Page 119 of The Wild Beneath

He wears glasses now. His hair is cropped shorter; he uses hair gel after the shower. His shoulders have broadened.

He doesn’t get the chance to visit home very often. But as the seasons roll past, his work grinds him to a pulp.

At home in Hale’s Landing for a week, he is looking forward to the quiet, time on the boat, hours of fishing in the fading September sun.

“You look like you need a rest.” Ruth cups his face in the doorway. Uncle Henry is there in the kitchen. Built from the forest around it, this cabin soothes him. All the logs fit intricately together, cut with precise axemanship. Everything is as it should be: the thick bookcases, the big trestle dining table made from peeled cedar trunks. Seashells line the windowsills. The three bedrooms along the hallway each look out at the rocky bluff.

A thunderstorm brews along the horizon.

“Hope you’re hungry,” Henry says without a hello. He pulls a bright red crab from a steaming pot.

“Starving,” says Aiden.

They eat at the table, watching out the window as white-capped waves build in the distance. Ruth complains about a new conservation tax; Henry says the cash boats are paying less these days. All Aiden can think about is how good it feels to be back. How tired he is. Has he ever been so tired? Thunder cracks and shakes through the floor.

Ruth and Henry are still talking, but Aiden can’t keep his eyes open.

He heads to bed; he needs to sleep off his endless night shifts on the lumpy twin mattress in his old bedroom. Listening to the storm whip the windows, he falls asleep quickly. He doesn’t dream. The storm rages, mighty waves battering the shore.

When his eyes open, much later, it’s a few hours before dawn.

The storm has passed.

It’s too early to be awake, but Aiden sits up. He feels a tangible pull toward his boat, in a way he hasn’t for a long time. Following his intuition, he shrugs on a burgundy-coloured sweater, a pair of old jeans, his smudged glasses.

The dock rocks in its usual way as he jogs to the boat. Once he’s started the engine and untied the dock lines, he pushes off and picks up speed. Waves spit out behind him under fleecy fog and cloud cover. The old aluminum boat cuts through the current. Occasional raindrops spatter the windshield of the centre console.

Near his favourite elbow of the channel, the clouds part. The full moon reveals itself. He slows further, a wordless instinct overtaking him, like a matchstick along his spine.

His eyes are drawn to the beach. He’s visited this bend a hundred times before.

He cranes his neck and nearly tips over. He cannot believe his eyes. A woman lies naked on shore. She’s curled up against a log of driftwood. Beside her, a flipped emerald-green canoe and a broken oar are strewn across the beach.

How could she have made it so far out here? She must be dead or near it. He manages to manoeuvre the boat up close. He hops off and wades through the frigid water.

She’s still breathing when he reaches her. She looks to be in her late twenties or early thirties. There’s a soft pulse in her inner wrist, but it’s slow. Too slow. Her skin feels jelly-like andspongy, as if the sea has waterlogged her. How long has she been submerged? Etched shallowly into the wood oar handle:Mara. It must be hers. He lifts her gently to the boat, lays her flat at the starboard end of the deck, covers her with the wool blanket he keeps stowed for emergencies. He checks her breathing once again—­still there—­then pushes strands of damp hair from her delicate face.

Something makes him pause. A shift in the air, a melodic tone. He shakes his head and then the sound is gone. The clouds return and shroud the moon.

He looks back at the beach, briefly, then starts the engine.

Aiden speeds down the channel as seawater sprays his cheeks in the crosswind. He checks on her many times. She doesn’t wake up, even over the bumpiest waves. He radios Ruth to meet him at the wharf.

She has the resuscitation supplies from the clinic when she meets him at the slip, her sleeves rolled up.

Ruth drops her bag to help tie up the lines. “What on earth...” she says, as Aiden lifts the unconscious woman onto the wharf, her small frame wrapped inside the blanket, her long, blond hair tangled and wet.

“She’s unconscious and bradycardic,” Aiden says. He lays her down and supports her head. “Pass me your bag?”

“Where’d you find her?”

“Up the channel. On the shore.”

“Why were you out in the channel in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know.” But he knows. That wordless pull that took him out on the water in the dark. The full moon and that spark of a feeling that made him slow down.

“She’ll need an airlift.” Ruth presses a stethoscope against the woman’s sternum.