Downstream

Follow this back to: Dodging Arrows

One day the warmth came. The wind shifted to the south and for a day there was the strange sensation of being outside on a warm sunny day though there was snow and ice all around them. That night, when she went to bed, Manueline heard water all around. It turned from a trickle at sunset to a rush by the time the dawn came. There was still ice in the river in the valley but it was submerged by the water from the melting snow. Manueline and Wals stood on the bank watching it. Even as they watched, they saw the ice in the river begin to break up, chunks of it floating to the surface with a grinding crashing noise.

Manueline said, "Come, we should go and look at the river and make sure the boat is all right." They had a muddy hike over the hill and down to the riverbank beyond. The boat was safe enough but the river was a terrifying sight. Water was coming down both from the hills around them and from upriver. The pressure of the water was buckling and breaking up the ice, which made a constant groaning, grinding noise like a giant in agony. It took three days for the river to clear and then another two before the chunks of ice coming down stream were small enough that they didn't pose too much of a threat to them in the boat.

Wals was reluctant to leave. He asked again why not go west. He was sure that was where Mab came from and it seemed reasonable that she would return that way. Manueline repeated the old arguments but then refused to discuss it. Even when Wals, unusually for him, persisted, asking again, 'Why not go west?' she wouldn't listen but just insisted that they leave. Wals was helpless against her. He could not argue and could not assert his will, so in the end he did as he was told.

Late in the evening, they carried the boat down to the riverbank. The boat was light, Wals could carry it on his own if need be and it was easy enough for the two of them to carry it between them for long distances. Manueline expected they would come to stretches of the river where it would be too dangerous to keep to the water and she hoped they would be able to carry the boat down river to a point where they could use it again. It would be a laborious process, as they could not carry the boat and their supplies so they would have to make two trips each time.

They started early the following day. The cub reluctantly getting into the boat, Wals sat in the bow, Manueline took the oars in the middle of the boat. She rowed out a little way, letting the current take them but cautiously at first, not being too sure of her ability to handle the boat or how difficult it would be to get out of the current if the need arose. The current was fast and carried them rapidly downstream. For the first couple of hours they kept in the shallows on the south bank.

Then they came to their first serious rapids. They heard the rough water long before they came to it. Manueline pulled into the bank and they got out and walked down stream to look at what they would have to get through or get round some way. The water was rough but there was a clear passage down the middle of the stream, Manueline decided she would risk it. They went back to the boat and she rowed out to the middle of the river and let the current take them. There were waves that made the boat rock and pitch but Manueline managed to keep the boat in the middle of the river and keep it from turning sideways. She found the whole experience exhilarating, her excitement and confidence communicated itself to the other two in the boat, giving a quite different air to the rest of the day's journey.

They were still careful when they heard rough water ahead of them; stopping and getting out to have a look before going through it. They stopped three times the first day. Even so, when they camped for the night, Manueline reflected there was now no turning back. They had easily come as far as a man could walk in four days on a good path. It would be impossible to row back against the stream and making their way through the forest that bordered the river would be almost as bad.

The next day they started early again and had a clear morning but around midday, they heard rough water ahead of them. They stopped and got out to have a look and it was immediately apparent that the boat wouldn't make it through. They spent a while scouting the surrounding country looking for the best way past. Inevitably, the countryside was particularly rough around the rapids. They ended up having to carry the boat a sizeable way up a hill and then down the other side to a point well beyond the rapids. They were actually going further down river than they really needed to but there was no convenient way down to the river any higher up stream and still below the rapids. It took all the rest of the day to move the boat and then move their supplies.

The next day was the same, a clear run in the morning with rapids in the afternoon. The third day they had a clear run all day though the river seemed to be dropping rapidly and was running very fast. At the end of the day, they heard a distant ominous roar, unlike anything they had heard before, this was obviously no mere rapids but a waterfall. They stopped for the night with the distant noise of the falling water constantly in their ears. It took four days to get round the waterfall. Manueline was only grateful she had trained the cub to carry a burden. She had made a harness for him that they could attach bags to. He didn't like it but tolerated it as a part of the unpleasant business of moving from place to place, which in general he didn't entirely approve of.

A little way beyond the waterfall, they found themselves unexpectedly out in the middle of the river. The south bank just suddenly vanished. It took Manueline a while to understand what had happened. Another large river had obviously just joined the one on which they had been traveling. Manueline realized that it must be the Forest River. The river they were on was known as the North River and there were rumors of another even larger river that ran through the forest, rising in the mountains on the south side of the forest.

Manueline was both intimidated and exhilarated by the fact that she had found it. She was now floating on a river that was just a legend to most of the people she grew up with. The water was rough for a time where the two rivers joined but settled into something like the former pattern though there was much more of it and the rapids seemed sparser as they didn't see another one all day.

A new hazard was trees floating down the river with them; often these were enormous tree trunks with great, spiky roots sticking out of the water. They had to be careful not to run foul of them; in the choppy water, it would mean the instant destruction of the boat. They made it through the day; running farther in one day than on any of the preceding days. At the end of the day, they heard again the ominous roar of a waterfall in the distance.

They camped and woke the following morning. Manueline stood on the bank looking at the river and listening to the distant waterfall. She decided it was still some way off and they launched the boat again being careful to stay near the shore. The roar grew steadily louder until finally Manueline lost her nerve; they beached the boat and started their way downstream to see what they could of the country beyond.

It was rough but not impassable, with an immense waterfall plummeting into a gorge raising a permanent cloud that turned the surrounding country into a rain forest. Outside of the rain forest, the country was quite dry and the vegetation relatively sparse. They spent the day hiking round the gorge created by the river and came to a point where they could see the country beyond. It was flat and quite barren, very strange to their eyes.

Wals argued that they should leave the boat; it would take too long and be too much effort to carry it all the way down to the flat country they could see before them. Manueline wouldn't hear of it. She led the way back and they started the tedious process of getting the boat past the gorge and down into the country beyond. They could see the occasional sign of human habitation and Manueline became nervous. She insisted they be careful with the campfire and carefully hid the boat when they were still some distance from the river while they went back to get the rest of their supplies. The trip down with the supplies took almost as long as the trip with the boat so it wasn't until four days later that they finally put the boat in the water and started on the next leg of the journey.

To follow this thread in the story go to: Beginnings

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