Gillian's Island Read online

The world around me has lost its color, so I stare at that yellow hair. And I know I'm hallucinating, know that I'm about to black out, but there's nothing I want to cling to more than this beautiful vision, this mermaid come to wave me good-bye.

  No...

  No.

  The blonde woman isn't a mermaid.

  She's Ivy. Ivy. The captain of the boat.

  Ivy isn't a mermaid...

  She's real.

  And she's hauling me up and out of the water. I'm dragged out of the freezing sea into something colder—the air, I realize. But then I'm slung onto a hard, dry surface, and I start to cough up water as I gasp in ragged lungfuls of air.

  I'm breathing.

  Holy crap, I'm breathing.

  I'm not drowning, not hallucinating.

  I'm alive.

  And I'm on a small boat. I stare down at my hands, braced against the wooden floor. This isn't an inflatable lifeboat but a little wooden one; it's thin and narrow...kind of like a canoe. There isn't much room, and I'm occupying most of it, sprawled on my stomach, coughing and throwing up seawater...

  And on the other end of the boat, she's here, too.

  Her. Ivy. The mermaid. The boat captain.

  The woman who just saved my life.

  “Are you all right, Gillian?” she asks me, her voice low and hoarse as she crouches in the bottom of the boat beside me, the two oars poised across her lap, her brow narrowed in concern. Lightning arches across the sky, and the reflection of that wicked, jagged light reflects in her eyes, illuminating the green as if from within.

  I stare into her eyes, dazed, mesmerized.

  “Are you okay?” she asks again.

  “Yes, thank you,” I gasp, coughing again over the side; every breath hurts. I place a hand to my chest and then shake my head, drawing in a tentative gasp. “Charity...no life vest,” I force out, as the realization hits me that Charity refused to wear the life vest she was assigned. I know she can swim, but swimming doesn't count for much in this hungry, violent ocean. Panic consumes me as I imagine my friend trying to stay afloat somewhere in the wreckage...or worse, already drowned. I squint, staring hard across the flotsam bobbing over the waves, but Ivy shakes her head.

  “I'm already on it,” she says, and by the time I sit up, ready to ask her what she means, Ivy is on her feet, her balance precise, perfect.

  And then she leaps over the side.

  I stare after her, my mouth open, watching in half-awe, half-horror as she begins to make powerful, thrusting broad strokes among the choppy waves, cutting through them like a knife. She's fluid, liquid as she rises and falls, never fighting against the force of the water. She moves as if she's part of the ocean itself.

  Maybe she really is a mermaid, I think deliriously, clinging to the edge of the lifeboat, peering through the wreckage. Ivy swims a determined path, as if she sees something from her vantage point that I can't make out from here in the boat...

  And then I cry out as Ivy dives beneath the waves and surfaces a moment later with Charity. Her short cropped black hair is plastered to her head and the sides of her face, but I can't tell if she's breathing, if her eyes are open... Just because Ivy found her doesn't mean she's okay...

  Relieved tears sting my eyes as Ivy tows Charity closer to the boat and I take in the fact that my best friend's eyes are open, that she's spluttering out seawater, coughing like crazy, breathing, alive.

  I grab Charity's arms; then I'm using up the last bit of my strength to haul her out of the water and into the boat beside me. Charity collapses, gasping, as I turn back, reach out with my arms to help Ivy in, but Ivy, bobbing up and down in the water as she holds onto the wooden rim, shakes her head.

  “I have to find Rusty,” she shouts over the wind, and before I can say a word, she shoves off from the boat and dives back into the maelstrom, her strong arms cutting through the water and carrying her away.

  Anxious for Ivy, I bite my lip, push my hair out of my face and focus on Charity, who's throwing up into the ocean. I pat her back, try to think of something positive to say—and all that comes out is, “It's okay. We're alive,” which is positive...until you realize that our current state of okayness and aliveness depends upon the fact that we're siting in a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a storm, with no land around.

  I squint out at the sea, trying to keep Ivy in my sights, but she's already disappeared. The waves roar as I clutch the oars and Charity's waist, leaning into the rising waves in a weak attempt to prevent our boat from capsizing.

