This Side of Death Ch. 01

While tied up beneath the bridge fishing, I had come to the conclusion that I had entered Witch Candle just as low tide was ebbing. There had been a winter's worth of time between my last visit this far north and today's adventure. Digging deep into my reserve of nautical knowledge of moon stages and area tide patterns, my mind told me there was no time to lose. I was scared that this great slayer of dragons had run out of his castle without out proper provision. If Maid Marion was to be saved, I would have to dig deeper than I had ever dug before.

"Try and hold very still," I said as I leaned forward, pressing my chest against the front of the cockpit, trying desperately to make my center of gravity as low as possible. "I'm going to try and take the tape off your mouth." A barely noticeable shaking of Mrs. Doe's chin told me she was in full agreement.

The difficulty did not come from adhesive. It came from the motion of reaching across the balance line of the narrow kayak with both hands. Almost tipping as a rising swell coincided with my movement, I righted myself and sat back up. "Half a second," I encouraged her as I turned my paddle end for end with my free hand while continuing to cradle Mrs. D.'s chin with the other.

Slipping my paddle float onto one end of the paddle, I extended it out past my guest, pinning its opposite end in beneath the tie-down lines in front of the cockpit. With that in place, the little boat would now be difficult to tip over. Reaching again out to the silver sliver of tape, I gently pulled at its corner. Almost without effort the tape floated free. A deep breath of air gave strength to the slippery eel who suddenly rolled, trying to beach herself up onto my lap. Losing my grip, the wayward fish slipped back into the sea.

Struggling again to keep herself upright, Mrs. Doe cried out to me, "Don't leave me. Don't leave me. Oh God, don't leave me." Bracing myself once again with the extended paddle, I reached out and filled my hand yet again with her tangled web of hair.

"You have to remain still!" I shouted at her in frustration.. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes. Yes." the pitiful voice of a drowning rat replied.

I think this time Mrs. Doe's effort was more to be congratulated than my own as I drew her up next to me. Rolling over onto her back, she seemed suddenly understanding.

"Can you feel your toes?" I asked, trying to determine how close Mrs. Doe was to hypothermia.

"I think so," she answered through chattering teeth. Slowly I relaxed in my arm from around her neck.

Regaining my thought processes, I began to determine a strategy.

"I don't think I can cut your hands free without tipping over. Do you understand?"

Fighting for sanity, she shook her head in acknowledgment. Remembering the knife that i had just used to cut myself free from the bridge, an idea popped into my head.

"Are you willing for me to try and cut your hands free?" I asked the waterlogged mop head. Agreeing to try, I asked her to take a deep breath and then to roll over and float upside down next to the boat. "Okay, as soon as you feel comfortable, I'm going to roll you over and let you go. But you have to promise me, once I cut you free, do not grab hold of the side of the boat. Do you understand me?" Mrs. Doe shook her head but I knew that the first thing she would do once I cut her hands free would be to do that very thing. "Once I cut you free, I want you to put only one hand on the side of the boat. Not on top. Do you understand?" Again a shaking of the head. "After I cut you free I want you float to the back of the boat. There is a handle on top that you can hold onto. Just hold on to it and then I will try to paddle us to shore. We have to do this quickly because the tide is changing. Are you with me on this?"

"I think so," she answered through a widening sardonic grin.

"Okay. Just tell me when you're ready."

Taking several breaths, gaining strength and composure, Mrs. Doe slid from my hand and rolled over on her tummy next to the boat. A single plastic tie-wrap bound her wrists. My knife, which only moments before had been all but ready to filet yonder salmon, cut the plastic bond easily.

As I had suspected, all my careful instruction went unheeded. Mrs. Doe's hands shot up around my waist as she tried pulling herself up out of the water. Instinctively I rolled away from her. Seconds seemed like hours for the both of us as I fought to maintain the little fiberglass stiletto in the upright position.

"HEY!" I shouted at her. "You're okay now. You're okay. You're not going to drown." Valiantly I tried reassuring the frightened, sobbing, little black haired woman. "You're going to be fine. LOOK AT ME!" I again shouted, trying to interrupt her panic. "If you want to get out of this alive, you're going to have to do what I tell you. Do_you_understand?"

