The Keeper of Dawn

by Hickman, J. B.

  When something grabbed hold of my outstretched arm, I reacted violently. Suddenly I was getting pulled up to a different place where all the wetness and cold returned. Though it still felt that I was underwater, I was breathing again, and the blackness in my eyes began to lift.

  “Lucky to be alive,” were the first words I heard.

  Roland knelt beside me, one side of his body wet from where he had reached in and pulled me out. Chris and Derek stood behind him.

  Roland smiled. “You’re alive,” he said, and then laughed, not quite believing it himself.

  “Can you stand?” Derek asked.

  “Not sure,” I said around a good deal of coughing.

  “Let’s get him away from the water,” Chris said, helping me to my feet.

  I climbed the path with concentrated steps. Roland followed close behind, helping me whenever it became steep. There was a hole in my jeans where I had hit my knee, but the cut didn’t look deep. A strong wind swept across the rocks, making my teeth chatter.

  When we reached level ground, Chris asked if I could keep going. I clamped my mouth shut and nodded. They seemed to be in a great hurry, but it didn’t matter to me where we went; one place was as cold as the next. The cold forced me to look down, to bear witness to my slow, methodical steps. Derek stopped abruptly at the hickory, causing me to stumble into him.

  They stood for a long while facing the water. Why weren’t they talking? My curiosity eventually forced me to look up.

  The tide had risen. Over half of the steppingstones were submerged.

  “Shit,” Derek said, running his hand through his hair.

  “Let’s just stay calm,” Roland said. “We have to keep going.”

  “And how do you suggest we do that?” Chris asked. “I left my surfboard at home.”

  “I don’t know how,” Roland said. “I only know we can’t stay here.”

  I looked at where the rocks should have been, and then back at my feet. I braced myself against the wind coming off the water.

  “Wait a sec. Won’t they notice we’re missing?” Derek asked. “Once they see we aren’t in class, they’ll start looking for us, right? Especially Chris. They’ll be searching all over for him.”

  “I think you’re forgetting where we are.”

  “The island’s not that big. Look, you can see the school from here,” Derek said, pointing at the cliffs.

  “No, you can see the top of the lighthouse from here,” Roland corrected him. “The whole reason for coming down here is that no one knows it’s here, remember?”

  “They’d find us eventually,” Derek insisted.

  “Sure, eventually. But how soon do you expect them to go rappelling down a cliff? No way. We’re on our own.”

  “NO, NO, NO!” Chris shouted, pounding his fists against his legs.

  I was having difficulty convincing myself that this wasn’t my fault. If I hadn’t fallen, we would already be back at the beach. I stood there and shivered.

  “We’ll have to swim,” Derek said regretfully.

  “No,” Roland said. “We’ll use the rocks, like before.”

  “Here’s a newsflash for ya, Van Belle. The rocks are underwater.”

  “Only some of the time. Look.” Roland pointed at the water. “You can see them when the waves pull back. We’ll get wet up to the ankles, the knees at most.”

  While Derek thought this over, Chris went down to the water. He kept his back to us as if unconcerned what was decided.

  “I still think we should swim,” Derek said. “It’ll suck getting wet, but it’s the only way.”

  “Actually, we don’t have that option,” said Roland.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Stay here for a sec, okay Jake?” Roland motioned for Derek to follow him.

  By this time the shivering had spread through my body. Though they spoke in whispers, I could tell I was the topic of conversation.

  “How you feeling, Jake?” Chris asked when they returned.

  “F-f-f-fine,” I stammered, which got my teeth chattering. There was no longer any hope of keeping them quiet.

  “It’s probably best if you take those wet clothes off,” Roland suggested.

  “Ok-k-kay.”

  Roland helped me with my sweatshirt. My chest and shoulders were milky white; even the tan on my arms had vanished. Chris and Derek both stared at me.

  “Hey, guys,” Roland said.

