Raft of Stars Andrew Graff (free biff chip and kipper ebooks txt) 📖

Tiffany nodded and repositioned herself on the stern seat. She found that by shifting her weight every so often, she could convince her legs they weren’t completely numb.

“Sure,” she said, though she wasn’t, “but maybe—”

Miranda waited for the rest of the sentence. “Maybe what?” she asked, a bit too tersely.

Tiffany shook her head. She eyed the storm clouds. They’d been rising into the sky pretty steadily. She didn’t make a habit of watching storms roll in, but her gut told her the storm would be upon them soon. She wondered about Miranda’s judgment. The woman had great reason to make rash decisions. Tiffany took another stroke, and knew she might need to take the lead in other ways too. She felt it.

“I was just thinking it’d be good to have a camp already set up before the rain hits—pitch a tarp or something, get some dry wood.” Her damp jeans made her legs itch. The thought of getting drenched again in a rainstorm sounded downright awful.

Miranda looked downstream at the clouds again, careful of her wrist as she turned. “Just a shower at worst,” she said. “We’ll have time.”

They rounded a bend, and the river opened up into a web of broad channels separated by low-lying islands. Cattails and red dogwood rose up in mounds. Here and there, an island was marked by a sickly tree doing its best to grow between floods and droughts. Tiffany steered them into a center channel, which seemed the most reasonable choice, though they were soon separated from the mainland by sloughs and islands. She looked at the clouds, paddled in silence for ten or fifteen minutes. Already the clouds had doubled in height. They didn’t look like a featureless bank of gray anymore. Tiffany watched the greenish wall of thundercloud roll over itself like a wheel. It filled the horizon, its uppermost regions shaved off and smeared southward by wind. Tiffany cringed as the clouds lit up in a crash of thunder.

“Miranda, I’m taking us out of the river.” The breeze grew stiff, making it difficult to keep the canoe on center. Tiffany had to point the bow directly into it or be pushed off course. It took a lot of muscle to bring it back to midchannel.

Miranda sat up straighter in the canoe, and Tiffany noticed impatience in her eyes as she looked at the clouds, the islands. “There’s no shelter here,” Miranda said. “Let’s get through this.”

Tiffany bit her tongue. They could have sheltered in that nice stand of cedar a mile back when she first suggested it. About a half mile farther on, forest rose up on the far side of the floodplain. That meant higher ground, drier land, something to hide beneath. Tiffany took an angry stroke in its direction, but a stiff wind swept the river before her and swung the bow of the canoe askew. Tiffany pried hard against the water and managed to nose the boat back. The surface rippled in swaths. The wind blew the canoe upriver about as forcefully as the current pushed it down. Even with the canoe pointed into the wind, their forward progress was next to nothing. Cattails rattled. A lightning bolt cracked across the face of the thundercloud. The canoe rumbled. Tiffany felt a raindrop hit her eye.

“I’m turning back to the woods,” she said.

Miranda shook her head in disgust. “It’s more than twice the distance. It’s best to keep going.”

“Miranda, I cannot paddle into this wind! Have you noticed we’re not moving anymore?”

“I can help,” Miranda said, and turned awkwardly in her seat to face downriver. To avoid using her bad hand, she leaned on her forearm as she turned and nearly tipped the canoe. Tiffany pried the water to keep the bow facing straight, cussed under her breath. Lightning struck, and the report of thunder was so loud, she nearly lost her grip on her paddle. It was like a cannon blast. More rain hit Tiffany’s face now. She squinted at the mountains of thunderclouds. Framed beneath them lay the whipping cattails and the figure of Miranda in the bow, digging fruitlessly at the rippled water with a paddle she held in one hand, her other hand clutched against her stomach. She didn’t look strong anymore. Not here. Not crippled like that with the storm so large before her. Miranda looked desperate, pathetic even. The wind blew harder. Tiffany braced and pried. Another lightning bolt shot across the face of the cloud. She pulled hard against the water with a few forward strokes. The canoe made no progress at all.

“Miranda, I’m turning back!” she said, more forcefully than she meant to.

“We can’t turn,” Miranda huffed. She looked doglike, wounded and mean, digging against the water, her hair tangled in the wind.

“We can’t go forward either, Miranda!”

There was no answer.

“Miranda!”

Miranda stopped paddling, gripped the gunwale, and faced Tiffany. She had fire in her eyes, but of a different sort. It wasn’t confidence. It was terror, anger, wildness. “My son,” she bellowed, “is not back in that tree line. He is forward, through that storm. And I will have my son and will have him now!”

Tiffany stopped paddling. A gust of wind whipped Miranda’s hair across her wild eyes, her panting breast. This was a different woman from the one she knew the previous night, who paddled in moonlight and spoke of walking in step with the spirit of God. Today Miranda’s sunken eyes had a demand in them. They were red and panicked. Tiffany felt a wave of fear move through the canoe and wash over her body. It felt physical, like a third presence, like the air had changed.

A bolt of lightning struck one of the forsaken trees on a nearby island, and the tree exploded in flame. Black branches shot into the river. Tiffany cowered, and even Miranda was jolted from her adamance. The air felt filled with static, and as both women ducked low in the boat, Tiffany watched the flames