The Marshlanders

CHAPTER 19: BEAVER NIGHT Three days later William, taking his turn at steering, was amazed that at every bend of the river a new vista opened: they would be passing a field ablaze with goldenrod and autumn asters with the early September sun hot on their heads and then shoot around a corner into the dank cool of a forest. It took them a whole day, swamping themselves five times, to master the art of turning corners. The steerer had to lean fiercely into the paddle to keep the current from forcing them against the opposite bank, while the bow person executed a twisting thrust sideways. Once they settled down, there were marvelous things to see: salmon muscling upstream to spawn, a bat falling off a branch to swim blithely across the river, does leading their fawns down to drink and, once, a mother mink standing on one bank trying to persuade her kits, screaming on the other side, to jump in and swim across. During what had seemed an endless portage and then having to learn the river's vagaries, things had not been going well between them. Clare had always been excitable, losing her temper easily; but her flare ups had always flared down quickly. Even in their most harried passages through marsh and mere, she had never stayed angry for long. But on this trip down the Ander, which they had looked forward to as their last holiday before their apprenticeships, Clare had been out of sorts for two whole days. Now she sat in the bow, slashing away at the water to express her disgust with the world in general and William in particular. She found his comments maddeningly stupid, and she kept telling him so until he clammed up entirely. He hadn't said a word at all since they had stopped to catch crayfish and eat some of yesterday's marsh shoots hours ago. William had seen some delicious looking high bush cranberries, but hadn’t bothered stop for a snack. Even Foxy was perturbed and, having given up on the day entirely, was curled up among the packs with his nose hidden beneath his paws. It was going to be a grim holiday, thought William, for all the autumn sunshine, if Clare was going to act like this. Not seeing any point in stopping to set up camp, he kept on paddling even when dusk was upon them. Clare's shoulders ached, but she wasn't going to say so. If William was idiot enough to keep paddling after dark, she wasn't going to tell him. Let him plod along, the stupid oaf: who did he think he was, giving her orders? Worn down by her hostility, he didn’t warn her when he saw sodden tree trunks all along one stretch. It was so dark under the banks that he didn’t see a thick and almost entirely submerged branch lying right across the river until they banged into it. Neither his strong paddling nor her thrusts from the bow could prevent them from crashing broadside. The full force of the current held them tightly against the log. They weren’t quick enough balancing their weight. The longboat capsized, pitching them into the fierce current. Opening her mouth to shout angrily at William, she swallowed water. She felt herself propelled downward, as if by enormously strong hands. She tried to hold her breath. She didn’t have much left! Her tunic tore as a branch dug into her, but she couldn’t catch hold of anything. The current seemed much more powerful underwater, pushing and pulling her down until her lungs almost burst with her attempt not to swallow. She was drowning! She tried to think of prayer, but was too frightened of dying in this narrow tunnel. But she would soon, with her shoulders jammed this way! She couldn’t help opening her mouth to gulp. But she was breathing air, not swallowing water, even though the rest of her body was being sucked down by the river current. Frantically kicking, she thrashed her shoulders and inched forward. She rested briefly, gasping fetid air, then kicked and thrashed again. Maybe she was dead already, trying to get out of her coffin. But her body would have none of that, and kept on forcing itself inch by inch into the darkness until she found herself leaning against some kind of muddy, fibrous platform. She couldn’t see anything, but she could breathe, and her lower body had come free. She hauled herself out of the water and crouched on all fours. When she tried to straighten up, her head bumped a low ceiling made of the same fibrous material as the platform. There was a clicking and clacking, very loud, from nearby. The chattering was coming from something else than her own teeth. She wasn’t alone, but she felt cold down to her very bones and realized that, having escaped drowning, she could freeze to death in the pitch black hollow! Clare went still all over. She had been trained for marshland emergencies, and knew she had to think hard, right now, to save herself. She could feel her soggy, tattered uniform lie heavily on her back, which stung with scratches, so she probably wasn’t drowned. But she had to get herself warm before figuring a way out. She sensed movement, something dragging itself across the floor toward her. Before she could get herself into a defensive posture, fur rubbed her from both sides. It was warm and dry and smelled musky, like she used to smell on muddy river banks when beavers were courting. Beaver! With their enormous teeth they could easily kill her. But they had stopped her shivering and had settled on each side of her in a comforting manner. Later, Clare realized she must have huddled in the Beaver lodge all night long, for it had been the dawn filtering through the willow roof that helped her figure out how to escape. The current had forced her into their upstream door. Beavers always built a backdoor opening downstream. As the sun came up she saw the two of them. They would not look her in the eye, but turned their heads delicately away as they moved from her side. Not wanting to offend them, Clare averted her gaze too, concentrating her mind on gratitude as she carefully inched her way across the platform. Below the little cave that was their front porch, she saw pond water glistening. She held her hand up in a silent blessing then slid into the water, swimming out flat to avoid any quicksand lining the bottom. William had held onto the swamped boat with difficulty, since the whole force of the current had poured against its sodden weight. He had managed to shove it along the dam until it spun around and plunged into a pool. It had taken all night to pull it out, build a fire, and begin to dry out, listening frantically for any sound from Clare and Foxy. But there had been no sound from the river except water pounding over the dam and an owl’s prey screaming. When dawn brought the first pale light he saw an odd sight. Foxy, head tipped to one side, ear cocked, was sitting on top of a sizeable beaver dam, listening to something under his paws. Then he leaped straight up, yipping joyfully, as Clare exploded from the den and swam strongly across the pond. Filled from head to foot with relief, William forgot all about how furious they had been with each other. Clare, equally oblivious of yesterday’s sour mood, hugged him and cried and, all at the same time, chattered about being rescued by two lovely beavers.