Chapter Seven

Katrin felt the water closing over her head. She tried desperately to grab hold of something, anything. Blackness enveloped her. She sank lower and lower and was utterly powerless against the swirling force of the river’s current. Then she remembered the teeth-marks on the oar...

All of a sudden, she felt a hand seize her by the arm and pull her up, up, with incredible strength and speed, so that in seconds she burst through the water’s surface with such velocity that she felt her lungs might explode. Paralysed by shock, she was helplessly at the mercy of this hand that gripped her arm so tightly, but not so tightly as to hurt her. She barely noticed as the hand became an arm around her shoulders, which half dragged, half carried her to the edge of the embankment and finally set her down on it, dripping wet and shivering, but not with the cold. And she barely noticed that her rescuer hadn’t been Meredith, that in fact it had been a peculiarly-clad boy, who now slipped away through the trees as quickly as he had come, without so much as a word.

“Oh Katrin, Katrin!” Meredith came rushing over and dropped down on her kness beside her. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she wrapped Katrin’s shivering body in her own jersey. Katrin pulled it closely around herself and buried her face in her sister’s sleeve. She couldn’t speak. She felt sick, relieved and very shaken, all at the same time. The familiar smell of her sister’s jumper was comforting to her; she breathed it in deeply and felt like a child again.

“Katrin,” said Meredith, after some time. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

Katrin lifted her head and looked into her sister’s tear-filled eyes. She managed a weak smile.

“You frightened me,” said Meredith, also managing a smile.

“You were frightened?” Katrin sat up and arched an eyebrow. “If you were frightened, how d’you think I was feeling?”

“I can’t begin to imagine,” laughed Meredith.

Katrin smiled again. She felt as though she was experiencing a new and fresh sense of her sister’s care for her, and that somehow their relationship had been strengthened. They had always been considerably close, but they had had their differences and difficulties. Maybe it was due to the almost four-year age-gap between them. But today, and even since last night, it seemed like some kind of barrier had been broken down between them. They were on level ground now. They both needed each other.

It was only once they were ready to set off again that the subject of their mysterius visitor was brought up. While Meredith helped Katrin on with her rucksack, about half-an-hour after the incident, Katrin gazed up at the cloudless sky with eyes that told she was far away and lost in her own thoughts.

“Meredith,” she said, softly. “Who was that person? Where did he come from?”

“You mean the boy who rescued you?”

Katrin nodded.

“I don’t know,” said Meredith, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Perhaps we’ll never know. But I’ll tell you one thing- this whole incident has made a believer out of me.”

“A believer?” asked Katrin, curiously. “A believer in what?”

“A believer in... miracles.”