Chapter 12

Kristyl failed to pull them inside in time, and that failure saved their lives… because the second boat came down on top of them and smashed the cabin, like, Vasiht’h thought in horror, a knife smearing butter across a cutting board. He was still staring at the wreckage when the Friendly Mermaid threw him off the deck. Far, far off the deck into the heaving violence of a storm-churned ocean.

Vasiht’h liked swimming.

Nothing in this sea permitted swimming.

The two life vests around his body kept bobbing him to the surface, where he gulped in great lungfuls of air before the wind and waves shoved him back under, and none of that mattered as much as his need to get far far away from the boat. He didn’t know what instinct spurred him, nor did it matter how little progress he was making. It was imperative that he not be anywhere near the wreckage. Because if it sank… and if in sinking, it sucked the water around it after it, to fill in the space where it once was…

Vasiht’h padded, barely able to see through the wall of rain, and the Goddess’s name was a constant litany in his head.

To come to Tsera Nova to die! Ridiculous! He hadn’t solved his brothers’ problems yet! Hadn’t called Sehvi back! Wouldn’t be there on the shore to hear how Jahir’s test had gone!

Vasiht’h groaned. Jahir.

He thrashed on, desperate and adrenalized, and behind him through the howl of the wind he heard a terrifying groan.

Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back

He looked over his shoulder, and watched the rain-smudged silhouette of the two boats capsizing.

How many people were going down with them?

Should he go back?

Lightning cracked, so close he yelled, swallowed water, vanished under the waves, popped back up again. You can’t do anything to save them. You can barely keep your own head up.

Swim, something whispered, and he flailed on.

It felt ridiculous that pummeled by waves and half-drowned, he could still be worrying about whether he was failing someone. Himself. The Goddess. The people who might still be alive. His family. Bret, for Her sake. But he was convinced he was going to die, so why wouldn’t he review his own faults in his last moments? Think loving thoughts of his family? Wish badly he had loved them more?

Think of Jahir?

Oh, Jahir!

The next wave smashed him down so hard something gave in a wing, and a pain brighter than the sun glimpsed between clouds made him yelp. Just a wing, I can get by without a wing, just paddle, keep paddling.

The broken limb no longer folded, though, and the waves kept smacking it. He thought he lost a few moments of consciousness, maybe more than once, but kept forcing himself awake. If he passed out in this, and stayed that way…

Without the life vests, I would have already been dead.

If he lived through this, he would owe Kristyl his life.

If he lived through this.

He had to live through this.

If he could breathe without inhaling water.

If he could swim and make some progress. Any kind of progress.

If his broken wing wouldn’t also tear along the wing vane, now that the waves had gotten hold of it, like some kind of creature worrying at a piece of meat….

Oh Goddess but that hurt!

And now, of course, he was bleeding. Did marine predators hunt in this kind of storm? Wouldn’t that be perfect… to survive drowning, only to be eaten?

Something nudged his lower leg. He retracted it instantly, but again, something bumped him. Front paw this time. Vasiht’h sprang his claws. He wasn’t going to die without a fight.

In front of him… a familiar head, barely visible in the torrential rain. He almost couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Romeo?” he asked, astonished, the words lost in the gale.

Another head rose alongside, a sleek gray streak. One of the dolphins from the show. Again, something brushed his side. This time, Vasiht’h grabbed for the fin and held tight. The dolphin seemed to wait for him to settle—as best he could in the churn—and then began towing him.

“This is great,” Vasiht’h gasped against the dolphin’s side. “I really appreciate the help, but it’s not going to matter if we don’t end up somewhere.”

No answer but lightning and the terrifying crash of thunder nearby. “All right, so no longer going to die by shark, or drowning, or being sucked under by the boat. Electrocution, though. Haven’t solved that.”

The dolphin kept pulling him. Vasiht’h didn’t know where the sea lion was, except that he couldn’t see anything through the noise, the waves, the rain, the everything.

I thought Selnor was the worst day in my life. I wasn’t asking for things to compare it to! Head ducked against the dolphin, Vasiht’h thought, Oh Goddess, I’ll never ask for another thing in my life but I don’t want to die here!

