Love Song For A Raven

oars, jammed the pegs down into the oarlocks and began to row with all her strength. As she pulled on the oars, she brought the bow back around to meet the wind and waves. Immediately the boat began taking on less water.

Janna braced herself and put her back into her work, pulling in long, steady sweeps as her brothers had taught her years ago on a small lake in Washington. She watched the shoreline that lay diagonally off her stern, trying to gauge her progress by landmarks that were slowly condensing out of the cloud- wrapped dawn.

When the landmarks appeared not to move, Janna thought she was simply overanxious. She picked another landmark, counted fifty strokes and checked again. She was moving relative to the land, but just barely. The wind and the tide were simply too powerful for her to overcome; and every few seconds more water splashed into the boat, adding more weight to the already unwieldy craft. At this rate she wouldn’t make Totem Inlet before her strength gave out and she was pushed onto the rocks or the rowboat was swamped in one of the larger sets of waves that humped up periodically out of the west.

For a few minutes Janna picked up the pace of the rowing, putting more space between herself and the dark cliffs that lined the edge of the sea. Always before now she had thought of herself as being reasonably strong and physically competent, the legacy both of a healthy body and the goading of three muscular brothers who had teased her mercilessly when she was too weak or too slow or too timid to play their rough-and-tumble games. She had learned to smile and joke as though she didn’t hurt; and she had learned to work harder and longer so that the next time she played she would be better. As a result, she had gained a reputation as a good sport with a great sense of humor.

Water sloshed ankle-deep through the boat. Janna permitted herself to look at the shoreline. She had made almost no progress. If anything, she was afraid she had drifted closer to the cliffs. For an instant fear burst in her, taking the strength from her arms. Then she set her teeth, headed the rowboat straight out to sea instead of on a diagonal course and rowed hard. After a hundred strokes the shoreline had receded somewhat. The inlet, however, was no closer.

Janna changed course slightly, choosing a heading that would bring her closer to the inlet. As she rowed she thought over her choices. Rowing straight out to sea would keep her off the rocks but wouldn’t get her to safety. Rowing a diagonal course would bring her closer to the inlet, but combined with the pressure of tide and wind, it would bring her closer to the shore, as well. It would be a race to see whether the tide and wind shoved her onto the rocks before she reached the relative shelter of the inlet. Frankly, she didn’t think she would make it.

And if she didn’t stop rowing to bail, she would sink before she reached either cliffs or inlet.

Janna dropped the oars, bailed frantically for a minute, then whipped off her waterproof poncho and dumped it at her feet. It the boat were capsized or swamped, she didn’t want to be weighed down by the unwieldly slicker. As she reached for the oars her long, cinnamon hair fanned out wildly in the wind for an instant, only to be plastered darkly against her skull when an unusually big wave burst over the gunwale. She picked up the oars and brought the bow into the waves once more. As she rowed she kicked out of the fisherman’s boots, knowing they would drag her down if she tried to swim in them. She left her soaking sneakers in place; she would need them if she got to the rocky shore.

„Not if,“ Janna said firmly to herself. „When. You’re a strong swimmer. Just two weeks ago you swam for about a mile without a break. It’s not even a quarter of a mile to the inlet’s mouth.“

What she didn’t say aloud was that two weeks ago when she had been swimming, it had been a rare, calm, hot day, and she had been in a very sheltered inlet, where the sea was as flat as a mirror. Right now the sea was neither sheltered nor calm. But there was no point in dwelling on reasons to be afraid. She knew that in dangerous situations, panic killed more people than anything else.

Pushing every other thought out of her mind, Janna bent to the oars once more. As she rowed, the fluorescent orange of her life vest swayed like a flame in the postdawn gloom. She was the only spot of life and color showing on either land or sea.

Raven stood on the stern of the Black Star, looking as broad shouldered and powerful as the mountains that rose steeply on either side of Totem Inlet. Beneath his feet the stern shifted and bounced slightly on the inlet’s choppy waters. He stood easily, swaying as necessary to compensate for the boat’s restless surges, oblivious to the chilly wind that tugged at the open collar of his midnight-blue flannel shirt. Eyes closed, he strained to hear the faint ripping sound that would tell him that the distant motor had finally caught and held. Nothing came to him but the shivering moan of the wind as it curled between the inlet’s rocky walls.

He stared up the inlet through powerful binoculars, his black eyes searching the water for any sign that the boat had reached safety. There was nothing ahead but the same tiny whitecaps and choppy Utile waves that slapped against the Black Star. Beyond the inlet’s mouth he could see a line of churned water. The powerful binoculars brought every detail close. Whoever was out in the descending storm would have his hands full, especially if he were in a rowboat with a dead outboard motor.

On the other hand, Raven knew that the sound of the engine could have been carried away by the capricious wind. He could be standing there imagining more problems than existed in the storm-tossed dawn. Few people other than professional fishermen came to the western side of the Charlottes. The tourists who came to the forbidding cliffs and narrow inlets either came with guides or had enough skill to sail to the islands on their own boats. They didn’t come in rowboats, either – and the sounds he had heard earlier had come from a single outboard engine.

That was why Raven wondered if he were imagining things. Few people had either the skill or the foolishness to take on the west side of the Charlottes in an open rowboat. Yet it was possible that one of the Haidas from Old Masset or Skidegate had chosen to make a personal pilgrimage to Totem Inlet. The descendant of people who had routinely raided as far south as Oregon in their dugout cedar canoes wouldn’t hesitate to put out to sea in a rowboat in order to reach Totem Inlet at the first stirrings of dawn.

A corner of Raven’s mouth curled into a faint smile. Of course it was possible that a Haida had come to the legendary inlet for personal reasons. That was what he was doing. He had come here in his season of discontent as though he could fish satisfaction from the dark veils of the past just as he had fished silver salmon from the green veils of the sea.

Yet satisfaction had eluded him.

With the ease of years of practice, Raven put his own personal needs aside and concentrated on listening to the wind’s flexible voice. From the faint, fitful sounds that had awakened him, he knew that the boat was beyond Totem Inlet’s mouth. Unless the motor had started again, the man would be forced to row against the wind and tide in order to reach safety.

Unconsciously Raven flexed his big work-hardened hands around the binoculars. If he were the man in the boat, he would be rowing right now, pulling hard on the long oars, feeling the power of his body sweeping down through the wood into the heaving sea. The boat would be cutting through the waves with deceptive ease, sliding closer to the inlet with each movement of the oars through the water.

But Raven was not the man rowing. If he had been, he would have been close enough by now to be spotted by someone standing in the inlet. There was nothing for Raven to see, however. Obviously the person out beyond the inlet lacked Raven’s strength or his understanding of the danger of letting a small boat drift too close to the unforgiving shore while he worked over a motor that was well and truly dead.

Several times Raven thought he heard faint shivers of sound that could have come from a motor. Each time he caught his breath, willing the sound to hold, to strengthen. Each time the sound vanished before he could be sure it had been his ears rather than his imagination that had heard it.

The wind flexed, paused and then blew with a new, sustained roar from a slightly different angle. Raven moved even as the wind did, listening intently, staring out across the chop with dark eyes accustomed to all the moods of the sea. Nothing moved within the binoculars’s broad sweep but waves and wind. Whoever was out there simply wasn’t getting any closer to safety.

If anyone were out there at all.

Yet even as the thought came, Raven discarded it. With a certainty that