Sea of Tranquility (24 page)

“What if I don't make it?”

“You will. You swim. I'll guide you.”

“Shouldn't we wait for backup or something?”

“No. Too long. Her name is Angeline. She's eight.”

“I've seen her with her brother collecting sand dollars and shells.”

“Then you know.”

“What do I do once I'm in there?”

“Stay with her and wait.”

Greg knew that there would be no way out of there for ten or eleven hours. It would be dark in there. If he made it. If he tried to turn around and come back out halfway down the tunnel, it would be much, much harder to swim against the incoming surge and there was a good chance he'd be pushed back. He wouldn't make it. One-shot deal. Greg decided not to think too much on it. All his life, right, waiting for a chance. Go for it.

“Take this with you.”

Sylvie held out the small packet of cookies. It seemed like a ludicrous gesture. He almost laughed but didn't. He put them into the back pocket of his swim trunks and pulled the Velcro tab over. She tried to hand him the flashlight too, but he knew he couldn't swim with it. “It's going to be completely dark in there, isn't it?”

“Yes. I thought this might work.”

Greg grabbed something off a shelf above his bed. A silly thing. A glow stick he'd bought in Mutton Hill Harbour. Cold, chemical light. You break something inside it and it glows for thirty minutes. You toss it around with a friend at night, on a beach maybe, and it'd look cool. But he never had the right chance to use it. He put that into the other back pocket and snapped the clasp.

Angeline cried for ten minutes and flicked the tiny penlight lamp on and off to try to keep herself focussed but gave up on it and instead concentrated on the diminishing light in the water, sunlight that could find its way only so far into the cave. She heard waves smacking against the rocks outside and heard them enter the tunnel before she saw the foaming white come spilling into the larger chamber. The water splashed against her legs and, as she tucked them up and under her, she felt the cold
snap of the wave upon her. She was shivering and she was more scared than she had known possible. But she refused to believe she would die. She was eight years old and death was not real for her. Fear and pain, however, were very real.

Why wasn't her brother coming back for her? It seemed like forever. Every minute seemed like an hour to her. But she had only been alone for fifteen cold minutes.

Just as she was about to start crying again, something popped up in the water near her. She screamed and pushed her little body back into the rock face behind her until the sharp rocks hurt her. Something was there in the cave with her. It made a sound like it was spitting and then it moved away from her, circling in the water that filled the bottom of the cave. When she got up the courage to turn on the little light for a split second, she saw it was a seal.

A young seal with that funny comedian's mustache and big, curious, dark eyes. He came within arm's reach and remained upright in the water looking at her. Angeline was not afraid of seals, especially a small one like this. Young seals, she knew, were very curious.

“Hello,” she said.“Can you help me? Please?”

The seal dipped sideways, splashed and went under, swam around the cavern and came up a little further away. Angeline was still shivering but the seal gave her new hope. She did not feel alone.

The seal came back close to her and lifted itself half out of the water, eyes open, watching her.

“I bet you know all about this place,” she said. “I'm glad you're here. I'm going to be okay, aren't I?”

The seal blinked, flopped sideways in the water again, and looked so foolish that it made her laugh. The seal had some gift for making the minutes slide away more quickly. He made the waves coming through into the cave seem less hostile. Something had
brought him in here for these brief moments. Maybe it was just a favourite feeding place where small fish were driven by an incoming tide. Maybe it was just curiosity. And then he was gone. But even then it wasn't quite as bad as it had been before until a big wave plowed through the opening and drenched her completely, almost knocking her off the small, flat ledge. Angeline began to cry again, feeling this time even more hopeless than before. She was sure a bigger wave was coming and if she fell into the cold, dark water beneath her, she didn't think she could scramble back up.

