Four Times Blessed (21 page)

The saltiness pops me up again, too soon. I gasp and take off arm over arm, keeping my eyes and nose above the surface as best I can.

I aim for the buoy and the splashes. Open ocean swimming is not like swimming down the lanes of the academy pool. That’s why so many drowned when they put us in the sea. Inlanders. This unforgiving water here, it’s why I didn’t.

             
I kick hard and cut through it ruthlessly. I know the feeling is deceptive, of course, but I can’t help the thrill it gives me. Thrill is good, I tell myself, in the surge of strength and warmth. It fades to an ache that’s cold. Then surges again.

Shoving my hair away, I see Cassie’s arms and head, thank goodness. I’m so close. She slips under with the next roll of the moon-dappled surface, and dread hardens me from the inside, even as the cold hardens me from outside. There is something else near her. Garbage? No. Another person. Eleni. Forefathers, how did she beat me?

              I redouble my efforts, not breathing at all, muscles that should be burning but are just rubbing, rubbing, rubbing.

             
I finally breathe. Ten more lengths.

             
“Len! Cassie!” I screech, voice scratched with salt.

             
I get no response, but I can see Cassie’s head and her moving arms.

             
“Say something back!”

             
Still no response. Panic or they can’t breathe. I hope that they just don’t care to answer me. I scramble forward, falling out of form in exhaustion, but I don’t care about form. The cold, hard ocean rocks, oblivious, sliding over my back, flooding my mouth with metal, thready seaweed fingering my numb limbs.

             
I spit and cough water and air. I’m right here, just not close enough. Eleni is latched to the buoy with one slender arm, reaching out for our drifting, splashing cousin.

             
“Len! Cassie!”

             
I reach for Cassie’s dress and catch the hem in my stiff fingers. I twist and yank, and it swings us together. I’m close enough to grab the buoy’s chain, now. I try to get my arm around Cassie’s chest, too, but she thrashes. Her heel connecting with my stomach.

             
I gag. “Cassie, relax, it’s me, Crusa.”

             
She doesn’t say anything even though I’m right up against her closed eyes and open mouth, as they stream above the surface. She coughs wetly and gurgles, mouth dropping back underwater. Her dress still tight in my fist, I shove her up, bracing myself with the chain. Still, the move dips me under, all except for the crown of my head. I think, my scalp isn’t sure.

             
Eleni has let go of Cassie, I notice when another roll carries her and me up, and Eleni just washes secure against the buoy. We dip, Cassie panics and starts to climb my body, dunking me without warning.

My own panic flares at the burning salt shoved up my nose, so while I realize I have what I think is Eleni’s foot, I claw at it to pull myself up. Up, and gasp. And lock my legs around Cassie. Haul her up.

I shove her into the buoy and she clings reflexively. I loop my own arm around the chain down below.

             
I hear Eleni whimpering. I hear myself rasping, short echoes against the pilled plastic. I don’t hear Cassie. My eyes are the only hot part of me when I put my ear against her wet lips. I can’t tell if she’s blue because of the cold or the darkness or some reason. I think I feel her…ouch. She coughs into my ear. Again.

             
My legs swoosh out from under me. I loop a knee around the chain, but some current still insists I fly out to sea. I sense Eleni straining, too. Body streaming out behind her.

             
Apparently, I’m not as amazing of a swimmer as I thought. No, the reason I got out here so fast is that the ocean brought me.

We’re all caught in a rip tide.

             
My feet slip and churn on the current. I look over to see Eleni’s wide-eyed face pressed into the buoy next to me. The shore is just too far away. My muscles are empty and cold. Too far to swim. Maybe if I rest a minute, just a minute and I’ll be stronger, I soothe myself. I know I’m lying, though.

It’s too far for anyone to see us in the dark, that’s for sure. They don’t know. I should have, I should have…why did I dive into the water without telling someone? Stupid. I just assumed once I was here we would go back, together. I don’t know why I thought that. My plans never go that smoothly. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

              Cassie is awake and wailing now. Well, at least she’s breathing and conscious enough to be properly terrified. Eleni has slipped a shaking elbow through Cassie’s, and reaches around my arm to hook me in, too. I pulled her around to my side a minute ago, so the rip is pushing her face-first into the buoy, but as long as she keeps behind it, I think it should keep her and us from being carried further out. I assume. And sweetest of the forefathers, aren’t my assumptions turning out splendid tonight.

             
Something splats at my back. I shiver as thoughts of sharks and creepy flying fish slip through my mind. Then I get ahold of myself and crane my neck.

             
It’s a bump of orange shade laying on the rolling black. A standard M.S.A. life preserver. I stretch out and flop a worthless hand on it to reel it in, and notice it’s tethered to a person a short distance away.

             
“Hey!” I call.

             
It’s one of the boys, splashing a lot but coming fast. With his brother beside him. I’m very glad to see them. They mash into us in no time at all.

