The Plains of Abraham

Chapter 8

The sun rose lower in the sky with each successive noon, and temperatures eased downward. After several more days of paddling we passed below Turonado, hugging the south shore, on the opposite side of the lake, yet staying far enough from shore to give us a head start over any unseen mutants bent on pursuing us.

Of course no one knew how fast mutants swam or paddled their canoes, or even if they had canoes. Such information was missing from books, both sanctioned and felonious. We only knew through stories that they had a dog's sense of smell and could sniff us out from great distances.

Turonado was a squat silhouette on the horizon, but we could make out its tallest buildings, rectangular prisms poking the sky, their top floors sheared off and ragged. A wound on the landscape. I thought if I tried hard enough I could hear the echoes of tumbling bricks in its empty streets, the hollow whistling of wind through shattered windows. And if I should walk its streets I'd step over weeds and enterprising saplings growing up through pavement, a reclamation in progress, a sober and biding pageant celebrating the ultimate mastery of nature.

In the other direction lay untamed wilderness. I kept my eyes on the tree line, convinced figures lurked in the shadows. Tree trunks took the form of hideously deformed men, branches became their outstretched arms.

Yet nothing happened. We glided past the danger without incident. The Turonado legend was apparently a myth. I was uneasy with such a conclusion, however, because I believed goodness lay ahead and that yin and yang required an integrated balance between good and evil. Save Rasmussen and his posse, thus far we'd experienced a shortage of evil.

The river connecting the first and second Great Lakes was interrupted by an enormous horseshoe-shaped waterfall. The drop was as much as 200 feet and the falls spanned the width of the basin, an astonishing half-mile long brink. Water roared and foamed, flexing brawny muscles in full view of the soft-bodied canoeists confronting it.

The noise alone! The crashing of an immense volume of water, the roiling and churning of the current as it reached the tipping point, anticipating its headlong plunge into soaring foam. The falls were sentient: a singular incidence of the landscape assembling its most impressive assets to fashion a godhead, an allegory of nature's own self-awareness, of its blithe audacity.

The water flowed northward. We paddled southward, until it became evident there was no passage for a canoe, then backtracked to where we could scale the bluffs hemming the falls. As we passed the thundering monster I looked down and imagined trying to navigate it in the future, when we returned to this place traveling the other direction. The plunging water would crush us. There'd be nothing left of man or boat by the time the river finished chewing us up.

We passed into open water and made camp. Malcolm sank to his knees and thanked the Blessed Virgin Immaculate for having spared our lives.

The second Great Lake! No Kebekian had ever seen it. I had wondered myself whether the lakes were only legend, but Malcolm had pointed out that the legend wouldn't be so specific as to list five of them. And to include details we had so far confirmed.

This time we hugged the north shore, to avoid the dead industrial cities to the east and south. The lake stretched to the southwest horizon and beyond, and at first I thought we may have at last encountered the ocean. But the shores remained narrow, as they had in the first lake, the water remained sweet, and nary a seabird came in sight.

At the western end was our next danger point. Chartrain guarded the straights between the second and third lakes.

"We'll navigate those straights when we reach them," Malcolm said. "Right now we're in a race to beat the ice."

What neither of us knew at the time was that we had already lost the race. We had lost the race the moment we set out from Kebek, far too late in the year. It had been folly to think we'd reach Ellanoy before the snow.

To punish us for jinxing the matter, the next morning saw a thin crust of ice on the water's surface. Malcolm tested it with a paddle. It broke easily.

"We'll go as far as we can," he said.

"Our goal ought to be to find the best place to winter over."

"We might make it yet."

"The lake is freezing. We can't finish our journey in a day."

But there was no reasoning with him. We set out and pushed ourselves. Wilbur's bow broke the ice as it went, cutting a narrow channel of water. The inevitable then occurred: a tear in the birchbark fabric. Water spilled in.

We aimed for shore. Malcolm continued paddling while I bailed. Once on shore we turned Wilbur upside down and drained him. Malcolm set about making a patch while I scouted the neighborhood.

The ground was flat, the conifers were dense and would hide us well, and of course there was sufficient wood to burn. As long as we could find enough to eat we could make a go of it. I was ready to try my hand at ice fishing, and I felt that between us we could design and construct an effective animal trap.

"This is as good a place as any to stop," I reported to Malcolm.

"We're moving on."

We didn't get far. Blocks of ice positioned themselves strategically in our way. At points we had to rock the canoe from side to side, to loosen it from persistent chunks. Soon it was evident we could go no farther. If we stayed out much longer an adolescent glacier would grind us to powder like dried corn under a pestle.

"Let's get back to shore while we still can," I said.

Malcolm reluctantly turned the canoe around. Our winter campsite had selected us.

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