Page 11 of A Promise of Peridot
“Dive for the funnel,” a guard instructed us. “It’s three feet down. Once in, swim hard and try to run when you see land.”
“Run?” asked Leigh. “Run how?”
But he was already giving the same brusque directives to the passengers behind us.
Cold, salty air stung my face as we walked across the plank they had affixed to the stern, and I stared down at the churning waves below, freezing and deep, with foamy little caps sloshing against one another.
Fear was beginning to distort my vision. Maybe Leigh and I could just keep sailing. Take this ship and sail and sail and never return.
“Ready?” Leigh’s voice punched through my dread.
We gulped in twin gasps of air before jumping from the platform.
Before I hit the water, one singular image flashed in my mind—
My mother’s face, devoid of life.
My brain felt the cold before my body. So much colder—I knew it wassomuch colder than I had been expecting. Only moments later did my limbs feel the stabbing sharpness of being enveloped by a biting, bitter sea. I tried to calm my panicky heart—to shake the strange, intrusive memory of my mother. We had to swim. Despite the sting of salt in my eyes and the chattering of my teeth, I pushed Leigh forward.
The ocean was blurry and endlessly deep, but I could see the open mouth of the funnel below us, like a blown-glass vase,opening wide and growing slimmer. We swam toward it without looking back.
The first twinge of the need to breathe rapped at my lungs. To suck in a mouthful of air—not water—but I ignored it. Maybe I could swim the whole length of the funnel in one breath. I had been able to stay under the longest of my siblings when we were younger and played in chilly, rocky ponds.
Leigh and I swam deeper, and once we were through the mouth, the funnel carried us more forcefully down into the depths of the sea. Past schools of silver fish weaving in and out of pocked reefs of coral and porous sponge. Flatter, skinnier fish laced through emerald seaweed that swayed with the current, dusted in sparkling flecks of sand. The lower the funnel shot us, the clearer and colder the water became.
But now my lungs were on fire. I had to suck in a breath, to ease the burning, the pressure building in my chest. Leigh was the epitome of calm, watching two sea turtles pass us by, reaching to touch their marbled backs. She had to be breathing just fine. And I trusted Mari, didn’t I? Still, I was terrified that gulp of air on the ship had been my last.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t hold out another minute, not another second—
My lungs—
My chestached.
Slowly—ever so slowly—I inhaled through my nose. The water dissolved as I breathed in pure oxygen. I tried again. A tentative mouthful of briny ocean water this time. But I was met with the same result. No matter how much water I took in, by the time it reached my lungs it had evaporated into air. I breathed deeply andswam with more confidence through the sheer tunnel of glasslike water, my limbs loosening with each inhalation.
The sea around us grew dark as ink as we dove toward the ocean floor. Pearly shells had lost the glint of the sun above, and I couldn’t tell the color of the starfish or anemones that lay still in the sandy depths. We swam faster—I wasn’t sure if the tunnel was only made of water, or some more protective magic, but I wasn’t going to wait around and find out between the jaws of a shark.
The funnel fed us through a rocky, pitch-black cave. Finally, Leigh’s fingers squeezed mine with unmistakable fear, the crescents of her nails digging into the back of my hand. I tried to squeeze back in reassurance, but we could no longer see the ship’s other passengers ahead of us, and the water had grown so cold my teeth were chattering.
I wanted out now, too.
I wanted clean, real air in my lungs. My chest was trembling, from cold or alarm I couldn’t tell.
We rushed through the water at a breakneck pace, so fast I realized it wasn’t our swimming. It was the funnel... purging us. Drowning in pitch-black darkness, I could feel the pressure of it in my eardrums, pushing into my eye sockets and popping in my jaw. Leigh’s hand was slipping from mine, the suction of the water tearing us from each other. I strained for her, clawed at her, sucking in strange salty air, eyes sealed shut by sheer force, choking on—
We tumbled onto a hot bed of sand with asplat. The grains ripped at my knees and cheeks, my dress whipped up in a frenzy, my hair a web I could barely see through.
But I sucked in a lungful of warm air.
Fresh air.Realair.
And the heat was dry and gentle, different from the oppressive humidity and floral breeze of Peridot—different from anything I had ever felt. Leigh had landed on top of me, her elbow implanted in my windpipe. Any fear that spiked inside me was washed away by her childlike giggle.
Knowing she was unscathed, I scooped her off me and righted myself, depositing her onto warm sand, before I spat the grains back onto the beach from where they had come. Unsatisfied, I wiped my tongue on the rough wool of my sleeve.
“Woah,” Leigh breathed.
I took in the long, sandy stretch of land before me, bordered by a bustling harbor of vivid blue. Ships of every shape and size—sailboats and tugboats and dinghies—adorned the crush of turquoise waves, milling about and narrowly passing by one another. The harbor was bustling. Men and women shouted from boat to boat, lazing their feet in the water, playing instruments, dropping anchors. It was overwhelming, the sounds, the textures, the brightness, after almost two weeks on a silent, bleak ship. There were more people in this harbor alone than had been in all of Abbington.
