She’d crossed this river before, many times, but never when it was this full or this swift. It was the danger of being deep in a low canyon—rainfall could quickly flood them out. Last night’s storm had been short, but it was a rager. When Lily looked up, she could see a few tiny waterfalls pouring over the edge of the red rock just from where she was standing. It wasn’t going to get easier if they just stood there and watched.
Lily put one foot in, facing the oncoming current, side-stepping into the water. And then, once she’d found her footing, she kept her eyes on the opposite shore, careful not to get dizzy looking down at the river swirling around her legs.
“Try to stay on the sandbar,” she said.
To her right, Leo stepped in slightly upstream, and her heart tugged insistently at the realization that he was protecting her by breaking the current. He reached out, grappling for her hand, and together they moved in tiny shuffle steps through the knee-deep water.
And then, only about five feet in, they abruptly dropped to their waists. Leo sucked in a sharp breath at the frigid temperature, and she looked over at him, stomach sinking. They weren’t even to the middle yet.
“We’re going to have to hold our packs up,” she told him. “We’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t drop much deeper in the middle.”
It would throw them off balance, but if they moved slowly, they should be okay. Shrugging out of their packs, they carefully raised them above their heads.
“Just one step at a time,” he said, meeting her eyes steadily. “Are you okay?”
Lily nodded, her focus on the opposite shore, allowing herself only tiny peeks down at the river even though she could no longer see the bottom. The water was icy rushing over her waist, her ribs. Her feet slipped around rock, around small branches and reedy detritus. Every step was a slow process of extending a leg out only a few inches, feeling around, finding solid footing, carefully shifting her weight forward. She sensed the same careful focus in Leo.
Everything was okay so far. But still… Lily felt uneasy. There was an instinctive, dark hum in her blood.
“This feels like a bad idea,” she said.
“We can do it,” he murmured, eyes on the other side. “One step at a time. We’re almost halfway.”
They hit the deep, quiet middle and, to their surprise, the water rose only a few inches up their torsos. Leo looked over at her in triumph. “See?” he said. “Almost there.”
She smiled, but a sharp sound ripped from her throat as her next step landed wrong, her foot sliding off the slippery edge of a jagged rock. Lily cried out, arms struggling to hold her bag overhead under the increasingly taxing weight. Leo looked over, eyes wide. “You good?”
A yes was on her lips, but then, suddenly, she wasn’t good. Her balance veered sidewise, and to compensate Lily did a quick sidestep, but all that did was bring her into a small eddy; she leaned to steady herself, tripping over an invisible obstacle. Her foot was swept out from under her, and she fell backward, submerging entirely for a shocking, gasping second.
The current twisted her torso, flipping her legs over and pulling her downriver, leaving her panicking, kicking for footing.
Lily came back up, coughing, blinking into the bright sun, desperate to get her bearings. The water was punishing and unsympathetic, rushing past her in a gleeful torrent. Suddenly her soaked pack was the least of her worries. When she’d lost her balance and slid downstream, her foot had slipped into a tangle of branches and rock… it was trapped. She had nothing to hold on to, nothing to reach for, stretch for, to pull her up. Leo took a few precarious steps toward her, reaching one arm out, but he couldn’t hold his pack steadily one-handed. Nearly dropping it, he immediately pulled his arm back, struggling to maintain his own balance. Both of them dropping their packs into the water would be catastrophic.
“Lily,” he said, voice steady. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“My foot is stuck.” She tried to keep the panic from her voice, but she felt it rising anyway, hot and bloating, pushing aside reason. When she jerked her leg back, attempting to pull free by sheer force, she discovered that it wasn’t only that she’d stepped into a tangle of branches. Something was hooked around her ankle, and she couldn’t twist her way out of it without losing her balance again. Lily could reach down and work it free, but she’d have to sacrifice her bag, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. “I can’t get free without dropping my pack into the water.”