Greg forced himself not to think of the logic of what he was doing except that he was buying time. He trusted Sylvie implicitly even though he had thought she was mental. Not as bad as Kit, but mental just the same. Old and crazy like that. And now he had to trust her completely, believe she was right. Hell, maybe there wasn't even any air inside there. How was he so sure there was this cavern she was talking about? What if there was no little girl in the there at all? Maybe she had made it all up or hallucinated it? Then what? Maybe he'd get inside and find no help coming for him. Maybe there was no open cavern inside, just a dead end tunnel. Fishermen might find him later, flushed out of there on a dropping tide, and wonder why he had a glow stick and a smashed pack of sea-soaked cookies in his pockets.

He looked at Sylvie for some kind of signal, but she was staring off to sea. There were waves for sure and they were building. Freda out there with high winds. Maybe there would not even be a normal low tide in twelve hours, maybe the push of the storm would keep the sea high. That happened sometimes.

“Greg. Ten yards and reach out for the wall. Veer left. Just save your strength if you can and let the wave push you in. If you hit backwash, you're going to have to hang onto something until it passes.”

Greg looked at her and suddenly realized how beautiful the woman's eyes were. For an old woman, she had an extraordinary look about her. But mingled with the beauty was fear. “I must be out of my mind,” he said out loud.

She touched his face then, held out her two hands and put them flat up against his cheeks and suddenly realized this was something she had done in the days before William Toye had died. And she had sworn never to have anything to do with death again. She had convinced herself that she had suffered enough loss in her life, believed there was some silent pact signed with the great decimation of her men and that she would be spared any further tragedy. For an instant, she almost changed her mind, was certain she was sending this good-intentioned boy to his death. But no.“Try to keep your eyes open, Greg. But if you get confused, close them and trust what you feel.”

She meant it, Greg realized. That sounded crazy for sure. Just what he needed. Hell. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but this. He was going in. He tried to stop the thoughts wrestling around in his head. He walked into the sea near the foot of the cliff, swam into the choppy waves, pulled a good lungful of air, then dove and swam underwater into the entrance of the flooded cave. His body was tugged about by the surge of waves that seemed to want to dash him up against the rocks. And then came the backwash sucking him back out, diminishing his progress. Stiff currents both ways seemed far too powerful for him to fight against. He imagined himself in the emptying river current again at Stoney Beach in Lawrencetown. Not good at all.
Think bathtub
. Warm bath water.
One thousand two hundred and ten
.

Greg gripped his fingers onto the rock wall, tried to perceive the give and take of the waves pushing and pulling at him. Began to reconstruct his confidence, and failing that, bolster his determination. He reached up and his fingers broke the surface of the water. He surfaced inside the cave and sucked quickly at the air
beneath the rock above him. A thin seam of air, mere inches at the top of the tunnel. The next wave would steal it away. He felt the seaward tug first and prepared for the next wave that would return. He got his bearings. The walls of the tunnel, the ceiling. He realized that he could turn back right now if he had to. He wasn't that far inside. The backwash could carry him out.

The water was clear with a greenish blue tint to it, and loose seaweed whipped back and forth in a way that did not seem threatening at all.

Gulp of air, enough to get him through to wherever the hell he was going. Dive down and
wham
. The wave arrived, having gathered tremendous momentum as it squeezed itself into the narrow tunnel. There were too many bubbles to see much of anything clearly. He closed his eyes, waited for Sylvie's voice inside his head. Heard nothing. Fortunately, he had his arms stretched out in front of him and jammed his fingers hard as the turn in the tunnel found him before he found it.

But he quickly turned his body and kicked his feet with all his might so he would not lose the momentum of the wave. Then he felt something slide past him and he nearly burst the air from his lungs. It was smooth and dense and, whatever the hell it was, very much alive. He felt wet fur against his side and dared not think much of anything at all. He kicked his feet harder, took a couple of breast strokes and felt the wave give out a little. He reached up but there was still solid rock above him. He kicked again, sensed the burn begin in his lungs. One thousand and how many? No, it was different here. He couldn't hold his breath very long doing this. Different altogether. He took two more big strokes, kicked harder with his feet, reached up again. Rock. A third time, rock.

