Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

Something else is floating in the rising water. The inflatable life raft from the Janus . New life vests, also pillaged from Adolphine’s ship.

“Climb!” I say, forcing Lazlo up the ladder first, into the open hatch of the escape trunk. I follow behind him with the uninflated life raft in hand, seal the hatch behind me.

Inside the tight compartment, an auxiliary light still glows. Casts us both in lurid red.

I think back to the lessons that Brother Calvert taught me—how to escape. How to equalize the pressure in the hatch in order to make the water level rise to the level of the escape hatch at the top of the compartment.

I turn the red valve that controls the pressure. There’s a hissing, and water begins flooding the compartment.

“Remy!” Lazlo says, fearful.

“We have to flood the chamber if we want to escape,” I say, trying to calm him.

All the while, the boat continues to shift beneath us, groans, pops, hisses—the water line tilts.

“I… I can’t swim,” he says, gasping.

“Neither can I. Here,” I say, fitting a life vest over his head, fastening it around his middle before securing my own. “Remember what Brother Calvert told us. These will keep us afloat. These will send us to the surface. We’ll shoot right up!”

He stares at the rising water, breathing fast.

“Just remember to blow out…” I say, panting myself. “Blow out all the way up. You’ll have more than enough air in your lungs.”

He isn’t hearing me. Isn’t hearing anything, his eyes hollow and pale, shaking. In shock.

“It’s time,” I say, taking his face in both my hands, forcing him to acknowledge my words.

He nods once. I shut off the valve just after the rising water clears the hood for the hatch, leaving us a small pocket of air remaining at the very top of the compartment. Then I duck under and open the hatch, which swings down on its hinge. “Okay, you first,” I say after surfacing, wiping the water from my eyes.

The boat groans, tilts even more to the port. The pocket of air shrinks.

“ Now! ” I say.

He takes a deep breath, then disappears beneath the hatch hood.

I follow, first grabbing the life raft, then ducking under and out.

I’m shooting up, rocketing through the water, blowing out the air in my lungs, even though that seems like the most unnatural thing to do.

But my lungs do not deflate—no, there is more than enough to expel and still be full. The oddest feeling.

Up and up—my eyes burn from the water, but I keep them open, looking down, beneath me—this ocean is nowhere near as black as I imagined—I see the dim shapes, retreating in the darkness—the Leviathan —the massive black vessel, bleeding bubbles—and what must be the missile—the Last Judgment, its white shell seeming to glow in the dimness, expelled from its missile tube upon impact. It did not launch. It did not reach the surface.

I finally must close my eyes from the stinging, but even behind my eyelids, head now tilted upward, I see a light. A growing brightness. The water grows warmer on my skin. My ears pop—it feels as though my head may burst from the pressure, but, finally, finally, I breach the surface, splash into open air and open my eyes to daylight—the brightest light I have ever seen. My eyes, utterly blinded by it.

It should be night, I realize.

We had only just finished with Compline, the night prayer. But up here, it is day.

I cough. Suck in a breath of clean air.

A rush of wind upon my head, my cheeks.

Finally, after I blink away the burning, my eyes take it in—a blue sea, a clear sky, a sun resting halfway to the distant, distant line that must be the horizon.

“Lazlo!” I call out.

And I hear a weak answer.

Some twenty feet away, he bobs, gagging, panicking, thrashing in the water.

Paddling to him, I embrace him again, and he clings onto my arm.

I pull the release valve on the bundle still clutched in my hand. With a sudden burst and hiss, the raft inflates, exploding from the size of a small flat box to a vessel large enough to fit ten at least.

Another violent splashing behind us.

I turn to see a shape emerge from the sudden geyser of bubbles—a figure, bursting to the surface, choking.

Edwin. He is clinging to an empty jug.

At least one of the Forgotten has survived.

“Here!” I shout out. “Edwin!” I realize that he can’t see me. He’s still blinded by the sunlight.

He paddles frantically, squinting. “Remy?”

“Here!”

Another splash. It’s Jarod, also from engineering.

And another—a face I saw for the first time upon journeying into engineering. A tall, thin young man whose name I don’t know.

“How ever did you escape?” I ask.

“We were locked in our berthing, but that second explosion warped the door. Made it out the rear trunk,” Edwin says, coughing.

I turn in the water to see a shape emerge from another geyser of bubbles.

Ephraim .

He’s clinging to a net float. Blinking, stunned, like all of us—looking upon this vast, bright world the way I imagine a newborn babe would.

“Ephraim,” I shout, reaching for him. He finds my hand, and I pull him closer to the raft. “You made it.”

“St. John—” he says, hacking, spitting up water. “He guided me out. Through the breached missile tube.”

Another violent splashing behind us.

St. John. His pate split and bleeding. He spins, thrashes in the water, among the growing slick of oil and fuel, the flotsam of the wreck of the Leviathan, clinging to an empty water tank for buoyancy.

“Here,” I call out.

And he turns, still squinting. A curtain of blood spilling into his eyes.

“Here,” I say again.

He finally spots us, splashes over, grips hold of the lines edging the life raft and pulls himself up and inside in one go.

I fear, for a moment, that he might leave us here. Maybe he considers it to. But if so, it’s only for a moment. He helps me to get Lazlo into the raft, pulling him up by the tops of his life jacket.

And then he helps to heave me aboard. Ephraim. Together, we help with Edwin and Jarod.

After, we all gasp, breathing, sitting in silence in the raft, looking around us, at the cloudless sky, at the blue, blue sea.

We wait, amidst the churning water, for others to rise.

They do not.

THE GREAT SILENCE COMES when darkness fully falls. The hours that follow Compline. No speaking, of course. But also a time where every action should be made softly. Every movement. Every footstep. A time for rest, for prayer.

I have no will in me for either.

We have been spit from the belly of the beast. Not safely upon a shore, but alive. Seven of us. For a time.

I must have done God’s will, in the end. The missile did not launch. It was thwarted. By divine intervention?

Something inside stops me from believing that, reminds me of how dangerous it is to believe that.

Little waves lap at the gunwales of the rubber raft, slap beneath us. They are not large. Do no more than rock us lightly, roll beneath. Night has almost fallen, and we all gaze above at the cloudless expanse of deepening sky, a bowl already blue and sprinkled with what must be stars. For I do not remember stars. Have only read about them.

The way the ancients once navigated, finding patterns and trustworthiness in their constant positions.

My mind doesn’t know what to do with it—this expanse of sky—these endless reaches. It feels as though I’m looking down instead of up, into a wholly different sea, about to fall in.

I must close my eyes.

Lazlo shivers in my arms.

His thin body, a collection of sharp bones kept contained in bible-paper thin skin.