When Eagles Fall (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage) Read online

  Maybe her dad thought she had her head in the clouds. And sometimes maybe she did, but she had to take charge now. She could do this, she knew she could.

  When she reached the eaglet, he lay chest down in long grasses, right wing extended.

  She crept closer, the hood of her windbreaker opened wide in her hands, ready. The bird didn’t move.

  In a swift motion, she dropped the hood of her wind-breaker over the eaglet’s head. The bird didn’t move a feather. She grabbed the hood tassels and pulled them tight so that the hood cinched up around the eaglet’s head. For a second, the bird struggled, then quieted again.

  Alex pushed wet bangs out of her eyes, then she crouched closer to the eaglet and—she could scarcely believe she was going to do this—grabbed the bird firmly and pulled him to her chest, his talons reaching outward, away from her.

  The eaglet clawed the air with its yellow, waxy legs, its razor-sharp talons. But with his head encased by the hood of her jacket, he soon stopped struggling. He wasn’t exactly heavy—maybe six pounds or so—but with every step toward the canoe, Alex’s shoulders pinched from climbing, from paddling … from the weight of the eaglet’s life in her hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wind and Water

  Rain dripped from cedar branches as Alex carried the eaglet to the canoe. The eaglet’s heart fluttered against her own; his talons were flexed, sharp and ready. Ned had said that in just another week or two, the eaglets would be tough to handle. At this age they didn’t realize how much power they really had. Alex was glad of that.

  Gently Alex lowered herself to her knees beside the canoe and placed the eaglet chest down on the floor, just in front of the bow seat. Her hands stuck momentarily on the windbreaker, and the eaglet startled. He flapped beneath the fabric, stood on his feet, and lifted his covered head.

  “C’mon, little guy, cooperate. Stay,” she said, as if it were Tooky, the yellow Lab her father had brought home for her when it was a puppy; the dog he couldn’t care for because he traveled too much. He couldn’t have a dog barking at the base of every eagles’ nest. When her parents had split, Tooky went to live in Brainerd with Alex’s grandparents. So much for the family dog.

  Lifting the bow, Alex eased the canoe off the rock lip, scraping its underbelly as it dropped into the water. She kept glancing at the eaglet. Her paddle rested against a birch tree; she grabbed it and slid it into the canoe. Beyond the arms of the cove, waves hit jagged rocks and sprayed plumes of water skyward. Farther out, whitecaps, now a few feet high, frothed the lake. She could stay on the island and wait out the storm, but she wasn’t very familiar with Minnesota weather. How long would a storm last? Minutes? Days? Her long-sleeved shirt and jeans were soaked. Wet to the bone, she’d rather be making progress, working her way back to the Naatucks’ and some dry clothes. All she’d have to do was paddle, paddle hard, and she could make it. The distance between Skipper Rock and Dryweed was short. Once she reached Dryweed, she’d paddle close to shore, out of the wind. If she had to, she’d get out of the canoe and walk the shoreline back to the cabin.

  The eaglet now lay motionless. What if he had broken more than his wing? He could have injured something inside when he fell. Carefully she stepped toward the canoe and slipped on wet moss—nearly falling headlong into the water—but landed instead on her rear. What a mess she was making of things.

  Alex glanced up. Despite the rain, a bald eagle rode the wind currents, barely flapping its wings. She huddled into her shirt, imagining the parent’s talons rake her neck as it watched her from above.

  She hopped over the bow—really glad the eaglet’s head was covered so he couldn’t nip a chunk of flesh from her ankle—and managed not to tip the canoe as she made her way to the stern. She sat on the woven cane seat, gripped the paddle, and headed out of the sheltered bay, straight for the whitecaps.

  She could do this. She wasn’t like Oscar Inness, too afraid to try.

  Yards out from the bay, water sprayed across the side of the canoe, hitting Alex full in the face, stinging her eyes. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. The canoe had turned sideways and water splashed over its edge.

  “I need help!” Alex cried aloud, to the wind, to no one. Frantically she paddled hard on her right and gradually pointed the bow directly into the west wind. A wind that slammed into her like a semi, never braking, never letting up, just pushing her backward, away from Skipper Rock Island, even farther away from Dryweed.

