We landed sideways.
We rocked with horror.
And for a moment, I feared this was it.
The moment we capsized.
But...like all the other moments, the ocean cradled us at the last second, keeping us upright even while drenching us in fresh brine.
Everyone gasped for breath.
Everyone clung to the sides, the benches, the broken rigging, desperately holding on, all knowing our strength was fading with every wave.
“It’s okay, canım,” my mother crooned, using the term of endearment I’d heard a thousand times before. My life. My soul. To my mother, we were all her life, even while that life was so terribly threatened.
She swallowed back tears and did her best to be brave for us. “Listen to baba, Melike. He says the land beneath the waves will save us. We will touch it again soon. You’ll see.”
“I hate the sea!” my cousin, Afet, yelled over the howling storm.
“Emre, what are we going to do?” My mother shouted at my father just as another wave crested against the savage fork of lightning and smashed heavily over us.
Spluttering.
Coughing.
Our fingers clung to anything and everything.
Each time the hull was battered by another wave, it grunted as if the waves were knives, slowly disembowelling it.
Another thunderclap punctured our eardrums.
The boat groaned a little louder. A dying groan.
We’d started this journey with twelve others.
The small boat had been overcrowded, unbalanced, and with a motor that coughed and spluttered more than it propelled.
I’d had my doubts when my father helped us into it.
But he’d said this was how these things were done.
Covertly, quietly, smuggled across the sea by moonlight.
But the storm had decided that twelve were too many.
The rain had come.
The waves had arrived.
And now...there were only five.
“The storm will pass,” my father bellowed, gripping on to all of us as if he could fight the storm and swim us to shore. “Just hold on. The boat will last. We will look back upon this as our greatest adventure!” He forced a grin, his teeth startling white in the storm-churned night. “We will live the life of safety and happiness that I promised. You will see.”
My sister didn’t buy it. My cousin cried harder. And my mother just looked at all of us as if imprinting our faces on her heart.
Another roil.
This one tossed us into a heap and made us cry out with fresh bruises. Blood coated my forehead from smashing face first against one of the benches. Blood smeared my cousin’s upper arm, mixing with seawater until it swirled with morbid patterns.
True fear settled into my heart.
Fear borne from suddenly understanding that my parents weren’t magic. They could promise to keep us safe, but they couldn’t actually make that promise come true.
They were as helpless as me, and that knowledge—that awful, awful knowledge—made me clutch at my baby sister. “It’s okay, Mel. Close your eyes. It will all be over soon.”
My mother let out a tattered cry; her dark eyes locked over my shoulder.
She shook her head, her hair plastered to her shoulders, her mouth working in a frantic prayer.
Pure terror sliced through me.
I turned to look, but she threw herself over us, planting salt-stinging kisses on our cheeks. “Seni çok seviyorum. I love you so much. Seni seviyorum. Love you—”
“Jale, stop that. You’re scaring them,” my father yelled. “The boat will last—”
The boat made a sickening noise.
Not a groan this time but a crack and a tear and a gush of water sprouted from the ocean-hammered sides.
A rush of nausea and a buffet of vertigo as the ocean surged beneath us, sending us high again, soaring again, dragged up the face of a giant wave as winds whipped and rain fell and sea foam blew agony into our eyes.
“Hold on!” my father yelled.
“Baba, help—” my sister screeched.
“I love y—”
And that was the last time I ever heard my family.
The wave crested.
It broke.
Onto us.
Into us.
Killing us.
The boat smashed into smithereens.
Splinters danced into the sky as a wall of water ripped me from my parents’ hold and flung me into the sea.
The icy embrace of the churning depths suffocated what air I had left.
I plummeted from the warmth of my family with such suddenness, it tore open my heart with grief.
I tried to scream.
Salt water poured down my throat.
I tried to swim.
Waves pushed me deeper.
I tried to survive.
Something heavy crashed against my—
* * * * *
Something painful lashed around my wrist.
I mumbled incoherently and tried to get away.
Only...nothing worked.
Everything hurt.
Everything stung and ached and screamed.
“You’re okay...I’ve got you.” The pressure moved up my forearm, squeezing. I groaned and tried to push it away.
“Oh no, you don’t. You’ll sink.” The pressure moved up to my shoulder, clamping tightly around me.
“Mum! He’s alive!”
I winced.
The words sat heavy in my waterlogged mind.
I recognised them.
English.
My father made us learn so we’d be able to speak when we travelled to a land where we weren’t hunted and safe.
“Help me. He’s hurt. He’s barely holding on—”
Something nudged my legs.
Awareness crashed through me.
Wet.
Floating.
Scratchy wood beneath my cheek.
The slippery nudge bumped my knee again.
My eyes ripped open.
The storm.
The decimation.
The sorrow.
The nudge wasn’t just a nudge this time but a shove to my side.
Everything inside me went cold.
Shark.
Shark!
I screamed and struck at whatever held me captive.
Pain tore through me.
Blackness stole my sight.
I sank—
* * * * *
“It’s okay. You’re okay.”
I hated those words.
I despised those words.
They were lies and false promises, and they’d stolen everything.
“Neri, move away. I need to see how badly he’s injured.” A male voice rumbled in my storm-deafened ears.
A scuffle sounded but then gentle hands landed on my head, fingers feathering around my skull as if searching for something.
I moaned.
The fingers stopped searching. A shadow loomed over me, blotting out the sun dancing behind my closed eyelids.
“Can you hear me? Can you speak? Open your eyes, mate.”
A tap against my cheek. A shake on my shoulder.
Another flash of breath-stealing pain from my ribs, my wrist, my leg.
Darkness feathered over my thoughts again, pushing me down...down...
“It wasn’t a shark,” a soft, sweet voice suddenly whispered—so close to my ear it tickled. “It wasn’t a shark nudging you. It was Sapphire. She’s a dolphin. Her pod brought us to you. They saved you. So rest easy, whoever you are, because you’re safe now and nothing can hurt you.”
My heart fisted.
My throat closed.
Loss crashed over me.