The dolphin bumped into something. Looking up, Vasiht’h found an inflatable life raft, its rain-dulled orange sides the brightest thing in sight. Someone looked over the side and called, “Hey, hey, the critters brought us someone else!” One of the Harat-Shar. Kristyl’s Harat-Shar. The tigraine leaned over and bellowed over the wind, “Come on!”

“I don’t know if I’ll fit!” Vasiht’h answered.

“You’ll fit, damn it! We’re not leaving anyone behind! Heave!” This to someone in the drenched uniform of one of the Mermaid’s crew, who grabbed Vasiht’h’s torso.

“Get your claws into it,” she yelled. “It’s tough enough to take it!”

How they grappled him onto the raft, Vasiht’h had no idea. But they managed, and the raft, rated for a third the boat’s capacity, was large enough for him despite the number of people already on it. Far more than he’d expected… far fewer than he wanted to see. Had the rest died? Or were there other rafts like this? If the sea creatures were helping find the stragglers in the water…

“Just lie down,” the Mermaid’s crewwoman shouted. “I’ll bind up your wing.”

“All right,” Vasiht’h answered, and discovered he was sobbing. “All right. Yes. Thank you.”

Sitting still for that was almost impossible. The raft’s floor was stiff but not hard, and the waves kept tossing them around. He feared he’d be thrown off, in fact, until he realized someone had snapped a clip to his life vest. The woman at work on him kept yelling something over the noise: apologies, he thought. But the process took longer than he wanted, and hurt like nothing he’d ever felt, and he was sure he did pass out at least once.

When he woke, it was to the same nightmare, except they were helping someone else onto the boat, and it broke his heart because it was Keridwyn, Keridwyn without her elderly husband, and he had to watch her scan the boat’s numbers for his face before crumpling. Unconsciousness seemed better than this, but:

“Here,” the tigraine yelled into the wind, pushing him toward the back of the raft. “You watch that quarter. If you see a fin or a sea lion head, wave so they can see you!”

Saying that if the creatures couldn’t see the bright orange raft, one person waving in this torrential downpour wouldn’t make much difference… he couldn’t do it. His real role was to help anyone the dolphins brought out of the water. He could do that, Goddess willing. Please, he thought to Her. Bring us more people.

And then there was a time interminable. Minutes? Hours? A day? Vasiht’h squinted into the dark, clinging to his corner of the raft, scanning for a bobbing head, a disturbance in the water, an arm, a fin, anything. The raft had caught a current and was traveling, but where, he had no idea; he’d lost all sense of direction. Maybe it was carrying them further out to sea? Did it matter? His life had narrowed to one breath, then another, to being drenched from pelt to skin, to the pounding pain in his side where his wing was bound. They rescued one more swimmer, then another. And the storm never seemed to cease.

It couldn’t last forever. No storm did. If they could just hold on, it would pass. Things had to get better.

He was chanting that in his head when the raft hit something and flung them all off it, and he was airborne while thinking, numb, that they were all about to die.

…and then the clip jerked him back—

…and he hit the ground. The ground.

That was his first thought, before something ripped along his side, and his next thought was obliterated by an inner howl. He wanted to curl into a ball and die, but the rain kept lashing him and the wind pulling at his body, and then someone was shaking him. The crewmember from the Mermaid. “…walk, can you walk?”

“Yes,” he said from between gritted teeth. “I think.”

The woman stayed long enough to help him stumble upright before limping off in search of other survivors. Presumably. There had to be other survivors? He followed her progress, thought that if she could drag her probably-broken leg after her in search of other people, he could too. They’d been thrown onto what looked like a beach? But it was too dark for him to see anything except the bulk of some kind of promontory behind them. So he hobbled along the shoreline, toward the only vivid color in sight: the orange raft, which had been crushed against something hard enough to deflate. He didn’t want to think about what that might have done to anybody trapped in it.

The first person he found he didn’t recognize. An Asanii, maybe from another boat? He helped the man stand and directed him toward the raft before continuing along the beach, bending into the wind and wiping the water from his eyes, over and over. The second he found was Keridwen, and she was unconscious. He couldn’t tell if she was hurt… he could, though, pick her up, because she weighed as little as a half-grown child. He ignored the pounding of his heart and the ache in his side as he carried her back, her sopping tail smacking against his forelegs with every lurching step.