  For a moment, she held the canoe steady, bow windward, and the canoe rode up and down, riding onto one wave, then sloshing down into the valley of the next. In the bow, the eaglet flopped under the windbreaker in the inch of water on the canoe’s floor.

  From the corner of her eye, off to the distant south, a boat sped along the channel. Maybe it was the Naatucks and her father. Once they returned to the cabin, they’d find her gone and come looking. Come rescue her. Suddenly she realized she’d left her life jacket on the island. She could swim, but …

  Another wave crested ahead, taller than the others. Alex dug harder into the lake with her paddle. She tried to keep the bow forward, straight on with the wave, but the canoe twisted. As Alex lifted her paddle, a wave hit, sprayed water across her whole body and into the canoe, and yanked the paddle from her grip.

  “Oh no!” she cried as the paddle slipped over the next wave and became a mere twig in the distance.

  She swore. Twice, then a third time.

  Then she screamed.

  But it did no good. Her paddle was gone.

  The canoe turned broadside to the waves, taking on more water. Her weight made the canoe unstable. She slid to the floor and sat in water. Then she began paddling frantically with her hands, trying to turn the canoe into the wind, just to keep it from flooding. Her hands became rudders, bad ones, but better than nothing. What she needed most she didn’t have.

  Thunder boomed, rib-racking loud, and lightning followed less than a second after, flashing across the sky to the north. Again thunder rumbled, this time low in the belly of a great beast as it grumbled out in a series of deafening booms. Alex braced herself. She was a perfect target. Again lightning crackled the sky, ripping its way through a fabric of murky gray. If eagles were smart, they’d build their homes in caves, not in the highest treetops.

  Another wave plowed into the canoe, spinning it broadside again. Alex hung on, paddled hard on her right, struggling to counter its force.

  Beneath the bow seat, the eaglet flopped in the water, his talon tangled in the string of Alex’s jacket’s hood. His soaked tail feathers protruded from under the edge of the windbreaker.

  Her windbreaker. Her brilliant plan gone wrong. Gone afoul. A fowl. A pun. As if there were anything funny about her situation.

  What a disaster she’d created. This poor eaglet. Half drowning in a canoe with a broken wing was the last thing he deserved. Her chest felt heavy with regret. She had only wanted to help the eaglet, to prove herself to her father. But what had she proved?

  Waves pushed the canoe faster than she could have paddled it. The wind carried it along, nearly picking it up and out of the water at times before setting it upon the crest of another wave that pushed it farther and farther from the Naatucks’ cabin.

  Two seagulls flew over the canoe, perhaps to scavenge a leftover lunch or whatever a fisherman might toss overboard, then moved on.

  “Nothing here,” Alex called up, the wind snatching her words. “And we’re not dead yet!”

  The birds flew higher and headed north.

  She blinked back water. Time slowed, marked only by the rhythm of the waves, the high-pitched humming of the wind. Head down, Alex tried to keep a lookout for the paddle. The chances of getting it back were slim. But with the wind pushing the canoe eastward, perhaps the paddle was close by, traveling at the same speed. She kept using her hands to steady the canoe. The lake numbed her hands, absorbed her warmth, and iced her body. She trembled and her teeth began to chatter.

  Something shimmered near the canoe. The paddle. She wasn’t going to let it slip by. She cupped her hands tighter and scooped water, trying to nudge the canoe toward the shape. Before the next wave snatched it from her, she reached for the flat of the paddle. Her hand clenched fast around something cold. Something slippery and squishy.

  She winced—“Oh! Puh-lease!”—and drew her hand back into the canoe, then, on second thought, let her hand trail in the water outside the canoe, hoping to wash off the slime. A dead and bloated fish floated off on the next wave.

  She groaned.

  The eaglet had stopped struggling, but now he held himself upright, feet planted in the water, his body cloaked in blue and teal. When a wave hit, he scrambled to steady himself, tried to reach around with his head, sometimes knocking against the wall of the canoe and falling. Alex hated watching him lose his balance and flail to gain footing, but there was nothing she could do.

