I don’t wait around to make sure it’s safe—the Saghani is getting farther away every minute—I haul my waterlogged body and coil of rope out of the water and up the ladder. It’s quiet on board, at least. The fisheries look like seething pink tentacles curled into orbs. I pad, dripping, to the ladder and follow it down onto the mess deck. There’s no one in the galley, and no one in the storeroom, so I’m easily able to find the water containers—five-gallon carriers lined up along the wall. I also spot a store of batteries, and shove several into my sports bra. I can only carry two of the water containers, so I grab them and struggle out, straight into the approaching captain.
He stares at me, a salty thief dripping wet and shivering. Two of his men look equally astonished to see me.
I take a breath, heart jackhammering, and when no other words come to mind I say, “Please.”
The captain looks as lost for words as I am.
There is a long, painful moment and in it the Saghani travels farther away, it grows steadily more impossible that I will reach it again, but in his face I can also see an understanding settle, for he knows of the sanctions at play, everyone does, and then the captain steps aside with a gesture for me to pass. I sag in relief.
“Thank you.”
I haul the water up the ladder and my feet slap loudly on the deck. Tie one end of the rope around my waist with a bowline, link the other through the two container handles and finish them with the same. The bowline, I think, is my favorite knot. It doesn’t slip. Then step to the edge of the railing. This could be the stupidest thing I have ever done, anyone has ever done. I could be about to sink myself to the bottom of the ocean.
I almost laugh, almost stop breathing. But panic is an enemy. Any emotion at all can be an undoing. Slow your breaths, deepen them, time them to a metronome. Make your limbs calm and your mind quiet and in you go.
I don’t try to dive, as the containers would wrench me out of it. Instead I go straight down, hitting the water smoothly and kicking upward before the containers have even hit the surface behind me. They sink and drag me down with them and for one horrible moment I’m done, I’m dead and this is too soon, it’s unforgivably soon and all that will be left is a bloated floating thing tethered to the sea’s floor by her own chains and then I am kicking with all the power I can muster, dragging myself up to the surface with arms and feet. But I needn’t have worried about being weighed down: the containers of fresh water float. I settle into a rhythm, ignoring the shouts of the sailors who are watching this madwoman, ignoring everything except the feel of the water around me.
Mam always said it was only a fool who didn’t fear the sea, and I’ve tried to live by that. But there’s no way to conjure fear if it doesn’t exist. And here is the undeniable truth: I have never feared the sea. I have loved it with every breath of me, every beat of me.
It honors me now, lifting my limbs, making them light and strong. It carries me with it, embracing me as I embrace it. I can’t fight it. I wouldn’t know how.
From a letter Niall once wrote me:
I am only the second love of your life. But what kind of moron would be jealous of the sea?
* * *
Anik drags me into the dinghy with a lot of cursing and takes us the last few hundred meters, where we are met by the entire crew, including Ennis.
My arms and legs are useless, and I have to be lifted onto the boat. They wrap me in a blanket and carry me below, and they kiss my cheeks, each one of them, making me smile, and they thank me and I think they are shocked and it’s unnerving me.
“That’s enough, then. Leave me in peace.”
The sailors file out, all except Ennis, who stays.
I reach to take his fist, smoothing it into an ordinary hand once more. It is a thick, rough hand, with chipped and dirty nails, with scars.
His eyes meet mine.
“The batteries will help. But the water’s only enough for a week,” I say softly. “I’m with you. I’m with you to the end, as far as we can go, but if you have a plan, Ennis, then now is the time for it.”
He squeezes my hands, dwarfing them inside his own. “Franny,” he murmurs, “you frightened me,” and then he kisses my forehead.
24
The Saghani, THE COAST OF ARGENTINA MATING SEASON
Once it was mild here, even in summer. Now it’s much warmer than it should be. The climate has always been ruled by the Antarctic, who stretched her cool fingers north to stroke this fertile coast. Now her reach is much shorter, for she is much smaller. We’re a long way south when we turn into a cove and let our engine rumble to a halt. Not far from us lies “the city at the bottom of the world,” as Ushuaia is known. No fishermen come to this cove, Ennis says, only luxury holiday yachts and sometimes locals who want to swim. Fishing has been banned here for centuries. It is where our captain always meant to reach before surrendering to his failing vessel, the only place he knew of that is private and hidden and maybe, just maybe, will allow us to remain undetected while Léa and Dae get what they need to fix the boat. Turns out he did indeed have a plan, and the extra water got us here.
Anik delivers the crew to shore in his skiff, while Ennis and I wait on the Saghani a long way out, far enough to watch for any approach. Rearing above is a dying forest and the magnificent Martial Mountains, once covered in snow, but I can’t turn my eyes from the ocean, not now, not when we are so close.
It’s my thirty-fifth birthday today. I don’t tell Ennis. Instead I pull free the bottle of French wine Basil has stowed in his cabin.
“Let’s drink this,” I say, returning to the deck.
Ennis glances at it and laughs. “He would murder you.”
“I’ll buy him another.”
“That’s a Domaine Leroy Musigny pinot noir.”
I stare blankly.
“It’s worth five thousand dollars. He’s been saving it for twenty years.”
My mouth drops open. “Now I really want to drink it.”
Ennis grins, while I put the wine back.
We play cards to while away the time, and we don’t drink five-thousand-dollar wine but we do drink forty-dollar gin and it goes down a treat. The sun only begins to set at 10:00 p.m., tracing the remarkably blue sea with delicate threads of gold. The little boats lining the shore light up, winking on one by one and turning the world fairy.
“My in-laws drink that sort of wine every night,” I say with my third double warm in my mouth.
Ennis whistles long and slow. “You must have had a few nice drops in your time then.”
“They bring out cheaper stuff for us. We wouldn’t appreciate it.” He grimaces and I laugh softly. “The funny thing is that we probably wouldn’t. At least I wouldn’t.”
“Niall might?”
“Yeah, he might. He’d pretend not to, though.”
“I think I like Niall,” Ennis says.
“He’d like you, too.” That is a lie. Niall hates fishermen, unreservedly. “He’ll be jealous when he hears about all of this.” Another lie. Niall has never wanted to adventure for the sake of it—he only wants to save the animals.
“Haven’t you been writing him?”
“Yeah, but…” I shrug.