Castle of Water

by Dane Huckelbridge

  Sadly, Marco “Ding Dong” Mercado died upon impact. The sheer force of the collision between plane and sea ripped his seat from the floor and crushed his body against the dashboard. His corpse was thrown in the tumult far from the rest of the wreckage, where it sank beneath the waves and into Pilar’s benevolent embrace.

  Étienne was the unfortunate recipient of the twisted steel bottom of the pilot’s seat—when it pitched forward, it also scythed upward, nearly severing one of his legs and gouging out a chunk of his side.

  Sophie was spared a similar fate by inches; the same jagged steel that cut through his organs only narrowly missed her throat. She suffered a mild concussion, and somehow lost her shirt, but was relatively unhurt when her mortally wounded Étienne unbuckled his belt and tumbled forward into the water. She went in after him, screaming his name.

  As for Barry, he and his seat had both been sucked backward when the plane’s tail exploded around him. He was treated to a series of disorienting reverse somersaults through the water before he regained some sense of up, unlatched his seat belt, and began swimming toward it.

  None of this should be especially surprising given what has already been disclosed about Barry and Sophie’s predicament. But it does explain why the rescue that they craved was at first slow—and then utterly absent—in coming. Marco, in his poor and Tanduay-warped judgment, had piloted them almost three hundred miles off course in his vain attempt at besting the storm.

  And nobody—barring Barry, Sophie, and the benevolent Pilar, patron saint of Zamboanga—had the slightest inkling of this fact.

  9

  “Ouch, hold up a second.”

  “Merde, what is it now?”

  “I stepped on a piece of shell.”

  Barry executed a few hops on one foot to extract the sharp little shard of conch from his heel.

  “Are you ready?” Sophie asked with more than a hint of annoyance.

  Barry took a few limping steps. “I think it went pretty deep.”

  Sophie did another one of her exasperated exhales through pursed lips. “Putain,” she muttered as, glazed in sweat (it was significantly warmer on this day), she undid a few buttons of the borrowed shirt. “By the way, why were you dressed like this? These are office clothes. You looked ridiculous back at the airport.”

  Barry sat in the sand to take a closer look at his foot. “I know, I came straight from the office.”

  “You left for Tahiti from your office and didn’t change your clothes?”

  Barry shrugged. “It was my last day of work, and I didn’t feel like going back to my apartment.”

  “So you went directly to the airport?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I’d bought the tickets the week before, but I jumped in a cab and went straight from work.”

  Sophie mumbled something derogatory about Americans and bloused out the shirt with her fingers to let some of the heat escape. “Well, it’s absurd, wearing a shirt like this on vacation.”

  “I’m not wearing it, you are. And you’re welcome to give it back anytime you like.”

  Sophie snorted. “Of course not. You will stare at my breasts.”

  “What?” Barry snorted as well, and punctuated it with a laugh. “You actually think your tits are on my mind at the moment?”

  Sophie shrugged, the same forcedly indifferent shrug she had mastered back at the cafés of the tenth when one of her friends confessed to an affair, or being in love with her psychiatrist, or having eaten an entire Saint Honoré all by herself. “Why not? You’re a man, non? Unless women don’t interest you.”

  “Yes, women interest me,” Barry replied, both his foot and his pride momentarily wounded.

  “There, you see? I keep the shirt. Merci beaucoup.”

  Sophie plodded off defiantly across the sand, and Barry, having the courtesy to at least wait until she was out of earshot, muttered something derogatory about the French and ill-tempered women both. He rose to his feet, though, and hobbled after her, having realized as soon as she escaped his view that it was better to be in the company of an “uppity French bitch” than to be shirtless and hopeless and utterly alone. Plus, there was a raft, possibly stocked with freeze-dried astronaut ice cream, waiting just past the sun-drenched palms.

  When the bright orange rubber of the raft came into sight, Sophie was already crouched over it, undoing the fastenings on a waterproof satchel. Barry approached and knelt beside her.

  “This is it?”

  “Oui. This is the kit.”

  “What’s inside it?”