  “Uh, we were thinking you could wear my sweatshirt,” Derek said. “It’s practically dry. I don’t even need it.” He pulled it over his head without waiting for a response.

  “Th-th-thanks. Are y-y-you s-s-sure?”

  “You bet,” he said, though he looked cold in just his Anarchy in the U.K. T-shirt.

  “And you can put mine over it,” Chris offered, taking off his hooded sweatshirt. “You’ll be sweating in no time.”

  When he pulled the hood over my head, our eyes locked. His face, even his posture, bore the markings of guilt. His sweatshirt was an offering, and though I stood beside him, I was at a place he could no longer reach.

  “We don’t have much time,” Roland was telling me. “I want you to stay right behind me.”

  “I c-c-can’t … g-go b-b-back in the … w-w-water.”

  “You’re not going in the water. Just your feet, nothing else. I promise.”

  I intended to argue, but my words—even my thoughts—came slowly. Roland led me by the hand like I was a child. The sunlight was bright on the water, forcing me to squint to locate the rocks. Derek handed me a branch that I used as a walking stick. When Roland jumped to the first rock, he seemed to be walking on water before the waves pulled back. Though he tried to hide it, he grimaced from the cold. But when I stepped beside him, the water wasn’t as cold as I remembered.

  We proceeded in this fashion, waiting for the waves to drop before moving to the next rock. The tide became our enemy. The farther we went, the deeper the water became, making the rocks more difficult to find. The waves had gotten stronger, and I leaned heavily on the walking stick. When we reached the halfway point, I looked back at Derek and Chris. Beyond them was an onslaught of waves—no trace of where we had crossed. There would be no going back.

  I stood beside Roland, water halfway to our knees. The rock we were on was long and flat. The next rock over—more than seven feet away—jutted waist-high above the water. When the next wave crested, Roland ran forward and leaped through the air. He landed at the edge, pin-wheeling his arms for balance before stepping to safety.

  Derek cheered from behind me. Then he shouted over the waves: “You can do it, Jake!”

  I tossed the walking stick back to him and waited for the waves to lower. The water between the rocks never settled long enough to reveal its depth. I tried not to think about what would happen if I came up short.

  “Okay, now!” Derek shouted.

  My feet were so numb that I knew I wouldn’t make it as soon as I took the first step. I sailed heavily through the air, colliding with the front of the rock. I clung to it in a bear hug, my face inches from Roland’s feet. Submerged to the waist, the numbness in my feet seeped upwards. I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up; it was all I could do to hang on.

  Roland had me beneath the arms. “Wave!” he shouted an instant before water swept across my face. My grip was slipping. Roland’s hands fell away. I closed my eyes and hugged the rock. I felt the water level creep up my chest and over my neck.

  Suddenly two hands grabbed me beneath the arms. Derek had me, and before the next wave broke, he lifted me out of the water and onto the rock.

  I sat in a puddle at his feet, trying to solve the riddle of how he had gotten there.

  “I thought you beanpoles were all skin and bone,” he said, breathing heavy.

  I smiled weakly. “It’s all in m-my f-f-feet.”

  I sat with my knees pulled to my chest. Chris was still on the rock behind us, waiting for the water to drop. But the water wasn’t drop
ping, at least not to where it had been. It never went below his knees, and the longer he waited, the higher it rose. The rocks leading back to the beach appeared only when the waves receded. Soon, in a matter of minutes, the tide would take them away. I pulled down the strings of my hood to shut out the surrounding water.

  A sharp yell brought my attention back. Chris had fallen in. He was treading water between the rocks, the waves tossing him about like driftwood.

  “Grab on!” Derek yelled, getting down on his stomach and extending the walking stick. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Chris grabbed hold and Derek guided him around to the rock’s lower side. Chris took Roland’s outstretched hand and pulled himself up.

  “Damn that’s cold!” he said, looking at his wet clothes in disbelief.

