Now that it was possible to look around, she relieved her boredom for a while by watching the sun rise. She had always loved sunrises on the boat. She used to take her coffee out on the deck, sit by the railing, and watch the brilliant shades of color in the sky reflected on the waves.
Now she found that, all discomfort aside, it was an even more spectacular experience from the back of a whale. On the boat, there had still been the railing between her and the ocean, the pilothouse at her back. Here, she was right in the middle of it. Each wave was topped with a brilliant edging of gold. Everywhere she looked, new colors appeared to her wondering eyes. The waves revealed subtle hints of green and blue; the sky was a kaleidoscope of every color from blue to red to vivid pinkish-gold.
Now that she could see again, Mira realized that they were not the only living things in the world. Birds flew over, most of them too high for her to recognize their kind. Mira caught glimpses of whorls and eddies in the water that suggested there were fish around. Once, far off, she saw something gray breach the surface before going back under. "Whale!" she cried, for Dane's benefit, pointing. "A humpback, I think."
Dane didn't respond in any way, and Mira began to wonder how much the journey was tiring him—and how much farther he was capable of going. She laid a hand on his back, rubbing it to encourage him.
The sun rose, chasing the vivid colors out of the sky. Mira sighed in relief as its warmth began to relieve some of her lingering chill.
She began to notice more birds. There were a lot of them, rising in wheeling clouds as birds often did at dawn. And she recalled the sailor's wisdom she had learned from the old salts who frequented the dockfront bars in ports around the world.
Follow the birds to find land.
"Are we heading toward an island?" she asked Dane.
He didn't respond, but after a little while longer, she saw that her guess was right. A long, low darkness appeared on the horizon in front of them. Gradually it grew larger, and then suddenly she realized she could hear the low pounding of surf. This was followed by the realization that the island was both much smaller and much closer than she had thought. It was so low and small that she hadn't been able to see it until they were very near.
The waves around them began to break up into white lines of surf, and Dane's steady swimming motion changed, becoming erratic. He was trying to avoid reefs.
"Don't beach yourself!" Mira said, alarmed. She stretched her stiff limbs, secured the laces of her shoes around the strap of the emergency bag, and then slid off Dane's back into the water.
She hadn't realized how much she had warmed up in the sun until the shock of icy water reminded her how cold she had been. But it was shallow enough that her feet touched bottom when it was only up to her chest. Pushed and pulled by the waves, she stumbled onto a rocky beach and fell to her hands and knees.
A moment later, Dane tottered out of the water, naked and man-shaped, and collapsed.
"Dane!" Mira gasped out.
All of her discomfort, from her cold, wet state to her exhaustion, was forgotten in her worry for him. Trying not to scrape him on the rocks, she half-dragged and half-carried him out of reach of the waves. The beach was made of cobbles and fist-sized chunks of black basalt, but above the waterline there was a somewhat softer region with some sand. Here, she laid Dane down and looked around for any sign of shelter or civilization.
There was nothing in sight. The island was not very big. The beach ran for a couple hundred yards in each direction before curving out of sight. The center of the island was made up of boulders and scrubby grasses. It blocked her view of what might be on the other side, but it wasn't very high. The tallest of the boulders was just a little over her head.
She could see nothing man-made in any direction. There wasn't even any trash on the beach. The only signs of life were the birds, and there were a lot of them, seagulls and mergansers and other ocean-dwelling, fish-hunting birds that whirled in great clouds, rising and falling on the wind. Their thin cries reached her where she stood below, looking up at them.
Okay, she thought,so we're on our own for now. First I need to get Dane warm. Then I'll figure out what to do next.
She knelt and opened the emergency bag. It was waterproof and had survived its immersion with no damage to the items inside. The first thing she pulled out, to her vast relief, was a blanket. She wrapped it around Dane, checking him carefully while she did so. He was freezing to the touch, and his breathing was shallow, but as far as she could tell, he wasn't actually hurt. He was just cold and exhausted.
Hopefully all he needed was rest and warmth, because she had little else to offer him.
She went on pulling items out of the bag. There was a small first-aid kit; she opened it to see if there was anything that might help Dane, but it was very basic stuff, bandages and painkillers. Still useful, she thought. There was a waterproof box of matches, a flare gun in a rugged plastic case, and a flashlight with a blinking SOS setting and an emergency whistle built into the handle. Below that, she found a stash of survival rations in silver foil bags, several energy bars, a collapsible cup, a pocket-sized wilderness survival handbook, and something she didn't recognize until she spread it out so she could read the package, which said,Emergency water distillation kit.
"This is great," she said to Dane. "I think we can live the high life with all of this."
Dane didn't answer, and her high spirits immediately collapsed. They could survive, all right—for a few days, until their food ran out. Meanwhile, they had no shelter, Dane had no clothes, and more critically, they had no way to contact the outside world.
Worryingly aware of their limited supplies, she carefully packed everything back into the emergency pack and placed a large rock on it to ensure that it wasn't pecked open by a seagull, blown down the beach by the wind, or otherwise damaged.
She checked on Dane again. He was still unconscious, but he seemed to be warming up with the blanket around him and the sun on his face. She could do nothing else for him; she didn't even have water to give him.
"I need to look around," she said out loud. It was startling to hear the sound of her own voice, with nothing else around but the wild sounds of wind and waves.
Even more startling was how cracked and raw her voice sounded. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was. Her lips tasted like salt.
"I'm going to try to find us some shelter and water. If there isn't any, the emergency kit has a distillation rig, and I'll see if I can figure out how to set it up."
Dane didn't respond. Mira smoothed his hair back from his forehead and checked his pulse one more time, finding it regular and strong.
Then she put her shoes back on, got up, and began exploring.
