Dane yelled something that sounded like "Trade places!"
"No!" she shouted back. "You jump first! You'll help me after!"
Dane hesitated. Mira pulled the stick back, so their forward progress slowed. "Now," she snapped, and Dane took a breath and then leaped out.
As soon as he was gone, before he could fall behind too far, she powered down the machine completely. She had just enough time to suck in a deep breath before the helicopter hit the waves with a powerful shock that reverberated through her entire body.
Her thinking with turning off the engine was that the biggest danger came from the spinning rotors. If the rotors were stopped, she could swim away from the machine in relative safety.
What she hadn't counted on was the way that her entire body went still as icy water rushed into the cockpit of the helicopter. For an instant, she couldn't swim; she couldn't even move.
I'm going to die out here. Just like—
But that galvanized her into moving. She hadn't died whenMerrylegswent down. Dane had rescued her. And he was going to rescue her again.
As if to underscore that thought, something large bumped the outside of the sinking helicopter.
Dane!
Mira kicked her way out of the pilot's seat. The cockpit was already full of water, and the machine had rolled onto its side as it sank. This made it a little easier to get out. She pushed her way out of the upward-facing door. There was no problem figuring out which way to swim to find the surface; the sinking helicopter's lights illuminated a path of bubbles leading her upward. All she had to do was swim to follow it, and a moment later her head broke the surface.
It was, once again, horribly like the sinking ofMerrylegs, except that at least it wasn't stormy, with waves smacking her in the face. She could tread water with relative ease. But she was a tiny human island in a vast black sea. Overhead, the sky was full of dazzling stars and a sliver of moon, which lit up the waves enough that she could tell there was nothing around her for miles. Just an endless dark nothing.
Then a small black and white hump broke the surface.
"Dane," she gasped out.
She swam to him gratefully. Dane's long back broke the waves, and he floated there. He nudged her with his head, and she saw that he was carrying something in his mouth. It looked like a backpack.
"You did find emergency gear!" Whatever it was, some kind of prepackaged set of supplies. She took it from him. It was a canvas bag with a long strap that she slung over her shoulder before throwing an arm across his back. Already she could feel the cold water dragging at her limbs, stealing her strength. "Dane, is it okay if I get on your back? I have to get out of the water."
Whales, lacking necks, were not well suited to nodding, but he made a motion that was probably meant to be one. Pointedly, he nudged her again.
Mira began to struggle out of the water onto his back. It turned out that mounting a whale while treading water, with one arm encumbered, wasn't the world's easiest thing. Noticing her difficulty, Dane sank below the surface—which alarmed her—and then came up beneath her, lifting her out of the water as smoothly as an elevator.
"Thank you!" she gasped, slumping over his back. The air wasn't a whole warmer than the sea, but it was enough to make a difference. She was shivering, but it began to fade as she leaned into Dane's body, stretched each limb, and tried to focus on getting her circulation going again.
Dane thrashed his tail and began swimming slowly forward.
At first, she had some trouble staying on. She had to thrash around until she found a better location for riding, just behind his dorsal fine, which she could hang on to.
It was difficult to get a good purchase on his smooth hide with her shoes, and she was afraid of hurting him, so she slipped them off one by one, tied the laces together, and draped them over her arm so she didn't lose them.
She was warming up slowly. Her sweater helped, damp though it was. The surrounding ocean was so monotonous that it was hard to tell they were making any progress at all. The moon went down, leaving her even more disoriented than before.
"Do you know where we're going?" she asked Dane.
His only answer was a puff of spray. She had no way to interpret this, so all she could do was keep herself on his back and pray that he had a destination in mind—hopefully one they could reach before cold or exhaustion made her lose her grip.
MIRA
It seemedto Mira that they had been traveling forever through the endless black sea, as if there was nothing in the world but the waves lapping against Dane's sides, never seeming to change. Now that the moon had gone down, she was unable to see anything clearly; even the white patches on Dane's sides were only dimly visible. She felt like a single speck of life in a black void.
But then, gradually, the blackness turned to gray, and color began to slowly come back into the world. Overhead, the sky lightened from a dark purple-blue to a warmer shade; the stars vanished one by one. Along the horizon, the first tints of pink and gold began to appear.
So that's east, Mira thought. They were swimming away from it at a slight northern angle, which alarmed her.
"Are we supposed to be going north?" she asked Dane, but the only response she got was another small puff of air and spray from the top of his head. He didn't change direction, so she decided to assume that he knew what he was doing.
