Morning had not yet broken, but Ket's campfire already spat and crackled on the high knoll above Main Street. Its flames illuminated the red ochre circles painted on her cheeks, and the bluebird, yellow warbler, and cardinal feathers that poked out of her messy bun. The first and last two letters had worn off her vintage John Lennon “Imagine” tee shirt, leaving only the word “magi.”

This teenager was primed for ceremony, or at least a grander departure from our flooded Vermont home than the rest of us. Along with my fellow refugees, I sloshed through the oil-stained floodwaters below her, weighed down by mildewed duffels filled with government-issued gear and taboo personal stuff I prayed would not be confiscated. My secret stash included a hardcover edition of Matsuo Basho's Collected Haikus.

I bow slightly, even now, as I recall his name.

Ket and I used to read Basho's work at our Saturday Night Poetry Slams—on the very knoll where she now stood. We were typically joined by our friends Montauk, Chatham, Aquinnah, and Salem. Our sappy parents had named all of us after New England coastal places that had sunk beneath the Atlantic waves. Ket's full name was Nantucket, for the submerged island off Massachusetts. My parents named me Machias, in honor of a bygone town in northern Maine. But I let Ket call me “Macky.”

Our parents weren't the only ones who were nostalgic about the old days before The Great Break—when the St. Lawrence flooded to meet Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the Hudson, turning all of New England and Canada east of Quebec into the island we called home. Stories about the days when our town was still part of the American mainland were our favorite fairy tales. Anecdotes about high school customs in Old New England were the source of endless jokes.

Saturday Night Poetry Slams were the closest thing we had to their old Friday Night Lights. We usually checked out of Farmer Keene's work assignments at sundown and headed for the knoll to read and write inspirational sonnets, free verse, limericks, couplets, and above all, haikus. Each time we met, we named our gang after a different poet: Harjo's Joys, Angelou's Angels, Whitman's Samplers, and so on. We never used Basho's name. It was too sacred. We respected that seventeenth century Japanese artist who survived floods and hardship on an uncertain island, and we honored him by memorizing his haikus.

Basho's words eased us through some seriously tough times. Yet we worried that today's move was beyond the healing power of poetry. The government had slated everyone under fifty in our about-to-be-submerged town to relocate to the Wendigo Mines in Canada's Northwest Territories. The physical expectations weren't the worst of it, especially for the young women. After Montreal slipped below the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Wendigo women's shelter became Canada's most notorious Red-Light District. I hated to think of Ket living there. But seeing her on that knoll, it was obvious that she feared nothing.

Staring up at her brightly feathered form against the glow of the newly risen sun, a Basho haiku burst to mind—

Come, butterfly
It's late—
We've miles to go together.

Miles to go… Our famed Vermont poet, Robert Frost, also spoke of miles to go…

We didn't know it then, but he and Basho were our prophets, offering glimpses of our forthcoming journey. Like the caterpillar about to become butterfly, the river widening to join the sea, and everything else that was evolving in our super sea level world, these poets knew that human beings would travel far and transform greatly. Yet here I was, selfishly trying to carve out some personal space for Ket and me. I even foolishly told myself that Basho intended his butterfly haiku just for us.

But things got real when the government's duck boats rolled out of the thick morning mist onto Main Street, pushing a water wake that swamped a cluster of tiny roadside orphans. Those river urchins crowed, danced, and hooted for joy. Having spent most of their lives fishing to survive, water mania was the only fun they'd ever known. Ket and I grew up the same way. Seeing those kids made me wonder what it would have been like to create a family with her, back when people had homes and schools and jobs.

I snapped out of my reverie when a fierce woman in a neon yellow NIEM (New Island Emergency Management) vest yelled Ket's name and tromped up her knoll. Ket didn't even notice. She was too busy craning her neck and squinting those deep chestnut eyes, searching the ever-rising river for… something.

I pressed hard through the icy water to catch up and heard the NIEM woman yell, “Where's your travelling gear?”

Ket swatted at her, still distracted. “I've got all I need.” She patted her backpack and homemade fishing pole.

