Raft of Stars by Andrew Graff (good books for high schoolers .txt) 📕

bear’s breath. Everything was dark and quiet and warm. Fish had never felt so great a need for warmth, nor had he ever been so tired. The bear breathed in and out, its giant lungs lulling the storm outside. Fish was sealed in. His head began to drop and nod, lower and lower, until he lay on the rock floor and curled his body. On the furthest edges of consciousness, Fish inched toward the warmth, closer and closer, until he felt his knees bury themselves in coarse, wet hair, his fingers and face entangled in it, rumbling breath and unspeakable quiet.

That night Fish dreamed of his mother on horseback, racing across frozen dunes, his father sitting atop one of them, smiling, whispers of tongues in the breathing sand.

Eighteen

CAL SAT IN THE MORNING SUNLIGHT WITH HIS ARMS FOLDED over his knees. The sun warmed his face and dried his clothing. He’d removed his boot, setting his one good sock out on the rock to dry. Before him stretched the open air of the gorge, the river rumbling below, and beyond the gorge and forest stretched the tilled plains of Ironsford, a blue horizon. The armory owned most of these woods, Cal knew, used the river and cliffs for training, but today the river was quiet, nothing in sight but the gorge and the sky. There was nothing to do but wait. The falls roared at Cal’s feet, fanning out to tumble to the river bottom. The spray that hung in the air was shot through with sparks of light. Gone were the rain and thunder. Gone was the drizzle that lasted the entire evening while Cal sat his vigil. Gone were the dark and damp. All was black rock and gold sun and green trees now. The sunlight lifted puddles from rocks. It dried the cedars, and the gorge became filled with the smell of rocks and trees. Below him in the gorge, a pack of hungry swallows swooped for bugs. Above the swallows, rainbows formed in the mist.

Cal heard stirring by his side. Tiffany lifted herself onto an elbow, then onto her hip. She discovered Cal’s jacket then, wrapped around her waist and still half draped over the sleeping boy. Bread slept with his head on his arm, his mouth open and huffing against the rock. The boy had huddled close to Tiffany during the night, and Cal had taken off his canvas coat and placed it over the pair of them. Tiffany pulled it off her waist now, tucked it back up to Bread’s chin. He didn’t stir.

Cal looked at her. Her eyes were puffy and her hair was tangled. Her jeans were muddied. Cal, too, was dirty and scraped up from head to foot. His face, he knew, was sunburned and bug-bitten. The two adventurers smiled sad smiles at each other. Tiffany moved to sit close to him.

“Hi,” he said.

She smiled and looked out at the gorge. “It’s pretty,” she said.

The sparrows charged down the river valley, swooping over and between islands, dipping defiantly close to the torrent of waves.

Cal looked at the boy. “He’s tired.”

Tiffany smiled at Bread. “He didn’t move all night. Did you sleep?”

Cal shook his head. “Not since we heard that shot. I keep waiting for him to poke his head up from some rock. I haven’t seen him.”

Bread told them what had happened, how Fish had gone over the falls, how they’d tried to save Bread’s dad, the mention of whom startled Cal into abject silence. He’d thought the man dead, remembered the man’s slick blood on his hands when he slipped in it. Cal remembered the way he tried to lift his hand to the man’s neck to feel for a pulse, and how his hand shook so badly he cursed it and pulled it back and went for the sink and the whiskey. He had no excuse. He was too embarrassed to speak. Bread finished recounting the night, and when tears welled up in his eyes, Tiffany beckoned him sit near to her. You look cold, she said. Bread sniffed and said, I ain’t cold. But Tiffany said, Yes you are, now come here, and pulled him in to her and wrapped him in her arms. It wasn’t more than two minutes before Bread’s head dropped and he nuzzled in, unconscious against her chest.

Tiffany looked at the gorge, the rapids, and the falls, and at Bread. All that beauty, she thought, all this light, and they still had to steel themselves to face the gravest kind of news.

“Tell me it’s possible,” she said.

Cal paused a moment.

“It has to be,” he said.

Tiffany leaned toward him, and Cal felt the slow sway of her breathing body.

“Do you think I should wake Dale?” she asked after a time. “We still need to get off this rock.”

“No,” Cal answered quietly. “Let him sleep.”

A voice from the island cut through the rush of the gorge. A dog barked.

“Cal!”

Cal knew it was Teddy’s voice before he even turned his head. On the low bank of the main island, Teddy stood with his hands cupped around his mouth. He was wet to the hips, and so was Miranda, who arrived beside him by stepping lightly down a stone ledge. The pair stood next to the buoy post. Miranda lifted her hand to her eyes and peered across the bright water. Jacks shook water from his neck and tail, stooped for a drink of river water.

Cal waved his hat. He and Tiffany stood.

“Do you have the boys?” Teddy called, and a bit of hope dropped from Cal’s heart. He had really hoped Ted would bear good news, say he had Fischer, and Cal could tell him he had Dale, and then everyone could rejoice.

Cal cupped his hands to his mouth. “We have Dale!”

“Where’s Fischer?” returned the call.

Cal didn’t know how to respond, particularly with Miranda staring at him. He couldn’t very well yell out that Fish had gone over the falls, dragging with him Bread’s dad, who