Two and Twenty Dark Tales (26 page)

“S… sorry I said… that.”

His eyes, shaped like teardrops, made him look as if he suffered from perpetual melancholy, and Miranda had an urge to touch his cheek. She thought maybe she could smooth the nervous tic away, but she held back. Touching seemed too intimate for someone she barely knew; besides, he didn’t invite it. This was their first real talk.

“I’m not hiding because of what you said.” But that wasn’t true. The minute he’d told her the myth, something caught inside her, and she didn’t want to see the moon. She didn’t want the temptation to wish on it to bring her back from death. If she did, she’d be giving up on the hope of rescue and life. She couldn’t do that. Ever.

She shivered in the sudden wind that seemed colder than the nights before.

Ned took out the compass, then dug the oars into the sea with more force than usual. When he pulled them into the boat, he didn’t look in their direction, even though all eyes were on him, asking if there was a problem.

“Look,” he said, “it’s getting colder, so we should move closer together, especially at night.” He scooted next to Miranda and Winker. “Come on Blakie, let’s sleep in a pile like Wild Things.” His laugh had a dryness to it.

So they huddled under the tarp, sharing their body heat and their fear. During the night, Ned’s arm encircled Miranda’s shoulder and pulled her into him. At first she held back, but she was tired and cold and the sound of his heart comforted her with its steady beat.

When the sun found them, she pushed the tarp away, blinking into the brightness of morning. Ned sat across from her, drawing the oars in steady strokes through the water.

After an hour, he traded off with Blakie, then Blakie traded off with Winker. Miranda took her turn, too.

Then Ned checked his compass. “Stop now,” he told her, and she leaned back to stare at the cloudless sky.

Blakie moved his lips, solving math problems, hiding in a place where numbers added up to perfection and the messy reality of being stranded in a lifeboat didn’t exist. Miranda wished she had an inner place like that to distract herself.

“We better cover up.” Ned looked at Blakie and Winker, who sat together. “Less sun, less water loss.” Ned tried for a smile. “You’ll have to wait for that suntan until you get back home, Miranda.”

Back Home. The place she’d wanted to escape for the past two years because her mother had turned into such a bitch. Her father had simply turned and run. The divorce was going to be ugly, and she didn’t want any part of it. She’d already had enough of the nightly fights. This trip with her senior class had come at exactly the right time. She’d withdrawn enough money from her college savings to make it, and she’d relished every moment away from Back Home. Every moment until she’d landed in the sea and all her friends had been sucked underwater… forever.

“Where’s Back Home for you?” she asked, directing the question to any of the three, trying to erase the images of her drowned classmates.

Ned answered. “Northern California. A beach town. We’ve surfed together since we could hop on a board. You?”

“Iowa. Corn-fed and Midwestern, through and through.” For a moment, the taste of hot-buttered corn on the cob filled her mouth, but it vanished almost as quickly as it had come. She licked her lips and found they were sore. Her head ached, too, so she burrowed under the tarp and dreamt of water, of butter and corn and the farm—the real Back Home. When she’d been little, it had been a perfect place. A tire swing at the side of the house. Mom pushing her high into the air. Dad in the kitchen every midday for dinner, his face streaked by sweat and plowed earth, earth that had belonged to the Langlies for three generations. That lifestyle had vanished along with the farm. Poor crops for three years running. Dad sold the land before he lost it to the bank. Then they’d moved to the city where none of them—

“Blakie!” Ned’s voice shattered her restless sleep, and she scooted from under the tarp.

Ned knelt over Blakie, pressing Blakie’s wrist between his hands, then shaking his shoulder. He pushed hard on his chest. Again. Again. “Wake up, damn you!”

Winker looked at Ned, then down at Blakie and the knife lying next to his body. Then Winker fell back and buried his face in his arms.

A thin, red line trickled from Blakie’s wrist to where Miranda sat. She threw the blanket over it and watched as the red soaked through.

Ned pulled Blakie onto his lap, swaying back and forth. “You idiot. You effin’ idiot.”

As the sun settled low, hovering just above the line between sky and sea, Ned released Blakie’s body and began to wrap him in the blanket.

