Nata was not the excellent swimmer she often considered herself to be. All the swimming lessons Daddy paid for only prepared her to lazily do lengths in the pool, where the water was flat as a mirror and pleasantly warm.

But desperately trying to swim across a turbulent and cold river, while helping along her sister, with her leg still in a splint, was a different matter. She again felt like she did when the ocean backdraft caught her dinghy, only a few days ago. No mater how hard she tried, she could not beat the power of the water, and seemed to be making no progress towards the distant shore.

Candace swam next to her, with an awkward backstroke that let her keep Miguel’s face over the surface, and not to aggravate a hole torn in his side. Nata braved only one short look at the red streak that was left in their wake to know he was badly injured. He was unconscious, which was likely for the better, for he would be screaming in pain and panic otherwise, which would make her lose it and panic as well, which in turn would cause her to drown, and drag her sis down as well.

“Come on Moppets, we are getting closer!” Candace shouted, her breath ragged from strain. This was of course a comforting lie. They were inching towards the opposite shore at a glacial pace. Meanwhile, the current was inexorably pushing them leftwise, but to where, she did not know. What she did see, was the river getting wider, and the shores swampier, which was definitely not good.

“My ne….ah,” she switched to English, ‘We not make it!” she shouted. Something caught her eye.

“Smotri, ostrov! uh… Look, look left, dry place!”

“What?” But now Candace must have seen it too. As the river widened into a funnel, and the willow bushes of the shore shot away from them, small islands started appearing downstream. One was particularly close, almost on their path.

“Can we make it? Go there?”

“Yes! Let's grab hands!” Candace shouted. She hugged Miguel closer and then linked shoulders with the two of them framing injured Sveta and unconscious Miguel. It prohibited their forward movement but also slowed down their leftwise drift, which allowed them to slowly achieve a collision course with the island.

Nata never worked this hard in her entire life. Her thighs and calves were burning, despite being submerged in cold water. Every few seconds she felt like her body would give up, and she had to convince it to keep kicking water for a while longer. Sveta could not help, she used both arms to keep Miguel’s face above the surface, while Candace kept pulling them forward with grim determination.

When finally, after what felt like a million years, they hit the banks of the small islet, she only had enough strength to help Sveta drag herself and Miguel onto the sandy patch and fainted out of sheer exhaustion.

When she regained consciousness a moment later, she really wished she didn’t. What welcomed her was a grisly scene out of a horror show.

Miguel laid on his back, white as a sheet. His belly and side were covered in blood. So were the hands of Sveta, who clutched his wound together, and Candace's, as she dug into it.

“What happening?” she asked, fighting nausea.

“he lost a lot of blood. Can't let him lose more. Trying to patch him up.” Candace showed here a splinter of bamboo she awkwardly stuck through Miguel’s skin, pinning the wound closed. There were already several such pins, but they were barely holding the suture together. It turned a gushing wound into a ragged line that seeped red droplets. Candace pressed Miguel's grass poncho onto it and wrapped it around with a strip torn of her own. He moaned painfully, and his eyelids fluttered.

“He will live? Hole looks very bad!” she asked.

“Shut up Nat!” Sveta scolded her in Russian. “He can hear you. He is already in pain, no use making him freak out as well.”

Candace shot them a look, but did not comment. She focused on Miguel who started mumbling something quietly.

“Svetushka, please,” Nata looked at her sister pleadingly. “Talk to me. How bad is it?”

“It is…very bad.” Sveta’s eyes were hard, but her voice trembled. “Candace says she can save him, but… ”

“And Martinez…”

“Yes,” Candace interjected at the familiar word. “Martinez, or rather, Special Unit Officer Raul Martinez, one badass copper from Argentina, died defending us. He died a bloody hero. I saw him crack open the head of one of those evil cunts back there.”

“But…”

“Story ends with that, love. There’ll be time to cry about his death, because he sure fuckin’ deserved it. But we won't talk about it until we are safe and sound, lest we go unglued, Survive first, mourn later, got it?”

