Page 57 of Dark Water Daughter

SAMUEL

In the midst of the storm, I foresaw Fisher’s death. The vision punched into my skull, leaving my inner eye filled with her motionless body, drifting into oppressive silence below roiling waves.

The bosun’s whistle shrilled, tugging me back into themoment—thewind and the waves and the tossing ship. Above me, sailors battled to lash the thundering foresail as their comrades hauled, yells and chanting almost drowned by the storm.

Then, as I had known it would, a shadow toppled from the rigging. I could not hear their shout, but I felt their ribs crack on a yard. I would have felt the crack of their skull hitting the rail too, but one leg snagged in the braces. Stunned and limp, they swung high above the deck.

I bolted, blood roaring in my ears, and stopped just under the limp figure. “Helena!”

There was no reply and I stared, open-mouthed, into the snow. A young man’s face blurred over me, short hair frozen to his cap, arms dangling. He was unconscious, and he was not Fisher.

My thoughts skipped wildly. I had to find the woman,now, but I could not leave this man to die. The sailors around him had already scattered, fighting to keep themselves aloft in the tempest. Perhaps they had not even seen their comrade fall.

“Man in peril!” I bellowed to them, pushing my hat back and pointing to the injured crewman. The wind stole my words away but I kept shouting. “Secure him, now!”

There was no time to see if anyone heard me. I staggered as a rogue swell struckHart. Screams rose above the howl of the wind and the whole ship moaned a timber-cracking, gut-melting lament. Ghisting light skittered across the hull as Hart labored to right the vessel. Everywhere sailors clung to whatever they could, while the dangling crewman swung like a pendulum above them all.

I found my balance and struck out for the ratlines. The sooner I got the fallen sailor to safety, the sooner I could find Fisher and stop my vision from coming to pass.

But my feet found no purchase on the wave-washed deck. My body went one way, my feet the other. I fell hard and scrambled for an anchor, but I was already sliding towards the opposite rail and an abyss of black, roiling sea.

Forget Fisher drifting alone into the depths of the Winter Sea. I would be right there with her.

A hand seized my sleeve. I instinctively twisted, grabbing whoever had caughtme—aslim wrist, and a forearm like iron.

Fisher hauled with all her strength. I scrambled along with her and seized the forecastle rail just as the deck leveled out.

I fell upwards, onto my knees and into the rail. Pain cracked through my shoulder and head.

“Fuck,” I groaned into a sudden, brief hush.

“You all right?” Fisher panted, still clutching my wrist. Her voice sounded overloud, despite the pain in my head. The wind had suddenly, completely quieted.

I gripped her arm inreturn—probablyhard enough to bruise, but she held on with the same ferocity. She had lost her hat and her black hair had come loose, hanging past her jaw in frozen shanks. Her cheeks were scalded with cold, her lips dry.

“Samuel?”

My earlier vision flashed back to me, drowning her words.

“You must go below.” Ignoring a badly bruised shoulder, I kept a grip on her forearm and staggered upright. I pulled her with me, my eyes straying to the injured sailor, still hanging from the yard. “Mr. Keo and I will manage.”

Fisher found her feet and flashed me a perplexed look. “I will not. Oh, Saint!” Halfway through her rebuttal, she saw the man suspended from the rigging. She tore away, sprinting past me to the shrouds and swinging up into the lines.

I shouted after her and began to follow, but the Other welled close, paralyzing me on the edge between worlds.

The vision came again, quick and fast. A storm and howling wind, Fisher’s body hitting the waves like a cadaver landing in a gravedigger’s cart.

But she did not fall. The Other came to me in fits and starts, and in my brief moments of lucidity I glimpsed her straddling the yard, joined by twotopmen—themost skilled sailors. Together, they hauled the injured man to the shrouds. There they began to descend, all while the Other roared through me.

When the wave came, I could not discern which world it wasin—themortal or the Other. Huge and unfathomable, it loomed over our larboard as Fisher and her comrades scrambled down.

I tried to shout a warning, but my mouth would not open. My fingers scrambled uselessly in my pocket and I screamed at my muscles to loosen, tomove—

The Other retreated. Relief made me stagger and gasp, but the reprieve was fractional.

The great wave remained, real and ravenous and looming. It frothed over the heads of Fisher and the three sailors as they hastened for the deck.

I hit the shrouds and grabbed Fisher’s wrist just as the sea swallowed us in a rush of frigid, brutal force. Salt burned in my nostrils, my eyes, inside my screaming mouth. Up and down lost all meaning. Sailors clutching the ratlines with desperate fingers, their bodies swinging out, then floating. Rope gouged into my shoulder, my cheek, my chest, but I hauled Fisher close and did not let go. I felt one of her arms lace through the shrouds before me, clinging right back.

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