Free Out of The Woods by Patricia Bowmer Page B

blood on the rocks.
    He contained himself. “Please, don’t look so upset,” he said, his voice softer this time. “We have to eat. Out here, we have to hunt to survive.”
    Halley didn’t answer.
    He gutted the fish with what seemed unnecessary cruelty, roughly jerking its insides out onto the ground with his bare hands. She wanted to run away, but she was so hungry her mouth was watering. And anyway, she didn’t trust what her intuition was saying about him. What was “evil” anyway? Was hunting evil?
    Building a searing fire from loose twigs and dry leaves, he roasted the flesh of the carp. It was a freshwater fish and it should have tasted sweet and of the wilderness; she gagged as she ate.
    Trance reached across and rested his hand on the sleeve of his jacket that she wore. His movement had an air of ownership.
    “There, that’s better,” he said. “You were weak with hunger.”
    His inflection disturbed her. He had put special emphasis on the word “weak”.
    Trance stood up.
    “We must hurry.”

Trance held her wrist firmly as he shepherded her towards his boat. He knew the urge to run was growing in her – it was visible in a captured animal tightness about her eyes. He shoved her roughly into the rear seat of the boat, and, leaning his heavy boots hard into the gravel riverbed, he pushed off from shore. Quickly, he hauled himself aboard. The boat shook precariously. Trance seated himself on the middle seat, facing the shore. With three pulls on the oars, they were away and moving fast down the steely river.
    Halley’s heart beat a staccato pulse. There was a metallic taste in her mouth. The river was swift but the water’s surface strangely smooth. Trees flashed by on the edges of her vision. The piercing shrieks of birds split the air. It was all too fast and too loud. Too out of control.
    Soon, they entered a gorge with high overhanging walls, and Trance looked directly at Halley for the first time since they’d boarded the boat. She was sitting as far as possible from him, shrunken inside his jacket. He rowed from the middle of the boat, facing Halley, guiding the boat without looking behind him to see the course they should follow.
    How can he row without looking? The question became trivial when she saw the coldness of his eyes.
    “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he began, his tone unexpectedly soft, belying his face. He gazed up at the rock walls, worn perfectly smooth by the passage of water. “Have you traveled this river before?”
    “No,” she said, in a small voice. Could I make it to the cliffs if I swam? Even if I could, there’d be no way to climb out. The walls are too smooth. She moved uneasily on her seat.
    “Are you sure?”
    She wouldn’t meet his eye. Her travels by boat had been curtailed a year ago. The memory of that last trip she knew intuitively not to share with Trance. Still, the memory flooded her, and she turned her eyes to the grey wooden planking of the boat’s floor:
She and Fernando were using single-man kayaks to avoid traversing some difficult terrain. By foot, it would have taken hours to reach their campsite. In the approaching darkness, she had decided it was far safer to take the water route across a small bay.
Halfway out the wind rose unexpectedly, blowing them off course, out beyond their planned depth. He waved to her from his kayak, gesturing that she should move closer towards shore. His gesture made her notice the shark net – their kayaks were well outside it. The space inside the net loomed empty. Suddenly she felt disoriented – what were they doing outside the shark net? Wasn’t it dangerous to be in the open water? A second later, she laughed aloud – of course they couldn’t kayak inside the shark net – it only ran across a small section of the bay beach! She shook her head, glancing across to Fernando’s kayak to see if he’d heard her laugh. She’d like to tell him her silly thought.
The smile left her face. There was a vertical fin