Nata looked around. They were on a tiny patch of silt and dead seaweed, surrounded by dirt-colored waves stretching almost up to the horizon. The shore was only a thin green line in the distance. This river made the Moscov River look like a streak of piss in comparison. They were not 'safe and sound' by any stretch of the imagination.

They sat for a while in stupefied silence, crushed by the hopelessness of their situation.

Miguel was not bleeding anymore. Candace pressed bulrush fluff against his wound, and that seemed to have stopped the blood from gushing.

He was conscious, but incoherent, mumbling to himself in Spanish and moaning in pain. Candace tried to keep a brave face about it, but Nata knew this was just a pose. It was obvious that without help Miguel would soon die.

The three of them stripped and put their ponchos on top of him, to at least protect him from the cold.

They tried to start a fire. But all the vegetation on their small island was damp and rotten. No amount of rubbing sticks together could ignite it.

They had no fire, no shelter, even the water around them looked so dirty that she shuddered even thinking about drinking it.

Finally Sveta decided to break the silence.

“What about the scream? You heard it, Candace? There must be other people!”

Candace shot up to her feet.

“Fuck me, Muppet. Tote forgot about it. It could have been a bird, or one of them hyenas barking. But it sure sounded like a bloke cheerin’…” She looked around the river.

“Hey, over here, help! Anybody!” she yelled.

“SOS!” Nata added.

“Ehs oh, fucking ehs!” Candace screamed at the sky.

Nobody answered. They shouted and yelled in Russian and English. Bits of Chinese and Korean. And then, when they ran out of ideas, they just screamed like animals. Surely, it did not matter what they were screaming, just as long as they were making themselves heard, right? But when they ran out of breath and shut up, all she could hear was the echo of their own screams, and the ever-present murmur of the river and the calls of the birds.

“Candace, this not work…” Nata said, defeated.

“Shite love, of course, it doesn't. We are in the middle of a giant river. Water stretching half a klick in every direction. We could pop a fucking grenade here and the sound will still vanish in the general noise of this place.”

“So what do we do?”

“I would say get the Hell out of here, but I'm pretty sure that's not an option with Miguel bleeding like that. We gotta stay put until his situation…” she trailed off without ending.

“Maybe make fire?” Nata suggested.

“This is one option. But we would have to make it very big with a lot of smoke to make any sense. I got to come clean with yous…” Candace sat back, and gave them a serious, pleading look.

“I saw a trail of smoke when we landed near that hill, right before we met Miguel. But it was so tiny and gone so quickly, that I dismissed it. Thought I was just seein' what I wanted to see? And could not even find it again. Maybe this was a sign of humans. Maybe this wasn't just my imagination. Haven't told ya a thing, did not want ya to get false hope, right?”

Nata felt a spike of anger. If Candace treated them like adults, if she told them the truth earlier…then... what exactly? Nothing would have changed. They would still have ended up trying to save Martinez, and the hyenas would come, and…

“But if we were to make a fire,” Candace continued before Nata could comment on her revelation, “it needs to be a big ‘un, for anyone to take notice.”

They looked around. There wasn’t enough fuel on the little islet to start even a modest bonfire, let alone a big one, and it was all damp anyway. Away in the distance they could see the shapes of much bigger islands, some covered in trees. If they could get there…

“Fine," said Candace. “You stay here. I'll try to swim to the closest one, and start a fire there. Though I'm not sure how, without Martinez’ help. I'm buggered to the bone… but it doesn't look that far. Done worse .”

“No, Candace. I will do it,” said Nata with grim determination.

“What?!” Sveta balked and tried to grab her sister’s hand reflexively. Nata stepped away from her and towards the water. Candace tried to block her path.

“No way girl. Don’t be a fuckin’ drongo, I'm not letting you drown yourself. I'm the designated swimmer of this team. You stay put-”

“No!” Nata said again, more forcefully. “I decided. You protect Miguel and Sveta. Save life. Help with Miguel's wound. Can fight animals. I cannot. But I can swim. Not very good, but good enough. And you say this is close.”

