Girl at Sea (21 page)

the stairs that led down to the second-class compartments. The whining noise was the ship. Its fabric cried and whined.

He had always thought he would know death when it came.

Maybe this was because he had watched his wife die after Marguerite’s birth, and it had seemed so inevitable. A joy such as a child’s birth almost had to be accompanied by a sorrow just as great. Or perhaps it was because he had worked at Pompeii for so long, chipping away the work on one single morning of destruction. He had constantly envisioned that morning in AD 79

when the mountain that sat above the town suddenly exploded, sending a column of ash and fire into the sky, blocking out the sun, raining down rocks and air that boiled the lungs that breathed it.

The shutter had come down on Pompeii, stopping it midday. Its inhabitants had tried to hide in their houses, block it out. But it came.

There was screaming now, cries of both “fire!” and “water!”

He couldn’t tell if this last one was a request or an exclamation.

He stepped back into his room and shut the door. It took some reaching around, but he found and lit the oil lamp that was secured next to his bed. If he survived this, two things would need to come with him. The first was the object that sat on the small desk, wrapped in layers of rough cloth. The second was a small alabaster cameo on a gold chain. This was the face of his daughter, Marguerite. She always gave it to him to take on his travels. “For luck,” she said. “So that you are never alone.”

There was another, louder whine, and the
Bell Star
righted herself, then fell in the other direction, throwing him up against the wall. The bundle slid across the desk, and he just managed to reach over and keep it from falling to the ground.

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“Somewhere safe for you,” he said, taking it in his hands. “You need to go somewhere safe.”

There weren’t many options in his small cabin. The best of them was the space under the heavy dresser that was bolted into the corner. The bundle fit under there snugly.

He sat on the floor next to it, listening to the chaos outside his door grow louder. There was heat under his floor and weirdly cheerful popping noises, a long series of them.

“My dear,” he said to the cameo. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”

The cameo smiled its peaceful, sleepy smile.

“I’ve always wondered how it would be,” he said. “The timing is very bad, though. I’ve just found it. I suppose the gods are unhappy. History wants her secrets kept.”

He was not fearless, but he was resigned. There was no fight he could put up. He would wait for nature and the gods, for history herself, to decide his fate.

176

Rescue

Something was jumping around Clio’s head. It was loud, loud like a horse. A horse was dancing around her head.

Except that wasn’t right. She wasn’t sure where she was for a second, and she hadn’t yet opened her eyes, but she knew that noise couldn’t be a horse. That just didn’t make any sense at all.

It had to be shoes. Very loud shoes. And behind that noise there was a language she didn’t know. Something was being mumbled.

“Clio!”

She opened her eyes to find Martin, Elsa, and Aidan leaning over her.

“Say something,” Aidan demanded. “Clio. Talk. Say something.”

She found the strength to deliver one short, decisive expletive.

“Good,” Aidan said approvingly. “Try to keep talking. Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere,” she gasped. “Legs. Back. Fingers.”

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That was enough talking.

She had known pain before. It had been very painful when she’d gotten hit by the boat. But this—this was something else. This was the pain of something that seemed to
hate
her. Something that was still seeping into her system and growing. It was oozy and wet, yet it burned. The contradiction was so pronounced that it scared her.

Something deeply programmed in Clio’s nervous system told her that this wasn’t good for her, that she needed to be afraid. Her body was shaking, for about six reasons.

In a very loose way, she wondered if she was dying. The thought of dying was less scary somehow. Dying was something that kind of made sense. This pain was confusing.

“Do we have the key to the wheelhouse to call this in?” Aidan asked Martin.

“No. Ben has it. Clio?”

“She can talk,” Aidan said. “But I think she’s in a lot of pain.”

Clio groaned another, slightly higher-pitched affirmative.

“This is useless,” Martin said, clicking off his com. “They’re out of range. We can get her to land, but then we’d have to figure out what to do from there, and it doesn’t look like she can move much. I’ll go and try to find a doctor or someone.”

“I’ll go with you,” Elsa said. “I can do the talking.”

“You’ll stay with her?” Martin said to Aidan.

“I’ll take care of her,” he answered.

“We’ll be right back, Clio,” Elsa said, taking her hand. “Don’t be scared, okay? We’ll bring help.”

They hurried off. She looked up at Aidan. His head was blocking out the moon, but his crazy haircut had picked up the white glow.

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“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice sounding uncertain.

“You’re shivering. Hang on.”

He was right. She was shivering. Aidan vanished for a moment, returning with a white chenille blanket that had been decoratively draped over the end of the sofa. He also had a cushion for her head.

“Listen,” he said, tucking the blanket around her, “I’m going to find out what to do. I’ll be gone for a few minutes. Will you be okay?”

She blinked. The blanket made things just a shade better. At least it felt like she wasn’t alone and exposed. In some ways, though, it made the pain even more clear.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I promise I won’t be long.”

Clio lay there on the wet deck, cocooned in her little throw blanket, staring up at the sky. The air suddenly stank of fish.

Aidan soon returned with the biggest kettle from the galley.

He was carrying it carefully by the handle.