“Where are you going… and what do you wish?” Winker whispered. “The old moon asked the three. Never… afraid are we. As we sail into the sea of dew.”

So whether it was a wish or a prayer or just a conversation between human beings and the ancient moon, as Blakie’s body slipped into the choppy water Winker knelt and Ned knelt with him. “Please,” Winker said, “find Blakie. Bring him home.”

Miranda sought out the darkness under the tarp to avoid the cool white light from overhead, to avoid hearing the entreaties for the dead Blakie, to avoid giving up on life.

That night, as the air chilled, the pile of three slept under the tarp, but not well. Winker bolted upright, screaming about the moon. Ned curled around her back, and Miranda found his hand and held it. This hand had saved her once; she prayed it would save her again. Before the sun arrived, she slept, believing that it would.

Rain didn’t come the next day, but a thick mist did. They made a catch basin from the tarp, spreading it across the end of the boat and funneling one end into the empty container. By noon they had half a cup of water, and they each took one small capful onto their tongues, holding it in their mouths, not wanting to swallow.

It wasn’t enough to stop Miranda’s head from throbbing or her lips from cracking. When she looked at Winker, he looked back at her with sunken eyes. His cheek hadn’t twitched since the day they’d sent Blakie into the sea, but now it began again.

“When did this start?” Miranda stroked his cheek as if it were something she’d always done. Now, touching him seemed right. The way he looked at her with his teardrop-shaped eyes invited her to do it.

Winker didn’t pull back, but took his time before answering. “After my mom died.” He drew his tongue over his teeth. “My dad took it hard. Spent lots of days drunk.” He swiped his hand over his face. “I read and surfed… the rest of the time.” Winker looked at Ned. “He and Blakie… got me through.”

The rest of that day they slept. Woke with starts. Slept again.

After that, Miranda lost count of the days. Now, she only counted the drops of water Ned placed on her tongue. It gave her comfort to watch how he held the cap. How he measured water, then presented it to her, and then to Winker before recapping the container and returning it to the supply box. This ritual helped her forget the half cup of water was nearly gone.

Miranda thought about those first days together here and realized she missed them because of all those rituals Ned didn’t perform anymore. He didn’t paddle or check the compass or talk about keeping them headed south. He didn’t net herring and serve her small slivers. Since Blakie had gone, there was nothing to distract them from the slowness of time, and it was as if Winker was sinking into himself a bit more each time she looked at him. All any of them did was sleep, and hopelessness spread like a contagion.

Then one night, when the sky had cast a silver net of stars overhead, after they’d taken water and after the sun had disappeared, Ned didn’t roll over and sleep. “We should set up a watch,” he said.

Miranda felt a surge of renewed hope, and when she looked at Winker, his eyes were focused on Ned and her as if he really saw them.

Winker raised a hand. “I’ll take… early watch. Sunrise to mid… morning.”

“Midmorning to when the sun passes overhead—about two. Okay, Miranda?” Ned asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll take it until sunset,” he said.

“We’re not catching a southern current, are we?” Winker asked, but it sounded more like a statement of fact.

Ned shook his head. “No. It’s getting colder,” he swallowed, “and dryer every day.”

He was having trouble talking. Miranda was, too. Her tongue didn’t fit inside her mouth like it should. It had thickened, and rubbed against the roof and the sides like a rasp.

The next day she lay under the tarp, shivering because the sun seemed to have lost its heat. When she felt a tug on her foot, she struggled to sit.

“Your turn,” Winker said. He stretched out and slept before she could get to the side of the boat.

Before noon, Miranda couldn’t stay awake. Her head jerked forward or lolled back, bringing her again to her watch. If any ship passed, she knew she’d miss it. She couldn’t do that. She was desperate to yell, “Throw us a line. Give us water.”

She no longer needed to pee. That humiliation of going over the side of the boat half-naked had ended some days ago, but she knew what that meant. She remembered the humiliation with some longing.

Ned relieved her from her watch, but she sat at his side and didn’t return to the tarp.

“If a ship…” She tried to swallow, but she had no saliva. “How do we signal?”

He pointed to the supply box. “Flare gun.”

They were using few words, saving energy, avoiding the pain of cracked lips.

