And a Nomad who couldn’t get back up was a disaster. A catastrophe. The kind of person that broke people’s hearts.
She was wasting all this pain and anguish on him.
He wasn’t lying on a bed crying over her, because he didn’t really meet her. She had never even told him her own name. Any feelings he had were for a dead girl. A girl that was gone, named Anna Barlow, who had been paddling to the settlements, but never made it. A girl who would fade away.
He would be sad, but he would get over her, with his dimpled smile and his mountain house. He would fall in love with a mainland girl, and Anna would be the Nomad who helped him not be so scared on his last few days at the Outpost.
That had been her purpose, her reason, to help him not be so scared.
He would move on.
But her plight was harder.
She knew him. He had been an open book.
She needed him. He had been her safe harbor.
She wanted him, he had been her choice. Waterfolk didn’t get many choices, react, survive, and like Sky was doing, settle.
Luna had stripped off her yoga pants and introduced him to her spectacular awesome, and now the pain ripped through her core with every second that she remembered—
Without her brain being aware, Luna sat up, swung her legs to the ground, and took a deep breath. Then she stood.
It was time to rejoin the living. She was Waterfolk. She might be an empty shell, fragile, but she wasn’t a catastrophe. She needed to get supplies for her new—but first...
She appraised the room. The copy of Walden was still on the night stand, but books would never make it through the ocean, even with the best of intentions. She looked in the trunk at the end of the bed. There was a T-shirt there, forest green. She held it to her face and inhaled. It smelled of Beckett. She pulled it over her head and tied the bottom in a knot, tight around her waist. There was also a watch on the ground, half under the bed. She picked it up. It was silver, the clock face looked antique, valuable. She wound it up and held it to her ear, it ticked. She set the time. It also had teeny tiny words that spelled out, waterproof. She turned it over and it was engraved: G. S.
She put it on her wrist and twisted it a bit to fit. Okay, these were enough.
She strode across the tent, pushed the flap, and wearing her remembrances, stepped outside to pretend to be alive.
Chapter 42
Beckett awoke the next morning to the squawk of the intercom, “Beckett, you’re needed on deck.” He swung his legs down and jumped up, banging his head on the ceiling. He was too tall for this blasted ship.
He stepped out of the hatch and was momentarily blinded again, but there was frenetic, bordering on frantic movement. He rubbed his eyes and focused. Rebecca was leaned over a railing, straining. He called, “Rebecca, is everything okay?” She looked up, her face a grimace covered in tears and sweat. She was pulling at something below. He broke into a run, sliding to a stop beside her; she held a long metal tool of some kind, he reached down to help secure it.
Below them a gigantic whale’s tail was on the water’s surface. The body of the whale stretched away through the water, boggling Beckett’s mind with its scale. The ship’s inflatable Zodiac, holding Dr. Mags and Jeffrey, was beside the whale. Dan, in his scuba gear, was pulling at a thick rope tied fast around the whale’s tail. Dr. Mags screamed at Dan, “Hold it, hold it!”
Dan yelled up at Rebecca, “Steady!”
She said, “It’s stuck, I can’t—” Tears ran down her face.
Beckett’s heart raced.
Beckett helped her guide the metal tool straight down toward the tail, but it required an epic amount of strength to keep it still. The end of the stick had a curved blade. Beckett gathered that the blade was supposed to slice through the rope, but there wasn’t any way to get it to aim, or grab, or work.
Beckett called down, “It’s really hard to steady, Dan.”
Dan yelled up, “No shit!” as he struggled with the blade, attempting to hold it against the rope.
Sarah appeared at the railing with a second long pole.
Dan yelled, “Thanks, Babe!” and helped steer Sarah’s blade-end toward the rope.
Beckett asked, “You got it Sarah?”
“I don’t know.” Her arms shook as she held it as steady as she could. She yelled down, “Be careful! Don’t get cut—crap!”
Dan said, “It’s okay, I’m okay, just hold it still!”