  “Ready to rock n’ roll?” Roland asked, pulling me to my feet. I tried to sit back down, but Roland wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s downhill from here,” he assured me, which, surprisingly, turned out to be true. Though the water was knee-deep, we took advantage of a lull in the waves and waded the rest of the way in.

  We made for a miserable bunch stumbling ashore: wet, improperly dressed, going on little to no sleep. We rested briefly in the sand, hoping to absorb its heat, but the sun was still low in the sky, and the beach was as cold as everywhere else. My feet remained numb despite being out of the water. I lay with my eyes half-closed, the rhythmic sound of the breakers lulling me toward sleep. Fragmentary clouds flickered past my eyelids, and half-formed dreams sprung up from some hidden crevice in my mind.

  I came awake when Roland pulled me to my feet.

  “Up we go. No sleeping on my watch.”

  We proceeded up the beach, sand spilling over my shoes and caking my ankles. The others rushed ahead, and by the time I had caught up to them, they stood staring at the cliff. Something was wrong. Why had they stopped? But then I saw it: the rope lay at our feet, all the tension gone out of it.

  Roland was shaking his head. “This is not happening. Not now!”

  Derek looked dumbfounded. “Jake was the last one down, right?”

  “Someone followed us,” Chris said.

  “What?” Roland said. “Who?”

  “There was a light behind us when we came down.”

  “That was Jake,” Derek said.

  “No, there was someone behind him.”

  “Hey!” a voice called down from above. Then it came again. “Hey!”

  Someone was peering over the edge of the cliff. He was too far away to make out, but that voice …

  “Who’s up there?” Derek shouted.

  “Who’s down there?” came the reply.

  Suddenly my teeth began to chatter.

  “Loosy-Goosy, you better hope I never make it up this cliff, you piece of shit!” Chris roared.

  From high above came the terrible, high-pitched sound of Loosy-Goosy laughing.

  “That son of a bitch,” Derek muttered. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna kill him!”

  “Charles Patterson, you should not have done that!” Roland shouted as if scolding a child. “Jake’s hurt, and we need to get him to the infirmary!”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” Loosy-Goosy called down, still laughing.

  “This is serious!” Roland shouted up the cliff. “Go back and get Max. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Gotta be going. I’d hate to be late for class.”

  “Hey, wait!” Chris shouted, but the only reply was the diminishing echo of Loosy-Goosy’s laughter.

  “This is idiocy,” Roland said. “Complete idiocy.”

  “I’m gonna kill him,” Derek kept repeating. “I’m gonna kill him.”

  “There has to be another way up,” Roland said. “We just haven’t looked hard enough, that’s all.”

  “There’s not,” Chris said. “The other parts are steeper, and the shoreline cuts back on both sides.”

  I tried to grasp the seriousness of the situation, but the idea of climbing sixty feet up a rope was ludicrous. Though I tried to sit still, hugging my knees for warmth, every muscle in my body shook.

  I brought my head up and looked at the others. Derek was running the rope through his hands. Roland sat beside me in the posture of Rodin’s Thinker, one hand straying across the ground, his forefinger tracing a random pattern in the sandy soil. And though I didn’t look directly at him, I could feel Chris’ eyes on me. Why weren’t they talking? I liked it more when they talked. The only sound other than the waves was the steady chatter of my teeth.

  “How you doing, Jake?” Chris asked.

  “O … ok-k-k-ay.”

  I looked down, frightened by my own voice. My stuttering reminded me of Benjamin, and more than anything I wanted them to know I wasn’t afraid.

  “Well we can’t just sit here,” Roland said, getting up. “There has to be something we can do. Can’t we … I don’t know, build a fire or something? Can’t we use our body heat to—”

  “This is my fault,” Chris said.

  “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Roland said. “I’m the one who came down here, remember?”

  “If it hadn’t been for me, we would have never gone to the Anvil.”

  Suddenly my muscles stopped shivering. It was like something inside me had shut down.

