“Aye and that’s a good thing, Lara—you’re no killer.”
I roll over, longing for sleep, but my wrist is shackled to the bed and the pillow is lumpy and my feet, oh god, my feet burn and burn and burn and they said I might lose some of the toes and still it’s as nothing to the screaming, ravening burn of my mind.
The Saghani, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MIGRATION SEASON
Something shrieks.
I jerk upright, woken by the high-pitched grind of metal against metal. Ennis is talking quickly into an intercom, more urgently than I’ve heard him.
I climb to my feet in the small captain’s office to find that the storm hasn’t yet passed. It rages on, as violent as it’s been all day. It takes me a moment to register what I’ve heard Ennis say.
“—nets are going in, prepare stations. Repeat—we have fish, nets are going in.”
“Now?”
Ennis glances at me and nods grimly. The Saghani is barely holding anchor in the gale-force winds and I can see ten-foot waves crashing onto the deck. It will be slippery as hell down there, the simplest thing in the world to be washed overboard. On Ennis’s monitors I see sonar circles that measure the depth of the ocean and any change of volume. There’s a red spike to which he points that I assume indicates a large body of marine life two hundred meters under the surface, although I could be wrong because he doesn’t explain.
Through the wall of rain I can barely see the crew members venturing onto the deck, just their bright orange overalls and parkas. They are wearing white helmets today, and they move quickly into action, hauling the cables into place and connecting them to the nets. It is Anik who seems to be in the most danger as he is lowered down onto the rocking sea in his skiff.
“He’ll be killed,” I say.
Through his radio Ennis is in constant communication with Daeshim on the deck, who relays everything that’s going on and takes orders from his captain.
“He’s down!” Dae reports. “I’m checking the winch cables now. Ropes are going out. Everyone stand clear! Bas—”
The radio goes off. I saw it: Basil slipped. I lose sight of him for a moment and then spot him again, clinging to a piece of rigging.
“Report, Dae,” Ennis says calmly.
“He’s all right, Skip. He’s up.”
Ennis studies a different monitor closely.
“What’s that one?” I ask.
“Sensors on the net so I can see where they are.” He goes for the radio again, but this time it’s connected to an earpiece in Anik’s ear. “You good to give me a wider loop, Anik?”
“Roger that, Skip. It’s … rough down here … my best.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, closing my eyes. I can’t see Anik’s skiff through the storm. He’s down there somewhere, tossed about and trying to maneuver the enormous one-ton net on his own.
“He’s fine,” Ennis says. “He’s got it. We’re in place. Dae, get him back in.”
The men work quickly to haul Anik back onto the boat and then they rush to deal with the catch, pelted by rain and wind and waves. It’s a kind of nightmare and it feels surreal to be up here out of harm’s way, watching. I feel wrong.
“Pursing,” Ennis warns, and starts to work his controls. “Nets up.” He goes slowly and I feel the boat tilt alarmingly. “Fuck,” he says, so softly I almost don’t hear it. “Big catch.”
“Skip, I got a lotta strain on the block,” Dae reports. “The cables are stretched to their limit.”
“Hold steady.”
“How much weight’s in that thing?” Dae asks incredulously.
“’Bout a hundred tons.”
There’s shouting on the deck and I press my nose to the glass to try to see what’s going on down there. The net is almost out of the water when one of the cables snaps.
“Cover!” I hear someone shout and every crew member hits the deck. Too late for one of them: the cable whips out and cracks into a body, flinging it against the bulwark. A doll, a toy, something weightless and lifeless and fragile. I gasp in horror and listen to the shouts of panic from below. Whoever it is doesn’t move.
The net, meanwhile, holds, but only just. More strain works at the power block and all the pulleys, and I feel the boat tilt farther. Someone is climbing the A-line to reach the top of the power block, and I recognize Malachai’s tall athletic frame as it nears the top, swaying precariously with the waves. He could go over at any moment, and water this cold can kill.
“What’s he doing?” I demand.
“Attaching the backup cable.”
“Can’t you just put the fish back and end this?”
“Too good a haul.”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
Ennis ignores me so I bolt out into the gale.
“Franny!” I hear him roar but I’m ducking and hammering down the metal steps, holding on for life. I am drenched to the bone, my parka seems no help against that, and the cold is shocking. It is worse than when I dove into the fjord to save Ennis. It is worse than the winter mornings in our freezing little wooden house on the beach, with wind howling through the slats in the wall and you thought you would die of it, you honestly thought you would—oh, it is worse than that by far. Water streams inside my parka, down my spine and into my gloves, turning my fingertips to ice. My ears, I think, have dropped off. I have the lucidity to think of these poor people who work in this madness, who must function at their best in it. On deck the shriek of the storm is deafening. I press myself to where Anik is huddled over the crumpled body of Samuel. Léa, Basil, and Dae are still struggling heroically with the winch, holding it in place with nothing but sheer muscle, a constant stream of curse words spewing from their mouths all the while, as Mal tries to reconnect the cables.
I focus on Samuel, who is unconscious. “Help me get him inside!” Anik yells and so we take an armpit each and drag the big man over the lurching deck. My feet slip out from under me and I hit the deck hard. Air goes from me. I remember this. It’s drowning. I gasp, panicked, trying to find a breath but there are none. The sky spins and falls onto my face. Anik’s hand rests between my ribs and he says, “Slow, slow, easy,” until I can breathe again and I’m not drowning and then we are moving, dragging, slipping, and finally inside the top of the ladder.
“How do we get him down?” I pant.
Anik is shimmying down the ladder and disappearing, and he seems to take a disastrously long time to emerge with a first-aid stretcher. Together we roll Samuel onto it and strap him in and I’m worried about his spine but there’s nothing for it. Anik goes a few steps down and catches Samuel’s feet, and then we slide the stretcher down the stairs to the bottom. The next task is to lift it, and it seems to weigh a thousand tons, a million, it’s far too heavy for me, I can’t—
“Franny,” Anik says calmly. “No one is coming to help—they’re too busy. You must lift him.”
I nod, and bend my knees. I’m stronger than I’ve been before, stronger than even the days when I was a swimmer—prison will do that, it will carve you tough. We haul him up and stagger down the corridor. As the boat heaves the wall slams into us and there goes the air from my lungs again. “Keep going,” Anik pants, and we do, crashing into the kitchen and dropping him on the bench.