Just this side of death, I listened to Mrs. Doe's fear. A gloved hand reached out and pulled the black mop off one side of her face. "You are going to have to let go of me," I told her as if I were talking to a child just waking from a nightmare. "I can't paddle you to safety if you continue holding on to me like this now can I?" Turning herself away from the bow of the boat, twisting her little head, two blank fathomless eyes looked up at me.

"I know that you're cold. And you know that we have to get you out of the water and dried off. But we can't do that with you holding on to me like this now can we?" Black-purple lips pouted a small measure of understanding.

"Here's what I want you to do. You are going to let go of me and slide back down into the water. And then you are going to float to the end of the boat. Then you are going to, very carefully, pull the back of the boat between your legs and then pull yourself up behind me. Do you think you can do that?" Like a bolt of lightening, I suddenly remembered the emergency strobe attached to the back of my life preserver. Careful not to lose our balance, I reached behind me and turned it on. It at once pierced the darkness in a sudden strobe of orange. "Come on now. The sooner you float back there and pull yourself up, the sooner I can have you in front of a hot fire. Okay?"

"I don't want to let go," she cried.

"You can do it. I know you can. The sooner you get yourself back up here the sooner I'll have you sitting in front of that nice warm fire I promised you. How about it? Shall we give it a try?"

Hesitantly Mrs. Doe released her lock and slid back down into the water, frantically reaching for and finally laying hold of one of the deck line which ran down to the back of the boat.

"Good girl," I called back to her, bracing myself onto the paddle float. "Now pull yourself up here and remember -you're trying not to tip me over. Okay?" Chilled to the bone, it took her three tries before she straddled the rear of the boat, falling face first into the soft rubber cover of the rear storage compartment. Hugging her success, I coaxed her up behind me. Two short naked arms quickly found their way around my waist as I fought to steady the boat.

"That's great. Now hold on and I'll get us to safety. Are we alright back there?" Through chattering teeth she bobbed her head in acknowledgement. Cautiously I slide off the paddle float and left it laying on top of my spray skirt. I was thankful that I had chosen the broad sprint paddle instead of the narrow touring paddle for my evening expedition. It would give us greater forward thrust and hopefully soon have us in close to the distant shoreline.

Hope beyond hope, I knew it was going to be next to impossible to land on the rocky south shoreline of Witch Candle Bay. But all other alternatives were evading me. With much more effort that I could have imagined, I soon drew us near to the southern shore before remembering and dropping the skeg. I headed us out into the incoming tide. The increasing current and full feathered skeg steadied the little boat as I aimed us both out into the open sea.

Towing the dead weight latched on behind me made the going slow. Though surprisingly light, the woman's weight was enough press the stern of the boat down in the water which in turn raised the bow up just high enough to make steering difficult. And yet, soon I found myself settling down into steady cadence, hugging as close to the sea wall as safety would permit. The water was deep. Progress was slow. My guest was quiet and steady. Like the little train that thought it could, I focused on one thing -a small sandy beach a long mile away.

Never wearing a watch, I had no accounting for the amount of time we ended up spending out in the open water. As I had feared, there were no places along the sea wall in which to land. The on rushing wall of black clouds seemed to greet us just as we floated out beyond the mouth of Witch Candle Bay. Yet in turning toward my cove, the advancing storm provided us with a bit of tail wind and wave. I prayed for strength. Why hadn't I loaded the batteries to light the fore mounted compass? Under breath I cursed myself.

I knew my greatest enemy now was time. Time was of the essence. I had rescued Mrs. Doe from one certain and terrifying death but if I didn't get her to shore fast and get her warm, she would sink into a slow stupor and soon be just as dead.

