“To hell with destiny,” I tell him. “It only brings misery. I want to save P.J. Can you help me?”

The old face smiles sadly.

I open my eyes. Try to sit up.

The pain is excruciating. I sink back down, defeated.

Dawn light is streaking over the river. A morning breeze rustles the leaves.

I’m on a grassy bank, near a canoe. Eko is thirty feet away, sitting on a rock that juts out into the river. She looks like a forest nymph, a dryad or a naiad. Long flowing black hair, lissome body, gleaming bare almond skin. She’s meditating, her arms spread wide as if she’s embracing the trees, the river, and the lightening sky.

One look at her is all it takes to understand how she kept me alive, fed, and protected while I was unconscious. She lives on such close terms with nature that she seems to be a part of this green expanse of threatening wilderness.

I remember her on the Outer Banks—how she communed with the birds of prey and the dolphins of the deep. I can tell it’s the same for her here—she probably knows every edible plant, every medicinal shrub. It wouldn’t surprise me if she could converse with caimans, and perhaps the chattering monkeys give her navigational advice.

Nature nymph nonpareil though she may be, I’m aware that her skills serve her own agenda. She’s a priestess, a functionary, carrying out the will of the People of Dann. She’s bringing me somewhere for her own purposes, or theirs. Definitely not mine.

What I need to do is clear: go back and find P.J.

“Never let me go again,” she whispered the night we sat by the firelight.

“I won’t,” I promised her.

I sit back up. My damaged ribs stab me. I cross my arms over my body, locking in the pain. Hold on to it, I tell myself. Use it to stay conscious.

I start to crawl across the mud. It’s slow going, but I make it to the canoe. Drag myself up and over the side. Find a paddle. Silently push off from the grassy bank.

I glance at Eko—she hasn’t moved. The rock she’s meditating on is a short distance downriver. If the current pulls me past her, she’ll spot the canoe.

So, weak as I am, there’s only one way to go. Upriver. I can’t possibly paddle a canoe against the current in this condition. Somehow I manage it. There’s no way I can make it back to the falls and find P.J.—this is a fool’s errand. Well, I guess I’m a fool.

I force my arms to move, the muscles of my shoulders to work. Dig, pull, lift. Every stroke is agony.