Page 27 of Jude

‘Papa!’ I screamed, coughing up the brown silt, my free hand clawing at his wet shirt. ‘Don’t let go!’

‘Never!’ he bellowed, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide with a fierce, protective terror. ‘Hold on, ’

A submerged tree trunk smashed into us with brutal force.

It slammed into our locked arms, the impact tearing his grip away into the foam with a sickening wrench.

‘Papa!’ I choked out, the current spinning me into the center of the channel.

Ten yards downstream, a flash of blue fabric cut through the brown water.

‘Mama!’ I screamed, my voice cracking with panic.

My mother broke the surface for one final, agonizing second, her hands reaching out toward me before she vanished beneath a swirling vortex of mud and broken timber.

Neither of them surfaced.

They were gone, and I was all alone.

My older brothers, farmhands on remote ranches in the Sila Mountains, were nowhere near rescuing me.

I was only nine years old, and the churning waters had just swallowed my whole world.

Kicking and screaming, I whirled in the water, about to be taken under, until an object hit my side.

A loose sheet of metal from our kitchen roof, as long as I was.

I clutched onto it and clambered onto it, my fingers bleeding as the jagged edges cut into my palms.

The current propelled me toward a bend where the deluge choked between two granite boulders.

I sobbed, wishing the waterway would take me too, because the thought of living without my mother’s arms or my father’s laugh felt impossible.

The deafening roar of the flood filled my ears, but a piercing call cut through the chaos from the canopy above.

Peering up, I spotted a colossal Bonelli’s hawk-eagle perched on a thick branch that overhung the fiercest stretch of the rapids.

The bird tilted its head, its intense yellow eyes locking onto mine.

An overwhelming, inexplicable intuition hit me, telling me I had to abandon my metal raft right now.

I waited until the current slammed the sheet of tin beneath the chestnut tree, gathered every ounce of strength in my nine-year-old legs, and leaped toward the low-hanging limb.

My fingers scraped the rough bark, and I scrambled upward, scraping my shins as I hauled my torso onto the safety of the branch.

The second my feet cleared the water, the river compressed between the boulders.

It rose into a three-story wave of mud and crushed rocks that pulverized my flimsy raft, throwing it into a rock face.

The impact would’ve shattered my bones.

I trembled from head to toe, the damp chill of the night soaking through my cotton nightgown as I crept along the mossy bark.

I stopped just two feet from the creature, captivated by its imposing size and regal majesty.

Dense brown plumage extended all the way down its tarsi to its yellow talons.

I sat, huddled, with hands wrapped around my knees.