I jerk in surprise. There is a strong, winding core of current that swirls around Hector, trying to pry him away from me. But I won’t have him stolen. Never.
I grasp him firmly around the chest from behind and issue a command to the waters around us. The water concedes, and we lift upward. I push the door to the boat cabin open, but I have to kick with my human legs for the force to exit the ship. My body flails in the bubbling water around us. I have trouble seeing which way is up, knowing without instinct where to go.
You are making a mistake.
I want to scream at her. Mistakes are for those who can make a choice. It’s mine to make. You can’t stop me. This is what I want.
She doesn’t answer me. Not with words, not this time. Her fury boils within the water and it scalds my skin—a sensation I’ve never felt. There has always been that energy within me, scorching with ability, but now it’s outside my body. Huge, and expanding. And there’s something else that’s also changed. My hunger is still there, but it seeks its nourishment from a different source. Not to extinguish, but to kindle.
I want life.
I kick and kick, pulling Hector up with me. Luckily, we are buoyant and let ourselves shoot up like corks. As our faces break through the water’s surface, I gasp for air. Hector’s face is ashen, his eyes still half closed. Our bodies crest over the huge waves, up and down, and still he won’t wake up.
“Hector!” I scream, shaking him. For an agonizing ten seconds, he does nothing but let the lake water flow over his face, into his throat. “Hector! Wake up!” I grasp him around the chest and squeeze him so hard that water pours out of his mouth. I squeeze him again and again, as if just embracing him could spark an awakening. Just when my arms are so tired they burn with pain, Hector coughs and sputters. He gasps a few times more, then pitches lake water from his throat.
I cling to him as the waves around us grow even larger. He coughs, a terrible barking dissonance, the most gorgeous sound of life I’ve ever heard. We cling to each other, hard.
“What happened?” he tries to yell, but his voice is bubbly and hoarse. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know!” I scream back. It’s the answer to everything.
The storm rages on and tightens its hold over the area around us, as a fist squeezes a sodden tea bag. We kick and paddle, trying to stay afloat though the waves try to pull us down with each mighty wall of water. Hector is still wearing his orange life jacket. Were it not for that, we’d both have trouble keeping our heads out of the water.
My body is tiring, and I’ve never known this type of exhaustion in the water. My muscles crave air, and sugar, and rest. I keep kicking, though my calves feel leaden and tight with lactic acid. A wave of water crashes over us, and we spin beneath the surface, water forcing its way into our noses, burning our sinuses, blinding us. We fight again for the surface, coughing and sputtering for a blessed few seconds before another wave comes over us.
Hector’s arms find their strength—what little he has to offer—and give it to me. For a second, his eyes meet mine and ask the other question he wishes to know.
Why can’t I control it? Why won’t I stop the storm?
Do you really want to know, Anda? Mother asks me. Let me show you.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
HECTOR
She’s not the same.
The inky tendrils have fled from her body. Her body is cold against mine, not the burning torch I’d felt when she’d been in the lake before. Anda’s got one hand on my life jacket and one around my shoulder, but her grip is flimsy. Her eyes are gray again, huge and taking in the storm around us. Exhaustion pulls her face into a scowl. We struggle to keep the water out of our throats.
“Can’t you make it stop?” I scream, but Anda can’t answer, because a huge wave pushes her underwater, and I have to use every bit of energy to pull her up. When her face surfaces, white hair plastered and splayed across her forehead, the landscape of her expression is unrecognizable. I’ve never seen terror in her face like this. “Make it stop, Anda!” I beg her.
Anda twists her head to face me, but there are no answers in her expression.
You really want to see what we are made of, Hector?
I’ve never heard Anda’s mother before in my head. It leaves behind pain that simmers across the seams of my mind.
I clutch at Anda, asking for answers, but she’s silent. She’s looking past me, far in the distance. At first, I think she’s having another spell. But then I realize she sees something.
I turn my neck. A huge mound of water rises out of the lake. It’s as if an unseen hand is pinching the surface, tenting it upward like a tablecloth. Spikes and spires poke out of the surface in the distance, around the pinnacle of water. I blink and paw the water from my eyes, but it’s still there. All of it.
Only twenty feet away, something muddy and tarnished rises out of the water. At first, I think it’s a piece of rotted log, pitched upward by the roiling lake water. But it keeps rising and rising. It’s not a log, but a broken mast. Chunks of green-covered metal are attached to it and faintly, writing on the side of a huge wall of metal becomes visible.
Gle--yon
It’s a sunken ship.
Holy shit. This can’t be happening. Just can’t. But even as I’m not believing anything I’m seeing, more spires and chunks of metal rise out of the depths. Wrecked hulls of boats, small and large, begin swirling around the mound of water that grows taller than a house. Taller than a building now. It’s a cone of lake, ever growing, surrounded by the swirling skeletons of dead ships.
Anda is watching, too, but she’s not aghast like I am. Her terror settles into reverence and cool acceptance. Whatever she’s seeing, it’s no surprise.
A chunk of metal swooshes beneath us, narrowly missing us. It would have chopped us in half if it were closer. Anda and I try to swim away from this hurricane of rusted metal and water, but the water swirls and pushes us closer. It’s impossible to get farther than a few feet in a few seconds. It’s hopeless to try.
Yes, hopeless. Some battles can’t be won, Hector.
The voice leaves its acid marks inside my thoughts, and pain blossoms anew at my temples. Somehow, I know that I’m not meant to hear her words. It’s unnatural, and I’m paying the price for it.
We watch as more and more wrecks rise out of the depths, traveling from the distance to join the others as they spin around the torrent of sickly green water. The water peaks and narrows before widening higher up. The clouds dip down from the sky and enshroud the hourglass of water, and lightning sizzles against the smoky sky. Two twirls of cloud spiral down on either side, like dancer’s arms wanting to touch the wrecks.
“Holy fuck,” I mutter, between coughs.