“This is hot water,” he said, setting it down. “It’s really hot, but it should take away some of the immediate pain. I’m going to pour this on you, okay? I’m going to start with your legs.”

She looked at him and nodded slightly. He peeled off the blanket and threw it to the side. Clio felt the scalding water dumping over her, starting around the waist and going right down to her feet. It pooled around her, soaking the cushion under her head. After the first burn, she noticed that it did help.

She heard a strange sound and realized that she was making a low wailing noise.

“I’m going to get some more,” he said.

He returned with another potful and rolled her over. She put 179

her face down into the pooled water. It gurgled up her nose. She felt her shirt being pulled up a little and the water dropping onto the small of her back.

“God,” he said. “They really got you. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Can I go inside?” she asked. Her voice sounded small and weak. Kind of pathetic.

“Sure,” he said. “Can you get up? Forget it. Here.”

Before she could even try, his arms were underneath her. She was deadweight, but he picked her up without too much difficulty and got her through the glass doors. In her miserable state, the random thought that passed through Clio’s head was,
I guess this is my turn to get picked up.

It was way too cold and dark in the living room, and the leather sofa he set her on felt like ice. Her skin stuck to it. She felt welts popping up all over her body.

“Blanket,” she mumbled. She didn’t mean to sound so blunt, but it was all she could really manage. She couldn’t be subtle and conversational. She had been reduced to a Franken-Clio level of speech. He rushed back out and got the blanket.

“It’s all wet,” he said. “I’ll go get the one off your bed.”

He brought Elsa’s, which struck her as odd. But it wasn’t like he should have known which of the two was hers. It smelled like Elsa too, an herbal smell, kind of like chamomile. He put it over her and switched on some of the lights.

Her body was coming back to life now. The pain was still strong, but the warm blanket that smelled of Elsa, the light—it all made her feel more human. A wellspring of emotion and fear, something huge that she hadn’t felt since she was little, suddenly 180

blossomed inside her. She wanted her father. She wanted her mom. She wanted her cat.

She tried not to let it happen, but it was useless. There was way too much inside her—too many thoughts, too much fear, too much jellyfish. It was about to come out whether she wanted it to or not. She pressed herself hard into the crease of the sofa in the hopes that it might swallow her. Maybe there was a secret room in there where she could quietly die on her own. She could not lose it in front of Aidan. Enough was going wrong at this moment.

“Clio?” he asked.

This, apparently, was the cue for the crying to begin. In a second, she was going all out, her face adhering to the leather.

There was no movement from Aidan for a moment or two, then Clio felt him sit down on the sofa a few inches away from her head. Clio balled up one of her fists and managed to stick it into her eyes, as if that might make them dry.

“I’m . . . fine,” she gasped.

“Yeah,” he said, in his usual Aidan tone. “I can see that.”

Clio took in a huge breath and tried to hold it. She managed to stop the tears for a few seconds and pull up her head.

“Fine . . .” she mumbled again.

He moved over so when she put her head down, it landed in his lap, just above the knees.

“Don’t you ever give up?” he said, more quietly this time.

“You’re hurt. Just cry, okay?”

It was so soft and matter-of-fact, so not Aidan-like, that it caught her off guard. So she did. In big, gasping sobs. She soaked his thick khaki shorts. All the while, Aidan kept one hand on the 181

back of her head, moving it just a little, in a tiny circle. He didn’t say anything. He just kept her there until she had run out of the big stuff and was reduced to some dribbling and hiccups.

When she felt like she had gained a little control over herself, she looked up cautiously. He was leaning against the armrest and looking down at her, his sharp features still.

“Can I have water?” she croaked.

He slid back down so that he could go to the galley and get her a glass. She tried to wipe off her face. She was a mess—tears dripping down her chin, her nose running. She took the glass looking down so that he couldn’t see all of this, but he sat down on the floor next to her, just at eye level.

“Here,” he said, passing her a paper towel.

She wiped at her nose quickly, but that just made it run more.

It was like a busted pipe of goo. There had to be a way of recovering from this.

“I got smacked,” she said, keeping her face in the towel. “Fifty points.”

“Smacked?”

“A group of jellyfish is called a smack,” she said, her voice cracking a bit. “You know, in Dive!? If you go into one, you get smacked. It costs you fifty points.”

Silence. She finished wiping as best she could and sipped her water.

“Why are you being so nice?” she said.

“Don’t sound so shocked,” he said with a smirk. “Hasn’t my natural charm rubbed off on you yet?”

“That was charm?” she asked. “I thought it was a sun rash.”

He let out a sigh and shook his head. “Would you stop?” he 182

said. “I know you’re tough. I know you think I’m an asshole. But can we just let it go for a minute?”

Again his directness put her to shame. She felt her face flush.

It was impossible to tell if it was embarrassment or if it was just falling in line with the rest of her body.

“Sorry,” she finally said. “I thought I was going to drown. I don’t know how I made it back.”

“Stubbornness,” he answered, a little too quickly. “
Or
adrenaline. I think some people
would
have drowned.”

A few leftover tears trickled down her face. He rubbed them off with his thumb.

“Thanks,” she finally said.

“Don’t worry about it.”