The Raft by Christopher Blankley Page A

genuinely perusing her plans to put their
home on the market, Rachael realized that Maggie had not been
joking. She was serious, she was really going to leave dryland and
live on a boat. Rachael was devastated. Rachael was hurt. Rachael
was angry.
    And then, one day, Maggie was gone.
    And here they were, five years later, with
Rachael throwing up over the grab rail of the very boat Maggie had
sold their home to purchase. Rachael righted herself and again
watched Maggie at the helm of the Soft Cell . The sun shone
on her face and wind whipped the curls of her hair around her
face.
    Rachael should be mad, she should storm about
and stomp her feet and yell. But all Rachael was feeling was a
strange inner calm, the pleasure of seeing Maggie safe. When the
wire had come and Rachael had assumed that the dead woman was
Maggie... but now that was almost forgotten, replaced by the sight
of Maggie stand proud and tall at the helm of her boat.
    So much taller than that lump on the couch
that Rachael remembered.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    The Raft was a floating Barnum & Bailey
Circus. Rachael could describe it no other way.
    The Agate Pass opened out into the slower,
calmer waters of the Puget Sound. Circling the northern tip of
Bainbridge Island, the Soft Cell came sailing into the wakes
of a hodgepodge of small craft constituting the main flotilla of
the Raft.
    The first outrider of the Raft Rachael caught
sight of was an elderly man standing aboard a paddle board. He was
moving away from the shore, for no apparent destination, buck naked
except for an elaborate Indian headdress of eagle feathers.
    He waved as the Soft Cell sailed
silently past. Maggie returned his salute.
    Soon, there were more boats moored here and
there, moored with a comfortable amount of water between each
craft. But as Maggie sailed farther around the north end of the
island, the craft grew thicker on the water. Before long,
artificial islands floated to the left and right of the Soft
Cell, whole islands formed by the lashing together of large,
mismatched collections of boats and dinghies. Everywhere there were
signs of life: on one craft, a group of long-haired, bearded men
performing in a drum circle; on another, a harem of burka-veiled
women stood watching the passing of Maggie's boat while a solitary,
smiling, gold-toothed man sat at the boat's prow, smoking a
hookah.
    A cross between Seafair and Burning Man
indeed, Rachael thought, remembering Maggie's off-the-cuff
description. Rachael had no idea what she'd expected, but she
marveled at each and every ship as it passed. She'd never
understood the scale of the Raft, the reports on the news had never
done it justice. It was big, Rachael realized as Maggie
sailed the Soft Cell past cluster after cluster of bustling
boats. How many could there be? Five hundred? A thousand? It had to
be nearer to a thousand, she thought, climbing to her feet and
trying to see back to the edge of the Raft, back along the route by
which they'd entered. Rachael could no longer make the path Maggie
had followed through the clusters of boats, the Raft seemed to
close in behind them.
    Rachael turned her attention back towards the
bow. She could just make out something large at very center of the
Raft. As they closed in, the outline of a ship resolved into view.
The ship sat at the epicenter of the commune. As Rachael sailed,
she could see the shiny chrome of the multi-decked Art Deco ferry,
the Kalakala , before her.
    Rachael laughed. She knew that the old ferry,
a famous piece of Northwest history, had been purchased and
restored by a member of the Raft, but to see it in person was quite
something else. The mass of the great silver ferry dominated the
congregation of ships, sitting at their hub like an old church at
the center of some rural community. It glistened in the morning
sunlight, slick with the earlier light rain.
    “The Kalakala !” Rachael said with joy.
“There it is!”
    “That's Gandalf's junk,”