Chapter 18
Enemies All Around
Sarah gasped. She bobbed above the water for an instant, then sank. The shock of the ejection from the canoe into the frigid river had paralyzed her. The backpack still clung to her shoulders and weighted her down. She tried to swim upward, but the cold sapped her strength with every kick, every stroke. Was it time to die, here in the past? Would Dad ever know what had happened to her?
She saw a figure deeper in the water—a flash of blue and a shock of yellow hair. It had to be Matt, wounded and incapable of fighting for his life. Suddenly power sizzled through her. She stripped off her pack and let it float away. Then she kicked off into the depths of the river.
Matt swirled deeper and deeper, but Sarah determinedly gained on him until she could almost touch him. He floated in front of her, ghostly, with pasty skin and wide dark eyes. She reached out, grasped his shirt by the back collar and tugged him towards the surface. Her strokes with one arm were ruthless, her kicks as strong as that of a ninja in a desperate battle. This was one fight she was going to win. She broke the surface and gasped, still gripping Matt tightly. He bobbed up beside her, slack and lifeless.
Fear clutched Sarah’s heart as she glanced at his inert body. Ignoring it she swam boldly towards the shore. Chogan stood hunched over on the riverbank, breathing heavily and watching her approach. He showed no emotion, just reached out for Matt when she brought him near. Chogan pulled Matt onto the grass and dropped him there. He turned to help Sarah from the water but she was already out—hair plastered to her head, shrunken from the cold. But Chogan must have seen the fire in her, because he stepped back.
She knelt down beside Matt and tilted his head.
“Il est mort,” said Chogan. He’s dead.
“Non,” said Sarah.
Chogan shook his head, but he continued to watch, his eyebrows perched so high on his forehead they almost met his hairline. Sarah bent her lips to Matt’s and breathed into him. He had to live. He had to. She felt for a pulse in his neck, but there was none. With her hands clasped, she compressed his chest, forcing the blood through his heart. She bent to breathe into his mouth again. He had to live. He had to. Minutes passed that seemed like hours. Her shoulders ached; her arms trembled. She couldn’t stop. At last her arms wouldn’t pump anymore. She stopped to check for a pulse again. There was none.
“Live, you genius. You stupid, silly boy. I’m not going to call you a corpse. You’re not a corpse!”
Chogan stood back, mystified.
“And where were you!” she yelled at the sky. “You’re his father, his guardian angel! You’ve saved him so many times! What’s wrong with you!”
She pounded Matt’s chest in frustration, which caused an explosive ejection of water from his blue lips. He gasped suddenly and started coughing. Sarah wiped her eyes. He was alive! She rolled him over so he could expel more water from his lungs. Despite the fact that he’d drowned, that an arrow was still embedded in his shoulder, he was breathing and trying to talk. Sarah turned him onto his back again.
“N-not a c-corpse,” he said. A smile flitted across his face. Sarah couldn’t help but hug him.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.” She backed off. “It’s just . . . You almost left me, you know. Right here, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of who-knows-when, surrounded by hostile people.”
“One n-nice one,” Matt corrected.
“Yes, one nice one,” said Sarah, looking up at Chogan. After his frantic attempt at traversing rapids to save them, and all the help he’d given them so far, the anger she’d felt towards him when he’d thrown her in the canoe had completely dissolved.
Chogan stared at Matt with a deep frown. He pointed at Sarah. “Shaman?”
Sarah shook her head. “CPR,” she replied. “Rescue breathing, lesson number six.”
“And . . . y-you were a-afraid of the water,” said Matt. “She was conning us,” he said to Chogan.
Chogan’s forehead looked like it would crumple into his skull. He nodded uncertainly and turned towards the forest.
Matt tried to get up, winced and sank back down. “We have to go,” said Matt. “Chogan has his ears perked up again.”
Sarah glanced at Chogan. His eyes darted here and there; his head was cocked to one side. She turned back to Matt, whose face was pasty, with dark smudges under his eyes. The arrow protruded from his shoulder, where blood still oozed.
“You’re in no condition to move,” said Sarah.
“If we don’t move, we’ll all be dead,” said Matt, reverting to French.
Chogan agreed. He pointed at the woods. “Mohawk. They’re coming.”
Sarah nodded at Matt. “He can’t move. He still has an arrow in his shoulder. We have to take it out first.”
“Not me,” said Chogan. “I am not a shaman.” He examined the riverbank downstream and gestured towards a pile of rocks. “He will be safe there until I bring one back.”
Sarah gazed doubtfully at the jumble of rocks beneath a sheer cliff. A shadow nudged between the rocks, perhaps a hole but barely the hint of one. “Some hiding place.” When she looked back at Chogan, the urgency in his face made her scramble to her feet.
Together, they put their arms around Matt and boosted him up. Sandwiched between them and stumbling over riverside debris, Matt managed to stagger to the shelter. Sure enough, a crawlspace angled into the cliff, just under the pile of rocks. Sarah and Chogan dragged Matt backward into the hoop-like opening.
Matt grunted as his arrow-torn shoulder bounced on the ground, but he gritted his teeth and didn’t yell or scream. The space narrowed like a funnel, too small for all three of them, so Sarah let Chogan take over and drag Matt deeper. Chogan propped Matt against the rear wall of the shelter, then began to back out.
“Where are you going?” asked Sarah, as Chogan wriggled past her.
“Home,” Chogan grunted.
“But—” she pointed at Matt.
“Mohawk—Kanienkehaka,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“He’s leaving us,” said Sarah.
“He has to warn his family,” said Matt. “The Mohawk are their sworn enemies.”
“I don’t see why everyone can’t get along,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“You’ve studied history,” said Matt. “There have always been wars.”
A tug on Sarah’s sleeve startled her into swinging around. What in the world? Chogan was trying to pull her out, too.
“I’m not coming with you. Are you out of your mind? I can’t leave Matt. He’s sick. He could be dying.” Hearing the hysteria in her voice, she stopped. “What do you want, Chogan?”
“I need to find shaman and warn my family of the Mohawk. You must come and keep watch for enemy warriors.”
“That’s insane,” said Sarah. “You don’t need my help. I can’t shoot an arrow. I can’t even throw a dart. Ask my Dad. No, you can’t ask my Dad. He’s not here anymore, not in this time.” She sniffed.
“Sarah, listen to me,” said Matt. “Chogan needs your help. You’re strong. He saw how you saved me. You can do this. You can do anything.”
“I can’t leave you,” said Sarah, her voice a tiny squeak.
Matt took a deep breath. He stiffened, but he didn’t cry out. “You can, because you have to. There’s nothing you can do for me now. I have to heal, regain my strength. I think Chogan needs you more. You’ll be back. I won’t let you go unless you promise me you’ll be back.”
Sarah stared at Matt in anguish. Chogan continued to tug on her sleeve. This was maddening and crazy and unthinkable. But Chogan had helped them. How could she refuse him when now he needed her help? She wiped her eyes and made the most difficult decision of her life. “Okay,” she said. But instead of following Chogan, she knelt down beside Matt. She tore a strip of cloth from her sweatshirt and coiled it around the arrow where it bit into his skin. She tore another two strips and wrapped these around his shoulder, binding the cloth so
it would press on the wound to stop the bleeding.
“I brought you back, you corpse. Don’t you die on me again.”
“Cross my heart,” said Matt, making the cross rather weakly.
Sarah was about to turn away, but stopped and faced him again. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”
Matt grinned. “I know,” he said.
“You,” said Sarah, shaking her head. With a heavy heart she turned away and followed Chogan out of the shelter. She heard him whisper at her back.
“But there’s none better than you.”