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Benefactor

By Colleen K. Snyder

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Roiling water spit Micah up from the bottom of the river. Seconds later, frothing rapids buried him
again. Submerged tree limbs clutched at his shoulders, raking across his back. Half-exposed boulders
arrested his descent. The river’s power jerked him and hurled him further down the canyon. There
was no thought of saving himself, no glimmer of a plan to escape the raging flood.
He gasped at air when his head wrenched above the liquid death before the water dragged
him under. Over and over, the torture repeated. Breathe. Smash into something. Lose your breath.
Sink under the waves. Get thrown in the air. Breathe. Sunlight and shadow. Daylight and darkness.
Life and death.
A last curl ejected him onto a shoal of weathered stones. His body washed on the rocks.
Battered. Crushed. Beaten. But still. Gloriously still.
Micah drew in long gulps of air. He forced his bruised and cracked ribs to expand and
contract, drawing in oxygen. He closed his eyes. “Tav. Luke. Jeremiah.” Each name a prayer. Finally,
he whispered the only Name that mattered. “God. Help us. All of us. Please. Save my friends.”
Consciousness raced away.
* * *
Micah woke, his body convulsing with the cold. Something heavy was being dragged near him.
Micah’s head spun from the thrashing the river gave him. He couldn’t focus his eyes. The dragging
stopped. A weight dropped beside him. Footsteps crunched on the gravel. Walked away.
More dragging. Coming closer. Lighter. Faster. Micah tried to force his eyes open, his brain
to make sense of what he heard.
A still, water-logged figure lay beside him. With a muffled thud, another burden dropped
across the way. A dark blur of willow branches, reeds, and ferns knelt beside the second lump on the
shore. The figure began bouncing up and down on the lump’s chest.
CPR?
Too many blows to the head. A bush doing chest compressions? Micah swept his hands
across his face, trying to understand what his brain thought he saw. Yet the vision remained. A
shrub was doing CPR on the figure on the ground. Micah tried to sit. His muscles refused to
respond. He choked, then called out, “What?”
Knights of the Octagon: Benefactor Snyder 5
No answer. The rescue-bush didn’t turn or stop. The figure kept working, feverishly
pumping. The object on the ground coughed, spit, coughed, rolled over, and moaned.
Tav. The voice belonged to Tav. Which meant the water-logged figure closest to Micah was
Jeremiah…or… Micah heard his friend wheezing. Snoring. Yeah, that would be Jeremiah.
Micah rested back. He closed his eyes. They were alive. They survived. He whispered,
“Thank You, Lord.”
Micah heard more movement. Their rescuer shuffled around for several more moments,
then grew quiet. Warmth radiated on Micah’s left side. He opened his eyes again.
A fire burned in a rock pit. The rescue-bush disappeared. Whoever he might be, he’d given
life twice. Once in the CPR, and now in the fire to keep them from hypothermia. Micah sighed and
closed his eyes again. “Thank You, Lord, for sending Your angel. Send him back so we can thank
him properly, please.” He chuckled as he drifted off. “Angels in the bushes.”
A hard thought jolted him awake.
Luke.
* * *
Luke tore at the scrub pine blocking his path. Tears of anger, frustration, and loss poured over his
face. “I’ve got to find Tav! I’ve got to find my brother!” He fell to his knees and screamed at the sky.
“God! Why did you let this happen? Help me. I’ve got to find him.”
A rafting trip. The Knights of the Octagon’s last hurrah before Luke went to college. Tav,
his older brother by two years. Tav’s two best friends and classmates, Micah and Jeremiah. Followed
by Luke. Knights of the Octagon. That’s what they’d called themselves ever since they were kids.
Octagon because no one owned a round table, and Knights of the Oval sounded weird.
“Stupid game. Look where it got us.” He lifted his head and bellowed, “Tav!”
There was no answer. There wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be. Their four-man raft hit a gnarly set of
rapids and dumped them all. Luke was thrown toward shore. Micah, Tav, and Jeremiah all
disappeared under the torrent. He’d seen their heads bob up, go under, bob up, go under….
And he didn’t see them again. He’d pulled himself to the trail running alongside the river. He
would outpace them to the bottom. Be there to pull them to safety. They would all have a laugh,
blame each other, hike out. Sure, they’d lost their cell phones, their GPS, their gear. But they would
survive. Together. They would.
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Except the trail moved inland, and the river divided. Luke couldn’t know which way his
brother went.
Luke stood and slashed at the foliage in front of him. “No! I have to find him. I will find
him. Tav!”
Something smacked Luke on his shoulder. He whirled around to look behind. Nothing. No