  “We had a choice,” Roland said. “We could’ve said no.”

  “No,” Chris said, sitting down; collapsing was more like it, sinking into my vision. “They never say no.” Then, after a long silence, he added, “It’s just like Wheaton.”

  “Shut up! You’re not doing anyone any good. We’ve got to figure out what to do!”

  I looked at Chris. His resignation made me feel like a lifeless object, discarded in the sand that would come back at some future time to haunt him.

  “I’m going to climb it,” Derek announced. He had one end of the rope tied around his thigh and was studying the cliff.

  “What?” Roland asked, not comprehending. “How?”

  “It shouldn’t be too bad.”

  “That last fifteen feet is almost vertical,” Chris said.

  “Yeah,” was all Derek said.

  “Derek, look, you don’t have to do this,” Roland said, going over to him. “We’ll find another way.”

  “Name one.”

  When Roland didn’t respond, Derek scrambled up the first ledge. Turning around, he said, “When I throw the rope down, tie it around Jake’s waist. And tie it tight. I want your best knot, Forsythe. It better not come undone.”

  Chris sat up and blinked, surprised he could still be of use.

  “It won’t.”

  “Okay, right,” Roland said, surveying the cliff like he was seeing it for the first time.

  It was such an effort to look up that I saw little of Derek’s ascent. The only evidence of his progress was the small rocks that skittered down from above. No one spoke, and I sat for a long time with my eyes closed, listening to the tide. There was something in that sound I had never heard before; it was emotionless, uncaring, but at the same time vital, even intimate. And the longer I listened, the more convinced I became that I was a part of it, that the very beating of my heart was connected to its ebb and flow.

  I jerked my head up when Roland shook me awake. I must have dozed off, for Derek had already made the climb. The rope once again extended up the cliff. Chris tied the end of it around my legs and waist in an intricate series of knots, and Roland was talking to me, giving instructions I didn’t hear. We were running out of time. I tried to tell them that the waves were coming, but hands were pushing me up the first slope, and then the rope went taut.

  Though I only went through the motions of climbing—my hands feeling for the next ledge, my feet scraping the wall—I continued to rise higher, at times sitting in the complication of rope knots like it was a crude chair. Though I felt safety in the ascent, the higher I went, the louder the waves became. Breathing was a deception. The air in my lungs wouldn’t last. The water was inside me now. A h
orrible sound filled my ears. An enormous wave was coming. I could hear it building in the distance, and when it arrived, it would take the entire island with it.

  The veins in Derek’s arms stood out as he pulled me over the edge. His hands were cut from the climb. I would think back on it later and marvel at what he had done. He unraveled the last knot, threw down the end of the rope, and led me along the trail. He half-carried me up the slopes, and by the time rocks gave way to trees, even walking over flat ground was a challenge. My surroundings remained a blur as I rarely looked up from my feet. We rested briefly in the woods (Derek giving in to my pleas to stop), and I collapsed twice in the field. Each time darkness crept into my vision, and by the time it cleared, I was lying on the ground.

  Roland and Chris caught up to us as we entered the school. The halls were empty; class had begun. When the others stopped in the hallway, I forced myself to look up.

  Mr. O’Leary stood before us. He was wearing his tweed sports jacket and pleatless black dress pants. He held a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee in one hand. He stared at me, through me and into the wall beyond. I kept expecting him to say something, for his resonant voice to travel the short distance between us and dispel the brutality of everything I had been through. But he remained speechless, a pained expression contorting his face.

  Chris cleared his throat to speak, but before he could utter a single word, Mr. O’Leary lunged forward, grabbed him by the shoulders, and slammed him against the wall.

  “What did you do? What the hell did you do to him?”

  Chris was shaking his head. “It’s …”

  The darkness began to hedge back into my vision, shutting out their faces.

  “What? What?”

  “It’s … d-d-different this t-t-time,” he stuttered. “I swear.”

  That’s when I knew the water was inside him, too.