The woman harrumphed. “Don't think you can stay here and survive on your own. There are no more rations allocated for New Island. You stay, you starve. Get it?”

Ket kept her eyes on the river, while reaching into the bucket beside her to retrieve a still-quivering trout. “Not starving,” she replied.

The government woman stormed back down the knoll. I tossed her the finger. Ket and I had always shunned adult supervision. We'd been on our own, since forever. My parents were medics who died in the cholera epidemic. Hers were geologists who studied climate cracks in Mount Katahdin, a place sacred to her Wabanaki people, until a section of that great peak broke off beneath her family. Ket survived the accident but spent months recovering in our town's one-room medical facility. That's where she met Grandma Molly, a Wabanaki nurse who refused to leave her homeland, even after her relatives moved to the First Nations Relocation Zones in Nunavut. Grandma Molly taught the girl survival skills and ancient tales about the beginning and end of the world. I never asked Ket for details about those end-times. Turns out, I should have.

I don't know if it was Ket's childhood memories of Mount Katahdin or what, but she regularly prayed to the Great Spirit from high places, like the knoll on Main Street. Yet somehow, today seemed different. With her hair rainbowed with feathers and her face painted blood red, she was exactly what Basho had in mind when he wrote—

Come, butterfly
It's late—
We've miles to go together.

I was about to tell her that, when she called out, “Hey Macky! I need to give you something.”

The sun shone high enough over the horizon for me to notice an awkward sheepishness around her eyes, as she handed me a torn box top with three lines written on it:

Hail Elder Brother
Crimson shoulders carrying
Hope for our planet

I cringed. This was not what I wanted. My passion was more in line with Basho's Butterfly.

Why was she giving me this strange haiku? Was Elder Brother an Orwellian reference to our government? Was she trying to say she thought of me as her elder brother? Oh please, let that not be true.

Sensing my misery, Ket started rambling about how she knew it was inconsiderate to show me this haiku right now, but she needed me to understand what she was about to do.

What was she about to do?

This one-way conversation had a distinctly Dear John ring to it. I felt microscopic and desperate. I was grateful when Mayor Meely interrupted us, calling out boarding instructions from atop an abandoned beater.

I sifted through his politician's spin to infer our situation. It appeared that the kids were getting the cramped boat because they were too young to vote. Couples got the rickety tub because they were most likely to make the repairs necessary to keep it afloat. Single women won the newest vessel, in a bait and switch until they reached their sordid assignment at the mines. My young men's boat contained a free full-service bar so the serious drunks could get conned into signing up for the worse grunt work. Those fifty and over didn't get any boat. Humanity had been reduced to its pissbucket value. This is the moment when we all should have foreseen what we had coming.

The doors on the duck boats puffed and screeched open. I inhaled a jagged breath, thinking of Ket in her future cathouse quarters.

How could she continue to stare out at the river, so buoyantly?

I made my last-ditch effort. “Ket,” I said. “I know this is shitty timing and probably a stupid idea. But if we sign onto the couple's boat, you'll get better housing. I don't care if it's just… ”

She gasped.

What had I been thinking?

I only breathed again when I realized she hadn't been reacting to my words. She was pointing at something that was moving in the middle of the rising river. Unfortunately, the roiling whitecaps and the glare of the newly risen sun made it tricky to tell exactly what it was.

I descended the knoll and approached the water's edge for a better look.

Was it a human being? No, it was definitely too large, and it appeared to be sitting on, or in, something. Was it a log? Some sort of dugout canoe?

“By the devil, that's one hell of a bear,” Mayor Meely shouted, pointing at the creature and adjusting his antique Boston Red Sox cap. “If the bears are on the move, then we better get going.” He motioned for us to hop on the duck boats. ”All abo-ard,” he urged, with his serious Vermont twang.

But nobody budged. It was impossible to look away from the thing on the river.

Silver-haired Farmer Keene pushed his broad red flannel shoulders to the front of the speechless crowd. Decades ago, he was known as Father Keene, from the Boston refugee parish that overlooked Pru Peak.