Thirty years prior I had found myself soaked from head to foot, holding on for dear life as my first kayak had capsized in a swollen river of broken ice. I had been a fool then, a daring, naive young man who thought ice out and hell's fury unleashed would make for good sport. What had taken me an hour and a quarter to float the summer before had taken me a mere twenty minutes that day. Twelve feet above flood stage, that rushing Mid-western river lead me straight into a wall of fallen trees and ice. If I hadn't cut across a small island and tipped myself up against two standing elms, I would have been washed under that dam of wood and ice and lost to all. Tonight, as I unconsciously paddled us for home shores, I thought of Mrs. Doe. Wet and cold, life ebbing from her with each passing minute, I wondered who she was and what she had done to deserve such a sentence of death.

The great Fisherman in the sky must have had pity on his most pitiful of knights. A small hole in the bank of clouds to our west allowed the briefest of light to shine through. Diffused in the gray haze, it reminded me of driving through a Midwestern snow storm with headlights set to bright. We were closer to shoreline than my ears had led me to believe. Aiming us back away from the sharp shards of granite, we slipped through the fog into clear night air. It was cold and dark and no friendlier than had been that winter's fog.

I had no idea what condition my silent guest was in. Her dead weight laid still. Her grip wasn't as tight as it had been at first while her fingers looked white as death itself. But I didn't want to disturb her. The boat was steady and we were beginning to make good time toward our mark. Normally I'm not given over to miracles. Those sort of things seem only to happen in movies, novels and to people you hear about but never actually meet. Whether it was by tide or angel, I have no accounting, for in a time unknown I found myself paddling toward a familiar flashing beckon high up on a ridge just in front of me. We were home.

As I had suspected, my little beach head was vanishing in the tide. High tide would make it no different than the sea walls back from where we had come. Time was of the essence as I caught a wave and surfed my little craft all the way in pass the narrow inlet and up onto the beach.

"Oh!" my frightened guest moaned as I rolled out of the beached craft. The waves were beginning to break a hundred feet out in three foot swells. I had much to do and little time to do it. With less than a dozen feet of sandy beach left to me, I shouted above the roar of waves and wind. "GET UP!" Pulling the limp bail of rags to her feet I headed us both toward the path to rescue. Five feet up the trail, I lowered a dead female body against a rocky cliff. I cursed my aching bones but headed back down the trail to rescue my boat.

By the time I returned to the beach, there was little sand left to me. The tide had risen high enough to wash my boat against the sea wall. Clunk., clunk. Clunk, clunk. The sound of expensive fiberglass crashing up against unforgiving rock sickened me. Half swamped, it was beyond my strength to lift it up out of the water and onto the path above. But once again fortune shined down on me from above. It was a night made full of miracles as a sudden ebb jerked the boat out my hands, rolling over and over down the beach, emptying the water filled cockpit as it went. Catching sight of the next wave about to wash in, I grabbed the hand grip fastened to the bow and dragged the hull up across beach and onto the trail. My wonderful green paddle could be seen floating out to sea. It was lost but the second set of touring paddle was still fastened securely across the stern. Enough rescuing for one night. The wave that had been anticipated thundered hard in against the wall of the little cove. I had been a fool to retrieve the boat. If I had been caught standing on that little stretch of sandy beach, the wave would have surely dashed me against the wall of rock.

Making it back up to my wounded maiden, I coaxed her to her feet. "Come on honey. You've got to get up. You've got to walk the rest of the way. I can't carry you and the boat at the same time. Hurry! The tide's coming in."

As if further emphasis were needed, another monstrous wave crashed in below us, sending a spray of salt and rubble across our feet. "MOVE!" I commanded her.

Stumbling up over the ridge, me, my boat and I fell across the already fallen Mrs. Doe. All strength suddenly seemed taken from me. I laid there next to the fallen maiden, imagining the boat which I had just labored to rescue now teetering on ridge, about to fall back into the wild fury below us. Suddenly it didn't matter to me. Sensing the cold lifeless body next me, I knew that first things had to come first.

Half crawling, half stumbling to my feet, I made my way back to my welcomed campsite. First thing was the butane lantern. Next came the propane torch which in turn lit a teepee of kindling wood and pine thatch on top of which several pieces of driftwood were laid. Next came piercing bolt of lightening down into the forest just behind me. Knocking me to the ground, its electrified landing ushered me off into a world of wraiths and wizardry.