  “I’m in the process of finding out. And the raft still works. I checked. It deflated because the plug came loose, not because it had a hole.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” Barry remarked, although he wasn’t sure it actually was. Even a cursory scan of the horizon revealed an obvious lack of nearby islands to row to (and yes, there were two small plastic oars bundled beside the survival kit as well—Sophie evidently had not used them). The odds of them making it on the open ocean, much like the statistical probability of his artistic success, appeared to be one in a million.

  As for the survival kit, it did not contain quite the freeze-dried bounty Barry had dreamed of, but its contents proved to be far more useful in the long-term sense. One by one, Sophie removed the items from the satchel and laid them carefully out on a space of smoothed sand. Included in the lineup was:

  1 white plastic first-aid kit, containing gauze, bandages, sterilized sewing needles and thread, a plethora of alcohol wipes, antibiotic cream, and, strangely enough, cold medicine.

  1 flare gun with six flare cartridges—instructions to its use were stamped on the handle.

  1 emergency foil blanket folded into a silver cube. (Barry recognized it instantly from the New York City Marathon; the runners always donned them like capes after the race for warmth.)

  1 box-cutter-style utility knife with six fresh blades.

  12 emergency energy bars, packed, according to the labels, with carbohydrates and essential vitamins and minerals.

  4 bottles of distilled water, ready to drink.

  6 heavy-duty resealable plastic bags, empty and rolled, to be used for potential water storage.

  1 solar still. (This one took a moment to figure out, but Barry recognized its plastic dome from his old Boy Scout manual and explained that it could be used to get limited quantities of freshwater from the ocean.)

  1 spool of medium-gauge filament fishing line.

  15 fishhooks of varying sizes, complete with sinkers and lures.

  1 Grundig FR-200 shortwave radio with a hand-crank generator.

  1 Brunton magnetic field compass.

  1 waterproof match safe containing (and yes, Sophie counted each one) forty-eight matches.

  1 waterproof Maglite flashlight.

  1 bundle of thin nylon rope (one hundred feet or so, by Barry’s rough estimation).

  1 pack of Russian cigarettes. (Barry didn’t recognize the brand, but the warning label was in Cyrillic.)

  2 stainless-steel drinking cups/cooking pots with folding handles.

  3 lightweight blue plastic tarps.

  0 packages of astronaut ice cream.

  There it was. Their lot. Their chance at survival. Barry grinned and reached for one of the water bottles.

  “Ow!” he exclaimed when Sophie smacked his hand.

  “Put that down. Those are for an emergency.”

  “What the hell do you call surviving a plane crash and being stranded on a goddamn island?”

  “We have freshwater for the time being, so we must drink that. Actually, we should fill the extra water bags in case we need them later.”

  “So I suppose no energy bars either?”

  Sophie shook her head. “Non. We might need them later as well. The best thing now would be for you to catch us a fish.”

  “Why should I catch the fish?”

  “Because you are American, like Huckleberry Finn, no?”

  “But you are French, like
Jacques Cousteau, no?”

  “Non. You can catch the fish.”

  “Christ.” Barry plopped down on the sand. “Can I at least have a cigarette?” He asked this sarcastically.

  Sophie did her shrug. “Sure, why not.”

  Barry picked apart the foil of the Russian cigarettes and held open the honeycomb of exposed white butts in offering toward her.

  “No, thank you, I don’t smoke.”

  “You’re French, and you don’t smoke?”

  “You’re American, and you don’t know how to fish?” She said this snarkily, with an exaggerated twang she had no doubt picked up from some cowboy movie, and that infuriated Barry.

  “You want fish? Fine, I’ll get you some fish. See you back at camp, ma chérie.”

  “Don’t ever call me that!” Sophie was suddenly enraged. “I’m not your chérie.” She hastily undid the buttons and whipped off the shirt, throwing it at his feet.

  Barry didn’t reply. Detecting at last her hidden layer of heartache, he realized, as he picked up the shirt and stamped off across the sand, that as young and pretty and seemingly impervious to disaster as his island-mate might seem, the ink on her widowhood was still painfully fresh—a fact that was demonstrated quite clearly by the fading sound of her sobs as she dragged the raft alone back to camp.

