Page 2 of Gilded Locks
Plunging her hands into the black, icy water that sloshed over the floor, she searched for the tattered rope. Her frozen fingers locked down the moment she grazed its frayed edge, and she yanked hard, angling the rudder to steer her towards what looked like a jetty protruding from a black coast.
The sails were gone, and she wasn’t sure how much of the rudder remained. The waves curled and crashed, pulling her in, but away from the light.
Gone. The light was gone.
All she could see was rain and sleet and endless ocean. Had she imagined it?
“No! I saw it!” She searched the endless black and screamed, “Help me!”
Panic welled up inside of her until she thought she might drown from the desperation spewing out of her in growling profanities, but then she caught sight of salvation again.
“I see it!” She steered the rudder, fighting the urge to squint or blink.
Minutes wore like eons. There was no guarantee she would make it to shore. All she had was a distant light in the endless black to guide her. The horizon didn’t exist. Everything was black. Just bitter cold, endless black.
“Come on!” she snarled, hauling the rope with all of her weight, fighting the current, and willing what was left of this wreckage to take her to shore.
She needed to stand on dry land again. Even if it wasn’t the lavish Isles of Kassel, anything was better than dying at sea on this godforsaken craft.
She hurled her shoes and any other weight overboard, desperately trying to lighten the load. Drifting toward the light, she’d suddenly waft back with the current, so close yet so powerless. If she jumped in, she’d only have minutes before hyperthermia killed her or she drowned. Maybe that was her best hope.
Gray clouds blocked out the stars, hiding the moon and its guiding light. Looming waves gaped like wide yawns on massive inhalations. The ocean was a greedy pig that swallowed any earthly morsel whole, and she was no exception.
The closer she came to the light—to what had to be shore—the choppier the water became. Eyes wide, she saw the power of the black sea as it towered over her, building to terrifying heights, and the choice was made. Thrown overboard, the wave forced her down with little air in her lungs, pummeling her into the sea. A thousand icy blades stabbed into her spine as her air cut off and she swam wildly, too disoriented by the wake to know what direction was up.
Her lungs burned as panic left with her last breath of air. Churning bubbles tickled her frozen face as she kicked wildly toward what she hoped was the surface, and then…oxygen.
She gasped, her airways so tiny she could only sneak a scant breath past the fear clogging her throat. Her legs kicked as the churning waves blinded her. Choppy whitecaps forced her back down as her clothing tangled about her legs, tripping her on nothing.
In that moment, she knew the ocean was alive and it wanted to kill her. Its determination was nothing short of personal, and she nearly surrendered, thinking there might be some peace in giving up, but then her toe hit something hard and solid.
Slippery moss made it impossible to grip, and as another wave crashed over her, plunging her down into the jetties of rock and seaweed, her head bashed on something sharp, and the roaring wash of the sea silenced into a muffled hollow of nothing.
Gasping, she broke the surface as the copper taste of blood mixed with the briny water rusing into her mouth. Sharp jetty smashed into her with bruising force as the relentless waves beat her against the black shores. Breakers tumbled her hard, and she stopped fighting, needing a few seconds to simply breathe.
Drifting, gasping, savoring what were likely her last breaths, a calm washed over her. Perhaps she passed out for a second or a day. Time lost meaning in those last few seconds of life, until true salvation smacked into her.
The slice of sharp shells and barnacles abraded her skin. The pillar came out of nowhere, but as she squinted, she could see that the rotting wood once belonged to a dock that had nearly washed completely away.
A dock meant people. It meant land.
Rejuvenated by hope, she swam as hard as she could toward the battered wood. Another pair of pillars jutted from the surface, which meant the sea was retreating and the ground was rising. Her frozen toes kicked into cross beams below the surface, and she was soon leaping off the muddy sea floor and hurling herself onto wet, withered wood.
“Thank you,” she wept, pressing her chest and cheek to the icy plank as broken sobs bellowed out of her.
Relief swamped her in heavy victory. She could have died then—in peace—simply knowing she made it. But she was a fighter, and fighters didn’t give up.
Violently shaking, frozen to the point of dysfunction, she growled and forced her body upward. “Get up!” she yelled when her legs wouldn’t cooperate.
Unsure where she was, but content she wasn’t drowning in the miserable sea, she used the last of her strength to haul her lower limbs out of the water and fell to her back, panting as the stars came into view through the blurry wash of her tears and the salt of the ocean.
She wanted to lie there forever and never move again, but there wasn’t much time. She wasn’t out of danger yet. If she didn’t find shelter and warmth soon, she was going to die.
Her legs trembled as she abandoned the dock’s dubious safety for solid ground that proved anything but. The earth beneath her feet was more ice than soil, treacherous and unforgiving as the family she’d fled. But it was her lack of balance that threw her more than anything else.
Each weak step forward became a battle against the wind, determined to fling her back toward the water, back toward the boat that had been her only escape from hell. The light she’d spotted had been smudged out by the storm and bare trees.
Bent forward against the cutting gale, she lurched and shivered, the fog of her breath so thick in the wind she could only squint and blindly hope she was heading in the right direction.
