Now, panic grabs hold of my chest; it winds around my iced limbs and useless fingers, pools in my stomach like cooled lead as I sink further.No, no, no.The words shriek inside my oxygen deprived brain, but they do nothing to stop the pressure of the water against my lungs or loosen the grip on my ankle.
Those who say drowning is a peaceful death have never drowned. The agony of helplessness as your muscles freeze; the burning acidity of the water filling your lungs. It is a painful end, last moments filled with desperation and torment.
I won’t drown in this godforsaken water.
I snarl the words in my mind, adrenaline pulsing through me in hot spikes as I gather what little remains of my energy for one last kick. This time, my foot connects with something slippery, but solid. A horrifying screech echoes through the dark water, the pressure of it against my ears nearly unbearable. But the hold on my ankle loosens, enough for me to yank my foot and free myself.
Black edges my vision as I kick toward the surface. Lungs burning, muscles screaming, desperation floods through me as I realize I’m going to pass out before I make it.
Oh god, it’s too far.
My limbs lock, frozen and heavy, and fire races through my chest as I inhale involuntarily. Water pours down my throat and into my lungs. There is no peace, no acceptance—there is only terror and pain and panic.
My eyes slip closed, and I see Celie’s face, pale and lifeless on the ground of our farm. I see the beige tiled ceiling of an Amelioration camp, and a slimy voice from the past echoes around me:So afraid of pain, aren’t you, Willa? Selfish, cowardly girl. Everyone’s counting on you. How dare you give in now?
The voice settles over me like ice, the agony of the past and present threatening to drag me to the bottom of the fathomless depths, when something hooks beneath my armpit and begins hauling me upward. I’m drawn toward the sky in steady, smooth strokes I’m sure I’ve imagined. Like I imagined the voice and the star. Pathetic delusions to shield myself from the awaiting pain.
My head breaks the surface, and a cool breeze grazes my skin as I blink up at the swirling night sky. I gasp and choke, each cough scraping my lungs with seawater and grit.
“Come now, miss,” a man—no, aboy—says encouragingly, his skinny arm still holding me up. “Take a big breath, you’ll be alrigh’.”
I blink wildly, my breath still coming in painful whistles, and wonder if I’m hallucinating. If I’m still at the bottom of the sea and the boy, with his messy blonde hair and lopsided grin, isn’t here at all.
“That’s it,” he says, hauling me tighter in his skinny arms. “Now kick your legs. Best we get out of the water soon as we can.”
The numb cold of the water has receded along with my adrenaline, leaving every bit of my body aching and sore, but I do as the boy asks, and kick. He does most of the work, hauling me along behind him by the arm as we swim to shore. The waves have calmed as quickly as they’d risen, and whatever ensnared my leg seems to have sunk back into the depths, leaving the waters of the lagoon so smooth, it feels like we’re treading through starlight.
When we reach land, I crawl up onto the beach and collapse face first into the black sand, digging my ice-cold fingers into the warm grit. I retch violently, sea water and whiskey pouring from me in an acidic wave. My throat is raw and though every breath hurts, I count them all until the burn subsides enough to move.
When I manage to flop onto my back, it’s to find the boy watching me with an odd expression. He appears harmless by all accounts, probably only twelve or thirteen-years-old—floppy blonde hair and a mouth of straight white teeth his face hasn’t quite grown into. But something about his eyes leaves me feeling far more chilled than the sea water had.
“Thank you,” I finally say, mostly to break the silence. My voice sounds like it’s been dragged over gravel and probably will for a few days, but if it weren’t for the boy happening by this beach in the middle of the night, far more than my voice would be ruined.
“I got caught by…something—” My head is pounding, and I shake it with a sigh, feeling unmoored. I dig my fingers into thesand in an attempt to ground myself and reorder my thoughts into something remotely understandable. “Something was out there.”
The boy furrows his brow and tilts his head to examine me, as if somehow,Iam far more worrying than whatever lurks in the waters of the lagoon.
“Well, of course there is, miss,” he says, eyeing me like he suspects I may be slow. His accent is thick, reminiscent of somewhere near London, but also odd in its affect. Like something has been hollowed out beneath its surface.
“The better question is what wereyoudoing out there? No one goes swimmin’ in the lagoon. Not ‘less they want to spend eternity with the sirens, cheeky monsters that they are.”
Now it’s my turn to furrow my brow. Before the plague, sailors routinely spoke the lore of the sea, stories of mermaids and krakens alike traded up and down the coast as routinely as their wares. But those stories died along with all the others, and I haven’t heard their like in years. Certainly not from a child.
“What’s your name?”
The boy gives me a warm smile that transforms his face, and I chide myself for being suspicious. He’s so young, and brave enough to venture into the bay in the middle of the night to take his chances with whatever monsters he believes swim there. All to save a complete stranger.
“Jamie,” he replies. His gaze darts nervously to the thick foliage lining the beach.
“Nice to meet you, Jamie. I’m Willa. And thank you again.”
I push myself to standing, wobbling slightly on my feet as I take in my surroundings. The sky is at once lighter and darker here than at home. There is no moon, but more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life. Millions of them shimmer between swirling clouds of celestial dust, deep violets and midnight blues thatlook as if they were painted in giant strokes by the hand of some ancient god.
At the peak shines the same star I held onto as I fell from the roof, the second in a line of seven that shine brighter than the thousands of others. I search the sky for another recognizable constellation, something to indicate where I’ve fallen, but find none that are familiar.
The lagoon is now entirely still, the smooth waters a perfect reflection of the sky above. There’s no sign of whatever grabbed my ankle, or indeed, of any life at all. Perhaps whatever it was slipped between the cage of rock spires surrounding the lagoon and into the sea beyond. Thepurplesea.
I shiver as a soft breeze rustles the foliage behind me, feeling increasingly hysterical by the second.
