Aurora Fox's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Aurora woke before dawn with the foot wraps already in her paws. The shack was cold. The stove had burned down to red coals. She reached for the smock and stopped. Something outside had changed. The frogs were gone. In their place, wind pushed against the wall in slow, heavy shoves. Sam was already at the window. He held the shutter open a crack. Grey light showed a sky the color of wet iron. Rain hit the roof in fat, spaced drops, the kind that came before the real weather. "Storm," he said. "Coming fast." Aurora pulled the smock over her head. "How long till it hits?" "Hour. Less." She crossed to the door and pushed it open. Wind shoved back. Beyond the porch, the reeds bent flat. The path they had come in on was already a shallow trough of moving water. She thought of the mire that had swallowed her boots. In open swamp, in weather like this, she would not slide across a pole. She would go under. "We can still move," she said. "If we go now." Sam did not answer. He walked past her onto the sagging porch and looked south, toward the basin. He watched the sky for a long moment. Then he shut the door behind them both. "No," he said. "Basin floods first. Trail floods second. We'd be in it when it broke." "Then when?" "When the wind drops." Aurora felt the day slide away from her. Every hour in this shack was an hour the basin sat waiting, and she had spent everything she owned to get one more hour closer. She wanted to argue. She looked at Sam's face and did not. He was already moving. He dragged the plank table against the door. He pulled the coil of rope from his left pocket and set it on the table where he could reach it. He checked the shutters one by one and wedged the loose one with a wood scrap from the stove pile. "Fill anything that holds water," he said. "Roof leaks. We keep the stove side dry." Aurora found two tin cans and a cracked bowl. She set them under the worst spots. Water began to tick into the tin. The wind rose to a steady howl. A shingle tore off somewhere above them and skidded across the roof. She sat by the stove and fed it a split of wood. Her new gear stayed dry. The route stayed in Sam's head. The storm would pass. "Tomorrow?" she said. Sam laid the knife from his right pocket on the table beside the rope. "Tomorrow," he said. "If the ground holds." Outside, the swamp went white with rain. Aurora pulled her knees up and watched the door shake against the table, and waited.