Four Times Blessed (22 page)

             
I do it again, and hit a tenseness and the bite on my scalp. I follow the section back with my arm, hands useless, lungs getting too hot too fast.

             
I shove the top of my tongue against the roof of my mouth, determined to keep myself from inhaling. The searing just intensifies, though, spreading from my chest down into my belly. The back of my nose is so on fire it itches and I sneeze out a puff of air. Snort in a little. The sound of the bubbles is all I hear.

             
I’m reaching and pulling, bucking, kicking. Pulled in all directions. I find the chain and go to shake it but the metal is rigid, tight with the buoy above and the rocks below. And the chill.

             
I’m choking on the fire in my chest. It overflows. I can’t help but inhale the stinging water, through my nose, my mouth. It smells of metal and salt.

             
My sneezing sinuses, choking throat, they bow away from the sinking heaviness in the back of my head but they can’t.

             
Tired. I grasp the tether of hair and pluck it, but it holds fast.

             
I’m almost drowned. The ocean will have me. I like the ocean but I don’t want it to have me. Not now or ever.

             
I’m tired, warm, I seep into the ocean. And I’m not anything. Not anything that could drown it like it’s drowning me. 

             
No, I think. Only my heart responds. I want to get away but I’m overflowing with silvery black and blue like it. There is a tensing around my waist. Rushing over my limp spine, curved into a c.

             
It’s light out.

             
No, no it’s not.

             
It’s dark.

             
Because it’s night.

             
It burns me.

             
I cough.

             
The air is light, compared to the water, silly girl, my soggy brain corrects me.

             
I get whacked on the back and I spurt the ocean back to where it came from. I’m alive. Holy forefathers, I’m not dead.

             
I revel in that, exhausted, and suck in air.

             
“Can you talk?” comes a rough voice.

             
I cough and nod. My top half is lying over a flat floating thing. Hey, I still have arms and legs. And they’re all tingly. Feels weird. Jesus, they’re cold.

             
“What’s your name?” the person that is Lium asks.

             
“Crusa,” I say, with an emphatic cough on the C.

             
“Crusa. Good girl, good girl.”

             
I roll my head to the side, dripping and heavy.

             
“Lium,” I close my eyes. I’m sleepy.

             
He shakes my shoulder and I groan. Pushes me up and drags us both more onto the floating thing. Orange and blackish blue go good together. Lium is close on my side and he’s all soaked, but he’s warm. I definitely don’t mind at all when he moves half on top of me. See? I knew I was right not to mind it before.

             
The boy swims with one arm and half drowns me with the other, all the while breathing right into my ear. I realize that we, or rather, he, is swimming into the current so I try to kick along. All I make is a pathetic flexing at the knees but it’s the thought that counts, I think happily. I giggle because I’m not dead. 

             
He takes a moment to move the heavy chunks of hair out of my face with a touch that is very soft.

             
I pout and blink. I was planning on a blink but I drift where it’s dark. He shakes me again.

             
“I was drowning,” I tell him. It wasn’t what I’d meant to say, which is probably good because I don’t know what that was but it was probably something embarrassing. I guess I’ve stored up a few phrases that need to come out before anything else.

             
“I know, but I got you now.” He tucks me more under his chest, and it frees up his other arm to swim.

             
I sigh. I’m very sleepy now.

             
“It’s a good thing we ate all those marshmallows. I think they’re making you float.”

             
“That. Was extremely, rude.”

             
“Rude seems to be the only thing that wakes you up, little lady.”

             
“That’s not true.”

             
“Yeah it is.”

             
“No, it’s not. Say something else and I’ll stay awake for it.” I roll my shoulders and he tries to hold them still.

             
He swims a few strokes.

              There’s a piece of seaweed. I like that kind. You can pop the bubbles.

              “All I can think of is rude stuff,” he says.

             
I try not to make a sound when I sigh again. Which, I realize, is worthless because his whole torso goes up and down.

             
“That’s making it worse.”

             
“I’m sorry,” my mouth works like fresh clay.

             
“Don’t be. This is good exercise.”

             
“Oh, good. Because that’s what…everybody needs. A nice, brisk...midnight swim, to get the heartrate going. Tomorrow, I’ll climb a tree, and get stuck in it so you can work some different muscles. Then, I’ll twist my ankle on the road and you can carry me home. How far would you like to carry me? We could probably do that one twice, once with hills for strength and once flat…for speed. I have two ankles so that’s no problem. Hey, and if you like the water, this winter I can fall through the ice.” I shiver. It’s beyond exhausting. I see dark clouds and I hear them too.

