Twisted brains, the normal people called them; magic people, dwellers of the darkness — and could anyone say no to this? For each people set its standards for each generation and these standards and these norms were not set by any universal rule, by no all-encompassing yardstick, but by what amounted to majority agreement, with the choice arrived at through all the prejudice and bias, all the faulty thinking and the unstable logic to which all intelligence is prone.
And he, himself, he wondered — how did he fit into all of this? For his mind, perhaps, was twisted more than most. He was not even human.
He thought of Hamilton and of Anita Andrews and his heart cried out to both — but could he demand of any town, of any woman, that he become a part of either?
He bent to the paddle, trying to blot out the thinking that bedeviled him, trying to smother the rat race of questions that were twisting in his brain.
The wind, which had been a gentle breeze no more than an hour before, had shifted and settled somewhat west of north and had taken on an edge. The surface of the river was rippled with the driving wind and on the long, straight stretches of water there was hint of whitecaps.
The sky came down, pressing on the Earth, a hazy sky that stretched from bluff to bluff, roofing in the river and shutting out the sun so that birds flew with uneasy twitterings in the willows, puzzled at the early fall of night.
Blaine remembered the old priest, sitting in the boat and sniffing the sky. There was weather making, he had said; he could smell the edge of it.
But weather could not stop him, Blaine thought fiercely, digging at the water frantically with the paddle. There was nothing that could stop him. No force on Earth could stop him; he couldn’t let it stop him.
He felt the first wet sting of snow upon his face and up ahead the river was disappearing in a great, gray curtain that came sweeping downstream toward him. He could hear distinctly the hissing of the snow as it struck the water and behind it the hungry moaning of the wind, as if some great animal were running on a track, moaning in the fear that it would not catch the thing that ran ahead.
Shore was no more than a hundred yards away, and Blaine knew that he must get there and travel the rest of the way on foot. For even in his desperate need of speed, in his frantic fight with time, he realized that he could not continue on the river.
He twisted the paddle hard to head the canoe for shore and even as he did the wind struck and the snow closed in and his world contracted to an area only a few feet in diameter. There was only snow and the running waves that fled beneath the wind, tossing the canoe in a crazy dance. The shore was gone and the bluffs above it. There was nothing but the water and the wind and snow.
The canoe bucked wildly, spinning, and Blaine in an instant lost all sense of direction. In the ticking of a single second he was lost upon the river, with not the least idea of where the shore might lie. He lifted the paddle and laid it across the thwarts, hanging tightly, trying to keep the craft trim as it tossed and yawed.
The wind had a sharpness and a chill it had not had before and it struck his sweaty body like an icy knife. The snow clotted on his eyebrows, and streams of water came trickling down his face as it lodged in his hair and melted.
The canoe danced wildly, running with the waves, and Blaine hung grimly on, lost, not knowing what to do, overwhelmed by this assault that came roaring down the river.
Suddenly a snow-shrouded clump of willows loomed out of the grayness just ahead of him, not more than twenty feet away, and the canoe was bearing straight toward it.
Blaine only had time to get set for the crash, crouched above the seat, legs flexed, hands gripping the rails.
The canoe tore into the willows with a screeching sound that was muffled by the wind and caught up and hurled away. The craft hit and drove on into the willow screen, then hung up and slowly tipped, spilling Blaine out into the water.
Struggling blindly, coughing and sputtering, he gained his feet on the soft and slippery bottom, hanging tight to the willows to keep himself erect.
The canoe, he saw, was useless. A hidden snag had caught its bottom and had ripped a long and jagged tear across the canvas. It was filling with water and slowly going down.
Slipping, half-falling, Blaine fought his way through the willow screen to solid ground. And it was not until he left the water that he realized the water had been warm. The wind, striking through the wetness of his clothes, was like a million icy needles.
Blaine stood shivering, staring at the tangled clump of willows that thrashed wildly in the gale.
He must find a protected spot, he knew. He must start a fire. Otherwise, he’d not last out the night. He brought his wrist close up before his face, and the watch said that it was only four o’clock.
He had, perhaps, another hour of light and in that hour he must find some shelter from the storm and cold.
He staggered off, following the shore — and suddenly it struck him that he could not start a fire. For he had no matches, or he didn’t think he had, and even if he did they would be soaked and useless. Although, more than likely, he could dry them, so he stopped to look. He searched frantically through all his sopping pockets. And he had no matches.
He plunged on. If he could find snug shelter, he might be able to survive even with no fire. A hole beneath the roots of a tipped-over tree, perhaps, or a hollow tree into which he could squeeze himself — any confined space where he’d be sheltered from the wind, where his body’s heat might have a chance to partially dry out his clothing and be held in to warm him.
There were no trees. There was nothing but the everlasting willows, whipping like demented things in the gusty wind.
He stumbled on, slipping and falling, tripping over unseen chunks of driftwood left stranded by high water. He was covered with mud from his many falls, his clothes were freezing stiff, and still he blundered on. He had to keep on moving; he must find a place in which to hide; if he stood still, if he failed to move, he would freeze to death.
He stumbled again and pulled himself to his knees and there, at the water’s edge, jammed in among the willows, floated a swamped canoe, rocking heavily in the storm-driven wash of water.
A canoe!
He wiped his face with a muddy hand to try to clear his vision.
It was the same canoe, for there would be no other!
It was the canoe he’d left to beat his way along the shore.
And here he was, back at it again!
He fought with his muddled brain to find an answer — and there was an answer, the only answer that was possible.
He was trapped on a tiny willow island!
There was nothing here but willows. There were no honest trees, tipped-over, hollow, or in any other wise. He had no matches, and even if he had, there was no fuel except the scattered driftwood and not too much of that.
His trousers were like boards, frozen stiff and crackling as he bent his knees. Every minute, it seemed to him, the temperature was dropping — although there was no way to know; he was too cold to tell.
He came slowly to his feet and stood straight, faced into the cutting wind, with the hiss of snow driving through the willows, with the angry growl of the storm-lashed river and the falling dark, and there was another answer to a question yet unasked.