cliff. He would fall and smash his skull on the rocks below, and while Max tried to scoop his brains back into his head Roddy would look up at the sky, and see a moon he did not recognise slowly appearing against the blue, a ghost emerging from the mist, mocking him as his world went dark.
“Roddy!” Max called. The others were already scrambling down the slope, and before his panic could take hold Roddy slipped and slid down to the gully floor. He did not fall, he did not die, but neither did he feel elated. He sensed the land laughing at him, amusing itself with the mild deceit it had planted in his mind. The stream was the sound of that laughter.
It was gently flowing, cool and fresh, and at its deepest it came up to their chests. It twisted and turned in its little valley, disappearing downstream around a rocky corner curtained by overhanging plants. The men stripped and bathed. There were no dead things here. Perhaps the remains on the beach had been drowned further downstream, to deter any visitors from venturing inland. But here, the air was clear of the taint of decomposition, and the sun still found its way through the leaves and branches to speckle their damaged skin.
The water was fresh. Butch tasted it, then gulped it down. Even Norris smiled and refrained from passing some derisory comment.
“Water, water, everywhere,” Max said. Roddy smiled, because he knew what Max meant, and Norris grinned in confused acknowledgement of his eventual acceptance. They all drank and swam, and washed away dried blood and caked dirt.
When they had finished, they climbed from the gentle waters to lie out on the bank and let the sun dry them. Butch remained in the stream. He bobbed in the current, floating a few feet, standing, doing it again.
The surge came from nowhere. Without even a sigh to announce its appearance, as if air and water conspired to fool the men’s senses. Butch turned and stared upstream at the rolling, tumbling, refuse-laden wave of water ploughing towards him. It frothed, like a rabid sea monster angry at the irony of its affliction.
Roddy stood, absurdly conscious of his nakedness. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He felt a draining flush of hopelessness, the same feeling he had experienced watching his ship split and sink. No hope, he had thought to himself then, no hope at all for anyone left inside.
Now he thought the same. Except he whispered it as well, like a prayer to the dying. “No hope.”
Just before the water lifted Butch from the stream bed, he glanced at Roddy, and suddenly his eyes were very calm, his expression one of equanimity rather than fear. It was a split second, the blink of an eye, because then the wave swallowed him in a flurry of limbs. His head broke surface several times, but he could only utter bubbles. The men watched helplessly as Butch was tumbled away from them, mixed in with the wood and weed and dead things also carried along by the surge.
Roddy started running along the bank. Stones snapped at his bare feet. Breath caught in his throat, possessed of sharp edges. But Butch was firmly in the water’s grasp, and it held him close and low, attempting to drown him even before he struck the wall of the gully further downstream. Roddy tried to shout, but his voice was lost in the angry white-water roar. He sensed the others following him. Their company made it all seem more futile.
He could have made it, Roddy thought. He could have swum to shore. It was impossible, of course. But it seemed that for Butch, even the intention to survive had been absent.
In the waters, jumping from the foam, speckled red for brief instants, Roddy was sure he saw tiny snapping things. It may have been the boiling water itself, spinning Butch in its violent grasp. Or it could have been something in the water with Butch, but surviving there, belonging there, revelling in the violence.
Butch was swept under the overhanging trees and plants, just before the stream twisted out of sight. For the instant before he was pummelled into protruding rocks Roddy saw him, eyes closed, mouth wide open. His bruised face had been struck by something, and he was drowning in blood as well as water.
The wave struck the rocks, scouring its contents across the blackening surface, then surged away downstream. It left behind its load, floating in the suddenly calm waters: a tree branch, stripped of bark; a bird of paradise, bobbing like a drowned rainbow; and Butch, still spread on the rocks, his snapped left arm wedged into a crack and holding him there.
His head lolled. He looked like he was falling asleep, and at any moment Roddy expected him to look up and his bashful grin to appear. His head fell lower, however, until his chin rested on his chest. And then they could see the damage to the back of his head, and Roddy knew that he would never be smiling again.
They had to cross the stream to reach him. Roddy could not bring himself to enter the water, even though it was back to its normal self, as if the bore had never been. He wanted to mention the snapping things he had seen, but he felt foolish; there were no apparent bites on Butch’s body, only cuts and scrapes. He watched nervously as Max and Norris waded across, arms held wide for balance.
Max paused in front of Butch, his attention focussed on whatever was beyond the rocky outcrop around which the stream disappeared. He was still for a long time. Roddy was on the verge of splashing out to him, shaking him awake and shouting at him, when he turned.
“No sign of the wave downstream,” Max said casually. He looked briefly back upstream, indicating to Roddy the wet, scoured banks where the freak surge had made its mark. Norris seemed not to hear, or understand the implication. He was staring at Butch, disgust stretching his face out of shape.
Roddy was glad he had not gone in. This was not a normal stream, not like the ones in the forests and valleys back home. It was a wrong stream, one which could conjure a wave from nowhere and then suck it back into itself, without having to spread it further along its length. It was flowing at its normal gentle rate once more, carrying away the detritus left behind. The colourful dead bird spun slowly as it headed for the beach.
Roddy thought the wave must be waiting somewhere. Tucked on the stream bed, pressure building, ready to appear again when the time was right. Like now, while Max and Norris were trying to free Butch’s trapped arm without touching the bone protruding through the skin.
But perhaps that would be too easy.
“Get him out,” Roddy said, “get him out, now, get him out.” He rocked from side to side, wincing at the pain from his gashed feet but enjoying the sensation at the same time. It told him he was still alive, his brain was connected. He looked down at his pathetic body. His ribs corrugated his skin and his feet bled onto the rocks. His blood was a black splash on the ground. It seeped between stones and was sucked in quickly, the land as desperate for sustenance as they were.
The two men eventually backed across the stream with Butch trailing between them. Norris seemed frantic to keep Butch’s head up out of the water, as if a dead man could drown. They reached the bank and Roddy helped them haul the body out. They lay Butch down on the wet rocks. His head was leaking.
Roddy had seen worse sights than this when the ship sank, but now it was different. Just as Ernie’s death had hit them badly, the sight of Butch lying cooling in this cruel place felt like a punch to the chest. He had been a survivor, one of only a few left from the ship’s crew. He had been valuable. A
“Just where the hell did that wave come from?” Norris asked. “What caused it? There aren’t any clouds, no rain. The stream’s back to its normal level. I didn’t feel…” He prattled on, but Roddy soon cut out his voice. He was becoming aware of the expression on Max’s face.
The big man looked defeated. His arms hung by his sides, shoulders slumped, water dripping from his ears and nose to splash into rosettes on the rocks around him. Pinkish sweat, coloured with his own blood, dribbled down his forehead and around his ears. The burns and scabs on his head were open to the elements. His eyes were shaded from the sun. They looked dead.
“Max?” Roddy said, and Norris shut up. “Max.”
Max turned and looked at them, and Roddy saw that some of the drops were tears. The big man was crying. They were silent, unforced, trickling salt-water into his wounds. “He was only a kid,” Max said. “How old was he? How old was Butch?”
Roddy shrugged. “Nineteen?”
Max nodded. “Just a kid.”
“Where did that wave come from?” Norris said again, now that the silence held their attention.
Max looked back down at Butch, shaking his head slowly, hands fisted. “Something very wrong,” he said.
“The wave, though,” Norris whined.
“Something very wrong with this place.” Max turned and went back to where they had dumped their clothes. He hauled on his trousers and shirt, wincing as aches and pains lit up his body. He said no more.
