Chapter 1

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

Ian leapt from his bunk, Amy’s panicked shouts echoing in his ears, but it was already too late. With a massive shudder, barnacle-covered rocks punched through the wooden hull and a torrent of cold water poured into the boat.

The impact threw him to the floor, hands and knees wet, the smell of brine in his nose. He pulled himself to his feet, fighting for balance, and flung himself up the companionway stairs into the cockpit. Amy stood in shock, eyes wild, face drained of all color, one earbud dangling, bassline thumping from the music she’d been listening to.

“Oh shit Ian, what just happened? I think I’m...” and then she collapsed, her eyes glazing over and rolling back into her head as her body crumpled to the cockpit floor.

Stunned, barely able to stay on his feet himself, Ian stared wide-eyed at Amy’s prone form. The boat was in violent motion, the lurching of a mortally wounded animal. The air around them was filled with the sound of raging wind and crashing waves, accompanied by groans and sharp cracks, as his boat, his only real love in this world, tore itself apart.

Feeling the boat heave under him again, he braced himself, feet wide, one hand on the binnacle, struggling to gain control of his thoughts. First, situational awareness. Second, understand threats to the boat and crew. Third, take action.

There was still daylight, skies leaden, wind twenty knots or more judging by the size of the swells and the wind-driven spray. Sails were up, the wind driving them hard onto the rocks. No way to get them down, not now. Instruments? All dead. Could he use the engine to pull them off the rocks? Did he even want to? Back in the water the boat might quickly sink, no telling how large the hole was. He glanced down below, water was already up to the seat bottoms in the salon. Not good. Not good at all.

He could feel the panic rising, a paralyzing helplessness that could kill them both. He clenched his jaw against it. Tried to breathe through it. The boat was shifting, pummeled by the churning waves that were driving them further onto the rocks, the wind unrelenting, the angle quickly becoming perilous, the ocean far too close on the starboard side. Panic rising again, he moved himself carefully to the high side of the boat, further from the water.

Suddenly it clicked into place. His panic dropped out of him, right out the bottom of his stomach, through his feet, and it was gone. He saw it clearly now. His boat was dead. Well and truly dead. Water was coming in over the side now, and down below he could see it was as high as the galley sink. The boat’s movements were sluggish; she was in her final death throes, it wouldn’t be much longer.

He grabbed Amy, pulling her over the high side, down the slippery hull and into the rocks. Water thrashed around them, freezing cold, taking his breath, no way to breathe, not now, keep moving. Falling, he scrabbled forward with one arm, crablike, pulling Amy behind him, feeling the barnacles tearing into his hands and knees. He was battered forward until he collapsed just beyond the tide line, just past the reach of the ocean, a tiny figure lost among the huge driftwood trees that lay upon the beach like the thigh bones of a giant, thrown there by something even larger and even less concerned with a puny human life.

When he came to again, he was aware that he was shivering. His limbs were numb and stiff, his hands felt like clubs, and they looked like raw meat. Amy. Where was Amy?

He sat up suddenly, too fast for his sluggish blood, and had to cradle his head in his hands for three long beats while his vision cleared and the ringing in his ears faded. Amy was a dark heap of sand-covered, sodden clothing to his left. In front of him the ocean beat on the rocks, sending up plumes of spray. Timeless. No sign of a mast. No sign of his boat. She was completely gone.

Behind him was forest – dark roots reaching out from the verge and plunging deep into the sand to hold fast against the perpetual wind and spray. He was sitting on a beach, white with crushed shells. A midden. Evidence of an ancient First Nations village site, the detritus of centuries of the living who had long ago faded into oblivion.

He crawled over to Amy and touched her arm. “Amy, wake up.”

She looked at him with blank eyes and he could feel the panic churning inside him again. There was nothing in those eyes. It wasn’t Amy looking back at him, it was a raw senselessness, her face slack. He clamped down, pushing the panic back as he felt the edges of his vision start to shrink, his chest pulling at him. Pulling at him to run, to yell, to do something. He shook her hard, yelled, “Amy!” She blinked once, slowly. A few more fast blinks and she was back, falling into him, hugging him hard, shuddering, and making incoherent noises that might have been words.

“Amy, we’ve got to figure out what to do next.” He could see her pull herself together. She was strong, he knew that, had seen it before. She’d been scared on this trip, had bitten off more than she could chew, but she’d stuck with it, hadn’t complained, and had learned quickly. She bore up when it was cold, did what was needed when the weather turned and the wind and waves rose up. He had been exhausted today, and he’d started to trust her. That’s why he’d agreed to get some sleep while she took a turn at the helm and kept the boat sailing north, putting miles under the keel.

Ian shook these thoughts from his head. It was time to focus on what they needed to do to survive. He took quick stock. They had the clothes on their backs. No radio. No ditch bag. No food or knife or matches. They both had shoes, thank the gods for that. His habit of sleeping off-watch fully dressed had helped him there. They were alive, battered, cut, and freezing, but alive. That was enough for now.

The beach they were on was a crescent roughly one hundred feet from point to point, hemmed in on both sides by walls of blocky, black rocks that reached out and descended into the ocean. He closed his eyes and visualized the last view of the GPS chart before going to sleep.

“Amy, how long was I sleeping before we hit?”

“Only a couple of minutes. Ian, I swear to God, I don’t know what happened. The fog came in so quickly and there was something out there… Something that reached out to me... I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Something out there? What are you talking about?”

Amy’s eyes lost focus, as she turned inward, trying to remember, trying to put it into words. “I don’t know. I just… it was like I was somewhere else. I thought I was in a forest. Oh my God, I sank your boat. Ian, I’m so sorry.”

“You fainted after we ran aground. You’re still disoriented. Let’s focus on what we need to do to get out of this mess, ok?”

Amy compressed her lips and nodded.

They had been a few miles south of Hurst Island when he’d given Amy the helm, so that must be where they were now – south shore of Hurst Island. The bad news was that it was a Provincial Park, preserved as wilderness. The good news was that there was supposed to be a lodge on the north side of the island, maybe six miles away. He tried to remember what he’d read. He knew it was only open during the summer and it was well into the Fall now, but maybe there would be a caretaker around who could help them.

They made their way to the top of the rocks on the eastern point. Twenty feet up, they had a better view over the beach with a panoramic view of the ocean to the south. Queen Charlotte Strait reached off to the horizon, a clear line of fading light. To the east were the snow-capped mountains of the mainland. To the west, the heavy forests of Vancouver Island – wild and inhospitable and as good as unreachable without a boat – the water cold enough to kill even if the seas were calm. The channel looked especially deadly at the moment, heaped into vicious, steep-sided waves, the tops blown off in whorls of spray by wind opposing a strong tide.

Six miles to the lodge. Just six miles. They could do that in a few hours, right? Ian turned from the ocean and looked into the dense forest lining the beach, considering what they should do. As he scanned the treeline he saw something moving in the trees. Right at the edge of the beach, just past the bushes, there was definitely something. He squinted his eyes and focused on it. Could there be someone else on the island?

“Hello? Hello! Anyone there?” He walked a few steps to get a closer look and the figure melted into the gloom of the trees, becoming indistinct in the waning light. He felt the hair rising on his arms as goosebumps erupted. He shook it off, feeling the fear subside as he rationalized what he’d seen. There was no one else around. The wind and the shadows were playing tricks on him.

To the east the sky was fading to a deep purple, to the west it was streaked with a riot of color. The light was fading fast and the air cut hard into their wet clothes. Six miles in this terrain? That could take a full day. They needed to find a place to shelter for the night.