a dolt, with his newly sprained hand—and then he leapt off the mound and ran back to Bones, listening to Silas swearing in the spume.
“I owe you two shillings!” Tom yelled, racing off.
He galloped with the pole before him like a lance, trusting Bones to lead the way while he scanned the widening river, having lost her once again. He felt a tug upon his chest as if a rope, pulled taut, were knotted to his breastbone. His nose had swollen badly. It was difficult to breathe. Fog massed heavy just above the water but the sun had started burning off the layers in the east, leaving thin misty tendrils in the bright gold bloom.
Ahead stood the Orange, Tom’s weatherworn tavern, cozy and reliable and glowing in the light. It was stout and double-chimneyed, on a hill near the river, safely distanced from the flood and higher than the ferry. To the right lay the town, a quarter-mile square of small, huddled houses that were bounded by the farms, and the forest, and the river. The meetinghouse steeple poked above the fog. There were lights in many dwellings—it was a town of early risers—but he couldn’t see a single man or woman on the streets.
Tom halted Bones and ran toward the water, carrying the gaff and hollering for Ichabod, the ferryman and servingman who boarded at the tavern. He tugged off his boots and felt the chill through his stockings, but it was nothing to the shock of frigid water when he dove.
He broke through the flowers with a splash. Cold struck him like a great set of hammers tipped with needles, thudding but precise, bewildering his mind. The current was astonishingly strong below the surface and it tried to pull him under more than carry him along. He struggled with the gaff, swimming mostly with his legs, and fought to reach the middle of the river at an angle, gasping hard and stiffening up and looking for the woman.
From the shore, the flowers had seemed to form a smooth, gentle surface, but in fact they clumped and bobbed, often rising over his head. They made it hard to recognize the whirlpools and waves. He was battered more than once by unseen debris, and even floating backward with an unobstructed view, he couldn’t spot the branch and worried it had passed.
He drifted to the ferry line: a thick twist of rope, suspended over the water, that extended bank to bank from columns on the docks. He floated underneath it, raised the gaff, and hooked the rope. The jerk was so strong, he almost lost his grip. The current forced him several extra feet beyond the line and there he dangled as the floodwaters surged up against him.
His breaths came in quick, light snatches at the air. His legs were numb, his wrist sprain a growing streak of flame. There were flowers in his eyes and petals in his mouth, sickly sweet and slippery when he tried to spit them out. Seven miles downriver lay the Dunderakwa Falls, and if he missed her—curse Silas and his God-rotting murkfins!—nothing but a miracle would pull her from her doom.
He finally saw the branch upriver, dead ahead. It was bigger than he’d realized, dangerously splayed like a wide black claw and coming fast, very fast. He hopped the hook along the line, half paralyzed with cold and moving to the side so as not to be impaled. There’d be one brief chance to get her off the branch. Here it came—he could see the little flowers on her gown, the whiteness of her scalp along the parting of her hair.
A limb beneath the surface cracked him in the ribs. The blow knocked him sideways, fully out of reach, and only fury at the pain allowed him to recover. With a wild bolt of energy, he grabbed her by the armpit, holding one-fisted to the handle of the gaff. The branch continued on, tearing at her gown. She was limp and almost naked when he pulled her free and clear.
The flowers swarmed around them, covering their heads, until his panic spiraled up to something like euphoria. Her body pressed against him, cold as any corpse. She was facing him and buoyant with her head lolling back, hair floating to his chin, breasts rising from her gown. Her slightly open mouth was her captivating feature—what a thing it would have been to see her take a breath.