The supplies in that box had to be years old. The crackers had been stale, the tins slightly bulging and filled with odd-tasting fruit. She let her eyelids scrape across her irises and slept, sitting there next to Ned, hoping that her first thoughts about the flare gun were not the right ones. It would work. It had to.

Then one day, Winker didn’t wake her for her midmorning watch, and she knew it was because he’d fallen asleep. She crawled to him, shook him, and took her place.

Even though she struggled to stay awake and scan the horizon, she must have dozed because the sudden and harsh rocking of the lifeboat brought her out of dark dreams. She blinked and looked around, thinking that if she didn’t hold to the side she might be washed overboard. A wake flip-flopped them in the water. Her mind was slow from dehydration, but she tried to piece together what this meant. Then she got it. There had to be something big making those choppy waves. She looked ahead and to both sides. Only emptiness. Then she looked to the stern, and there it was. Looming like a great white mirage. A ship.

Miranda stood, shouted, waved her arms. She grabbed up a blanket and flapped it in the air.

Winker and Ned scrambled to her side. Ned opened the supply box. He held the flare gun so it pointed at the sky and pulled the trigger. It fired, sending a red streak into the air. He stared after the ship, gritting his teeth. “Come around.” He fired again, but this time the flare didn’t discharge. Again he pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

Ned hurled the gun into the supply box, sank back against the boat, and buried his head in his arms.

Miranda and Winker watched the great ship become smaller until they could no longer see it.

That night they slept apart, shivering. In the morning, Miranda stayed under her blanket, waiting for Winker to call her and dreading another day on watch. It wasn’t until the sun dipped low in the West that she sat up and realized Winker had never awakened her.

She crawled to his blanket and pulled it back. He wasn’t there. She nudged Ned awake. “Winker’s gone.”

It took a moment for him to understand what she meant, and then he said, “He left us.” Ned curled his knees to his chest and pulled the blanket over his face.

Loneliness swallowed her in one gulp, sending her into a pit of hopelessness unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She’d thought the day strangers carted off their farmhouse furniture would be her worst. Then her dad left with a grim goodbye, and that was even more miserable. She’d never expected to face something worse than that. She longed to cry. She longed to drink the sea dry, but when she licked her lips, the saltiness reminded her how terrible even one sip would be.

Sleep was her only escape, so she lay down next to Ned’s bundled form and closed her eyes. She set her mind free and—as if from a great distance, maybe as far away as the moon—looked down on the two of them, the tiny boat and the vast sea. She dreamed of Iowa where the sea only existed in movies and cool water in tall glasses was taken for granted. At first light she stared into another clear day, surprised and not a little disappointed to find herself adrift on a sea and not standing on the Iowa soil of her dreams.

Ned hadn’t moved since last night. She placed her hand on his chest, then snatched it back when she couldn’t feel his heartbeat. Her quick movement made her dizzy, and for a moment, she thought he’d stirred. When her head cleared, she touched him again, feeling for some spark of life. There was none, and a rush of terror shot through her.

Missing the closeness of another, she put her ear against his chest, and stayed pressed to Ned’s stillness, her eyes closed, their pile of two growing colder with each beat of her lonely heart.

When day slipped into night, she rolled onto her back and found herself in a world of two moons—one in the sky and one drenched in the sea. Ready at last, she prayed. “Please bring me—all of us—home.”

She laid down again and returned to thinking about beautiful things like sweet water. Soon, the boat stopped being a boat and became a cradle, the cradle that had rocked her. The cradle that used to be tucked into the back corner of the attic in the Iowa farmhouse, waiting for the next generation. Sold, she remembered. There would be no cradle for her children, so she shouldn’t be worried about not having children. Blakie would see the logic in that. She’d tell him.

When the darkness came for her, the cradle rocked her to sleep and the misty sea slapped along the sides. Out of that darkness, Ned’s hand reached for hers. He hadn’t deserted her. Trusting him again, she let herself be pulled to the side of the lifeboat.

And then she tumbled into the dewy sea, where the moon watched from above and waited below. Where starry herring nibbled her toes and fanned their silver against her skin. Where Blakie mumbled his perfect math solutions, Winker recited the moon prayers of Eskimos, and Ned Parker offered drops of clear, cool water for her tongue.