Now You See Me

Thirty-Seven: Forewarned Is Forearmed

My alarm the next day felt like a punch in the face.

Incidentally, that was exactly what it was.

I sat bolt upright, greeted by a view of water made soupy with disturbed silt, and within that cloud I could just make out Chris's flailing limbs. An ache was spreading from my cheekbone outwards, towards my ear and the bridge of my nose, where one of those limbs had dealt me a not-inconsiderable blow.

"Chris!" I said, and just talking made my cheek hurt. I swam upwards above the sand cloud, and then arced down into it to try and pin him in a way that reduced my chances of further damage. I managed to grab one hand before getting gashed in the side with the other, at the same time as his tail came out of nowhere to deal me a bone-shaking knock to the hips. I cried out, searching blindly for the other arm and finally finding it, pinning both back to the sea floor before using my own tail to keep his body still.

He seemed to wake up at that moment, falling abruptly still and quiet. For a few moments, the settling sand was the only thing that moved. Then he began to shake, with rattling sobs so wrenching I was sure they were going to show up in my dreams, and not the good ones.

When I was sure he was awake, and subdued enough to not continue beating me bloody, I let go of him. His hands trailed after me as I rose, as if lighter for being released, and then drifted back down again to rest at his sides. The look on his face was of utter helplessness.

"Nightmare?" I inquired, settling beside him. A thin ribbon of blood followed me down before dispersing into the water.

His breath caught as he nodded.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I got a withering look for my pains, which withered in turn when he spotted the damage he'd done. His eyes widened; he looked at the bruise on my face, the bleeding cuts in my side. He gulped – and looked remarkably like an actual fish as he did so – before opening his mouth. Then, with just as much stalling, he closed it again with a snap.

"Don't worry about it," I said. I absently traced the thin red line from Rella's knife on my forearm as I spoke. "It doesn't hurt."

It was a lie; he knew it and so did I. But between us, sorry didn't seem to cut it anymore since it never actually changed anything in the end. So he stayed silent and looked down at his lap as he sat up, while I made a fruitless attempt at staunching the bleeding.

"We need to eat," I said. It had stopped eventually, but I doubted it was due to my efforts. I looked around. All around us I saw sand, arranged in perfect ridges all over, except for where we'd spent the night. The closest thing to food was a small patch of hair-like stringy weeds that lay a few feet from my hand.

"We need to keep swimming. We'll come across something at some point," Chris said. "There's no point hanging around where there clearly isn't anything."

I rose slowly in the water with him following me. He was still unable to meet my gaze when he drew parallel.

"Which way were we going?" I asked, suddenly disorientated. The seascape looked exactly the same in both directions. I'd been ignoring my inbuilt compass, apparently to our detriment, because for the life of me I couldn't remember which way we'd been headed.

West, Damien. Leia's sleepy voice entered my thoughts. She yawned. Feila's taking over for a while, sailor, if that's okay with you. I'm bushed.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you." I couldn't make it heartfelt enough through my own exhaustion. Despite the night's sleep, I was weak; food deprivation and blood loss had taken their toll. I wasn't sure what I was running on now, but it wasn't genuine energy, I knew that much.