The flood had come faster than anyone believed.
In the night, rain hammered the valley for twelve straight hours, feeding streams until they swelled, until the quiet river grew teeth. By dawn, the road was gone. Fields became lakes. And in the middle of it all, three travelers found themselves stranded on a patch of high ground no bigger than a barnyard.
Ilsa, Janis, and old Peteris—companions of chance more than choice—stood in the mud, staring at the brown water rushing all around.
“It wasn’t even an island yesterday,” Janis muttered, kicking at a broken branch half-buried in silt.
“It isn’t one now,” Peteris said. “It’s a grave, if we don’t find a way off it.”
The water stretched in every direction, churning with debris—fence posts, logs, even a dead sheep bobbing pale in the distance. The far bank shimmered like a mirage, too far to swim in that fury.
Ilsa hugged her arms around her soaked coat. “How long until it goes down?”
Peteris shook his head. “Not soon enough.”
Silence fell, broken only by the hiss of the flood. Then Janis said what they were all thinking:
“We need a raft.”
Ilsa stared at him. “Out of what? We’ve got nothing.”
Peteris squatted, pulling at the branch Janis had kicked. It came free with a sucking sound. He held it up, water dripping from its barkless skin. “We’ve got this,” he said. His eyes swept the little island, the driftwood tangled on its edges, the fence rails washed up from some distant farm, the sodden bundles of reeds. “We’ve got enough, if we think like river rats.”
Janis snorted. “And if it sinks?”
Peteris’s mouth twisted into something between a grin and a grimace. “Then you learn to pray fast.”
Ilsa shivered as the flood hissed around them, carrying whole trees like twigs. She knew Peteris was right. On land, they were safe for now. But the water was still rising. The island was shrinking by the hour.
If they didn’t build, they would drown where they stood.
The island gave little willingly, but the flood had left its offerings tangled in the mud.
Janis waded knee-deep along the edges, dragging out what he could—fence posts, half-rotted planks, twisted roots that looked like knotted arms. Each piece came free with a sucking noise, as if the island itself resisted surrender.
“Careful!” Ilsa shouted as he slipped, the current tugging at his legs.
“I’m fine,” he grunted, hauling another beam onto the bank. His face was pale, though, and his breath too quick.
Ilsa worked on the other side, pulling reeds into bundles. She remembered her grandmother telling stories of people weaving mats tight enough to float goats across rivers. Her fingers ached in the cold, but she tied the reeds with strips torn from her skirt.
Peteris moved slower, but with purpose. He examined every piece before keeping it, tossing aside what would crumble in water, setting aside what was solid. At last he found a coil of wire caught on a root—rusted, twisted, but strong enough. He held it up like treasure.
“Wire and reeds,” he said. “Stronger than rope, if your hands don’t bleed first.”
By noon, they had a pile of driftwood, posts, branches, and reed bundles stacked on the highest patch of ground. The water licked closer now, swallowing the places where they had stood that morning.
Ilsa wiped mud from her cheek with the back of her hand. “It doesn’t look like a raft. It looks like a funeral pyre.”
Peteris knelt, pushing the posts into a rough frame. “Sometimes they’re the same thing,” he muttered. Then louder: “But this will float. Wide base, light on top. We tie the reeds under—make them the lungs.”
Janis frowned. “And when the current smashes it against a tree?”
“Then you pray again,” Peteris said calmly, twisting wire around two beams until his knuckles bled.
Ilsa worked beside him, weaving reeds into place, her fingers raw. She tried not to think about how little stood between them and the water. She tried to imagine the raft as a ship, not a desperate bundle of wood and weeds.
By dusk, the shape had formed—a crooked square of posts bound with wire, reeds lashed beneath like swollen bellies. It groaned when they shifted it, but it held.
Ilsa stared at it, exhausted, mud up to her knees. “Do you really think it’ll carry us?”
Peteris spat into the flood. “It doesn’t need to carry us far. Just long enough to cheat the river.”
The sky darkened. The water kept rising. Tomorrow, the raft would have to prove itself—or they would vanish with the island.
The morning came heavy and gray, the kind of light that made everything look older, more tired. The island was smaller now—half the size of yesterday. Their footprints from the day before had been swallowed in the night.
The raft waited on the last dry patch like some strange animal made of bones and reeds. It groaned when Janis shoved his shoulder against it, as if protesting its fate.
Peteris tested each knot of wire, tugging until his palms split anew. “It’ll hold,” he said. “Not forever. But long enough.”
Ilsa wrapped their few possessions in cloth and tied them to the center of the raft. Bread, a tin of salt, matches sealed in a jar—everything they had left of home. It looked pitiful on the sagging frame, yet heavier than stone.
“Push on my mark,” Peteris ordered. “Let the current take it sideways, not straight. If it spins, we’re done.”
They braced themselves at the muddy edge, water soaking their boots. The current hissed, eager to snatch what they offered.
“Now!” Peteris barked.
All three shoved, muscles straining. The raft slid, reeds squealing under the weight. For a heartbeat, it seemed it would sink at once, swallowed whole. But then—it floated. Crooked, low in the water, but floating.
Ilsa’s heart hammered. “It works,” she whispered, as if afraid to anger the river by saying it too loudly.
