Sierra Ashwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Sierra followed the river until the last bend stopped her. Past it, the water changed. It ran fast and dark, pinched between rugged rocks, then spilled over a ledge into a deep, churning pool below. Cascade Run, the previous explorer might have called it. No bank ran along the edge. No ledge to walk. The X for the Grove sat somewhere downstream, past this rushing water. On foot, she could go no farther. She crouched and studied the current. It moved too fast to wade and too deep to cross. One slip on those wet rocks would drag her over the falls. She thought of the abandoned camp behind her, of the tools stacked in its corner. If she could not walk the river, she would have to ride it. Sierra hiked back to the camp. She hauled loose planks from a collapsed shed and dragged them to the water. In the corner she found a coil of thick rope, tightly braided, its end neatly bound. She laid the planks side by side and lashed them tight. She tested each knot with her weight. The delicate blade from the bundle sliced the rope clean where her heavy knife would have frayed it. Under the gray light, the raft came together, rough but solid. She eyed the fast water again. A raft could carry her past the bend, but only if she controlled it. She tied a long line of the braided rope to the raft's front corner and looped the other end around a boulder at the water's edge. She would let the raft down slow, hand over hand, and keep the boulder as her anchor. Sierra pushed the raft into the shallows and climbed aboard. The current grabbed it at once. The rope snapped taut against the boulder. She fed it out slowly, foot by foot, her boots braced on the wet planks. The raft slid past the last bend. Spray soaked her jacket. The falls roared closer on her right, but the rope held her clear of the drop, steering her along the deep channel. Then the rope reached its end. She had no more line to feed. The raft hung in the current, straining. She looked ahead. Below the falls, past the churning pool, the river widened and slowed. Calm water. If she cut loose, the raft would ride the calm stretch, but she could never haul it back upstream against this flow. Sierra pressed the delicate blade to the taut rope. One cut, and there was no returning. She cut. The rope split. The raft leapt forward, dropped down the near channel, and slammed into the slower water below. She gripped the planks, drenched and shaking, and rode the raft around a wide new bend. The falls fell behind her. Ahead, the river opened into ground no chart had marked. She had passed the last bend. But the current now carried her one way only, deeper toward the Grove, with no path back the way she came.