Candace looked like she wanted to object, but the objection died on her lips. They both knew that if Candace went looking for help, then Miguel would certainly die, even if the girls did their best to try to stop the bleeding. And sooner or later, something would crawl out of the swamp, attracted by the smell of blood, devour them, and Candace would not be there to stop it.

Then again, if Nata went alone and tried to beat the river current, it would be incredibly dangerous, even without taking predatory fauna into the equation. She grabbed Candace and hugged her tightly. Then she did the same to her sister.

“I will be alright. I come back…. ne plach' Svetushka, ya skoro vernus.” She kissed away her older sister’s tears, and patted Miguel gently.

“You listen to me.” Candace grabbed her face and looked her in the eyes. “Don’t swim straight at the big island. You remember the mistake yous made when we met? Gotta take into account the current pushing you sideways, off-course. The river is spreading more to the right-hand side, and it will try to wash you that way.” She pointed a finger at Nata’s face. “Do not let it do that. It will pull you all the way towards the big spread, and you’ll be fucked.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“So what-”

“Veer left. Go left. like you are trying to pass the big island on the left side.”

“What if I go..too much left?” Nata asked.

“You won’t. Just don’t force it. Don’t waste your energy. Let the water carry you, and only fight it very little to stay on course. Got it?”

“Yes.” Nata nodded and stood up.

Candace kissed her forehead and gave her a slap on the bum.

“Take a good-luck pash and off ya go. Get to the island, light a big fucking fire, stay put. No silly business.”

“No silly business.” Nata said and jumped into the murky, green water.

The current around their tiny islet was substantial. She barely had to do anything besides staying afloat. Just as she promised to do, she only put enough effort to counter the nearly imperceptible rightwise drift.

The further she went, the more turbulent the water was. She felt the wind and the foamy waves fighting against the river flow. It forced water into her mouth, and it had a salty tang to it, that made her suddenly aware of how close she was to the open sea. It was as if the sea and the river were wrestling over the stretch of tiny islands, the water turning and twisting in unpredictable ways.

It felt like hours passed since she left the small islet, and her target was inching closer at a torturous pace. The cold water stole all her heat, and her body felt like it was made of numb wood, that she only propelled forward by sheer will.

Which was when she saw the first giant crescent fin breach the waves in front of her.

And then another.

And another.

“O blyat!, net, net, net….” she shouted and immediately coughed out water that rushed into her mouth.

Were those sharks?! Please, please not again…. What would Candace do? Should she tuck-in her limbs and try not to attract their attention, or put all her strength into trying to swim away?

Nature decided for her. Several more fins appeared, and they all headed inexorably in her direction. Fuck! She could not turn back and outswim them against the current, so she did the one thing she promised not to do.

She veered right, towards the middle of the funnel where the current was strongest, and let it carry her away.

And yet, it was not fast enough. One of the curved fins turned towards her lazily, easily catching up to her.

'This is it', she thought to herself, her mind oddly calm. 'How could you think that a stupid schoolgirl could possibly survive in a place like this? Stupid! Useless! Not only you will die, but you abandoned Sveta!'

She curled into a ball and dove down. At least she wanted to see it attack. She did not think she’ll be able to fight it off, but a maw grabbing her out of the murky dark without her seeing it seemed far more terrifying.

She forced herself to open her eyes underwater, and saw a giant sleek shape swim by her. It was a horrific monstrosity, a crocodile-like fish covered in gnarly armor, and as big as her Papa’s Maybach.

And yet, she almost burst out laughing. She resurfaced, coughing and spitting.

“Yebanyi osietr!” she shouted and giggled, the stress of near-death expelling out of her body. Fucking sturgeon! She had it for dinner a hundred times. Papa insisted they should eat not just the sturgeon caviar, but the fish itself too, because he considered it a traditional meal of the Russian elite.

She knew sturgeons were huge, but harmless to humans. Sure, this one was big enough to bite her in half, but she knew they subsisted on a diet of small fish. If she only had Candace with her, she surely would have killed it with a spear and they could roast it over the fire.

It does not get more traditional than that, right Papa?

Her joy was soon deflated though. She looked around, and saw that her attempt to evade the fish made her drift far, far to the right. The big island she aimed for was now on her left, and she was about to pass it by in seconds.

