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I see what’s stopped us. A rope spanning the entire width of the river, now pulled taut by the boat. The contraption the hunters had been carrying must be a harpoon. They used it to shoot the rope right across a narrow river bend.
“I think my ribs are cracked,” Epap says, gritting his teeth. His hands fold gingerly before his chest as if cradling an invisible baby. “I can’t breathe, it hurts even to breathe—”
“Sissy!” I shout. “Give me your dagger! We’ve got to cut the rope!”
The sound of feet pounding the boards, then Sissy slides feetfirst toward me, splashing up water. She stares into the river, sees the rope. Horror dawns across her face. She’s about to reach down to slice the rope when she pauses.
“Cut it, Sissy!”
“What if they’re hiding in the water?”
“They can’t swim underwater!”
“Then where are they?”
“I don’t kno—”
Something splashes in the river a few feet from us, sending up a huge spray.
“What was that?” Jacob cries.
Then another loud splash, closer to the boat this time.
“Are they in the water?!” Jacob says, moving away from the splashes. “Is that them?”
“No!” I shout, “they can’t swim!”
“Then what—”
A thrack explodes next to my foot, sending up shredded wood chips from the deck. A large iron-cast grappling hook—black as night with four razor-sharp claws—is embedded halfway into the deck. The grappling hook is attached to a rope that extends all the way to the riverbank. And that’s where I see them. The hunters. They’re partially hidden behind a grassy knoll but the rope is like an arrow pointing right at them.
I fasten my hands around the grappling hook. A slippery emission coats it—their saliva—and I jerk my arms back. “Don’t touch the hooks!” I yell at the top of my voice. “Their saliva is all over them!”
“Now’s not the time to be delicate!” Sissy shouts back. “We have to pry them off!”
I stare back at her, dumbfounded by her ignorance. It’s possible she simply doesn’t know: if the hunters’ saliva gets into an open cut or sore and into our bloodstream, it will all be over. The turning will begin. I rip off my shirt, wrap it around one of the claws. “Don’t let it touch your skin!” I yell. “Use your shirts!” But I can’t wrench the claw free—it’s too deeply embedded into the wood.
Another grappling hook smashes into the deck on my right, narrowly missing David’s head.
The hunters spill out of the shadows, pulling at the grappling-hook ropes, their strength churlish and brutal. The boat lists toward the riverbank with discomfiting speed.
“Sissy! Cut the rope!” But she can’t hear me; she’s trying to pull the other grappling hook out. That one is embedded even more deeply—she’s not getting it out. I reach for her belt, grab a dagger, and then I’m reaching over into the water at the stern. But when I touch the harpoon rope that’s pressed against the boat, my heart sinks. It’s made of a hard synthetic material I instinctively know is resistant to cutting. It’ll take fifteen minutes to cut through with this knife. I try to shove the rope downward, hoping to dislodge the boat that way. But the rope is pressed too tightly into the wood.
By now the boat’s been pulled halfway to the bank, close enough to see a hunter—hissing, ankle-deep in the river—making a throwing motion. A grappling hook soars into the night sky.
“Watch out!” I shout.
Ben is focused on dislodging the first grappling hook; he doesn’t see this one in the air arcing down toward his head. Epap, still cradling his ribs, leaps up and pulls Ben away just as the hook smashes into the very spot he was kneeling. They fall to the ground, in front of the cabin, Epap’s body flopping to the deck. He’s been knocked out; I see an ugly gash down the side of his face where a hook must have struck him. Blood gushes out.
The hunters scream with ecstasy into the night.
The rope line falls right on top of Epap, and now I’m diving at him, shoving him roughly aside before the line can pull taut and pin him painfully against the deck, or, worse yet, sever a limb. Three grappling-hook lines are hauling us in now. And with such force, the far length of the boat lifts a foot off the water. The boat, listing at an angle, ripples faster yet toward the bank as if powered by a sideways motor.
Sissy is hacking away at one of the grappling-hook lines, but she gives up. They’re made of the same synthetic material as the harpoon rope. Her eyes focus with intensity, a hundred calculations made in seconds, a dozen options considered and discarded until there is only one remaining. She grabs David and Jacob roughly, pushes them into the cabin where Ben and I are still sprawled. Epap is still knocked out, his chest rising and falling with shallow rapidness.
“Listen to me,” she says. Water drips off her face. “I’m swimming for the bank. I’ll dive off this side of the cabin and swim underwater so they don’t see me. In the meantime, you all distract them. Keep pulling on those hooks.”
“Sissy, no!” Ben cries.
“It’s the only play we have left.”
“There’s got to be something else—”
She grabs Ben’s arms, hard enough to make him
wince. “There isn’t, Ben.”
“Then let me go,” I say. “I’m a strong swimmer, I can make it.”
“No,” she says, sheathing her dagger into her belt.
“We both go, then,” I insist.
“No,” she says, snatching the dagger out of my hand. She snaps it securely into her belt.
“Sissy—”
And she stares at me with a fierce look that is somehow both anger and wonder. She holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary. “Don’t let Gene die,” she finally whispers, and just like that, she whisks past me, dives into the river with barely a splash.
David starts to cry. I pull him up, him and Jacob, and Ben, too, knowing all three will need each other. “Listen to me, boys,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. “Sissy gave you a job to do. Get those damn hooks off our boat. Use your shirts, no skin contact. Do you understand?” Jacob nods, and I gently cup David’s face with two hands. His skin is too thin. He wasn’t meant for a world like this. I stare courage into his eyes. He nods.
“Go!” I say, and push them out to the deck. They scamper off, each to a hook.
And then I am leaping off the boat, diving into the river.
* * *
Cold, black liquidness. The current whips me downstream. I fight against it, resisting the swirling eddies that almost spin me around. Get spun down here, and you’ll be forever disoriented. I stroke hard, forsaking fine-tuned navigation, simply wanting to propel myself forward before my lungs give out.
The bank comes at me like a vicious slap. Sharp rocks cut into my hands, jamming my fingers. I pull myself out, wet clothes weighing me down. Force myself forward, on my feet. I see the boat. Farther than I’d have thought. The current carried me almost fifty meters downstream. A warm liquid spreads down my hand. Even before I see it, I know what it is. My blood pouring out from the gashes.
