Mar 27, 2018 6 min read

The story so far: Aaron awakes from fitful dreams about illegal Chinese immigrants huddled deep in the bowels of a ship-only to discover that Lisa is missing.

Skull

“Lisa!” Roger called, his hands cupped at his mouth. An osprey crashed into the cove, lifting off with a salmon clutched in its sharp talons.

She’d gone to sleep beside her dad in their tent, but now she was missing.

Roger called again. Rags of mist hung in the branches in the early sun.

“Did she say anything last night?” Dad asked. “She seemed upset.”

“Nothing.” He pulled on his water boots; the usual twinkle in his eye was buried like a blackened coal.

“Cassidy,” Willie said, snapping a stick for kindling. “What happened last night?”

“Nothing happened. Chill.” He was leaning against a tree, wrapped in his mummy bag.

Yeah, sure, I said to myself. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.

Roger dragged Willie’s kayak out to the waterline. I jumped up and said, “Dad? I’ll take our kayak. Two of us have a better chance of finding her.” I wanted to find her. I needed to find her. She might have been a tease, but whenever I was with her I was at her mercy. I couldn’t help it. Her smile made my heart glad; her indifference made me glum.

Dad scratched his stubbly chin. His blue eyes shone deeper than the sea, and he looked haggard, as skinny as a scarecrow. “Maybe Cassidy should go. He has more-“

“I want to go,” I cut in. I stood firm, trying not to tremble.

He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Okay, Aaron,” he said. “Watch your bow-it’ll ride up and catch the wind.”

Willie, with his usual energy, was already getting a fire started.

“I’ll scout along the shoreline,” Dad continued.

Roger was already slicing through the water as I climbed into my kayak. I drew the spray skirt tight and paddled after him.

“Wait, dude!” Cassidy hollered. “I’m comin’ with you!” He hopped up and threw off his sleeping bag. He was only dressed in his boxers, and I saw the tattoo on his left pec flex .

He just wants to be a hero, I thought. “Too late!” I said. And soon I was out of the cove, finding my rhythm through the sea.

Dad had said these islands of the Inland Passage were once the world of the Haida, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Bella Bella, and Bella Coola-“a sea people who built a culture around the dugout canoe.”

Roger said these people were still here-fishing in modern boats but still hewing dugout canoes from red and yellow cedar. He said that their traditional burial islands dotted these waters, and that the spirits of their ancestors still lingered here like mist, or eagles.

Roger circled back to me, his red bandana blazing in the sun.

“She could be on any one of these islands.” He nodded toward a scattering of tree-clad islets. Off to the east, the mountains of the mainland were lost in the mist.

“Maybe she’s exploring a burial island,” I said.

“Maybe, mate,” he said. He turned his kayak and paddled off.

I followed, but had a hard time keeping up. I had to sit in the rear cockpit so I could operate the foot pedals to the rudder, and like my dad warned, that caused the bow to rise and catch the wind. I struggled to stay on course, and at the same time I scanned the horizon for the Sea Wolf.

I heard a loon’s high, crazy yodeling laugh and looked around. Sure enough, one was floating some twenty yards away. It watched me with its red eyes. A lone loon, perhaps lost. Like Lisa, I thought.

We circled island after island till the sun was high, paddling till hunger and exhaustion sent us back to camp.

Of course, we were hoping she’d be there. But she wasn’t.

We had to find her-that was the “unspoken imperative,” as my dad would say. The sun was hot, and I was parched and frazzled. But when Dad offered to take my place, I said no, I was fine. Willie said he’d go with me and for Dad to remain at the camp and keep the fire going. He reminded him not to feed needles, cones, or damp wood into the fire; to keep it small, and as close to smokeless as possible. The Sea Wolf must not see it.

“Dude,” Cassidy said. “You do it. He’ll keep a lookout, and I’ll go with Aaron.”

Great, I thought. Just great. I sat in the rear cockpit; no way did I want him at my back.

It was getting dark. We’d been paddling for another six hours, in and out of coves, around every islet for miles around. I tried to match Cassidy’s strokes, which were sure and powerful. We didn’t speak. Fear was driving a nail into my heart-fear for Lisa. And exhaustion was a haze drawing the darkness closer.

The white head of a bald eagle, glimpsed in the gloom, drew our attention to a hidden cove. We rounded a point and coasted in. First we saw her kayak: it was drifting away on the flood tide.

Then we saw her-sprawled on a boulder slick with algae. A surge of panic overwhelmed me. Is she dead, or just knocked out? The freezing water was lapping against her; one arm was floating limp, like a dead snake.

Cassidy snatched the bowline of her drifting kayak, then we skimmed our boats ashore and nosed them up to the trees. We climbed out-not bothering to tie the kayaks off-and Roger got to her just as something thumped and rolled to my feet. It was a human skull, covered with moss. Its eye hollows, scooped out of darkness, stared up at me.

NEXT WEEK: Burial Island