Before her, the water spread into a giant funnel, with dots of islands spreading on both sides. Far in the distance, the edges of the bay were flanked by cliffs.

She could not stay in the middle of the current, because it would blow her right past all the islands, the cliffs, and towards the gray infinity that stretched towards the horizon.

She had to beat the water, and get to one of the islands somehow.

Left?

Right?

At this point the right bank was the easier option, though it would put her even further away from her sister…

She turned right and swam with grim determination. She was angry, which was a new emotion to her. Sveta was usually the hot-headed one. Nata always stood back. Always the quiet one, the polite one. The invisible one. She let her more confident sister, her parents, and the money they had, shield her from all problems. Despite being fed with a golden spoon all her life, she often felt sad and useless, but never angry.

Good girls don’t feel anger, right?

But Candace a lady entirely made up of pent-up anger and she killed a shark, with her bare hands!

So maybe there was some extra energy hidden in rage?

She let herself be mad then.

Not mad, she thought, no. Mad was too polite. She was fucking pissed. Fuck this goddamn river. Fuck the hyenas, and the sharks, and the sturgeons. Fuck this fucking world!

She pushed forward with renewed strength and speed, punishing the water with kicks and slaps. She kept inhaling water and coughing it out, but it only made her more determined. Only weak girls let themselves drown.

She was too furious to die like that.

She was on a mission to save Svetushka, Candace, and Miguel…if he still could be saved.

Finally, after a gray, wet, cold eternity, she reached a sandbank covered in branches and logs. It was as if all the wood that washed downriver hit that exact spot, and entangled itself with a mess of green, cottony algae, like loose hair stuck in a bathtub drain.

She crawled on top of the biggest log she could find.

She was so cold she was no longer shivering, which she knew was likely a bad sign. If being cold no longer feels bad, it's your brain that is mistaken, right?

Disgusted but desperate, she tore a dry mat of dead algae off the log she was sitting on, and wrapped it all over herself, like a scratchy cardigan.

She turned towards the midday sun to dry off and warm herself. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day, yet she was so cold she could not feel her fingers or toes.

She gazed upon the gray waters spreading in front of her.

This close to the shore, the water carried a lot of debris. Dead reeds, driftwood, clumps of algae, and even dead fish.

A white, translucent bubble, like a plastic bag. floated by.

She gasped with sudden realization.

Plastic bag!

Finding trash floating downriver would be a sure sign of humans nearby!

Without even thinking about it, she stripped off her algae mat, and dove for the rapidly vanishing bubble. The water was so thick with dead weeds that she crawled more than swam, but she managed to grab the bubble before it floated away.

It burst in her hands along with her hopes. It was not a plastic bag, but a big fish bladder. It deflated in her hands and filled with water, like a water balloon she used to toss at Sveta in their poolside play-fights.

The orb of water captured sunlight like a magnifying glass, and for a second, it seemed to shine like a lightbulb.

And with it, another lightbulb burst with an incandescent light in her head, and her hope returned. She waded back to her spot atop the driftwood shallow. As she climbed on top of it again, she noticed that she was not alone, and there were beavers, not far away from her, busily fussing with yet another pile of wood.

She was too desperate and cold to be afraid of them.

Besides, she had a mission.

She spread the bladder gently with her fingers, and filled it with as much water as she dared. Without any sudden moves, she lifted the heavy translucent droplet high up, until the sun rays passing through it focused into a laser-like dot on top of the dry tip of the log.

Then, mustering the last reserves of her strength, she tensed her muscles to stand perfectly still, and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Just when she felt her arms start to tremble, and the dot of light defocused, she saw a wisp of smoke coming off the wood. She noticed it was not the log itself, but the bone-dry algae fiber that smoldered. She moved the dot ever so slightly to focus on the fibers, and soon saw a tiny, tiny flame burst up.

Remembering Mr Martinez’ lessons, she bowed down, and blew on it as gently as she could, making sure the air came out of her mouth and not her lungs, to avoid breathing moisture out.