“That’s good,” the crewmember shouted through the gale. “Don’t go back out, I’ll cover the rest.” She pointed. “We’re going that way.”

He wanted to ask why, but it was too much effort. He had a direction, someone to help, and a group to follow, so he did, trudging along the ragged line of survivors.

Vasiht’h kept walking. And walking. Rearranged Keridwen when his arms started complaining. Rearranged her again, wondering how she’d gotten so heavy. Kept walking. Stared at the person in front of him. Kept walking…

Stopped.

“In, in, in,” the crewmember chanted, and they obeyed, passing through a door set into a stone wall and…

Then there was light. And quiet. He was dripping, and no longer cold, and no longer battered by the wall of noise and pressure outside.

“You made it!” a voice cried, and then Kristyl descended on him and hugged him.

“Here, let me take her,” someone said, prying the unconscious Seersa from his arms. “There are some medical supplies here, we’ll stabilize her.”

“Are you hurt?” Kristyl added, looking past his shoulders. “What… that looks awful. But not serious?”

He looked past his torso at his barrel, found the poorly-splinted wing. But Kristyl was looking at the other side, where he’d lost the skin on his ribs. She was right, though. Maybe? It was starting to drip.

“We’d better get you sewn up. Come on.”

‘Here’ was the control center for Serenity Palms island, a bunker tucked into the rock that tourists climbed to reach the lookout point. It was already full of refugees from the storm: not just those on the boats, Vasiht’h divined by listening, but visitors to the island who’d been taken by surprise by the weather. A good number of them had escaped down the bridge before the wind had made it impassable, though a handful of those were missing. Possibly. Communications was spotty.

“But what happened?” Vasiht’h asked Kristyl once he’d had his rips sealed and his wing properly bound. “What… where did it come from?”

The human was sitting beside him, staring at the satellite image of their location. “No one knows. They’ve been trying to contact the weather station, but no one’s answering. And I mean no one, even the orbital station general. It looks like outbound traffic’s stopped up, though we’re still receiving some data.” She nodded at the image: the cloud cover on it wasn’t moving fluidly, the way Vasiht’h was used to, but in jumps and starts. What he saw there, though…

“What is that?” he breathed.

“That’s a hurricane,” Kristyl said, matter-of-factly. “And it’s on its way here.”

“Here?” Vasiht’h repeated, dumbly. “To the island?”

“And then past it to the coast, yes.” Kristyl smiled a little. “I’m sure the buildings will be fine, but all the nice landscaping’s going to get pulled up by the roots. Nothing with an eyewall that well-defined is weak.”

“But… a hurricane? On Tsera Nova? They were supposed to have…” Vasiht’h waved a hand. “Things. To stop that.”

“Yes, well.” Kristyl’s smile grew mordant. “I guess sometimes when humans try great things, they fail at them.”

At the front of the room, an Asanii in a staff uniform had climbed onto a chair. “All right, everyone! Listen up! I’ve squeezed some messages in and out, and we’ve got a big storm heading our way. It’ll roll right over us… we’re safe in here. So don’t worry about that.” He drew in a deep breath. “Having said that, though… we have less than an hour to check the rest of this island for survivors. People who might have been beached on rafts, or gotten lost, or found a hiding spot good enough for what we’re experiencing now. It’s not going to be good enough for what’s coming our way.” He scanned the silent room. “Technically what I’m about to ask goes against our safety policies, and I shouldn’t be doing it. And you should absolutely not feel obligated to volunteer. But if you’d like to help us canvas the island for stragglers and direct them here….”

Kristyl slid off her chair. “Count me in!” she called over the heads of the others.

“It’ll be dangerous,” the staffer said.

“Really?” she answered, with a tired smile. “I would never have guessed.”

“Ha, right. Not too obvious, is it.” He smiled, wan. “Thank you for volunteering. I’ve got short-range telegems, so you’ll know when you need to make it back, and be able to get directions if you get lost, or be able to report people who are too injured for you to carry.” He paused. “But you’ll need a partner. No one goes out alone in this. Teams, only.”

“I’ll go with her.”

Was that his voice? It was. Vasiht’h finished, “I’ve got a long back. It’s good for carrying people.”