Shadows Cast by Stars

I pick up my blanket and give it a shake. “The sand fleas are getting to me. I think I’ll go sleep on the boat too.”

“Cassandra,” he says. A hand extends toward me, but I step back.

“Cedar, you know it’s not like that.”

“He’ll hurt you.” His words are hard and tight and all the throatiness is gone. “He’ll hurt you and ruin you. One day, you’ll come back to me and say, ‘You told me, and I didn’t listen.’”

“Maybe,” I say as a knot forms in my stomach. Is he right? “But right now, I can’t be anything more than your friend. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

He throws a log on the fire and suddenly his face is illuminated with orange light. He doesn’t look like the muscle-bound goon I once met. He’s a boy-just a boy. A boy who’s heartbroken, and as I edge away toward the skiff, I wish I could take that hurt away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I wake to a raven’s rasp. It perches on the dodger, bobbing up and down at me.

“Shoo,” I whisper at it. Helen doesn’t stir, so I say, “Shoo,” a little louder.

The raven still doesn’t budge. It just continues to caw and bob at me, until I caw back. Then it flies away, sailing straight down the beach to the edge of the water, almost running right into Cedar, who’s standing in the shallows, watching something.

I stand, stretch, and decide to let Helen sleep a little longer. The tide is licking the bottom of the skiff, so we could leave now if we wanted, but it’s a shame to wake the one person still asleep when there’s no immediate rush. I settle on the prow and watch Cedar. In another place, in another time, maybe things might have been different. Maybe. But maybes aren’t very useful because they’re not real, and all that wondering about what could have been, if only… it never leads anywhere.

The sun turns the sky a red so violent that I can tell the weather’s going to change. That’s going to make our search difficult, and my heart sinks a little-until I notice the black shapes in the open water just beyond the mouth of the cove. That’s what Cedar’s watching. Orcas. Sea wolves. Our sign.

And he was going to let them pass without telling me!

Anger rages through my veins as I shake Helen awake more roughly than I should. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say as she blinks at me. “They’re out there-we have to go.”

“Okay,” she says, pushing her hair away from her face. “Okay. Give me a second-do I have a second?”

“One,” I say.

“Where’s Cedar?”

I freeze. I’m so angry I could kill him. I’m tempted to leave him here, but I call him anyway. “We’re going!” is all I say. He’ll have to figure out the rest.

Fortunately for him, it takes Helen several minutes to wake up fully, and a few more before the skiff is truly floating-enough time for Cedar to hop onboard. He doesn’t look at me. I don’t look at him, either. We both know that something has changed between us and that the friendship we once had-if it could be called that- is irretrievably lost.

But I have no time for that now-only the black dorsal fins of the orcas as I pray that they don’t disappear, that they’re not just some strange optical illusion-that they’re real.

Helen revs the motor and the skiff plows the water. I grip the gunwales, boring my gaze into the ocean, willing the orcas to surface. And then, just off our port side, one breaches, sending a flume of water high into the air. Others join it, and then they continue their migration south, dipping and diving through the waves as I thank them silently.

The wind whips up a stiff chop as we round the point, and dark clouds are billowing in the southeast. “Where to now?” Helen yells.

I don’t know. I somehow thought that when we found the sea wolves, we’d find Bran and Paul with them, but I scan the ocean and can’t make out anything. My hand finds Madda’s spirit stone. It’s silent too. “Still north, I guess,” I say.

Helen gives me a grim look. “We can’t go far. We need to save enough fuel to get back.”

“Do your best” is all I say.

The shoreline has been painted red by rising sun, so the whole world seems coated in blood. I shudder and push the thought away. There will be no blood spilled this morning. And then, from the corner of my eye, I spot a blur of blue-a kingfisher. It ducks into the shadows and there, where a creek runs out to the ocean, I spy a war canoe.

We’ve found them.

In my mind, this is what I envisioned: Bran would run to me and spin me in his arms. Paul would greet Helen, and love her as much as I do. Maybe as a sister. Maybe as something more. We’d return home, triumphant. Our family would be whole again.

None of this happens.

The canoe is empty and badly damaged. Bullet holes riddle one side. Rusty bloodstains coat the ribs, as if the canoe was a living creature stripped of its flesh. My heart thuds against my breastbone. One of them-maybe both-is hurt.

“It had to get here somehow,” I hear Helen say as I run to get the medicine kit.

“Currents, probably,” Cedar says.

“Currents, my ass.” With the kit slung across my back, I duck into the forest. Standing on the beach staring at the canoe isn’t going to find them.

Helen chases after me. Great firs tower above us, watching as we wade through the sea of ferns on the forest floor. I look for signs that they passed this way-broken branches, crushed fronds, something, but there isn’t anything to find. When we reach a creek, the only sign of life is a doe and her fawn drinking.

“Good water source,” Helen says. “Maybe they came up this way.”

We wait until the deer leave, then scour the banks, looking for tracks. Nothing.

“Looks like tidal flats on the other side,” I say, nodding at the bright light behind a screen of willows. “Maybe they’re out there?”

“Maybe,” Helen says.

We search the flats, calling for Bran, for Paul as we go, but no one answers. My throat has gone dry. Where could they be? Did the raven lie to me? I pick up my pace, jogging down a stretch of beach, hoping each time I round a stand of sea grass, I’ll find them stretched out in the sun, but there’s nothing but stone and sand and forest.

“What do you want to do?” Helen asks when I draw up, panting. She glances up at the sky, now thick with clouds, with a worried look.

“Just a little longer,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “But not too much longer. I don’t like the look of that storm.”

We head back toward the skiff, searching every log, every rock, every outcropping of beach oats. My brother is here. Bran is here. I know it. I can feel it.

The skiff comes into sight. I can just make out Cedar kneeling next to it, and then a shock of auburn hair appears next to him. “Over here!” he yells when he spots us. “I found them. Over here!”

I break into a run, scrambling over the seaweed, slipping, falling, and taking all the skin off my knees, but I don’t care. I cannot be fast enough.

And then, I round the prow of the skiff. Bran and Cedar are standing over a man lying flat on the ground. Where is Paul? I look on the other side of the canoe, and then at Cedar, who just shakes his head.

The man on the ground groans in pain, and I push the questions about my brother away. The man’s hurt. So is Bran, judging from the way his eyes are tinged with yellow. See to them first. Then they’ll tell me where Paul is. Maybe he’s off hunting. Yes, that must be it. Hunting. My heart settles into an even rhythm as I reach out to touch Bran’s cheek. It’s filthy. “You’re back.”