I hear muffled shouts. Cries that come from all around me, all different directions.
“Tesni!”
Samick is calling out for me.
I try to shout back but water sploshes into my mouth, and I’m choking. I’m forced back under, spinning like I’m in a fucking washing machine. I roll and roll and roll—until my face breaks the surface, and I’m sputtering and gasping for air before I’m sucked back under.
I break the surface again—and the world is tumbling darkness. No campfires, no torches, it’s all pitch black.
“Tesni!” His shout bellows through the forest. It’s wrangled, desperate almost.
I try to call out again, but my throat is strangled raw, like it’s been fucked with sandpaper.
I’m gagging in the water, smacking into trees and rocks, and I think I throw up, or that’s water spilling out of me.
Waves must still be breaking in the forest.
The strikes are deafening. Trees are cracking and splitting, the earth trembles under the siege—and the force of wave after wave pushes me further away.
‘Tesni…’
I hardly hear him anymore.
It might just be my mind playing tricks on me.
I’m so far away now, far from the commotion, the cries, the cracking trees…
All I hear now is the water washing me away.
I don’t let it.
The next tree or rock I hit could be the one to crack into my head and end it all.
Too close to the bridge, too close to the end of it all, I can’t let a fucking wave take me out.
Not now.
Not after everything.
I flail through the water, as if I have some sort of control—
But I don’t.
NINETEEN
The water carries me further and further out, until the depths gradually lower, and my body starts dragging over the foliage.
Still, the swell is tumbling me, pushing me over the forest floor.
But it’s slowing down. And I snatch out for anything I can grab onto, reaching out over and over, until my bare, raw hand finally clutches a fistful of shrub.
I hoist myself against the swell and drag my weight upright until I’m on my knees.
Head to toe, I am drenched to the bone. That water spills from all over my shivering body.
I double over—and hack up everything I’ve swallowed. So much icy water regurgitates out of me that, by the time I can pause for a breath, my brain is pulsing in my head.
Dizziness washes over me.
