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not wanting to add another drop to the already soggy surroundings.
    Then she swore—not at Derek, but at the situation—usingthe one word she never said aloud. She felt a lot better.
    “Let’s hurry up and get loaded,” she said. “You carry the rest of the stuff down here and I’ll pack it up.”
    Cody straddled the bow and made a mental inventory of the remaining gear: one kayak, two paddles, one tent (wet), one life vest, two sleeping bags (wet), two flashlights, two water bottles (one empty, one half full), one cooking pot, one bear horn, matches inside a plastic bag, and clothes.
    Just as quickly she counted what they’d lost: one kayak, one paddle, one life vest, stove and fuel, the other cooking pot, water purifier, extra batteries, plus the smelly stuff like sunscreen, insect repellent, first-aid ointment, and Lysol. All the food, except a small bag of trail mix.
    Cody tossed the tent sack in front, climbed in, and shoved it forward with her feet. Personal gear came next. The wet sleeping bags were draped over the two seats. They’d dry in no time in this heat. She wondered what had happened to all the mosquitoes and seagulls.
    She finished packing while concentrating on the gurgling noise coming from the trees along the shore. The carbon dioxide-breathing plants were suffocating in the rising water. Who would have thought that trees would cry out when they were drowning?
    Cody pushed a sweaty strand of hair under No Fear and looked at Derek. He was building two pilesof trail mix on a rock, counting out equal numbers of almonds and raisins and dried peas.
    “We’re not shipwrecked, you know, and we won’t be on this beach forever.” Cody tossed him the lone life vest. “You wear it.”
    “Why me?”
    “I’m the captain and what I say goes.”
    Derek sighed long and loud. He knew better than to argue with her. He’d never win anyway. He just grabbed a paddle and took his place in back. He knew without being told that his captain-cousin would demand the front seat.
    Out on the water, the eight-foot craft glided easily up the fjord toward Yakutat. But the air was so hot and thick that it was difficult to take in. Cody tied a damp bandanna over her nose and mouth, and breathing became easier. Then she pulled some of her hair loose so that it covered her ears. Derek’s ears were probably already sunburned.
    “Thank goodness we’re not on a sailboat,” she said, worrying why there wasn’t the slightest hint of a breeze. In the back of her mind the phrase
calm before the storm
repeated itself.
    An unspoken question prodded her into the narrow seawater passage. They hadn’t mentioned the rising water since early this morning. The water level was coming up even faster now.
    She felt as if she were inside a small fishbowl. Someone was carrying the bowl and water was sloshing up the glass sides, threatening to spill out. But thesides of this bowl were rugged mountains of record height, Mount Saint Elias on the north, Mount Fair-weather on the south. Both stood in ranges thick with impenetrable forests of western hemlock and Sitka spruce. And glaciers, such a mass of frozen rivers most of them didn’t have names.
    Cody’s shoulders started throbbing with a dull ache that pulled at her muscles. She set the paddle across her lap for a minute and watched water drip off the blade. Without sunglasses she couldn’t look at them too long; the drops were blinding in the bright sun.
    She lifted the corner of her bandanna and took a single satisfying tug on her water bottle. The water felt cool in her dry throat and helped fill the void in her stomach. Last night’s macaroni and cheese was long gone. Trail mix tasted like gravel in the heat and made her thirsty. Being in a kayak surrounded by water they knew they couldn’t drink made most people wolfishly thirsty.
    “It’s like we’re in a swimming pool,” Derek said. “Someone is filling it with a fat hose cranked up full blast. And it’s gonna overflow