Sarah said, “I can’t hold it!”
Beckett turned to help her, leaving Rebecca to try alone.
Dr. Mags called up, “If we don’t get this rope cut soon, it might go under, if it goes under we can’t do anything!”
Rebecca said, “No! We can’t, we have to!” Her arms strained with effort.
The rope was as thick as a man’s arm. It stretched out, wrapping around the front of the H2OPE, dragging the whale backwards. Beckett looked over his shoulder and saw the men from the bridge leaning over the opposite railing. One of them called, “I’m cutting the net, but you have to get it off the tail!”
The pole Beckett and Sarah held was impossible to aim, it swung maddeningly. Dan worked Sarah’s blade under the rope, but though she pulled, the rope was too thick to cut through.
Both knives needed to pull-slice-cut at the same time.
One more glance at Rebecca’s face—tears streaming down, and before he could think, Beckett climbed over the railing and scaled down the rope ladder to the frigid water. He dropped in right between the whale’s giant fluke and the ship.
Beckett’s elbows reflexively clamped to his side. Cold. Crap, it was very cold. His breaths were jagged and gulping, he took in a deep breath and held it, trying to calm his body. Treading water he carefully, cautiously placed his hand on the whale’s skin. Whoa.
Dr. Mags yelled from the Zodiac, “He’s scared and tired, but still alive.”
Beckett thought, That makes two of us. He grabbed, with his right hand, the sharp end of Rebecca’s pole, just above the blade. Then with his left hand he pulled at the rope. It didn’t budge. He attempted to steady the blade and slide it under the rope, but his left arm’s strength couldn’t give him a gap for the blade to hook under. He was fighting the tug of the (thankfully tired) trapped whale and the pull of the prow of the H2OPE and the sinking of the heavy rope. All forces with more power than he had, all pulling in opposite directions.
But he had to try again. With a surge he jerked up and yanked the blade down and just missed catching the knife edge under the rope. Crap!
He looked across the fluke at Dan. His blade was under the rope, but it still wasn’t cutting through. One more try. He met Dan’s eyes and together they pulled up and gained a small clearance. With his other arm Beckett steadied and finally hooked the curved barb under the rope—
“Pull up, pull up!” Beckett yelled.
“I’m trying!” called Rebecca.
Beckett grabbed the pole above the blade with both hands, then placed his feet against the side of the ship and shoved away, adding force and power to the blade’s pull and tear. The blade ripped through a quarter of the rope’s strands.
A cheer rose up from the Zodiac and onboard the ship.
Dan held the other blade the same way, and in unison he and Beckett put their feet on the ship, “One! Two! Three!” They shoved away yanking the knives against the rope. Beckett’s cut most of the way through, just a few strands left. He pulled the rope with his left hand toward the knife in his right hand with another, probably his last, surge of strength.
Finally, with a rip, the rope released.
It yanked from Beckett’s grip, burning across his left palm. At the same time the curved sharp knife sliced through Beckett’s right palm. Then the whale’s fluke flipped upward and splashed downward, so close to Beckett’s shoulder, that the force of it shoved Beckett down into the ocean. Deep below.
Beckett saw nothing but splash, felt nothing but searing pain in both hands and a pressure
all around. Then he was deep. So deep that everything became quiet and calm. He opened his eyes to see the whale’s tail move up and down in the water, effortlessly, propelling itself in a big wide circle, until it’s head,
it’s eye,
slowly
looked at Beckett
and Beckett stared down deep into the whale’s eye.
One moment, eye to eye.
The hand crank on what made sense about the world stopped turning.
This was it.
That eye, that whale, looking right at Beckett.
Then the whale swam away, growing smaller and smaller, into the deep endless blue.
Beckett scratched for the surface.
Black neoprene-covered arms wrapped around his chest and pulled him up and he gained air just as his lungs wanted to give up.
Dan dragged him shoulders first into the inflatable boat. Someone tugged his legs aboard. Dr. Mags said, “His hand is bleeding, both his hands are bleeding. Tell Sarah I need my kit.”
