sam was braced against a submerged root, both arms down, hauling. A young otter's head broke the surface, coughing. Sam dragged the otter onto a mat of floating vegetation. He pulled a coiled rope from his left pocket, looped it under the otter's arms, and tied it off to a cypress knee. Only then did he look up at Aurora. "Vest's on backward," he said. Aurora looked down. One strap was twisted. "You're Sam." "I am." "Valerie sent me. I need you to take me to the place on your map. Where the sky was brightest." Sam wiped mud from his snout. He studied her a long moment. Then he nodded once at the otter. "Help me get him to dry ground," Sam said. "Then we talk about your map." Aurora gripped her pole and waded to where Sam was with the otter.