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The rowboat cocooned us as best it could, but it wobbled slightly on the arm of the sea monster, the size of which I’d vastly underestimated. Finn knelt us down in the boat, his shaking arms giving me zero hope that we’d actually survive this. “We have to jump and take our chances swimming.”
“Won’t it see us? Won’t it catch us? Won’t it eat us?”
“Yes to all of it, but what choice do we have? Wouldn’t you rather to go out swinging?”
I didn’t have time to sort through my regrets, knowing each second we were still alive was a luxury. “Leave the backpacks here, then. They’ll only slow us down.”
It was the best plan we could come up with, but it didn’t matter. The sea monster started moving west, carrying us on our precarious perch. The tentacle lowered a little when the boat moved unsteadily from side to side, so that now we were only twenty feet above the ocean’s surface. Finn and I were on our knees at the base of the boat, clinging to each other like children who’d once thought themselves warriors. We’d been fighting like plastic toy Army guys, facing foes of equal size. This was unlike anything either of us could stand up against.
“Are you ready to jump?” Finn asked, peering over the edge. His expression hardened as he leaned back to place his chin atop my head. The wind I hadn’t felt much of before whipped at us, due to the increased speed at which we were now moving through the ocean. “Scratch that plan. I can’t jump wide enough to clear his tentacles.”
I glimpsed over the side, swallowing the bile that rose as the stars showed me just enough of the nightmare to keep me in the boat. Underneath us were tentacles thick as roads, winding like blacktop through the water, and stretching out too far around us for us to jump free and land in the ocean. “So this is it? This is how we die?” It wasn’t despair; it was stating a grim fact.
Finn sat down carefully in the boat as the monster moved us far faster through the water than we could ever hope to go on our own. He pulled me into his arms, bracing us against the wind that made me shiver against him. “If it is, then we die together.”
A tear rolled down my cheek, but that was the most I allowed myself to carry on. The moisture was immediately whipped away by the wind, for which I was grateful. “I never got to finish the Mer books I was translating. How does it end? Does Lissima end up with Ricardo?”
Finn cupped my face with one hand to shield me from my wildly flying hair. He stared into my eyes, looking at me like I was something special, like I was worth getting swallowed whole by a sea monster if it meant we were together. He slowly shook his head. “I’m not spoiling the ending for you. We’re going to get out of this somehow. There’ll be no giving up, no saying goodbye. It’s a bump in the road.” He motioned to the space below us. “Bakunawa’s not tearing us apart. He’s saving us, taking us somewhere.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you not give up. He’s a sea serpent, which means he’s got a lair. No one knows where, but I assume he’s taking us there to add us to his collection of bodies.”
Finn was right, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the fact that we were still alive meant that the sea snake had a purpose for us still. Something dinged in my mind. “You said snake, but it looks like he’s got lots of tentacles, like an octopus. Are you sure it’s the right sea monster? Not that it matters. I mean, if you’re being abducted by a sea monster, does it matter which one it is?”
Finn had the wherewithal to chuckle, which either meant he’d gone insane, or the situation wasn’t as dire as I was making it out to be. “He’s got a head like a sigbin, a body like a snake, but his tail’s split into sixteen tentacles.”
“Precious.”
“I’ll get us out of this,” Finn promised, though both of us knew he had no idea how. His eyes searched the ocean for possibilities, but there was nothing in any direction – just the void of the dark swallowed by the ocean.
“I’m sorry, Finn. This was all my bright idea. I just wanted it to be over! I wanted Sama gone, and I didn’t stop to ask if there were any heinous sea monsters before I dragged you into the ocean.” I buried my face in his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“You came to me. You could’ve gone to Kabayo. You know he loves breaking the rules and pissing off the council. He might’ve taken you.”
“I know! And you’re the person I want to save, not the one I want drowning in the middle of the ocean!”
“You wanted to be with me. Maybe not in all the ways I need, but some part of you knew I’d be good for you. You left your fiancé in the dead of night to come to me. You crossed worlds to get to me, but you still can’t admit that you’re in love with me? That it’s me you should be with?”
I kept my face fixed firmly to the side, my cheek buried in his chest so he couldn’t see my guilty expression. “We’re about to die, Finn. This is hardly the time for all that.”
His arm around my back tightened. “This is the only time left for it! This might be all we have, and you’re still lying to yourself? Admit when we’re inches from death that it was worth it! Admit that you needed to see me.”
“Shut up, Finn! This isn’t helping anything.”
His anger rose to a shout. “You might want to marry him, but you want me, too. Admit that I’m about to die because you couldn’t live without me!”
“Stop it! Stop saying it!” I wriggled free of his grip, venturing a few inches further toward the helm, regretting the distance between us the second it made itself known.
“October!” he shouted, his voice booming above the wind that whipped at my hair as I turned to look at him over my shoulder.
My heart pounded for too many reasons, and I knew that whatever I did or didn’t do, I would regret it. The boat shifted, and I lost my footing, tipping toward the helm and smacking my chin on the seat. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I knew I was on the edge of losing my mind into the depths below. My hand was shaking as I gripped the side of the boat, needing something sturdy to hold onto so I didn’t fall apart into a million emotional pieces I’d never be able to stuff back inside.
Before I shattered, Finn was on all fours behind me. With steadier hands than mine, he slid me onto the floor of the rowboat, shielding me from the wind as he rolled me onto my back. His body caged mine in, his eyes holding my fearful gaze as he leaned down to lay atop me and let the boat shield us both from the elements. “Easy now,” he warned, brushing the tangles back from my face. “I’m here.” I don’t know how he found the strength to be tender, but when his knuckle dragged down my cheek, a layer of calm brushed over me, taking my panic down a notch. “No place I’d rather be.”
I reached up and held his face in my hands, tracing the prominent features. They could look deadly in a breath, but always melted into softness for me. “Take me someplace other than this,” I pleaded, tilting my throbbing chin so my lips brushed against his. I wanted to be anywhere that wasn’t here, even if that meant admitting things I wasn’t ready to examine.
“Beg me.”
“What?”
“Beg me to kiss you.”
My lower lip quivered uncertainly, but finally, after all my fighting, my weakness for him won out. “Please, Finn. Please. Take me away from here.”
Finn palmed the back of my hand that rested on his cheek and exhaled a brief smile. “I know just the place.”
With that, I kissed Finn. During what was most certainly our last moments, I chose to leave reality and escape into beauty – however imperfect that paradise might turn out to be.