Everything in me urged me to leave the ship, as fast as possible.
But then my eyes went back to the doorway as lightning flashed.
Mateo.
I had to try. Had to see if he was still alive.
Biting onto the cork so I wouldn’t lose it, I scrambled to my feet and made my way to the hold and braced myself in the doorway, trying to see below. Useless; it was pitch black just a few inches in.
I turned and felt for the steps with my feet. It was steep—more a ladder than stairs. After the next wave passed, I scrambled downward but remained where I was, trying to let my eyes adjust and get some sort of bearings. “Mateo!” I shouted, tucking the cork into the bodice of my dress. “Mateo!”
I listened but heard nothing but the whistle of the wind, the wash of the waves, and the terrible creaking of the ship that sounded horrendously weak to me—as if she were slowly cracking apart beneath my feet. The water down below in the hold was up to my knees and rising.
“Mateo!” I cried, working my way down a hall. Behind me was a cavernous area—what I assumed held cargo and rows of hammocks, if the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were accurate at all. But they’d talked about putting him in a storeroom. Locking him in. Emilio had mentioned that, right?
Was there more than one hall of storerooms? More than one deck? What if I was in the wrong area of the ship? What if I drowned down here, in the dark?
One step at a time, Grillita, my grandmother’s voice said in my head.
I put a hand to my chest. It had been so clear, her voice. And she was right. I had to focus, not give into panic. Panic would be the death of me for sure. And Mateo.
I continued to call his name as I worked my way down the narrow hall, all the while trying to keep track of where the ladder to the deck was in case we capsized again and I had to swim for it. “Mateo! Mateo!”
I thought I heard something and cocked my head to listen first in one direction, then another. Nothing but storm and sea filled my ears.
“Mateo!” I screamed, my voice higher and more stressed than I’d ever heard it.
For a blessed moment, the wind and thunder seemed to pause. I made out his voice then, even though it was faint. “Here! I’m in here!”
He wasn’t far. Farther along and to the right, I thought.
I moved forward, and my fingers found the splintered wood of his door first. What had happened to it? I could see nothing. “Mateo?”
“Over…here,” he said again.
I didn’t like the weak nature of his tone at all.
“Where? Where? Are you hurt?” I felt my way through the doorway, trying to make out anything in the inky darkness. “Keep speaking to me, Mateo! I can’t see anything!”
“Hurt, yes. But it’s…this that holds me.” He was short of breath, as if pinned.
I moved, hands sprawled before me in the pitch dark, trying to feel any obstacles in the absence of sight.
When my knuckles brushed the cold hard edge of steel, I knew.
A safe. The safe the pirates had stolen from the storehouse and so laboriously carried to the boat. It must’ve been stored in the room across from Mateo’s…and burst through to his, right through the walls or doors.
“When we were hit by that first wave?” I guessed.
“Yes,” he wheezed, crying out when the hull shifted, pressing the safe against him.
I winced and moved around the hard edge of iron. “Perhaps I can help you push it away.”
“Impossible,” he panted. “Too…heavy. Even for the both of us.”
I ignored his words and tried anyway. But he was right. The way the ship was listing, it held the safe against him.
“Perhaps if we…rolled…the other way,” he tried to joke, between gasps for breath.
“Shhh,” not laughing. “Save your strength. How injured are you?”
“It…isn’t good.”
“Ribs?” I guessed.
“Yes. Perhaps…more.”
I swallowed hard, suddenly thirsty in the midst of all this water. I shoved away my fears over internal injuries and tried to think of a way out. A lever. We need a lever. If I could lodge something strong against the wall, perhaps that would help me raise it far enough from Mateo that he could escape. And with the aid of the right wave at the right moment…
I moved around the room, feeling for a strong piece of wood. I tossed aside one option after another, knowing they were too flimsy. But finally my fingers closed around a splintered corner post of a sturdy doorframe, four inches square. My heart surging with hope, I sloshed back to Mateo; the water was as deep as my thighs now. Even if we didn’t capsize again, this ship had to be going down. Would the water make it easier or harder to move the safe?
