She couldn’t reach back. The water shoved and pushed and forced her away from her ensnared foot. Her shoe seemed suctioned to her foot and Liv could not wriggle out of it.
Her lungs burned as she struggled upward, but she couldn’t get her head above the water.
Seconds ticked by. The cold stole her breath.
She gazed into the green, murky bottom, trying to continue her fight, but her limbs felt heavy and limp.
Soon she’d have to open her mouth and allow the water in.
She tilted her face to where the sun slanted through the green water. It was so close, and yet she couldn’t lift up, couldn’t catch even a breath.
Her head would burst if she didn’t open her mouth. She released her clenched teeth and let the water pour in, filling her, but no relief came. The bright rays of the sun seemed to shift and darken. The river receded and blinked out.
It was morning and Liv’s mother was shaking her awake.
“I’m up,” Liv grumbled. “I’m up.” But as she spoke, a terrible burning seized her throat.
She coughed and a spurt of water shot from her mouth and splattered the face of the young man gazing down at her. He smiled, not bothering to wipe the water dripping from his chin.
“Livvy, Livvy,” her little sister cried, wrapping her in a wet hug and plastering her soaking braids against Liv’s cheek.
As Liv breathed, the heavenly intake of air both painful and exhilarating, she remembered Arlene washing down the Dead Stream, and then her own foot caught in the branches.
“You saved us,” Liv breathed, wincing at the pain in her throat.
Her eyes welled with tears as she patted her little sister’s slick back.
The boy gazed at her, his eyes as pale and sparkly as the quartz rock she sometimes found in the quarry behind the Kenworths’ farm.
He nodded, let loose a shaky laugh as if he too had been holding his breath for a very long time, and ran a hand through his black hair. Little rivulets of water ran down his forehead. He sat back on his heels and patted Arlene on the head.
“Yeah, that was…” He shook his head, as if he hadn’t figured out what it was yet. “That was alive.”
“Alive?” Liv asked, puzzled. She gently pushed Arlene away and rolled to her side before sitting up.
Arlene hiccupped, her face red and splotchy. Liv tugged one of her pigtails.
“Come here, peanut,” she told her, letting Arlene crawl into her lap. At seven, the girl was too big to be held, and yet Liv wanted nothing more than to cradle her sister and thank the gods for the man they’d seen fit to plant at the river, at the moment death arrived to take them.
“Yeah, alive,” he repeated.
“Thank you,” Liv murmured, resting her chin on her sister’s head and smoothing away the goosebumps coating her folded legs.
“Thank you,” Arlene squeaked.
The man smiled and looked toward the river, a mystified expression on his handsome face.
“Now that I owe you a mortal debt, I should introduce myself,” Liv told him. “I’m Liv. This is my little sister, Arlene.”
“A mortal debt,” he murmured, as if that too baffled him. “I’m Stephen Kaiser. Pleased to meet you.”
Liv closed her eyes and breathed in Arlene’s scent.
Her thoughts were jumbled, and each time she looked at the river, she saw their deaths laid out and waiting for them, but they had not died that day. Stephen Kaiser had saved them.
Eventually, Liv felt ready to put some distance between herself and the river. Stephen helped Liv to her feet and they headed back the way they’d come.
The three walked through the woods, stopping frequently for Liv to lean against a tree and catch her breath. Her lungs ached and her limbs felt heavy and sodden, as if the water had seeped through her skin and caused her blood to thicken and freeze.
Arlene, in true child form, had bounced back quickly from the near-drowning. She hummed songs as they walked, stopping to point out flowers and pluck caterpillars off trees.
“Are you okay?” Stephen asked after they’d stopped for the third time.
Liv nodded.
“I think so. I keep wondering if there were signs, and I missed them.”
“Signs?” Stephen asked. “About the current?”
Liv shook her head.
“Signs that we were walking toward our death. Signs to ward us off.”
Stephen looked at her sidelong, and Liv saw the curious expression on his face.
She laughed and reached back for a handful of her long blonde hair, wringing it out. It was thick and tangled, wavy hair that didn’t seem to know if it wanted to be curly or straight.
“I didn’t have a dream. I had no idea.” Liv searched the previous night’s dreams but found nothing out of the ordinary, no foreboding of what lay ahead.
“A dream?” he asked, offering another curious glance. “You’re a strange girl.”
Liv blushed and wished he’d shift his pale blue eyes away from her face.
When he did, she tried to think of normal things to talk about. She didn’t have many friends and had spent so much of her life with George; she’d forgotten that ordinary people did not speak of prophetic dreams.
“I’ve never seen you in school,” Liv blurted, because she hadn’t, and school was something normal people talked about.
“Do you go to Gaylord High?” he asked.
“Yeah. I moved here with my mom and stepdad last year.” She didn’t mention that they’d moved into the shacks on the south side of town, where civilization melted into the forest. The shacks were rundown and as likely to be filled with vagabonds as poor families such as Liv’s.
“I go to a private school. Or I did,” he amended. “I graduated in the spring. I’m moving to Ann Arbor in the fall to go to the University of Michigan.”
“Wow,” Liv breathed.
She’d never met anyone who went attended a private school. The only college-educated man she could think of was the town’s doctor, who looked at Liv and her family like lice-infested rats that had scurried through the back door.
She touched her snarled hair self-consciously and wished she hadn’t worn her summer clothes, which consisted of a ragged t-shirt and shorts not worth mending, since they’d just get torn again anyhow. “I have another year of high school left. I hate it,” she added.
Arlene stopped by a tall prickly plant.
“Nettles.” She pointed to Liv.
Liv nodded and silently willed her sister not to say more.
“Don’t we want to pick them?”
“I don’t have my bag,” Liv told her, grabbing Arlene’s hand and pulling her along.
“Why would you pick nettles?” Stephen asked, giving the sharp-looking plant a wide berth.
“Livvy uses them to heal mama’s hands,” Arlene announced proudly.
Liv felt the flush creeping back up her neck and turned to point at the big oak tree with the strange round protrusion in its trunk.
“Better go touch the boob tree for luck,” she told Arlene, realizing her comment sounded as strange as the nettles remark.
Arlene skipped to the tree and pressed both palms on the knobby growth.
Stephen followed her, putting his hands on the place where Arlene’s had been.
He looked back at Liv and smiled.
“We can all use a little luck.”
Chapter 2
Liv
Liv was hungry. Not a new feeling by any means, but walking through town, she caught a whiff of Miller’s Bakery, where something hot and cinnamony drifted from the windows. Her stomach knotted with longing, but instead of moving closer, she crossed the street and averted her gaze.