  10

  Despite her many incorrect assumptions regarding Barry and his country of origin, Sophie had been at least in the ballpark with her comment about Huckleberry Finn. Although he was raised in Cleveland, Barry’s grandparents’ farm, which he had visited frequently as a boy, was to be found in Macoupin County, Illinois, just across the river and a few tractor pulls away from Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Mark Twain. And indeed, as a boy, Barry had engaged in many similarly folksy pursuits, one of which was catching catfish, although this occurred more often in local “cricks” than on the Muddy Mississipp’. Unlike those hook-and-line aficionados Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Barry had learned to fish with the fine-meshed nets known locally as “seines,” any similarity to the river that bisected Sophie’s city of residence being pure coincidence. In fact, one of Barry’s most beautiful and haunting memories (and he had never told anyone this, certainly not his co-workers at Lehman Brothers and definitely not his ex-girlfriend Ashley) was going seining with his grandfather when the moon was full, the two of them waist-deep as they dragged their gossamer nets through the quicksilver water.

  So Barry was not a total stranger to fish. Of the sort one finds in southwestern Illinois, anyway. Perched on the rocks above the island’s clearest little cove, however, he was a long way from the fried catfish and freshly gigged frog legs he had relished in his youth. Shirt returbaned about his head, line in hand, he gazed down at the calm pool below and squinted for a sign of anything edible. He fixed one of the artificial lures onto a hook (it reminded him of the gummy worms his mother used to put in his Easter baskets, a poor substitute for an actual night crawler), attached the float and the sinker, and, following a weak sidearm cast, watched the whole baited affair settle in the water. It seemed like a good place to fish—a sheltered semicircle of rock that created a calm patch of water, some twenty feet across and perhaps ten feet deep. He could see the white sandy bottom, rippled and duned with the soft tracks of the current; kelpy-looking things swayed in it, and corally-looking stuff at its rim formed ledges below. Dark shapes occasionally darted in the shadows, and he hoped one or more of them might have an appetite for yellow gummy worms.

  The first three hours were uneventful. He smoked another cigarette, ever mindful to take an occasional scan of the horizon; he was sure somebody would be arriving soon, and he had the flare gun tucked in his waistband to welcome their landing. But neither rescue nor dinner was quick in coming. The waves rolled in steadily around the tiny cove, trade winds picked up as morning became afternoon, and the yellow gummy worm hovered beneath the surface without a nibble to its name. Crap.

  Something occurred to Barry. He recalled hearing his cousins talk about fishing for catfish with a trotline during one of his visits to Macoupin County and remembered that they had suggested “stink bait” to lure them in. Old chicken livers, rotten eggs, even chunks of hot dog coated in WD-40—stuff that put some funk in the water. A funk that his little gummy worm, no matter how noble its intent, simply could not exude. It was four hours in, and although he was certain he saw fish wriggling down below, his virginal lure remained untouched. It was worth a try.

  But what to use? The island didn’t seem to have worms—or any significant insects, for that matter, beyond a few gnatty little flies. And to use pieces of fish, he would have to catch one first. He had noticed, though, a scatter of peculiar-looking shells wedged in the crevices of the larger rocks. He suspected them to be clams of some sort, and in this instance, Barry was correct. They were maxima clams, a smaller cousin of the giant clam and favorite foodstuff of Polynesians for centuries, although Barry had no knowledge of that fact. Ready to try anything, he pulled in his line, set it at his feet, and went peeking between the rocks for a suitable specimen. Arm deep in such a hole, he found one and with three hard tugs pried it loose. Examining it in the sun, he saw that it was actually quite beautiful, blue tinged with nacreous swirls. He almost regretted having to smash it against the rocks, but alas, this was a survival situation. Two hard whacks and the fist-sized clam split apart like a coconut; its meat was tough, but the azure-colored lips stripped away easily enough. Barry removed the gummy worm lure and worked the barbed hook through several layers of clam meat, forming a tempting bunch with some dangle on the end. “Shit,” muttered Barry, “if these fish don’t eat this, I definitely will,” oblivious at the time to the accuracy of that statement. And he retook his perch and cast it in.

  The morsel had been dancing beneath the surface for no more than ten minutes when something torpedo shaped and lithe came circling in. “Yes!” Barry exclaimed with a triumphant hiss. It was a fish all right—and a good-sized one at that. Definitely enough for two hungry people. Come on, you son of a bitch!