Of course, Pru wasn't really a mountain, but what else do you call the ruins of a submerged insurance building in Boston Harbor?

Lots of things had changed since Boston went under. For one thing, Keene and his fellow priests no longer quoted from the Book of Revelation. There was little market for apocalyptic tales. Yet his willingness to help everyone by sharing his farm and impressive woodpile gave him the right to command our attention.

“I may have been born a Flatlander from the city,” he grumbled, crossing himself. “But I've seen plenty of bears on this river over the last few years. And that ain't no bear.”

Mayor Meely slopped through the wet street and gently patted the old man's wide back, “Now, now, Joe. I believe that the stress of making a second escape from the rising waters has left you a little bleary-eyed. There's no need to worry. I know a bear when I see one.”

“A bear in a canoe?” chided Keene. Chuckles rippled through the crowd.

Ket extended her arm as straight as an oar and shouted from above, “That's not a bear! It's Elder Brother!”

“Elder Brother?” This phrase rippled up and down the waters of Main Street. Townspeople shook their heads, skeptically, at the girl with the red ochre paint running down her damp cheeks and weather-beaten feathers sticking out of her hair.

Mayor Meely's downcast snicker made it clear that he intended to squash this interruption in his relocation process. But Farmer Keene shouted, “Let the young woman have her say!” He waved his muscular arms upward to an affirmative Yankee chorus of “a-yuhs.”

You see, folks around here had become inclined to listen to Native Americans, thanks to the legendary wit and wisdom of the late Grandma Molly. Mayor Meely fingered the loose threads on his cap before approaching Ket, “Are you sayin' your people call bears 'elder brothers?'” He nodded to himself. “I can understand that. Bears are truly wise creatures.”

“Elder Brother is no bear,” she asserted. “The Native people of this land have been talking about him for millennia. He is our Watcher. Our ancient stories say he was the one who brought us into this world. Now he's come to lead us into a new one.”

At first, we hung on every word she said about how the planet was changing and we needed to change with it, in order to achieve our higher nature. Then she started rambling about honoring Mother Earth and the Sacred Waters, like her folks always do. When she finally finished, Mayor Meely carelessly thanked her for her words and waved his cap toward the duck boats, this time with gusto. The water had risen to our calves. It wasn't safe for the kids. We had to go. I told myself the mines wouldn't be so bad. At least I had a job near Ket, and she was obviously pretty good at standing up for herself.

I stepped into the men's line right behind Father Keene, who informed me—with a wink—that he'd just made the cutoff, at forty-nine years and eleven months of age. We were waiting our turn to board, when the thing we'd seen in the river abruptly beached its canoe and splashed onto Main Street. As it got closer, I could see it had dark red hair from head to toe, a broad sloping forehead, enormous leathery feet and palms, and kind hazel eyes. This was definitely no bear.

“Greetings Elder Brother,” called Ket, descending to greet this mysterious creature with Dalai Lama grace.

None of us uttered a word. Meely turned toward the NIEM worker, imploringly, but her face was blank. We all figured the government had special units to deal with pandemic flus, UFOs, and well, this sort of thing. We never imagined we'd have to handle such a situation, on our own.

Elder Brother raised a tender eyebrow and extended his immense hairy arms to hug Ket. It was October but the smell of spring flowers perfumed the air. Before we knew it, tears were covering our cheeks, the kind of tears usually reserved for the birth of a child. For this creature carried the scent of hope, and none of us had enjoyed a whiff of that in quite a while.

Ket and Elder Brother motioned for us to join them in a wide circle around the duck boats. As he wrapped his thick padded fingers around Ket's tiny palm, I felt the pang of a new emotion. It wasn't jealousy. Although, it should have been. It was more like unity, like we were holding hands with everyone on the planet.

A dam or something must have burst because water rushed into our circle with a roar, like the earth was cheering, or crying, of giving birth, or all three. Elder Brother gently motioned for us to lift the children out of the rising tide. I don't know how, but we could tell that his request was caring and his love was pure, that he watched over us, without anger or judgment.

