Free A Grave Tree by Jennifer Ellis Page B

and farther down the river, their bodies bruised and broken by rocks. He clenched his fists.
    Russell and Jake, at Sylvain’s direction, already had their heads bent and eyes closed. Mark closed his own eyes and tried to focus on moving his head down the river, on scouring both sides of the riverbanks for people, for debris, the water surging beneath him. He mentally traced the sinewy line of the Moon River, a line he had studied so many times on a map, but his mind remained stubbornly entrenched on the cliff, the low breathing of the others and the twittering of nearby birds jarring his concentration.
    How had he felt when he had flown before? He had been sleepy, almost inattentive. He had not been intending to go anywhere. He just had. He pictured Abbey with her face tight and her eyes wide, calling to him as she climbed down the skull face. She had been worried about Caleb. He knew this. He could read it in the set of her features, even though reading people was not his strong suit. He could read Abbey. Her emotions rippled off her like a spinning tornado, capturing him and pulling him along.
    The ground seemed to buck and drop from beneath him, and he nearly fell to his knees. He threw out his arms and clung automatically to the nearest solid object, the smooth, peeling trunk of the Madrona. Then the ground fell away again and he was tossed to the side. The riverbanks flew past at an alarming pace, the air heavy with the spray of the water, the triangular bow of—a boat?—leaping and twisting in the current in front of him.
    He wasn’t following the path of the river from above, as he had expected. He was in the boat.
    He whirled his head back, and sure enough, there were Ian and Abbey, clutching the sides of the roiling rowboat, their knuckles white, their pale faces scrunched in identical grimaces of terror. They were both soaked to the skin, and Ian had lost his beret.
    The boat shot into the air bow-first, and Mark felt his stomach leap and then plummet. (Had his stomach accompanied him on this flight? He didn’t think it would have.) The front of the boat landed hard, and the stern jerked up, threatening to catapult over the bow. Both Abbey and Ian were flung forward, nearly hitting their heads on the seats in front of them. Mark flew forward too, but his movements were somehow muted. He was moving with the boat, feeling the twists and turns, but he wasn’t experiencing them in the full body way that Abbey and Ian were. He was not really there. He hoped.
    Abbey was scanning both sides of the river as best she could. Mark turned his attention back to the front. Maybe he could figure out where they were and go back and tell Sylvain. Maybe he could find Caleb. He focused on the steep sides of the canyon. The craggy dark grey rock was cut with horizontal and vertical fissures. Small trees and plants clung to the canyon walls near the top. A white line showing the historical high water mark ran along the walls a few feet above where the water now surged. The line caught Mark’s eye, and he wanted to focus on it and consider what it meant for the flood data he had been examining, but he had to concentrate on determining where they were.
    The canyon walls were too high for him to make out the geography or any key landmarks. All that was visible above them was a narrow expanse of bleak sky. The walls were tight, sheer and confining. There were no beaches or areas of calm water where they might pull off momentarily to rest, or where they might find Caleb. He tried to analyze where they were based on the twists and turns in the river, but the wild thrusts and shifts of the boat happened too quickly for him to make sense of it, and even though he was not really here, he found the whole experience terrifyingly confining and claustrophobic.
    Again and again it seemed like the poor, dizzy rowboat would be dashed against the cliffs and shattered, but even as it veered toward the looming rocks, and Mark prepared for the end of