“Okay, I found something I can use as a lever. When the next wave washes past, I’m going to try this. If you are able to wriggle out of there, you’ll have to duck this piece of wood. Comprendes?”
“Sí,” he panted.
I waited, wishing for a giant wave, just big enough to help me, but not big enough to capsize us. I wasn’t sure I could keep my bearings and get Mateo, injured, out to the deck again. Especially if we had to swim.
Please, Lord. Please, please, please….
But there was no perfect wave. I tried on two, three, then four small waves, but I wasn’t strong enough. I leaned against the safe, panting, trying to think up another plan.
The fifth wave surprised me, and I acted almost too late. “There!” I cried, lapsing into English in my excitement. “There! Come out, Mateo! Move! Move!” I could hear my bar beginning to crack under the strain, and the wave was moving past. In a second, the safe would be pressing against him again.
He scraped toward me, obeying my tone if not my native language. He was close, so close.
“Hurry!” I grunted, beginning to feel the weight of the safe bear against me as we lost our edge of gravity.
He leaned and came under the bar, just as my strength gave out.
The safe slammed against the wall with a thud.
“Mateo?” I panted, half-panicked that he didn’t get out in time.
“Estoy aquí,” he said. I’m here.
I grappled in the dark for his arm. “Oh, thank God! Let’s get out of here before this ship takes us down with her.”
CHAPTER 11
JAVIER
The storm hit us well after dark. We’d been traveling for hours with urns to light our way, slowing to a walk but feeling pressed to get as far as we could before sleep claimed us.
There was an icy glint to the rain, and Rafael’s eyes met mine in the shadows of our lantern. Out on the water, it had undoubtedly been hail. I wondered what had pressed the captain to round the point in such hazardous weather. Why had he not even waited for morn? It made no sense. No one rounded Point Ruina in bad weather, and certainly not without the aid of daylight.
Lightning flashed, and from our vantage point high on the hills, we could see the angry seas, roiling, the waves battering the shore as if aiming to expel all their energy. I pulled up with a start, not wanting to lose track of where I’d been looking—out near the point. Had I seen—? Was it a—?
Thunder cracked, so close, I felt it in my chest, as if it had rumbled about inside my ribs. Rain pelted my hat and dripped off the rim, but it was the lightning I was waiting for. Just another glimpse. Rafael pulled around and waited in silence beside me. “Did you see something?”
“I thought so,” I said, looking out toward the point again.
The other men stopped behind us, asking questions, but I ignored them.
Lightning flashed again, a terrific bolt that zigzagged down to the water and illuminated miles of empty waves racing toward shore. My eyes madly shifted left and right.
But there was no ship.
My heart paused and then pounded. There was no way Mendoza’s Crescent Moon had been there a moment ago and now was gone.
Unless it had simply slipped past the point?
�
�Did you see anything?” I asked Rafael.
“No, friend. Come. Even if they ran into trouble, they’d still be miles ahead.”
I nodded and followed him, thankful that the men behind us had fallen silent.
It embarrassed me, this desperate need to know what had transpired for Mateo and Zara. It made me feel vulnerable. Weak. Which unsettled me.
Worse was the thought of losing them both forever.
CHAPTER 12
ZARA
I urged Mateo up the ladder-like stairs, fighting against the waves as one after another poured down on us. The cold dumps of water reminded me of dirt dropped onto a coffin by a small bulldozer—intent on covering us forever. Again and again, Mateo fell against me, losing ground every time, until I decided to climb with him, my arms on the rail to either side, bearing his weight against every new wave that came down upon us. He was just too battered, too weak to take this on by himself.
“Leave me, Zara! Save yourself!” he shouted over his shoulder, sounding disgusted and humiliated.