Swim, Greg. Can't go back now, he drilled himself. I'm doing the best I can, Coach. What if I can't make it? You can. What if? He had all the doubts in the world now. This was a very stupid thing to attempt. Then he jabbed his fingers upward for a fourth time.

And then sliced up out of the water into air. He rose up out of the deluge with his mouth wide open. It was dark, he could-n't see a thing. He got half a gulp of air, then the wave that had carried him slammed against the rear of the cavern with a roar and the backwash drove back at him like a sledge hammer, pushing him against the front wall while trying to suck him down and under, back into the tunnel. His fingernails clawed at the bare rock face, and he screamed.

He was still clinging to it and feeling the wave relent when he realized someone else was screaming. The voice of a child. He continued to gulp air.

“What are you?” she screamed, crying at the same time.

“Greg,” he said, barely able to speak at all.“I'm Greg. Where are you?

“Here. Please help me.”

Greg cautiously clawed his way along the wall until he found her. He reached out in the darkness, touched her, and Angeline grabbed onto his two outstretched fingers like a vice grip. He found the ledge, but it was awash in seawater. Another wave came through just then and both were nearly swept off. He was holding onto her wrist at that point and having a desperate time keeping his footing. But when that wave had passed, he put an arm around this little kid and said nothing until he could get his lungs to work right again.

“Where's Todd?”

“Who?”

“My brother.”

“Oh, right. Todd and Sylvie sent me. I'm here now.”

“I'm scared.”

Greg did not say that he was too. He knew you could fake some stuff with little kids, although he knew next to nothing about child psychology. His ruse would be to present a clear game plan. And only eleven hours and twenty minutes to go.

Sylvie knew that Greg had made it through into the cavern. She saw the seal pop up outside of the cave and understood that his presence inside had been a good thing, a purposeful thing. Now Angeline had Greg. There were ledges inside high enough to keep them out of the water. Low tide was ten o'clock tonight. Everyone from the island would be out here. There would be help aplenty. Just a matter of time now. Suddenly the negative events of recent days — politicians, ferry closures, newspaper reports — all seemed insignificant. This was what mattered.

Todd and his mother came running down the shoreline. Todd pointed, and Elise began to shake her head and lose control.“Easy, girl,” Sylvie said.“Your daughter is not alone. I had a champion swimmer handy. You remember Greg, the college kid? That's why he stayed. He didn't know why. I didn't know why. But this was it.”

“She's okay in there?”

“Yes. It'll just take time.”

The size and power of the waves was definitely on the increase, but the weather itself was even-tempered. It was a warm, sunny day. Light onshore breeze with a scent of the tropics in it. Freda, off Sable Island. Sinking ships, as it turned out.

Elise wrung her hands and held tightly onto Todd. “It's my fault,” he said.

“Doesn't matter now.”

They walked closer to the shore and stared at the cliff with the underwater cave. And waited.

A half-hour later, Moses' boat rounded the front of the island but stayed offshore. Sylvie saw him wave, pointed to the RCMP Zodiac ready to beach itself on the pebbled shores. A four-wheel-drive truck could be heard as well, grinding its way over the rubble towards them.

The battery on Todd's little penlight had gone dead as Greg helped Angie climb further up the rock face, seeking the ledge that Sylvie had promised was higher up. Greg felt overwhelmed by responsibility now and worried again that he was not going to be able to cope with this. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this immense responsibility.

And then they found the ledge. Waves still splashed them but they were way up there near the roof. Unless a really monster swell slammed its way through, they'd be okay.

They sat and Angie snuggled close to him, making him feel uncomfortable. He didn't have a sense about kids. He was just never around them much. She shivered, and he wished he had something warm for her, but he didn't. He remembered the cookies and pulled the soggy bag out of his pocket.

“You brought cookies?” She started to giggle.

“Here.”

“Sylvie made these.”