Alexandra Sellers - Sheikh's Castaway

“What’s that for?”

Bari tossed it down.

“Never used a paddle before?” he asked. “You’d better learn fast.”

With a neat economy of motion he pulled another one out of the sack and fitted that together.

“Shouldn’t we close the entrance? We’re getting a lot of water in here,” Noor complained.

“There’s work to be done first. Pick that up and come and help me.”

All her life Noor had been pampered. The only girl, and the youngest child, she had always been special. No one made real demands of her. Her needs were always met through someone else’s work—servants, her parents, her brothers, even her cousin Jalia had all conspired to cushion her against the truth that life required effort. Any effort Noor made went in the direction of fun.

And no one—including Bari—had ever spoken to her in the tones he was using now.

“What’s the point? Where are we trying to get to? We don’t even know where we are!”

“We know we’re too damned close to the plane, and it’s sinking,” he informed her flatly. “We have no time to argue. Try to spread your weight as much as possible. It’s dangerous to have all the weight on one side, but we have no choice.”

Bari pushed his head and shoulders out into the rain and began to paddle, fighting to get the raft away from the downed plane. It lay helpless in the water, with its ugly broken wing, and their position was dangerous—a wave could smash them against the hull. Or they might be caught by the wing, or hammered by the tail, as the plane went under.

Or simply sucked down with it when it went.

After a moment, to his surprise, Noor moved up behind him and put her head out, paddle at the ready.

“What do I do?” she shrieked against the storm.

His biceps bulged under the soaking-wet jacket. “We’ll aim to get around the nose and out that way,” he shouted.

Noor could hardly see, hardly breathe in the downpour, but he had challenged her and she wasn’t going to give in. She wiped her hair out of her eyes and tried again.

“Watch my paddle,” Bari ordered, and that made it easier. Looking down she could follow the direction of his paddling, and she got less rain in her eyes.

They paddled together, side by side, wordlessly battling the waves that tried to drag them towards the sinking plane. Then suddenly, pushed close and then swept on by a high swell, they were past it and out of danger.

“That’s good enough,” Bari said. They drew back inside, and he rolled up the door flap and sealed it, and now at last they were cocooned against the storm. Soaking wet, Noor reflected, and chilled, and in a tiny space that was awash with water and bouncing like forty miles of bad road, but suddenly it seemed like comfort. She slumped down against the rounded side of the raft, panting, her heart drumming in her ears, and realized what a relative thing comfort was.

For a minute or two they rested in silence as their breathing calmed. Then Bari opened the flap again and looked out, using the paddle to turn the raft around and get a wider view.

They had been carried well away from the plane, now half-submerged. It would disappear soon. Gazing past Bari’s head into the grey seascape, Noor caught no sight of ship or land. Still, such heavy rain might easily disguise land that was quite close.

Bari closed the flap again.

“No sign of land?” Noor said, hoping to be contradicted.

“No, but with a little luck we’re near the Gulf Islands.” He reached for the emergency pack again and pulled out a plastic-covered sheet of paper whose bold title read “Immediate Emergency Procedures.”

Lightning flashed and flashed again, throwing an eerie orange glow over the interior, and making it hard for Noor’s eyes to acclimatize. Bari frowned down at the paper for a moment, then lifted a hand to the centre of the canopy and turned on a little light.

Noor, uncomfortably curled in one corner, her shoulders resting against the edge of the raft, felt light-headed with the constant motion. Water was trickling down her back from her soaked hair. Her lacy stay-up stockings were slipping on her wet thighs, and she lifted a hand to strip them off as Bari pulled some rope and a curiously shaped piece of plastic out of the red sack.

“What’s that for?” she asked, but he only shook his head as if her question were a bothersome fly. After a moment, her eyes fell on the wedding dress damply scrunched up under the satchel. It was slowly absorbing the water sloshing around the floor of the raft, but it was better than nothing. Noor reached out and pulled at the hem.

She knew she was being foolish and stupidly sentimental as she avoided using the beautiful overskirt and instead lifted one of the flounced underskirts and bent to wipe her face and hair on the impeccably hand-stitched silk. It came away blotched with black, green and tan, so no doubt her face was a mess. She tried wiping her hair and her arms, because she was starting to feel chilled, but the dress was too soaked to make any difference.

For several minutes as Bari got his bearings there was silence between them. Noor sat straighter and tried not to feel sick. Normally she was a good sailor. The raft was stamped with the information that it was for four, but it was a small enough space even for two when one of them was a runaway bride and the other her furious ex-bridegroom, she told herself with grim humour.

It was moving up and down with the stormy swell, the waves slapping it, the water on the floor sloshing around to produce deep discomfort. Once they felt a heave and a toss and then water pounded down on them, pushing at the canopy, and she knew a wave had washed right over them. The incessant drumming rain and the silence within made the little space even more claustrophobic.

Noor shivered. She had never been so close to the elements, so profoundly at their mercy.

And in this mood, that included Bari himself.

“How long do you think it will be before they find us?” she asked nervously.

Bari lifted an eyebrow and looked up from what he was reading.

“Who do you imagine will be looking?”

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