“Get on,” Peteris commanded.
Janis scrambled first, nearly tipping it. The raft wobbled, water licking over the edge. Ilsa followed carefully, clutching the reed bundles for balance. Finally, Peteris stepped aboard, planting his branch deep into the riverbed like a pole.
The current caught them instantly, dragging the raft into the main flow. The island slipped away behind, shrinking fast.
Ilsa clutched the frame. “It’s too fast!”
“Better fast than stuck,” Peteris grunted, wrestling with the pole. “Keep your weight low. Don’t fight its speed—guide it!”
The river carried them, spinning just slightly, the far bank rushing closer but never straight. A log hurtled past, smashing foam against their side. The raft shuddered but held.
Ilsa pressed her forehead to her knees, whispering prayers she barely remembered. Janis laughed once—sharp, wild, half terror, half exhilaration.
Peteris’s face was stone. “Eyes ahead,” he warned. “The river hasn’t tested us yet.”
And sure enough, downstream, the roar of something greater waited—the sound of rapids, hidden by the bend.
The bend came fast. Too fast.
The sound grew from a growl to a roar, until it filled the air, swallowing their voices. The water ahead boiled white, breaking itself against jagged rocks that jutted like black teeth.
Ilsa clutched the raft’s frame so tightly her knuckles went bloodless. “We’ll be smashed apart!”
“Not if we keep her nose straight!” Peteris barked. He jammed his branch into the current, straining with all the strength his wiry frame had left.
The raft bucked like a live thing, one side lifting, then slamming down again. Water surged over the reeds, soaking them to the bone. Janis tried to help, plunging his own branch against the current, but the force nearly tore it from his hands.
“Keep low!” Peteris shouted. “Shift your weight with me—LEFT!”
They threw themselves to the left as the raft skidded past a jagged rock, so close the spray slapped their faces. The log frame groaned, wires screeching, but held.
“RIGHT—NOW!”
Ilsa moved on instinct, scrambling across the slick reeds, heart hammering. The raft spun, scraping against a stone, tearing away a bundle of reeds. For a sickening moment it lurched sideways, water rushing across its deck.
Janis screamed, shoving his shoulder into the frame. Peteris shoved back with his pole, teeth bared. Somehow, impossibly, the raft straightened, shot forward into a gap between the rocks, and burst out into calmer water beyond.
For a moment, silence—only the heaving of their breaths, the hiss of water streaming off the reeds.
Ilsa pressed her forehead to the wet wood, shaking. “I thought it was over.”
Peteris sat hunched, his chest rising like a bellows. His hands trembled, blood dripping from torn palms. “It was nearly over. But the river… decided otherwise.”
Janis let out a breathless laugh, half-crazed, half triumphant. “We lived. We actually lived!”
But as Ilsa raised her head, she saw something else—the far bank, closer now, green with trees, solid and steady. Their goal was within reach.
And yet the current still pulled them hard, not toward the bank, but deeper downstream. One last challenge remained: steering the raft ashore before the river dragged them past safety, into the endless flood.
The far bank was so close Ilsa could see the moss on the trunks, the roots twisting into the water. Yet the current tugged them stubbornly, sweeping the raft past the safest landing.
“Now or never!” Peteris barked, his voice raw from shouting. He shoved his branch deep into the mud of the riverbed, muscles trembling. The raft shuddered sideways, groaning against the force.
Janis threw himself toward the bow, plunging his own pole into the water. “Help me!” he cried.
Ilsa crawled forward on hands and knees, gripping the reeds for balance. Her heart pounded as she leaned her weight on Janis’s branch, pushing with everything left in her aching body. The raft resisted, creaked—but then the nose angled toward the trees.
The current fought back, dragging their stern, but slowly, painfully, the raft slid diagonally toward the bank. Branches brushed Ilsa’s shoulders, leaves dripping cold water onto her face.
“Jump!” Peteris shouted. “Now, before it pulls away!”
Ilsa didn’t hesitate. She leapt, crashing into the shallows, mud sucking her knees. She turned in time to see Janis tumble in beside her, gasping, scrambling for purchase.
Peteris was last, shoving the raft with one final grunt before throwing himself into the reeds. The raft spun free, caught by the river again, and drifted away, shrinking with every heartbeat until it was just another bundle of wreckage in the flood.
They lay in the mud, heaving, coughing, shaking. Water streamed from their clothes, but beneath the cold and exhaustion was something harder, sharper—relief so strong it felt like pain.
Janis rolled onto his back, staring up at the gray sky. “We… we did it.”
“No,” Peteris corrected, his voice weak but steady. “The raft did it. And the river allowed it.” He spat blood-tinged water into the reeds. “Never forget—it was only borrowed time.”
Ilsa pressed her palm into the wet earth, feeling its solidity, its promise. She looked at her brother, at Peteris, at the empty river where their fragile craft had vanished.
“We’ll remember,” she whispered. “Every time we see water, we’ll remember.”
The three of them sat in silence then, the current rushing on behind them, indifferent as ever. But on that far bank, with mud under their nails and the ghost of the raft already gone, they carried something stronger than fear—
a lesson carved into their bones:
When the land betrays you, you build. When the river tests you, you guide. And when both conspire to take you, you survive.