The Rattled Bones(76)

Sam’s boat whirlpools in circles, whirling and twisting.

The boat doesn’t move from the exact spot where it spins off Malaga’s shores. Has Sam dropped anchor? In my years at sea I’ve never seen a boat twist in a circle like this, and the impossibility of it stuns me. My suspicions jump to Reed or Old Man Benner. Could they have sabotaged Sam’s engine in some way that Sam wouldn’t know how to fix? Or maybe another family that doesn’t want the story of Malaga to be unearthed? I know for certain it’s not Agnes. Agnes isn’t interested in Sam. Only me and Gram. Possibly, my mother.

Then Sam blows the emergency horn, and it doesn’t matter what’s wrong, only that everything is wrong. The bleat of his air horn hangs in the air, bellows over the roar of my engine, over the thundering spasm of my heart.

When I near Sam’s craft, I call to him, “What’s happening? Is it your engine?”

“No! Everything’s shut down. I—I think I’m stuck.” His voice strains over the distance. “Is this a riptide?”

The Under Toad, the mysterious creature that lives under the water and pulls you down into his world, holds you there, all so he can have a playmate.

Sam’s boat spins and spins, slowly, playfully. Cruelly.

This is no rip.

The water here taunts Sam’s boat, swirls it, controls it. There’s only one creature I’ve met in the deep that could do these things. But I don’t want it to be Agnes.

“Sam!”

He comes to his rail, though I lose sight of him as the craft makes another round. Then I can only see the back, the engine. The motor’s turned off, sleeping, and yet a spark pops from its plugs. My body goes cold. Sam runs to the rear of the boat and another spark jumps out of the engine’s lines.

“Sam! Can you swim?”

“Yes!”

“You need to abandon your boat. Jump off?! Now! Dive and swim as far as you can as quick as you can!” ?Two sparks leap now, partners in their crime. “Can you hear me?”

“You want me to jump?”

“Now, Sam! Get as far from your boat as possible. Swim to shore.” I know he’s struggling to hear me through his fear and my own engine, but I can’t turn it off. I can’t take the chance of not being able to rescue him. “Dive now!”

Sam climbs to the front deck and flies into the night, a straight dive away from his boat, away from me. I nudge my throttle forward and maneuver past his craft, which is now spitting sparks in a waterfall. I can’t be too close when one of those sparks finds his gasoline engine. Or my deck. And just as I think the thought, Sam’s boat fires with a wall of flame rising from the motor, running along the broken lines of gas that spurt as his boat turns.

The red glow of light shows me Sam in the water, his head bobbing. He throws one arm up to call me to him. A wave smashes over him. I lose him to the crash of the black sea before he resurfaces and my heart restarts. I motor to him and slow when I get close. Close enough for him to climb aboard but not so close that I make the waves bigger around him. He is struggling already, his muscles surely tiring in the swells.

“Climb up! You’re going to be all right!” I need to believe this promise. I head to the back of the boat, readying my hand at the ladder.

He swims toward the Rilla Brae but stops. He struggles as if he doesn’t know how to swim, or can’t move.

The flames rage upon his research boat, the smoke rising in clean red stacks of blaze. The boat is engulfed and the water is freezing. I want Sam safe, onboard. “You need to hurry! I know you’re tired, but you need to swim now!”

“I can’t, Rilla.” Sam’s voice is muffled with something that sounds like confusion.

I know how exhausted a body can get from treading water in the ocean, but he has to try. “You can. Just a few more strokes. I’m here. I’ll help you up.”

“Rilla, I can’t. I can’t get closer.” Sam raises one hand, and his palm flattens against the nothingness that separates us. Except his hand is too still. It doesn’t move with the sway of the water. It’s as if he’s pressing his hand against an invisible glass wall, too similar to the invisible man who pinned me down.

“Sam?” This time his name moves over my lips with almost no sound. Why is this happening?

“Rilla!” Sam yells. The flames that engulfed his boat jump now. They spark on the surface of the ocean, one leaping ember and then another. The hot specks of fire don’t extinguish when they hit the water. They shimmer with coal-red heat.

“Sam.” I force my voice loud. “Can you swim to the island?”

Sam twists toward Malaga. He takes a few strokes and hope grows in my chest. Embers pop from Sam’s boat. Too many embers. I watch Sam slowly making his way toward Malaga, watch as the fire builds on the sea. “Sam! Swim faster!” The fire chases after Sam, each popping ember marking a trail along the water, pursuing him with its fiery length. Worry rattles within me. Then the fire on the water bursts, as if seawater itself is flammable. A wall of fire surrounds Sam, traps him.

Sam will die. He’ll be burned to death or drown. I am horrified and helpless.

But then.

The girl is on Malaga’s shore. Watching us. The fire around Sam. Agnes stirs the flames, building their intensity with her gaze. The same way she burned me when she rose from the deep with the seaweed in her hair and the fire in her touch.