  She ached inside, hated how terribly stupid and helpless and alone she felt. Tears welled up and merged with rain down her face. Before anyone would notice or figure she was missing, she and the eaglet would probably be at the bottom of the lake or floating, food for scavengers.

  If she died, would she be with her brother? She always pictured him in a good place, somewhere happy and without suffering. Was there such a place, a heaven, for him? If she died, would there ever be a heaven for her?

  In every direction, there was too much water. Rocking, churning, waves of water.

  And no cell phone. No emergency phones. No policemen or rangers. Nobody to help.

  Water clouded her vision, dripped off her nose, and soaked her skin. She sank lower, continuing to use her hands as rudders, using her body to counter the waves’ unceasing efforts to turn the canoe and its cargo upside down. For hours, beneath dark thunderheads, the canoe rode foamy waves, swiftly floating eastward. Alex felt pushed forward by forces beyond her control in a tiny green vessel on miles and miles and miles of empty, wind-churned water.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alone

  All the rain, the steady pounding incessant rain, made her think of the playhouse. For years, she had managed not to think about it, not to remember anything. A thought would flicker in her mind and before it would come fully to life she’d snuff it out, like a candle extinguisher over a hungry flame.

  The playhouse. She didn’t have the strength now, and the waves and water and rhythmic rocking lulled her. She let the memory come.

  Her father had built it, and it had sat in the corner of the backyard, right beside the ginkgo tree. He worked from sketches Mom had drawn. He cut wood with his circular saw. It buzzed as he filled the air with the sweet scent of wood chips, a growing mound of vanilla-colored chips and sawdust that she and Jonathan played in. She used her brother’s yellow front-end loader and dump truck, hauling wood chips with him, load by load, to the compost container.

  When the playhouse was finished, her parents held a grand ceremony complete with a decorated cake. Abuela Elena arrived, her silver hair bobbed and bouncing, carrying a brightly colored homemade quilt. Alex taped a red ribbon across the door frame, then handed her grandma the scissors. “Abuelita, you’re the oldest. You should cut the ribbon.”

  “Gracias,” her grandmother said with a broad smile. “I would be honored.”

  They had just moved to San Jose from Minnesota, so at first, Alex had played only with Jonathan in the cedar-shingled playhouse, complete with blue shutters, real flower boxes, and a red door. Inside, they sipped tea from plastic toy cups, toasted the queen and king, played bankers and robots and “chinny-chin-chin,” Jonathan’s shortened name for the Three Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. He was always a pig; she was the wolf. And sometimes she fell asleep with him on the green folding cot under the orange-and-yellow quilt that always made her think of churros. Probably because Abuela Elena always made churros, puffy and hot and lightly sprinkled with sugar.

  A shriek pulled her from her daydream.

  In the bow, the eaglet flailed and kicked, a mangled mess of wing and tail feathers, beak and talons. Now its hood had come free and he was eyeing her, flopping in the water, half covered by her windbreaker. Alex drew her sandaled feet toward her and sat cross-legged. Her toes might look like easy food.

  The eaglet continued to struggle, his body looking smaller and smaller as water saturated his feathers. And in an instant, he managed to shed the windbreaker and hop to the bow seat. He sank his talons into the woven seat and stared at her, as if to say, “Why?”

  She sat against the stern seat in three or four inches of water that sloshed and sprayed with the waves. Another wave rolled into them and threatened to turn the canoe sideways. Alex paddled with her numb hands, straightening the canoe and turning it downwind.

  The eaglet cocked his head, one eye on her, steady, unflinching, as if he could reach into her soul and read everything written there. Her thoughts, her fears, her secrets. The wind blew its brown crest feathers up.

  “A mohawk,” Alex said. “Very cool.”

  Another wave bounced them sideways and water flowed over the canoe’s side.

  “Just what we need,” Alex said.

  The eaglet’s eyelid slid sideways and open again. Eagles didn’t have regular eyelids. Instead, a thin membrane closed sideways across their eye like the quick shutter of a camera.

