Found

Prologue

 

I was cold. My knee hurt.

I heard an eagle cry, twice.

I woke. I was on a journey. The journey was long, many days, many, the people my people, the animals fierce, the mountains beautiful.

I left that place and lingered in haze, dark, nothing.

I could not see or hear. I could not think.

Then I was no longer cold, no longer in pain.

Later I was aware of noises, sounds.

Even later I woke to hear people speaking. At first I could not understand. I did not know where I was, or who I was. I opened my eyes. I could not recognize what my eyes saw. All was strange. I looked around. I did not know what I was seeing.

The three people before me were familiar. I knew them all but I did not know them. Someone gave me water. I drank. I listened.

Now I could understand.

“Dad, you’re awake.” This was my daughter. What was her name?

“I knew you would wake up.” The small girl speaking had the spirit of a great bear. This I knew. Who was she? I knew her name was Sarah. And this must be Tom, this tall thin man, smiling at me. My oldest friend.

“We found you, William,” Tom said. “Your lifeboat was cast ashore on Haida Gwaii.” As he spoke I remembered. I had gone for help with Anne, the third mate, and I had been injured. I sent her on, leaving me in snow beneath boughs. I had been born on Haida Gwaii 58 years earlier, and on those boughs I was sure I would die. “We came north and found you in December. It is now April. You have been in a coma for three months, William. You are in Port Angeles, the hospital. It’s good to see you awake.”

“Myra?” Myra, my daughter, my beautiful strong blood. “Myra?”

Now my life, here, with these people, rushed into me, real, as real as my dream.

I now understood where I was, what I was seeing. I was in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines. I was much thinner and surely weak. I looked at these people before me.

“I have been on a journey,” I said. My voice sounded as if I had not spoken for 10,000 years.

“Yes.” Myra was crying. She held my hand. She was a tall woman but her hand vanished in mine. “Your amazing journey, dad. The ship fire, drifting to Haida Gwaii, lost there, being found, being brought back here, yes.”

“Not that journey, Myra.”

Myra did not understand.

It came to me we had all planned to return to the park in June, visit the place we had seen the year before – Tom, Sarah, Myra and the Russian, Sergei.

I saw that my knee was tightly wrapped. I could move slightly without pain.

“I must go back,” I said.

“What, to work on the ship? Dad, you can’t go back to work.” Myra was frowning. “You’ve lost 70 pounds, and while you were always big that’s too much. Your knee has to recover. Something tore away half your ear up there, but that’s mostly healed.”

“Not work, Myra. Back to the park. Our trip. Sergei is coming over from Russia, isn’t he? In June? This is what we agreed last fall.”

Sarah was nodding.

“I will tell you of my journey when we are in the park,” I said.

“That’s soon, dad, maybe too soon.”

“I have two months to make myself ready, then.”

I closed my eyes.