Dan dropped into the water, swam three strokes, and climbed the ladder. “Doc needs the first aid kit.”
Jeffrey was beside Beckett his head bobbing, looking away, “You good man—you okay?”
Beckett nodded.
“You scared us, but man, you got through the rope, that was awesome.”
Beckett nodded again, then turned to the side and vomited sea water all over the bottom of the boat.
Chapter 43
Luna joined Sky and River and Odo at the garden where they were enjoying strawberries. She ate a few and they were even more sweet than before, their season was almost over.
“The packs are over here.” Buzz and a young man named Seggy followed her to the trunk. Buzz whistled when she opened the lid and showed them the contents—thirty-five big packs, each full of food rations.
“You weren’t kidding, this is enough supplies for trade and tough times.”
Luna picked up Beckett’s notebook.
Odo asked, “What is that?”
“A list of the families that have been here.”
Sky asked quietly, “Anyone from your family?”
Luna shook her head.
Odo looked over the list.
Luna asked, “Recognize the names?”
Odo said, “The Copternarians are listed there, but I saw them a month ago. They didn’t go east to the settlements. They’re still traveling.”
Luna looked out to the horizon, “That being the case, we should leave some packs, just in case, enough to feed a good size group for a few days.”
Everyone nodded and began carrying a pack at a time to the stairwell.
Luna took one last look at the notebook, Beckett’s handwriting, her last connection to him. She replaced it in the trunk.
While they loaded all the packs down the stairs, three people stayed below, strapping a few packs to each trailing board. Twenty-five in all. With the supplies they already carried, first aid kits, food, water filtration, their clothes, it made for very heavy loads.
Odo asked, “This will change our family’s fortune, all these supplies. We’ll be able to trade and travel without worry for a while. Can everyone pull the weight? I’d rather leave a pack behind than dump it because it proves too heavy.”
They sat on their boards eyeing the loads. It was a lot, but they all wanted to do it.
Odo said, “Okay, let’s head out.” One at a time they slowly turned their paddleboards and knee-paddled to the port window.
Luna called, “Oh wait, I forgot something. Buzz, Sky, I might need help.”
She dropped to the water and swam to the stairs with Buzz and Sky following.
Sky asked, “What did you need?”
“To break the upper window.” Luna climbed to the 119th floor and walked to the bank of windows—the same windows where she had watched the storm with Beckett. Looking down, she accounted for all the paddleboarders and waved them out of the way. Then she picked up a heavy office chair and swung it against the glass. The window vibrated, without a crack.
Buzz grabbed a chair, and swung, aimed right at the middle of the window. A diagonal crack formed from one corner spreading down. “This is fun, do one more, do it, one more!”
Luna swung her chair back and aimed, arced and hit, shattering the glass into a million falling pieces and allowing the chair to fly out and tumble down to the water about eight feet below.
Sky picked up a chair and she and Buzz broke out the next window and the next until they had opened a new port on the side of the building. For when the water rose.
Luna said, “Now we can go.”
Chapter 44
Beckett was raised to the deck of the ship in a stretcher sling, and Dr. Mags set to work. A blanket covered him. His feet were raised. People bustled around.
He looked down to see puddles of blood on his t-shirt and staining his shorts and he felt a little like swooning, which would completely take away from his amazingly heroic deed, but what did he care, dizzy heads would prevail.
He groaned as Dr. Mags pressed gauze to his palms. He couldn’t tell which one hurt worse, or wait he could, the left, the rope burn. Deep and ouchy.
“Beckett, we’re going to move you to the shade. I need to stitch you up.”
Hands pushed him to his side and rolled him back and he was lifted in a blanket. He looked up at Dan, John from the Bridge, Rebecca, and Jeffrey, struggling to carry him. He kind of felt like an ass.
He said limply, “I can walk.” As they lowered him into a cooler place.
