Cristelle Comby - Alone Together

We’d made it about a hundred metres out when the waves grew bigger and stronger. The ride no longer smooth, we could feel every high and low as we moved past wave after wave. I glanced at Killian. Despite the cold air, his brow was covered in sweat, his cheeks acquiring a rosy tinge to them. Our speed had lessened, a sign that it was getting harder and harder for him to row.

Each wave hit us like a slap in the face. It shook the raft and everything on it, splaying icy water all over the deck. By this point, I was as drenched as Killian. I shivered as I held onto the open spaces between the various floor sections, doing my best to keep from being thrown overboard. Killian was grunting as he pushed against the waves, but the island had too firm a grip onto us to readily let us go. She fought back with all the strength she had, gnawing at us, forcing us back into her fold.

The next wave almost swallowed us, tearing a scream out of Killian’s mouth as he fought to hang onto the oars. When the pain distorted his face, I knew he’d reached his limits. He wasn’t going to last much longer and if he let go, we were lost. Careful to keep my position and composure, I got to my knees. I had to scream his name for him to notice I’d moved. I motioned for us to switch places and he nodded.

Once I grabbed the nearest oar, I nodded for him to let go. We tried to sync our movements as I moved to the middle of the raft while he took my place. I lunged for the furthest oar as he released it, my fingers slipping on the wet branch. I tightened my grip on it, intent on keeping hold as I sat down with my back to the open sea.

Once I started rowing, I got my first good look at the island we were escaping. In the dim morning light, it felt surreal to look at. The rock formation on the left didn’t look so menacing and jagged from here. The trees appeared like a small, sparse grove. The island had nothing frightening and menacing to her from this perspective. It almost seemed inviting, a deserted island getaway. For a moment, I was tempted to forget her darker, more sinister nature. But the strong current I was fighting served as a good reminder of this aspect of her natural soul. She was putting up a fight still, deploying her long tentacles as far out as she could get to get us back to her shore.

I cursed her between my teeth, trying harder and harder to put some distance between us. Let us go! I silently demanded, putting my back into my strokes.

“Anne-Marie,” Killian called out in warning, making me look over my shoulder to see what had him so worried. The wave coming for us was bigger than any of the others. Even if I’d been standing up, it would have still been taller than me. My God, that one was going to rock us good. That was, if it didn’t tear our raft in half first. If we let her hit us sideways, she was going to crush us like a twig.

I had seconds to correct our course, to position us at the perfect perpendicular angle. I put as much strength as I could muster into the oars. This was the big one; we needed speed like never before. I warned Killian to hold on fast as the wave drew closer and closer. It towered over us like a water-monster, ready to swallow us whole. When it started to curve inward, I could see the first rays of sunlight glistening on its rippling surface. I wanted to scream at the sheer horror of it. But the wind was caught in my throat, nature’s last tease of a painful predicament.

The wall of water faced us and I closed my eyes, as ready as I could make myself. There was no way we could go through this unscathed.

I felt our raft being lifted off the surface of the ocean. I would have been sent overboard had I not been holding onto the oars. I floated in the air for an instant, before crashing back onto the deck with force. I wasn’t sure why, but I kept rowing. Maybe it was because I’d been doing it so long that the motion was automatic. Muscle memory, I supposed. Maybe something was being reassured by the action.

I heard Killian scream something before the water punched me hard from behind. It wasn’t a splash this time. Icy cold water surrounded me and I thought for sure we were sinking. I fought the urge to scream as I clung to the oars. An instant later, it was over and I could breathe again. My eyes flew open while I gulped down a large breath of fresh air, water dripping from my hair. The salty water burned at my eyes, but it was a small price to pay to see our raft was still afloat.

I turned back to look at the open ocean and couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up inside me. The sight that greeted me was a quiet, flat ocean that spread as far as the eye could see, melting into the azure blue of the sky far in the distance.

We’d made it… To this section of serenity, this sliver of peace, we had made it . I knew there was more turbulence to come, more kilometres to row. But for now, I enjoyed this calm emptiness.

I turned back and kept rowing, putting more and more distance between us and the wave barrier I could see in our wake. As the clouds parted, letting the first true rays of light beat down on us, the island looked smaller, almost humbled. She’d lost the fight.

I turned to look at Killian, found the same elation breaking through the pain and tiredness in his face. Tearing away from my gaze, I saw him look down and force himself to let go of the deck he was holding onto. His knuckles had turned white under the strain. When he looked back up at me, he had a large goofy grin that seemed to split his face in half. It looked manic beneath those large eyebrows and water-plastered hair. I couldn’t hold the laughter in anymore. I released a child-like giggle that overflowed, that was too delightful even for my good.

The joy was short-lived. Killian’s face darkened as fast as a brewing Northern storm. Glancing at the open ocean behind us, I couldn’t see anything that’d warrant such a rapid change of emotion. I turned back to him, my eyebrows raised. He pointed to the other side of the raft. The instant my eyes set upon our stack of provisions and equipment, I understood. One of the wire-cloth cords had been torn apart clean, taking half of our cargo.

Letting go of the oars, I cursed as I moved over to check them. Thank the stars I’d packed the food and drinks at the bottom of the pile. But we’d lost everything else. The spare clothes, the blankets… the island may not have got us, but she may have sealed our fate just the same. A shiver ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

We took turns rowing, using the sun to adjust our bearing. Neither of us was a qualified sailor, but it wasn’t like we had a destination in mind anyway. There was no way to know if we were heading in the right direction or not. I hoped we were aiming for the continent, but for all we knew, we could have been rowing towards Greenland and the North Pole. All we could do was make sure we didn’t get carried back to the island we’d left so painstakingly behind us.

The day was pale and wintry, a bank of clouds hanging low and thick in the sky. Even at midday, the sun had a hard time peeking through. As a result, our clothes remained drenched most of the morning, damp throughout the afternoon. Shivering was our default mode unless we were rowing. At the very least, our frigidity gave us some much-needed motivation to row. That was the thing about nature: though her bites were sharp, the scars would always tell stories one could gather some wisdom from.

When Killian took my place at the helm, I curled in a ball on the side of the raft, a desperate attempt to preserve energy as well as a last-ditch effort to warm up. We had stored up a week’s worth of rations, more if we tried fishing. But losing half of our equipment hadn’t been part of the plan. Losing the ability to keep warm and change out of wet clothes changed the equation. If one or both of us got sick, we were done for.