Together they shoved the rowboat over the edge. It hit the water with a heavythwack.
“Here we go.” Opal exhaled slowly, shaking out her limbs. “No big deal. No big deal.”
With an oar tucked under her arm, she stepped off the ledge.
Slap-cold, breath gone.
Opal’s body shrieked with the shock of the icy water. She sank like a stone, feeling the cove surge over her. Swallowing her.
She heard a splash nearby.Emma?
And another.Tyler?
Or was that something else?
Opal surfaced. The boat was ahead, bobbing right side up, appearing seaworthy despite its peeling boards. Opal swam awkwardly, dragging the oar, the water so frigid she couldn’t call out.
Opal hauled herself aboard, being careful not to capsize the vessel. A moment later a slender hand grabbed the opposite rail. Opal helped Emma scramble up into the boat.
“W-where’s your o-oar?” Opal chattered as Emma collapsed into a ball, her blond hair soaked and dripping.
“I’ve got it!” Tyler shouted from somewhere near the stern.“Get me out!Oh please, get me out! I think something’s in here with me!”
The top of a paddle appeared. Opal wobbled forward and snagged it. Together with Emma, they pulled Tyler up as he half climbed, half somersaulted to safety.
“We made it,” Opal breathed. She fit her oar in a worn bracket and dipped its blade into the glass-like water. “Let’s go.”
Emma rubbed the back of her neck. “Sure, but where to?”
Opal shrugged, anxious to bedoingrather than thinking. “Around. In circles. Back and forth. I don’t know, but we need tofind Nico.”
“One of the greatest plans ever formed,” Tyler muttered, but he fit the second oar.
Emma moved to a lookout position in the bow and, slowly, gracelessly, the boat slid forward. It took Tyler and Opal a minute to find their rhythm, but soon they were pulling in time, gliding across the water.
“Nico!” Emma shouted. “Nico, where are you?!”
Tyler winced with every call, but didn’t bring up the Beast again. “Should we stick close to shore, or crisscross the inlet?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Opal admitted. Up close, the cove was dark and murky, with strange sounds and odd ripples. Shadows moved in the corner of her eye. The fog swirled everywhere.
Tyler grunted. “We’re already headed toward the center, so maybe keep going? Nico might hear us sooner.”
Opal glanced up, then did a double take, nearly losing her oar. Emma shouted at the same moment, pointing to a dark shape looming in the leaden half-light.
An island rose out of the mists, ringed with brooding forest.
Opal had never heard anyone mention an island in Still Cove before.
Nico.Surely he’d have gone for that.
Tyler swallowed, half rising from his bench to stare. “Does … does that look like the kind of place where a giant sea monster might live?”
Emma sucked on her teeth. “It looks like where King Kong lives.”
Icy fingers traced down Opal’s spine. Her heart sped up as something sang through her, like the echo of a strange note. This island felt … wild. Untamed. Unknowable. Every instinct in her body sounded the alarm at once.
“If I were stuck in the water,” Opal said, “that’s where I’d go.”