To warm him, a second blanket was placed on top. Dr. Mags spoke in calm, soothing tones and someone poured water on his hands, both, on two different sides, at once. Rebecca by his head said, “Look at me.”
A needle pricked his wrist. Dr. Mags said, “Okay, stay still. You’ll feel this.”
Rebecca’s face grew pale and she gulped. “Thank you. I mean I understand you didn’t do it for me, but I thought we were going to lose her, I really did.”
The engines of the ship roared to life. Beckett asked, “Where are we going?”
“Chasing the fishing boat away from the sanctuary. Then we’ll return to our normal routine. Why does anyone use those nets anymore, anyway? We could fish enough for everyone without dragging along the ocean.”
Beckett nodded. He couldn’t feel his right hand anymore which was a relief, but the left one hurt like hell.
Dan’s face hovered above him. “You holding up okay?”
A needle pricked in his left hand. Beckett clenched his teeth and grunted out, “Fine.”
Dan said, “Yeah, you look fine.”
Dr. Mags was working on his right hand again, he felt pressure, and her brows were furrowed in concentration.
“You stitching me up?”
“Looks like you’ll need fifteen.”
Sarah’s voice said, “Those things are so dangerous.”
Beckett said, “Someone should design them better. They’re ridiculous. Or better yet, use a knife, anyone thought of a knife?”
Dan said, “That’s what we needed, you jumping into the ocean with a knife clenched between your teeth.”
Beckett said weakly, “Seems safer.” He groaned again.
Rebecca had her arms wrapped tightly around his bicep and shoulder. Holding him still.
Beckett said, “There were three.”
“Three?”
“Three whales. The one we saved swam away with two more.”
Rebecca said, “Really? Oh, oh, really? Seriously?”
Beckett nodded his head. “Two big and one small.”
Rebecca said, “A baby! That’s so rare, a baby! Maybe they’re coming back, maybe it’s not all lost. Oh that’s auspicious, Beckett. Good luck I think. A whale baby, I haven’t seen one of those in...”
Beckett closed his eyes against all the pain.
Chapter 45
Luna was paddling. The going was tough, slow, requiring enormous effort. Waterfolk usually spread out, over a
distance, because they all traveled at different speeds. The paddlers in the back tried to go faster, the paddlers in the front tried to slow down, but now, with their heavy loads the paddlers were close, slow, unable to talk, just paddling, keeping pace. After an hour River said, “I need a break.”
Everyone stopped paddling and collapsed to their boards.
Odo laughed. “I guess we all did.”
They refueled with food and water, then rested, floating idly. The day was hot and beautiful and the wind pushed from behind. The sky was high and cloudless.
Luna covered herself in sunscreen, then passed it to Sky. Sky looked at her arm as she rubbed the white paste in. “So that was where you met The Guy?”
River paddled up for some sunscreen. Luna asked, “What guy?”
Sky said, “The one with his name on your pack and your board.”
“Oh, that guy.”
River and Sky laughed. “Oh, that guy.”
Luna had almost forgotten how much Waterfolk laughed, and how they liked to tease. Because it was conversational, and it passed the time. What else did they have to do, really? Also hard physical effort had the tendency to make people silly.
Luna asked, “How do you know Beckett Stanford isn’t the name of the designer of my, um, water filter?”
River and Sky laughed even louder. Buzz paddled up to see what was funny. “Anyone who goes by the name of Beckett Stanford is a boring, duty-bound, fear-driven, Stiffneck.”
Sky said, “And any Stiffneck who scrawls his name all over a Nomad’s paddleboard is a love-sick Stiffneck.”
Luna fell back on her board arms wide. “He wasn’t love-sick, he—”
Sky said, “Right, you just gave him a taste of your spectacular awesome, and that my dear, is totally the same thing.”
Buzz said, “Seggy over there,” he thumbed toward a smiling, dark-haired, short, stocky, shaped-like-a-square young man who sat splashing his feet in the water, “said he would help you get over the Stiffneck, if you need his services.”
Leveling Page 11