“No! I will not! Go! Hurry!”
He forced himself to take another step, a new handhold, before the next wave hit us. Water was steadily rising beneath too. We were halfway up the ladder and the water was sloshing around my calves.
“Go, Mateo,” I urged. “You can do this.”
“If anything happens to you—”
“Stop thinking about that. Think only of getting to the top and out of here. Do it for me. For Doña Elena! Your sisters! Your brothers! Go!”
This seemed to galvanize him. He took two steps and was halfway through the door when the next wave hit.
I almost lost my hold on the rail. I’d been ready to burst through right behind him, not set to withstand another rush of water. I prayed madly as the wave passed me, one arm giving sway to the surge, each ounce of seawater seeming like clawing tendrils, pulling at each of my last five fingers to let go.
But then it was past and Mateo was through, turning, hand to his belly, to watch me come after him. Lightning flashed, and I could see him clearly outlined, bent over, heaving for breath. I couldn’t believe it, standing there, on deck at last. We’d made it this far. Could we possibly make it to shore?
I fished in my bodice for the cork I’d stashed there, praying it had remained. It had. Lightning flashed constantly, and I thought I glimpsed land. But it was much, much farther than I’d hoped. I turned away, not wanting Mateo to see my fear as another bolt of lightning came down, so close that I could smell the ozone and feel the soaked hairs at the nape of my neck practically rise. I hurried over to the water barrel, shoved the cork into the drain, then tipped it over and rolled it to the edge.
I grabbed a length of rope that was floating against my legs and tied it around the barrel lid handle. Then I made a loop around Mateo, fastening him to it.
“What? No!” he said, weakly pushing my hands away. “Tie yourself!”
I batted his hands away in irritation and tightened the knot. “I will!” I shouted as thunder cracked. “There’s plenty more behind you!”
The rope was long, and I knew it’d be better if I cut it off so it wouldn’t get entangled on anything else, but I didn’t exactly have the blade I’d need to do so. I was casting about for anything I could use—or something to at least wrap the excess length around—when a hand grabbed my hair and pulled me upright and against a broad chest.
“Where do you think you’re going?” shouted a voice in my ear.
The second mate, Gonzalo.
Hot tears came to my eyes—I always cried when I was angry, and it seemed like I’d finally broken through constant shock to pure fury. After all we’d made it through, there was no way—no way—that I was going to let this jerk stop us.
I was just about to ram him in the belly with my elbow and then turn and bring his head to my knee, when the ship lurched beneath our feet and we began sliding to the side rail. The man released me with a cry, grasping about to grab hold of anything that would stop his fall. Side by side, we bumped and skittered across the planked floor of the broad deck. I looked behind me in terror, knowing that the ship was going down, stern first. I rammed into the front wall of the captain’s cabin, just as Gonzalo did beside me. We stared at each other as lightning flashed constantly.
I’d only had to see Titanic once to know what would come next. The ship would go down and pull us with her, creating a suctioning whirlpool that we wouldn’t be able to escape before the oxygen in our lungs ran out. We had to be away, as far away as possible, when it happened.
“Mateo!” I screamed as I scrambled to my feet. “Jump! Swim!”
But he and the barrel were already gone, presumably tossed overboard. Only Captain Mendoza, clinging to a side rail with soaked tendrils of black hair coiling across his cheek, glanced back at me before diving off. Two others followed him.
The two-hundred-pound Gonzalo knocked the wind out of me as he literally crawled over me in his crazy desire to be free of the ship. I choked and gasped for breath, holding my belly, watching as the lightning—which was so frenzied and frequent now it was like an odd sort of strobe light—illuminated his progress. He reached the railing and made a flailing jump overboard. I remained where I was, stunned, trying to breathe again and wondered if this was all some terrible dream.
Surely I wasn’t the only person left alive on this ship, was I?