Without taking her eyes off the growing fire, she fed it small clumps of dead algae, splinters of punked wood, and old bulrush fluff, until it grew big enough to sustain itself.

She tore a shallow hole into the log and pushed the embers into it, so that they would not roll off the trunk and fall into the water. The punkwood inside almost immediately caught, and the flames were sucked into the hollow of the log, jetting out of its top.

Fire!

Not only did she make a fire, but a big one too! Of course, it would not be very visible in the middle of the day, but after dark? It would be the brightest spot on the river.

She put her algae cape back on, and sat by the fire to consider her options. The pile of driftwood she was stranded on was enormous, easily the size of a yacht. If she decided to intentionally spread the flames to the whole thing, it would make a big fire, visible from kilometers away.

But then, if nobody was around the river to actually see it, it would be all for nothing, and not only would she run out of firewood, but likely be forced to swim away from it, or roast herself.

The other option was to maintain a more modest fire for a long time, hoping that whoever lived around here would sooner or later notice her. The drawback of course was that the longer it took, the more likely it was that Miguel would die, while Sveta and Candace would be in danger, not just from dangerous animals, but from the cold as well. Even though the days were sunny, the nights were terribly cold especially when they were wet.

She spent the rest of the day carefully climbing all over the driftwood patch, to scavenge for dry kindling, while avoiding falling into the muck below, which was filled with jagged sticks and tangled water weed. Strange, creepy things crawled through it, from oversized crayfish, to nightmarish creatures that looked like the spawn of praying mantis and a shrimp.

And leeches.

So many leeches. She scrubbed so many of those off her calves and thighs that she was covered in bloody welts from her toes to her navel. Her legs looked as if she lost a fight against an octopus.

As bad as the leeches were, they were not even half as bad as the biting insects that buzzed around the swampy shallow and bit every centimeter of her exposed skin. She had to lean over the bonfire and hide in a cloud of smoke to fend them off.

But all the pain and itching just made her more angry, which helped her be less afraid. She was too exhausted to feel more than one emotion, so she focused on anger.

The sun was setting, bathing the river in an orange glow, which annoyingly, almost completely obscured the light of her fire.

She let it smolder until the sun disappeared completely over the horizon. The river grew darker, turning blue and black like the night sky above it.

And then, in the distance, she saw it.

A pinprick of orange light, just like her own, but much bigger.

Someone did manage to set the bigger island on fire!

For a second she thought it must have been Candace, who succeeded where she failed, but then the light reflected off a snow-white rectangle billowing in the wind. Even though it was as tiny as a pixel from that distance, she recognized it for what it was, a sail of a boat. A boat that started moving away from the burning island, slowly disappearing in the gloom of the night.

“Hey! Stop! Over here!” she yelled, but deep down she knew they wouldn't hear her. Instead, she turned to her tiny fire and blew it brighter. She threw every stick and clump of reeds she could find, to make the flames burst higher. She even used her algae cape to send SOS signals using its light, but it was in vain.

Even though she managed to raise a column of fire twice her height, the sailboat kept moving away from her, downriver, and now disappeared completely. She could clearly see their fire, much, much brighter than hers, and understood that as long as that burning island was closer to the boat that she was, whoever was sailing it would not be able to see her meager light.

“B’lyad! Vernis idiot!” she yelled, and tossed burning sticks into the water in blind rage. Despite the back-current, they floated downriver, slowly smoldering.

What now? Should she keep waiting another day, hoping the boat will come back? try to swim towards the burning island?

Neither option seemed realistic. And she could not go back either. The only possible option was to go downriver, and try to find the boat, or the people who owned it.

She slid off the log, and braced herself against the pile of driftwood. Digging blindly in the silt she found the spot where the thick log was wedged into the pile, and heaved. It did not give at the first try, and it took her several attempts to dislodge it.

As she did, the half rotten trunk slid off the shallow, and started floating down the river, with the remnants of the bonfire still on it. She chased after it, barely managing to grab it before it moved out of her reach.

Climbing on top, she tore off a length of the rotten bark, and using it as a makeshift paddle, oriented her smoldering punkwood canoe towards the cliffs.