Five Years Ago
Eight-year-old Swift pointed the tip of his rapier straight at his best friend’s face. “Surrender, or you’ll wear the mark of my blade on your mug for the whole ship to laugh at.”
“Never!” said Swift’s best friend, Ash—already bearing three marks on his face, inflicted with red ink. He swiped the blade aside with his own rapier (duller than Swift’s, not as jeweled). “You give up, or I’ll leave you with a pretty good scar for scaring the ladies.”
“Swift,” Mum called. “Off the dock, please. If you and Ash want to play at invisible swords, come do it by the house. Let’s have no spills into the water.”
“I don’t care a heap of sardines for the ladies.” Swift lunged.
A tap with a finger meant a rapier strike and entitled the aggressor to scrawl a mark on the victim.
Swift did. Right across Ash’s cheek. It looked real. Bloody.
Ash, clutching his chest, sunk to his knees. “This wound’s mortal!”
“No it isn’t.” Swift backed up. “I just clipped your cheek.”
“Well, say that you didn’t.” Ash got to his feet. “Say you plunged it home in my chest or belly. Say you did. That’d be a mortal wound and much more interesting.”
“All right.” Swift took his stance and thrust the rapier straight to the chest.
Home went the blade. Ash sprawled on the dock and dropped into a fit of theatrical twitching.
“Come off the dock, Lads,” yelled Caius, Swift’s best older brother.
Mum followed Caius up the path leading to the beach house. “Now!”
“Be right there.” Swift, holding his marker cocked, knelt over Ash. “I just have to finish off this pirate rascal.”
“Make it quick,” came Mum’s irritated voice, from the beach house’s doorway.
Swift applied a line of red jagged ink across Ash’s chest, right at the left intercostal space where Caius had taught him the heart beats the strongest.
One mighty last twitch—and
Ash was gone.
Dead as a driftwood plank.
Ash pushed himself to his elbows. “Bet you can’t get me again.”
Swift glanced toward the beach house.
Mum and Caius weren’t there. Neither was his father. They all must’ve gone inside.
They wanted Swift and Ash up by the house, but—invisible swords was far better played with a backdrop of water.
Swift narrowed his eyes at Ash. “Bet I can.”
And he certainly could. In a meeting of rapiers, Swift almost always prevailed. It was about the only thing at which Ash ever allowed Swift to win, making each victory honey sweet.
Ash was way more competitive, better in every sport, and friends with everyone. And he made sure Swift knew it.
“Your blade won’t so much as come near me,” said Ash with gusto. “But look how mine bites!” He rushed Swift.
Swift eased aside, sending Ash tumbling to his knees on the dock. “Yours bites, does it? Seems tame as a tuna fish to me.”
Ash clambered to his feet and ran at Swift.
A smart flick did the job, and Ash stumbled once again, gripping his ribs where a rapier handle would be sticking out.
Sometimes it felt like this game of swordplay—Ash perpetually losing—was his attempt to keep Swift, tiring of always trailing behind, from shaking him off.
Swift could best Ash in any subject at school, though. People called him a savant at languages—he’d grown fluent in French, German, and Welsh early, his father and mum presenting them to him along with English as a baby.
And since starting school, he’d picked up Italian and Greek. He absorbed new languages so quickly that his older brothers—Caius, Trystan, and Edric—regularly entertained themselves by giving him characters and words from dead languages to play with, to watch Swift, right before their eyes, sop them up.
He had about a thousand Egyptian hieroglyphs and hieroglyphic word groupings memorized. He knew Latin and Sicilian and Karaim well enough to read whole books written in them. And in Celtic Akkadian, he could fluidly translate both ways.
As strong as he was at his languages, though, he was yet stronger in maths. In mathematics, Swift was a match to first-year college students, and he was now even learning from the same textbook Caius was using in his maths for medicine class.
In academics, he could truly best anyone. But on that score, Ash refused to compete.
“I’m finished,” Ash whispered. “You’re witness to the last words of Captain Ash, Pirate Tormentor of the Cold Celtic Sea.”
Swift saluted.
Ash spun on a heel and fell backwards.
A glorious, tragic fall it would’ve been, had his aim had been on point toward the dock. But he fell right off its edge and splashed into the water.
Swift rushed to the dock’s edge. “Ash?”
Nothing.
He waited.
If this were a trick, Ash would have to come up in a second.
“Ash?”
Bubbles. Some rippling. And then—steady waves.
Ash wasn’t coming up.
Ash was drowning.
“Mum!” Swift cried. “Father!”
No one came out of the house.
Swift started to run to it but stopped. He stared at the dark, rocking water. Ash was down there.
He crashed to his knees on the dock.
He’d been trained to help struggling swimmers. Well, not trained, exactly, but he’d seen it. Well, not directly, but online. And Caius had done it and told him about it.
