Clean Water

The sound behind you is unmistakable — a deep, resonant click, like a vault sealing shut. You don't look back. The main river takes you gently, indifferently, the way rivers do when they have no interest in you at all. Ordinary water. Ordinary morning light burning the last of the fog into nothing.

You spread your charts on the console with trembling hands. The tributary isn't marked as dangerous or anomalous or even questionable. It simply isn't there — smooth contour lines where the mouth should be, solid land, unremarkable. You stare at the blankness for a long time. Then you fold the charts away.

You deliver the cargo. You sign the paperwork. You walk off the dock and you don't go back. People ask, eventually, why Mara Voss quit. You tell them your knees. You tell them the money. You tell them anything that ends the conversation quickly. And every night, you sleep without dreaming — deep and dark and clean, like water that has never been touched.