  The eaglet rode that way, never taking his eye off her, despite the falling rain and the wind that howled around them, as if she were the one who had been captured, not the other way around. He stood guard, shaking like a sentry who had stood out in the cold too long. A sentry with a broken arm hanging awkwardly at his side.

  Glancing in every direction, Alex hoped for any sign of boats. Whitecaps and sheets of slate-gray rain filled her view. She would simply have to wait it out. Wait for help. Wait until the canoe touched shore. At least she wasn’t on the ocean. She had seen a map. The lake had its limits, even if it stretched eighty miles end to end. Even if it was a labyrinth of islands and channels.

  “Labyrinth,” she said aloud. An endless maze, that’s what she was floating on. Once she found her way into it, could she find her way out again? She was glad the eaglet was with her. He was only a bird, but even his company was better than being completely alone. “Sentry,” she said. And the eagle blinked sideways. “That’s what I’m going to call you. You mind?”

  Maybe if she talked to the eaglet, he would have a better chance of surviving and wouldn’t try jumping into the lake. If she lost the eaglet, she couldn’t bear it. “So chin up, huh? You and I, we’re going to be just fine. Don’t you worry your little eagle brain about anything, okay, Sentry?”

  A chill had settled deep inside. Alex began to shiver uncontrollably. All that water. It was cooling her down to lake temperatures, which had to be about fifty below zero. Her teeth chattered and her body kept shuddering. More than anything, she wanted to be dry and warm. She didn’t care if she ever got home again, if she could only get to some source of heat. Still, she kept her numb hands in the lake, ruddering the canoe, keeping it upright, letting the wind pass by on either side of port and starboard, not letting it swamp them.

  The eaglet turned his head and studied her. He ruffled his feathers, puffing up only slightly.

  “Maya said eagles … are a symbol of strength and wisdom.” Her own lips weren’t moving very well, but she kept talking. “She’s Ojibwe, or at least part, and she would know. Maybe you were sent here by the Great Spirit to teach me something. That’s what Maya would say.”

  Thunder and lightning passed on ahead, but a driving cold rain continued to push the canoe eastward. Alex tried to keep talking.

  “My brother,” she continued. “When he mile—” Her words weren’t forming right on her lips. She tried again. “When he smiled,” she said, “his eyes scrunched up and—” She stopped. Talking was too much work. Her brother. He had shared everything, even bites from his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. If she could go back in time, she’d lift him from the floor of the playhouse after the time he drank from her birthday tea set without her permission. She’d pushed him right off his little plastic chair. He was great. Really, Sentry, you would have liked him.

  The canoe twisted and dipped, riding low in the water. It crested over the top of one wave and slid down into the valley of the next. Alex felt numb and limp. Any moment, the canoe would capsize, fill with water, and she would be too cold to hang on. She’d just slide into the lake and sleep.

  Her stomach churned with all the endless up-and-down motion. She closed her eyes, clung to both sides of the canoe, and slid lower, her head tilted back against the seat, and cold rain fell on her face and eased her urge to throw up.

  And still the canoe floated eastward.

  Alex had no idea how much time had passed when the canoe bumped against rock, jolting her. She opened her eyes. To her amazement, the eaglet was still there, clinging to the seat.

  When she tried to stand, her legs wouldn’t obey. She felt confused. Couldn’t remember why she was in the canoe. Slowly, as if they didn’t belong to her, she lifted her hands before her eyes. Water puckered. Grayish-blue. Rain fell steadily. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to sleep, just to lie down in the water in the canoe and sleep.

  With a shriek, the eaglet startled her. Awkwardly he flapped one wing, then hopped from his seat to the bow, to shore, and was gone. She had to follow him.

  Alex forced herself to move. Slowly she pushed herself over the seat, the yoke, the bow, and stepped onto a large boulder, her legs shaking so badly that her knees buckled. She fell, but felt nothing.

  A large spruce tree darkened the edge of the woods. Its long branches swept the floor. Shelter. Dry shelter. Alex half walked, half crawled. She eased herself under the spruce’s prickly arms. Near its trunk, on a dry patch of ground, she drew her knees to her chest and closed her eyes.