“Mum,” he screamed. “Father! Caius!”
He could dive, but—Caius once told him that in water accidents, the rescuer often drowned, too.
Kneeling on the dock before the sloshing current, Swift could comprehend why.
The water was turbulent and deep here, where the dock met the shore rocks. Plus, it was cold. Ice cold.
Swift looked back toward the beach house.
There was no one in sight.
No one was coming.
He stripped off his trousers and kicked off his shoes. He filled his lungs with possibly all the coastal air in Wales. Then he dove.
Down he sank, his body convulsing with the agony of cold water. Down to where the light thinned. Down into worlds removed from air. Down towards where a pale hand drifted beside a dark head.
The burning in Swift’s lungs started well above where Ash hung. He had to let go of bubbles, precious oxygen bubbles to keep his diaphragm from sucking down seawater.
His eyes stinging, his heartbeat deafening, Swift struggled down, down to the eerie weeds swaying on the seafloor.
He caught Ash’s hand and dragged him up from the murk.
Holding Ash’s limp body to his chest, he kicked. He let out more bubbles, broke the water’s surface. He drew a deep breath while shadows cleared from his eyes.
Ash didn’t breathe. His eyes weren’t open.
“Ash.” Swift kicked toward the shore.
But the current was a fist dragging them back.
Already, they were a dozen feet from the shore rocks, and the breakers weren’t giving him any chance at reaching them.
Don’t panic. Float. Keep parallel to the coast. Don’t try to swim to it—that’s a losing fight.
Swift breathed as steadily as he could between waves. He kicked, keeping parallel to the coast. He glanced around for anything to grab onto, but there was nothing. Ash’s cold body, rubbery, was the only thing nearby to hold onto, and as strongly as Swift was trying to keep them both afloat, it seemed to be dragging him down.
He struggled to think.
Swim parallel to the coast. That’s all he knew about surviving a fall into the sea. He’d many times imagined falling into the sea, but he’d never imagined doing it with his best friend—not breathing—in tow.
A tall wave splashed over them, dousing their faces.
Swift heaved Ash higher, resting the back of his head against on his own shoulder.
Ash coughed up water. Breathed. Cried out.
Arms grasping. Legs kicking.
Swift could barely keep hold of him.
“Ash, stop.” He managed a tighter grip. “Calm down. I have you. Keep breathing.”
“Who has you?” Ash rasped.
Swift thought fast. “The kraken. Its tentacles are holding us up.”
Ash seemed to be picturing it. He let off with trying to wrap his arms around Swift’s head.
“Don’t move, okay? Not a muscle. Trust me.”
“I want my father.” Ash was crying. “You let me fall. Why’d you let me fall in?”
The water spun them away from the rocky shore and carried them north of the beach house.
Swift had been in water this cold before, but never without a wetsuit. After just these few minutes, his legs were tending numb.
Mum came into view. “Swift?” She scanned the dock, the edge of the rocks. “Ash?”
“Mum,” he shouted. ‘Help’ would’ve been next, but he swallowed a mouthful of water.
Mum screamed. She raced over a stretch of sandy land to the rocky sea wall.
Running along the waterline, she seemed faster than the current, but barely, and by the time she reached the end of the shore rocks, they were spinning toward the open ocean.
The open ocean. Where jellyfish and water snakes drifted. Where sharks swam.
Swift couldn’t control his breathing going manic.
He twisted to facing the coast. He stared at Mum—running along the shallows and not keeping up.
“Let go,” said Ash. “I can swim.”
Ash probably couldn’t swim, or not well, after what happened to him. And apart, the current might carry them each faster. Or him this way and Ash that.
Mum might be able to reach one of them, but not both.
They had to stay together.
Water smashed into them.
“Let go of me.” Ash squirmed.
A wave buried them.
Up they came, Swift gripping Ash’s shoulders with arms he couldn’t feel.
Ash fought to get away. Clawed Swift’s arms. Kicked. Swiped at his face.
Even if he wanted to, though, Swift couldn’t have let go of him. His arms were frozen, contracted around Ash’s shoulders—they wouldn’t unbend.
“You’re killing me,” whispered Ash.
Swift kicked as hard as he could to stay over the waves. “Hey—what’s that?”
Ash stilled.
“In the sky,” said Swift. “There. What is that?”
“Where?”
The current twisted them to face the open ocean.
“The clouds,” said Swift. “Look at those clouds.”
“There aren’t any clouds.”
“One coming from the north is shaped just like a pirate ship. See it?”
“Where?”
Heavy hands gripped them and cast them onto a body board.
“Hang on, Lads, tight as you can.” It was Swift’s father. Justus.
He saw their hands fixed on the board, then kicked hard, ferrying them to the shore.