I forced myself to move, even before breath returned to my lungs, crawling to the railing. I’d gone swimming almost every night of the summer, back home in my own time, loving the feel of natural space and peace and freedom. Only God, the waves, and me. Time to feel the surge of the tide, the living breath of the sea. I loved it, looked forward to it each night with the same anticipation I might in seeing a dear friend.
But as I teetered on the edge of the rail, praying for breath enough to surface after my dive, I had one thought.
This ocean I’ve always loved is now determined to kill me.
CHAPTER 13
ZARA
I hit the water hard from about fifteen feet up. It hadn’t been my most graceful dive. But as soon as I surfaced, I began swimming, thankful that the corners of my dress seemed to be staying put in their knots at my waist. Perhaps the water had tugged them even tighter. I did my best to do a breaststroke, but the seas were too wild, the water constantly washing over my face. I took a deep breath, went under water and did several strokes, came up for another, and then went down again. I felt I was making more progress this way.
Help me, Lord. Help me get far enough away.
I’d lost track of where the ship was, but from the direction of the waves, I thought I knew where shore was. I went with them. Even beneath the water, I could hear it when the ship finally gave up and with a tremendous crack and boom, she screeched and gasped, as if fighting the sea and losing with her last gasp. As expected, I felt the pull of water around me, sucking me backward, but I’d managed to get far enough away—or the ship had been full enough with water—that it wasn’t as bad as I had feared.
I rose to the surface and waited for one flash of lightning after another to help me see in all directions. I didn’t see Mateo, and I fought off the urge to call out to him. While all I’d glimpsed was wreckage from the ship—no people—among the waves about me, if any of the pirates had survived, I didn’t want them to know where I was.
I had to get to shore. That’s where Mateo would head too, the best he could. I hoped and prayed he’d made it over the rail, still attached to the barrel. That he was alive. Give him strength, Lord. Give me strength too.
My fingertips brushed past wood, and I desperately cast about until I found it again. A timber, of good size—nearly as wide around as I was. I wrapped it in my arms, bobbing partially out of the water, feeling a surge of real hope for the first time. I admitted to myself that I’d been worried I wouldn’t have the strength to make it to shore. Not on my own, after all I’d endured over the last couple of days.
Silently utt
ering thanks and praying that the storm would send any great white sharks in another direction, I got my bearings again and began kicking with everything I had in me. I felt buoyant, hopeful, for a good long time, but after some hours, the teeth-chattering chill won out over my energy, and I began to give into despair. I was shivering, sending my teeth rattling, and my throat ached with thirst. My eyes burned so badly from the salt and fatigue that I let them close, resting my cheek against the rough wood of the timber as I feebly continued to kick.
I caught myself dozing off, my grip on the timber beginning to loosen, as the sea beckoned me deeper. Distantly I considered the relief of it, letting go. Giving up. Stopping this fight that never ended, quitting the hope that this cursed storm would cease or the sun would somehow rise again.
I wondered: if I gave up and let myself sink into the sea, would she spew me back up in my own time? What good is this, Lord? I complained. To come to this time for love, family, adventure, only to die? Did you just want me to recognize that my wishes had been fully granted before you took me home…to you or to my own time?
But I didn’t hear his voice…or my abuela’s in answer. Only the constant waves, rising behind me, passing beneath and around me, building again, as if I were nothing but a dull rock they could ignore. Over and over again.
It took me some time to realize that the sound of the waves had changed…that I was hearing them crash on shore.
On shore.
My head popped up, and a pitiful sound left my mouth. I cast the timber away and began swimming in earnest again, a brief surge of energy fueling my path forward. In a minute or two, my toes brushed sand. Sand! In my excitement, the next wave took me by surprise and I came up choking and coughing. But I was close to safety. So close. A minute later, I was chest-deep, then waist-deep, then stumbling on numb, tree-like legs, then crawling, my cold fingers clenching handfuls of sand.
Four Winds (River of Time California, Book 2) Page 6
