The Paper Swan(27)

“How is MaMaLu?” I asked, holding on to my coffee.

The sea was rough and things were sliding back and forth on the counter.

“I’d like to see her,” I said, when he didn’t reply.

He dumped his plate into the sink and turned to me. “That’s where we’re headed. If you can make it through the next fourteen days, you’ll get to see her.”

Damian had mentioned twenty-one days earlier. We had been on the boat for about a week, which meant that he had been counting down the days until he saw MaMaLu.

“Does she know . . . ?” That you planned to kill me? “Does she know to expect me?”

I caught a pained expression cross his eyes before he turned away. Of course she didn’t know. She would never stand for it. If I could just make it to her in one piece, MaMaLu would fix everything. MaMaLu knew how to fix things—lost things, hurt things, cracked things, cut and bruised things.

I watched through the porthole as we left Bahia Tortugas. A colony of sea lions surfed behind us, playing in our wake.



Ay, yai, yai, yai,

Sing and do not cry. . .



The thought of seeing MaMaLu comforted me and for the first time, I felt a glimmer of hope.

We sailed past rocky cliffs obscured by swirling clouds of haze. As the day progressed, the waves got choppier and the sky turned dark and ominous. I could hear the crackle of the radio from upstairs, but Damian’s voice was drowned out as the bar stools toppled over. Everything went crashing and rolling as the boat lurched and heaved.

I held on to the walls as I made my way upstairs. Sharp, cold needles of rain pelted down on me. The sky was a scene of high drama. Black clouds roiled towards us, dragging deep shadows across white-capped water. The wind whistled in the rigging and came at me in shrieking gusts. I couldn’t make out the horizon. Then I peered into the eerie darkness and realized why. Up ahead was a wall of water so high, that I had to tilt my head back.

HOLY FUCK.

“Get back down!” Damian shouted over the chaos as I struggled to stay on my feet.

The boat began flying off the crests and crashing into the troughs, bringing us to an abrupt, heart-stopping halt through each terrifying wave. I held on to the railing, but the metal was wet and I kept losing my grip. Buckets of water were being tossed in my face and my feet slipped on the deck.

Damian barked something into the radio and hung up. He made his way towards me, fighting against the wind, and slipped a life vest over me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. We were falling into each wave with a resounding crash. He pointed towards the stairs and started inching his way back to the cockpit.

I was almost there when I heard something whip past me—a high-pitched, metallic whoosh. I looked up and realized that one of the lines securing the dinghy had come loose and was whipping around in the wind—probably the one I had unlatched partially when I was on the roof. The heavy, steel fastener at the end had just missed me and was swinging back, heading straight for me. I stood paralyzed, unable to move, unable to breath, as the wrecking ball of death came for me.

“Skye!” Damian pushed me out of the way a millisecond before it hit.

I rolled on the deck, knocked off my feet. I heard a crash, the sound of glass shattering, and opened my eyes. The line had slammed into one of the windows and the hook was lodged in its frame. The dinghy was barely contained by the two remaining latches, and looked like it was about to come loose.

“Damian.” I turned to him.

He was lying by my side, but didn’t respond. There was big, wide gash on the side of his head. Blood was oozing out and mixing with the rain.

“Damian!” I knelt beside him.

Oh God. Please wake up.

But his body was limp and his head rolled from side to side as the boat lurched like a bucking bronco.

“Damian, please,” I cried. I can’t do this alone.

The ocean swelled around us in wild, terrifying chaos. I needed him. I needed his fierce brutality to conquer the waves and take us to MaMaLu. I needed his frost and his bite and his unrelenting fury to power us through the storm.

“What do you do, Skye?” I thought I heard him say as I held his bleeding head in my lap.

I glanced at the cockpit. Damian hadn’t locked the radio up. It was still crackling with static. This was my chance—to escape, to get away, to make a run for it. So why was I still holding on to Damian?

Because he saved you.

Because he pushed you out of the way.