  The paddletail snapper in question (of course Barry didn’t know its species, either) pecked, prodded, and then took a bite. The line jerked to a delightful tautness, accompanied by a flurry of silvery flopping. Oh, he had it, and hand over hand, Barry began pulling dinner in, despite its zigs and zags to the contrary.

  What was the best way to cook such a fish? he asked himself. Skewer it? Bury it in coals? Then again, sashimi was good—could they just eat it raw? Barry didn’t find out. Not that day, anyway. He was on the verge of yanking the weary fish right out of the water when one of the boulders at the sandy seafloor—it had been sitting there utterly inert since he had arrived—came bursting to life. With a horrific surge of speed, its massive bulk heaved up from the depths, engulfed the poor snapper in a tangle of limbs, and with the weight of an anvil shot back down. The initial tug was so great, it nearly pulled Barry into the drink—a terrifying prospect given what he had just learned was lurking there. Weak-kneed with adrenaline, too shocked to curse, he pulled from the water the limp remainder of his line, discovering as he did so that the creature had not only stolen his supper, but also gotten away with one of his few precious hooks. Then he cursed.

  When the water settled, Barry peered into the pool’s depths to search for some trace of the beast, but it was gone. He suspected one of the caverns at the bottom was its lair, where it was no doubt enjoying his sashimi dinner. Crestfallen, Barry removed the bobber and the sinker and rewound the line around the spool, wondering what to do next. Sunset wasn’t far off, and he doubted he’d be able to land a second fish. Honestly, the notion of that thing coming back up scared him to death. The idea of returning to Sophie empty-handed was also disconcerting, so he decided to pry loose a few more of the thick, blue-tinged clams and take those back instead. He found two at the pool’s edge, yanked them free of the rock, tucked them in his pants pockets, and headed back to the shelter.

  Barry was not the only one w
ho’d had an eventful afternoon. Sophie had been busy, as well, using the time alone to get their camp in order. She was, after all, a committed and serious architect, and even an island maroonment was no excuse for bad taste. And besides, keeping busy also meant keeping her mind off of Étienne, whose loss she was still not prepared to cope with. Was it denial? Probably. Well, almost certainly. But what other option did she have? She could confront what had happened when she was back in Paris. She could deal with the emotional nightmare of burying her husband’s empty coffin in his family’s plot at Père Lachaise once she was home again. And she could begin sweeping up and dusting off the shattered pieces of her life as soon as the rescue plane had spirited her off this putain d’île and away from that paunchy and bumbling imbécile d’américain. But in the meantime, she had things to do.

  First, the shelter. It definitely needed work. Sophie took Barry’s ramshackle attempt down and began anew, with a far more suitable and aesthetically pleasing plan in mind. For while Barry had spent his summers on his family’s farm in Illinois, riding tractors and trolling for catfish, she had spent hers at her ancestral home in the Pyrenees, the Cirque de Gavarnie. Her grandfather, although retired at the time, had worked most of his life as a local guide and mountaineer. He would take Sophie and her younger brother on long hikes outside the village, showing them how to slice saucisson with their little Opinel knives, teaching them the words to bawdy peasant songs that their mother did not approve of in the least (“Le curé de Camaret” was without question their favorite), and, as it just so happens, giving them instructions on how to make a basic emergency shelter. Granted, his shelter had been intended to protect against Pyrenean blizzards and not Polynesian downpours, but she was certain it would serve its new purpose just as well. Remembering his lesson, she cut a length of the nylon rope from the survival kit and tied it securely between two carefully selected trees; she unfolded one of the three tarps and slung it over the rope, and using four small pieces of driftwood she had whittled with the utility knife, she staked down the corners. Voilà! A makeshift tent. She took a step back to appraise her work but still was not satisfied. No, the blue of the tarp was too garish, its artificial color too discordant with their primitive surroundings. She may have been the granddaughter of a peasant guide, but she was still a French architect. So she gathered up fallen fronds from the palm forest’s edge and arranged them over the tent in careful layers, creating after several passes a functional and actually quite charming thatched roof. The floor, however, was still nothing more than kicked-about sand, and that she did not care for. It was tedious work, but she managed to pull off some larger frond leaves and weave them together into a sort of tropical version of a tatami mat. She put this on top of a cushioning layer of banana leaves and was pleased with the end result. It would do for sleeping, at least until she was rescued.