He whispered something in Ket's ear. She tossed her head backwards and laughed as if she'd been set free from something. Then, she and Elder Brother each scooped up a handful of the rising water and drank from one another's hands. He took her offering hand and kissed it. She kissed his leathery palm, in return.

Was this a water blessing? A wedding? No, this was much more. It was a cosmic unification for the ages. And it was clearly irreversible.

I wondered if there could possibly be a nightmare more beautiful than this one. Some huge convergence in the course of human history was happening right before me, and it required the crushing of my personal dreams. My beloved Ket was tied to a transcendent, timeless creature, and I had no role to play. My mind swirled, like I was caught in the undertow of a wave that reached the sky. Memories of Ket splattered inside my brain, like someone had taken a machine gun to them. My feet faltered. Just as my head hit the floodwaters, I caught the image of a brilliantly colored butterfly, alighting upon the waves.

I'd been at the Wendigo Mines almost a year before they quarantined me with the other victims of the whale flu. It had already wiped out all major population centers to the south. Mining was pointless. All healthy workers were tasked to build the Oasis, a survival habitat constructed inside the space that miners had carved out of the Mackenzie Mountains. Everything the mining company could muster was being dumped into building this last human stronghold.

My surviving quarantine buddies and I would never see that Oasis. Our isolation bunker retained only a month's worth of water and dried rations, along with a house–of-horrors bathroom and an incinerator. No doctors were assigned to us. They'd all been sent to the Oasis. To keep my mind off the mortuary stench, I read and re-read Ket's haiku, hoping that it might offer me a clue about what exactly happened to her.

Hail Elder Brother
Crimson shoulders carrying
Hope for our planet

Around the zillionth time I repeated this process, my focus was broken by something falling from the slot in the overhead bunker door. Several people I'd thought were already dead bolted upright at the sight of an angelic white envelope fluttering down into our sick room.

The patient who read it first said, “Aw, hell! It's addressed to some guy named 'Macky.'”

“Macky!” My heart exploded.

I dragged my skeletal arm into the air, to acknowledge that I was the rightful recipient of this treasure from beyond. I limped toward that letter, while my quarantine mates clapped their boney hands in a hollow knocking sound. Clutching the envelope to my heart, I refrained from opening it, until I returned to the private sanctuary of my cot.

The writing was barely legible. But it was definitely from Ket. She began by explaining that her memories of me, and a sense of responsibility to Mother Earth and humanity, was all that kept her going; for she, too, had contracted the flu. Knowing that our time was limited, she wanted to share with me her prophetic vision of earth's future. At this point in the letter, her writing trailed off into scratches, only to resume later, in a far neater but unrecognizable hand. My heart grew weak, knowing that illness had forced her to dictate to some healthier scribe. I anxiously read the better-formed words that followed:

I have seen the future. I know that Mother Earth will recover. We, humans, will be replaced by a higher version of ourselves, a loftier species, covered with thick glistening crimson hair. In this future, these Elder Brothers and Elder Sisters will occasionally claim to spot one of us mythical human beasts. A few crazies among them will allege that a handful of us survived in a remote northern cave. But their leaders will quell those rumors with their elegant oratory. For this species will be known for its great poetry.

I began shaking, trying to take this all in. My mind filled with the image of Ket standing on the knoll by that fire, head crowned with feathers; face painted blood red; magi shirt proclaiming her role as humanity's liaison with its successors. I realized that my thoughts that day had been petty, while hers had embraced the entire planet.

I considered Ket's letter again and noticed a faint arrow, drawn in pencil at the bottom right hand corner, indicating that I should turn the page. A lead lump formed in my throat at first sight of what was on the other side. It was a poorly drawn sketch of a newborn creature, covered in long downy crimson hairs, with padded leathery feet and hands, and familiar chestnut eyes. Several tiny bird feathers had been tied to the hair on the baby's head.

Below the sketch were the words, “I named her Butterfly.”