             
Lium tells me shhh. Which is kind, considering how obnoxious I’m being.

             
“Are we there yet?”

             
“Not really, love.”

             
I tell him I’ll help him swim, and he says ok.

              I do try, but I think most of my brain’s commands are turning to ice before they make it to my legs. I try flapping my arms to see if that could work.

             
Lium shakes his head and sniffs as my attempts send a hefty splash into both of our faces. I blink and wipe my own face off. I don’t like water on my face. But what with the swimming and the balancing and the hold he has on me, I don’t think Lium can really do the same.

             
So, I twist back, take a numb hand, and carefully aim a knuckle at first one eye and then the other, moving the drips away because I’m sure it stings. I should know, I just swallowed it all.

             
He blinks a few times, and I finish my ministrations by brushing the residue off his cheeks. There.

             
“Better?”

             
“Much. Thanks. Say, why don’t you leave the swimming to me for now on. You just lay there,” he laughs to himself.

             
I snort and pretend I don’t get it. “Um, Lium? I’m laying here like a dead fish. And if-”

             
“A dead fish? Nah, I spent all last winter with those guys and you’re not like them at all. See, you’re a lot prettier than a dead fish. You’re warmer, too. Not by much, but still. Girls keep you much warmer than dead fish. Also, you smell a heck of a lot better. You’re mostly softer, too, except for your shoulder blade.”

             
“Well…I’m glad you’re comfortable.”

             
“Good. I like to make the ladies happy.”

             
“I’m happy,” I say. A little too happy. Loopy, even. I can’t move anymore.               “Lium, I know you were a great fighter once, but that was against humans. And some animals. So don’t feel bad if you can’t fight the whole ocean,” I reach back and pat him. I think. My eyes are hot.

             
“I wasn’t planning on fighting the whole ocean,” he grunts, determined, still working hard.

             
“Oh, well, it seemed like you were.”

             
“Maybe I would, ask me and see.”

             
I smile but he can’t see that. Plus I’m numb so it probably looks weird.

              “All we really need to do is distract it, anyways,” he says.

             
“And how do you distract the ocean?” I give the water a little pat now, and the surface drags my hand.

             
“Hmm.” I wonder if he’s thinking or just busy breathing like he is. I feel my heart beating against the hard float, and his pounding fast on my back. Which is warmer. Achy and warmer.

             
“I think you had the distraction part pretty well covered.”

              “Hm?” He never makes any sense, but I don’t care.

             
“You had your head all stuck down in there. Now, don’t get all upset, I think you have a lovely head.”

             
“Oh. Thank you.”

             
“Sure thing. Now, like I was saying, you had your very lovely head down in the water, so all I had to do was sneak behind it with my knife. I hope you don’t mind.”

             
“That’s ok,” I say, being that I don’t get it yet again.

             
I guess Lium’s feet can touch the bottom because we seem to stick where we are, no longer rolling with the uncrested waves.

             
He turns us and hauls me along backwards. I look out at the perfectly curved horizon. As soon as my own feet catch the sand I trip into the pushy white water. 

             
The offending wave pulls away, and my top half slips into the air. It becomes extra heavy, I notice as I sink. Lium’s arms lift me back up so easily. Then I’m on his shoulder. Then he drops and I land on him. He holds me as if it’s the most pleasant thing.

             
“Thanks,” I try to say, but my face is numb. I rest a frozen arm over it and somehow my limp body shakes. 

             
“No problem,” Lium pants.

             
We lay there catching our breaths, the water lapping at our feet.

             
Someone runs up from above our heads.

             
“Crusa! Honey! What are you doing swimming at this hour! It’s freezing in there,” my zizi starts out yelling but by the time she’s standing there on my hair and peering at me over her stomach, she’s calmed down to a normal voice. She does it so precisely that it reaches my ears at the same volume from start to finish. She’s amazing.

             
“My girl, I honestly don’t know what to do with you. Stop laying on the ground. You’ll catch your death.”

             
Then she’s all over me, rubbing my hands with her hot dry ones and wiping my face, hooking me under the armpits while Lium pushes my bottom up. I whip around and can tell he’s laughing, he’s just too tired to make a sound.

             
My zizi, meanwhile, hauls me half over her shoulder. My eyes slip from her to the boy still in the sand, back and forth and in between. By the time we get to the seawall, he’s surrounded by my uncles and boy cousins, but he’s still watching us as if fascinated, so I give him a short floppy wave and a smile.