The Explorer's Apprentice

86:Waiting

I only own Marley

Marley Faulkner 

Water hits Marley like a thousand teeth scraping against her skin. It completely consumes her, it’s everywhere. All she breathes is salt, all she sees is salt. She feels it trickle down her throat, scrape down her nose. When she coughs, the sea is all she tastes.

She kicks, her long legs feeling clumsy and unaccustomed to making swift movements in a liquid environment. She clutches onto Jack’s hand—the feeling of skin completely glorious. She can’t see him anywhere, all she sees is blackness, but the feel of him keeps her kicking.

Water is a raging tornado that surges and pulses around her, or a great and powerful villain that knows she isn’t dead—and won’t rest until she is. Marley’s head begins to feel light and it’s as if there’s a fire in her tight chest. Everything feels numb. Water is winning the battle.

Her hand begins to slip as the sea rips her and Jack apart. She reaches with all of her might, all of her soul, but it seems like the further she stretches the more she is torn away. She wants to scream, but water fills her chest.

Within seconds both of her hands are empty and Marley’s heart rages with panic. She keeps reaching, her hand gaping at empty space. Her lungs explode. Her legs keep kicking, her hand remains outstretched.  When she finally resurfaces it doesn’t even feel real at first. Cold air smacks her face like the fist of God. The screams of thousands erupt from around her. Her very bones continue to shudder, like there’s an earthquake in her spirit. But everything feels too much like a nightmare for her to believe.

“Jack!” Her screams are swallowed up by the cries of others, her voice seeming like nothing but a whisper among the crowd. She looks to her left, to her right, her vision blurring. Little waves brush up against her face. She spits out salt. “JACK!” Any minute now, she’s going to wake up. Any minute now. She’s sure of it.

 Bodies encircle around her. She can’t even tell the living from the dead, there’s so many of both. The ocean is scattered with thousands of people.  Everywhere she looks; there are people, all looking for or being looked for by someone. The black water is stained scarlet. She can’t feel her legs, and she uses only her arms to pull herself forward. “JACK!”

People are drowning. Water fills their noses, eyes, mouths. Water fills their minds, racks their brains with panic and fear, like a fever. They use anything to keep themselves afloat. Driftwood, dead bodies. Live passengers.

Marley feels strong hands atop her head, forcing her down. Her mouth fills with sea, and when she bobs back up again, she’s forced back under. She hardly even has enough time to scream, or see the face of her insane torturer.  “No!” She can’t breathe. She can’t think. “Jack!”

“Rose!”

Her heart, as it’s forced underwater for a fourth time, leaps for joy.

“Get off her!”

But the man doesn’t even hear Jack. His mind is too far away. Marley wonders who he was only hours before. Perhaps a father.

“Get off!” One punch, two, three, to the man’s wild face until he’s forced to let Marley free from his grip. Marley isn’t even sure of where he drifts off to, then. All she sees is Jack’s face, his eyes. There are sunsets in them, beautiful ones that fill the sky. There's so much they hold.

Reason number sixteen: your eyes.

“Rose!” She loves the sound of her on his tongue. She reaches for him and his embrace feels warm despite the cold around her. “Swim, Rose, I need you to swim!”

She takes his hand and together they move forward. Marley can feel her hair thicken within the frosty air. Her legs are like dead weight as the cold begins to take hold of them with the unbelievable power of a curse. People push against her, arms and legs flailing in all sorts of uncomfortable directions.

“Where are we going?!” Speaking, in itself, is a miracle. Water splashes into her throat with each breath she takes.

“Almost there! Just swim!”

She can’t even feel her own flesh. When she runs her free hand through the water, or when she touches her own cheek, both feel the same. Both feel dead.

“Here!” Jack stops at a large, floating piece of driftwood before them. “Get on it.” If Marley squints carefully, she can make out the elaborate carvings on the wood. Perhaps it was a door.

Her arms wobble as she lifts herself up. Everything aches. Everything stings with raw cold. The old door bobs, up and down, up and down, up and down...under her weight. For a moment she thinks it’ll completely tip over, but it doesn’t.

Jack reaches up to steady himself on. His shirt is so soaked that it’s like he’s not even wearing one. She can see the outline of his strong muscles, and if she closes her eyes, she can remember what they feel like.

The door begins to tip, thrusting Marley into the ocean.

Jack lets go. “Stay on,” he tells her. His voice is so breathy. It sounds as if there are a thousand bricks atop his chest. Marley reaches for the door and starts to pull herself on once more. Her fingers tremble. She can’t get them to stop. She feels Jack’s hand on her back, helping her back up. How sturdy he is. How determined.

Reason number seventeen: your strength.

He makes his way over to the end of the door, his face turned to her own her own. His skin is pale. His lips are black. The moon reflects across his eyes. He puts both hands atop the door, resting them there. Little slices of silver encircle his purple wrists. “We’ll be all right now,” he says, his voice trembling.

Marley keeps thinking of the carnival because of all the achingly loud screams. The carnival and the thousands of dying passengers—it’s amazing how similar they sound. The last time she went was when she was twelve, with her uncle Guard and Kate. She can still smell candy apples and roasted pecans and cotton candy. She can still see the blinking game lights and the bright faces of full children, and she can still hear the screams—happy screams—of those riding the roller-coasters. She’s so close to the memory, she can feel it.

“Nah, we’ll do it.” Jack says, and his tone is promising. “We’ll drink cheap beer, we’ll ride on the roller-coaster ‘till we throw up—“

She breaks in with her own laughter, hard and loud and she can feel it in the pit of her belly.

To the far left of Marley a ship guard blows a whistle, over and over.  She and Jack watch him for minutes. “Get on,” he gasps, “The boat!” Whistle…whistle… Insanity that comes with disaster is a funny thing. 

Jack turns away and strains his neck ahead of her, gazing out onto a point she cannot see. She wants to ask him what he’s looking for, but talking is too hard, and the words stay trapped in her wobbly throat.

“The boats…. They’re coming back for us, Rose.” He tells her. The corner of his black lips turn up. Almost everything around her seems to be in black and white. Skin is pale as parchment, mouths and the sky and the sea are black. But his eyes are still so blue. “Just hold on… a little bit longer.”

Reason number eighteen: hope. You have hope.

“They uh…they had to…to wait for the suction, of the boat…you know…” His voice is like a thousand falling pieces of china. Breaking. “But…now they’ll be coming back.”

Marley used to give swim lessons at her community pool back in Washington. Sometimes she’d have to wake up early for them, early enough that the sun hadn’t come out and the water was cold. But at least she could still feel her waist.

I do not want to rely on people. I do not want to put my life in the hands of those in charge, like ship guards, who are supposed to help me. Because how many of these people have let me down? Marley loses track at nineteen.