one. Muscle spasm? Shoulder pull? He faced front again and started beating a path forward.
Something hit him again. Luke spun around. Definitely not a muscle spasm. But nothing in
view. Something plopped to his right. Luke eyed the direction the noise came from. Shrubs blocked
his view. But a bush swayed. Did something stalk him?
Too little oxygen to the brain. He must be imagining. Luke backed away carefully, one step
at a time. He turned to resume his path.
A rock hit him in the back. He swung around. His hands curled into tight fists. “Knock it
off! What do you want?”
A bush jiggled a few yards away. Then another yard further. And another. Luke yelled, “Go
away! I’ve got to find my brother!” He turned back, only to be pelted by small stones. Luke raised
his arms over his head and howled. “Stop! I’ll kill you if I catch you!”
He was yelling at the bushes. Trees. Nothing. But again, the bushes jerked. Something
moved away. The motion stopped. Waited? Why? For what? Luke turned his head enough to watch
the shrub out of the corner of his eye. He pretended to step away. The bush shook violently. Luke
faced the motion. What was with this plant? “You want me to follow you?”
Branches a yard further ahead dipped. Up and down. Nodding.
Luke narrowed his eyes to peer into the distance. Nothing. He could see nothing. But bears
don’t throw rocks, and they don’t tempt you to follow them to their lair. Whatever this might be, the
thing knew which direction they wanted to go and wanted Luke to follow. In his desperation, he
didn’t care. Alien or Bigfoot, if the bush knew Tav’s location, Luke would follow. Luke called, “I’m
looking for my brother and his friends. Do you know where they are?”
Another nod from a sapling further up the way. Luke’s “guide” wanted to maintain distance
between him and them. Out of sight? Why?
What mattered? If they knew where to find Tav, he’d follow them anywhere. Luke limped
forward. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”
* * *
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Evening neared when the guide made a mistake, allowing Luke to glimpse what he followed. A
shadow between two trees moved unnaturally against the gentle wind blowing. Luke got an
impression of tree branches, ferns, vines…a little over four feet tall…two feet around? A child in a
ghillie suit? How? Why? And how did they know where Tav and the others ended up? Luke hobbled
hard to catch up, trying to come alongside the guide. But the little guy moved faster and stayed just
beyond Luke’s reach.
Until they topped a rise. Luke heard a thump and saw his guide roll over and over down the
hill. Still between bushes, so Luke couldn’t nail down a profile. But the small ball tumbled to the
bottom of the slope. The thing lay still for a few seconds, crawled to its feet—if it had feet—and
crept into the darkness between the trees.
Luke chuckled. “You okay, guy?” He slid down the side of the incline and reached the
bottom. “You okay? You out there?”
No answer. Luke waited for a sign, a signal, something. Anything. “Now what?” Did the
bush bring him this far only to abandon him?
The smell of wood burning caught his attention. A fire. Luke followed his nose to a clearing
beside the river. The deep gloom made identifying shapes almost impossible. But three lumps or
logs lay prone around a small campfire. Covered in silver, survival-type covers. Luke approached the
first one. He held his breath, lifted one end of the shroud….
Boots. Feet. Wrong end.
Did it have a wrong end?
Luke stepped to the top of the figure and pulled down the cover.
Jeremiah Acosta grabbed the blanket back. “Mine.” The four-day growth of black beard
shrouded Jeremiah’s face. He muttered more than spoke. Still sleeping.
Air rushed from Luke’s lungs. He spun, pulled a cover back to reveal a second man.
Tav. Blond touseled hair concealed most of his eyes. In contrast to Jeremiah’s plenty, Tav’s
sparse beard scattered across his bruised face. Luke sank down beside his brother. “Thank You,
God.”
Micah’s weary voice drifted across the clearing. “Good to have you with us, Luke. I was
worried about you.”
Luke turned and climbed over to sit beside Micah.
His friend sat and passed his hand across his face. Micah motioned to a bundle near the fire.
“There’s a blanket for you, too. Someone knew you were coming.”
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“Someone?” Luke eyed Micah carefully. His meager brown beard barely covered the cuts,
and his eyes looked exhausted.
Micah exhaled. “Yeah. We can talk about it in the morning. I need sleep.”
Luke squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “Yeah. We all do. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Micah eased back to a prone position and covered up with the wrap. Luke moved to get his
own blanket. He sat near his brother, lay down, and closed his eyes. He whispered, “I mean it.
Thank you. I owe you.”
He slept.

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