             
“Everyone good?” Hale spits out. They reach around us three girls to the chain. One clamps his hand over mine. We’re a mess of heads and arms, but we all try to still our limbs, to move slower, except for Cassie. Hale peels her off me and the buoy, pinning her against himself like I’d done. Only it works out for him a whole lot better. She stops crying, even.

             
“We’re fine. It’s a rip tide, though,” my jaw shudders. I leave what logically follows unsaid.

             
Lium grabs his brother under the arm. Hale is suspended for a moment, and plunges the life preserver under Cassie. He slips away, but I reach for him underwater and catch his pants. Lium’s kept his grasp on him as well, and it churns us all into each other. Where my arm is folded around the chain, my flesh is pinched painfully but I ignore it.

             
“Are you going to try to get in?” I ask over the rush of my panting. And more shivering.

             
Hale doesn’t answer for a second, and wraps the preserver’s tether several times around one hand. Lium, meanwhile, lashes Cassie. He plunges in and out of the water, with huge gasps each time he surfaces.

“Yeah,” says Hale.

              “Y-y-y-ou sh-should sss-wim diagonal t’ th’ shhh-ore.”

             
“I got it.” He glances between me and Eleni. Lium pulls himself back to us along Cassie and Hale’s taut tether.

             
“I can pull in one more. Who’s first?”

             
“’L-eni. Sh’s too cold. Eleni!” I nudge her with my elbow.

             
My cousin moans. Between Lium and Hale, and me prying her fingers from their death-grip, she’s secured to the float as well.              

             
“Crusa,” she croaks.

             
“You’re going in, Len. I’ll see you in a minute.”

             
“You really think,” I wipe my nose on my shoulder, “you can drag two people?” I ask the boys. It’s more of a challenge than a question.

             
“I told you, it’s fine,” grunts Hale. I give him a look. He ignores me.

             
“He’s got it, Crus,” Lium says, out of breath, dripping on my cheek.

             
“He’s got it? You’re not going to help him?”

             
“I’m waiting with you.”

             
I panic, “How is he going to get them in!? They’ll all drown.” I feel dirty for saying it, using it for shock, but I can’t believe it.

             
“He’s got it,” Lium reassures me, pulling one of my frozen arms over him. I’m scathing mad at him, at both of them, but I realize my muscles don’t work. So there it goes.

I’ve been keeping Eleni’s fingers knotted in mine, so I feel Hale’s strength when he begins to go. It makes me feel a little better. I keep reminding myself of that as I watch him swim off with my two cousins.

             
He goes diagonally. And actually moves the girls, tug by short tug, just inches, but still. He moves them against the current. The relief comes from nowhere to hit me. Good at first, it soon morphs into a convulsion that rings with the surrounding cold. I wedge the chain inside my elbow, and bow my head.

             
“He’ll send it back to us, don’t worry.”

Stupid Hale. I hate him.

“I’m not worried, I’m freezing,” I sputter. Stupid Lium. I hate him, too.

I can’t stop shaking. I almost loose my grip on the boy as I wrap my other leg around the chain.

He grabs me by the ribs and tells me to stop squirming.

I’m an idiot.

Yeah, sure, stupidest boys I’ve ever met. I’ll just wait here and freeze to death with one of you while I wait for the other one to swim around in circles in the middle of the ocean in the dead of night. Here’s my cousins, drown them with you, while you’re at it.

Lium reminds me of the rope again. Asks if I want to hold it. I decline. Hale left us one end of a line and took the other end with him. Plans to string on the life ring and send it back to us with the current.

Lium keeps talking but I don’t pay attention to what he says. I cling to him and the chain, I think, I can’t feel my legs anymore but sometimes they twinge which is possibly the links pinching my thighs, and I think about the bitter cold. And phantom jellyfish.

             
The cold hurts. I grit my teeth and shiver, half on purpose to see if it helps, but it doesn’t. Except to make me more tired. It’s constant, the new water sliding up against me, stealing away any warmth. It eeks in between me and Lium, through the smallest of spaces.

             
A base patrol boat’s motor growls somewhere further out. I try not to listen to it because there is no chance of it spotting us, for better or worse. Instead, I just listen to my own catching breath and clutch my arms tighter around Lium’s neck. I can’t feel my face. I don’t realize that I should have paid more attention to the boat until the first wave picks me up.

             
It surges under my legs, rising bitterly around my nose, and then dives out from under me. It yanks us against the chain. I’m ok. Chilled viciously deep where Lium’s body has been pulled away from me, but ok.

             
I feel the urging of the ocean, still restless, and brace for another one. I float with the boy and the buoy on the slanted edge of it. Then, abruptly, my whole head is wrenched down.

             
A dark pain stabs the back of my neck. I clamp down in my chest. I jerk and twist, trying to gather some momentum, but I feel the sharp bleeding pang on my scalp, so warm after the iciness of the yank.

             
Another yank, but I stay smothered. Underwater, completely underwater. I swipe my hand through the thickness and listless swathes of hair that writhe around my head. I hit something firm, maybe a leg, maybe the chain, I don’t know.