  Finally, Ivy's head bobs into view alongside the boat again. She surfaces, flinging the hair out of her eyes in one graceful arc of her head, and as she grabs the edge of the boat, she breathes out, panting. Then she slings herself up and onto the bottom of the boat in one easy motion that flexes the muscles of her arm, no help required. She nudges herself into one of the two seats in the tiny craft. Really, this lifeboat was only built for two people. There's hardly enough room for the three of us, so Ivy has no choice but to press tight against me. She's gasping, holding her head in her hands as she tries to draw in deep, even breaths, her wet hair dripping, creating puddles on the boat's floor.

  “I couldn't find him,” she keeps saying, over and over, her voice hoarse, pained.

  I stare at her, unable to find any words to soothe or console her. Given the situation, I don't think such words exist... My heart aches as I watch the torment on her face.

  Finally, she slams her fist against her knees, hard enough for the entire boat to shudder.

  “H-h-he was right there, right with me,” Charity pipes up, her teeth chattering. “We were together, but then he told me to get onto the barrel. He said that he was going to go search for you. He helped me, and then he was just...gone,” she says, her eyes wide, her mascara running in rivulets over her high cheekbones. “I should have held onto him; I should have made him stay...”

  Ivy finally glances up, a single tear—or maybe it's just a drop of salt water—trailing from one green eye. “Of course he went looking for me,” she says then, the words soft and mournful. “Of course...”

  After a few minutes of silent drifting, each of us shivering, lost in our own thoughts, Ivy takes the oars from me—gently, helping me to uncurl my frozen fingers from the handles. Then she dips the ends into the water and starts rowing.

  “I looked for your boss and that other guy,” says Ivy gruffly, glancing back at us and shaking her head. “Couldn't find them.”

  My heart sinks. It's true: I'm angry at Brendan for his role in this tragedy. But I didn't want him to die because of it. I wrap my arms around my shoulders and shudder as I try to sit steady in the rocking boat, glancing over my shoulder at the wreckage we're leaving behind us, already being blown apart and drawn into a hundred different directions because of the violence of the storm.

  “Do you know where you're going?” Charity asks, head tilted to one side as she considers Ivy, who is calmly rowing.

  The former co-captain of the Swan Song regards Charity coolly, sea-green eyes glittering beneath the darkening sky. “I always know where I'm going,” she says, voice flat. But then she softens, resting for a moment, gripping the oars in one hand as she lifts her other hand to the base of her throat, to touch the pendant there. I didn't notice it before, but now she holds it up, showing it to us: there's a small compass dangling from the chain.

  “And I've got a compass.” She glances down at it for a moment; then she looks over her shoulder, in the direction the boat is headed. “It belonged to my dad. We shouldn't be more than two hundred feet from the island,” she says then, squinting against the downpour that has begun to flood the bottom of the boat. “See—there it is,” says Ivy, jerking her chin behind us.

  I squint my eyes against the stinging rain, but I can't see a thing beyond the waves and water, water everywhere. I place my hand above my eyes, squint a little harder...

  Are those... Are those...trees?

  I can't be sure. Everything is so surreal right
now. I can't even trust my own vision...

  So when the boat bumps up against land, I'm worried that we've just hit an outcropping of rocks, that there's no land, after all. But there, ahead of us, I can finally see it, really see it: a beach. A beach curtained by a torrential downpour, but a beach all the same.

  Tears begin to leak from the corners of my eyes as I take in the glorious sight: shore, earth, land.

  The three of us crawl out of the boat. I fall to my knees in the waves, feeling the land beneath me, the solidity of it, the sand shifting beneath my feet as I rise, as I stumble onto the shore.

  I'm disbelieving, stunned. We're alive. We survived a shipwreck...

  As Charity staggers onto the dry part of the shore, I turn, looking for Ivy. And there she is, trying to drag the lifeboat onto the sand. But it's waterlogged and heavy, and she must be bone-weary exhausted from fishing us out of the ocean, and from vainly searching for her brother.

  Rusty... My heart is heavy and sad as I jog to meet Ivy.

  “I'll help you,” I tell her, and she nods with a small grunt of frustration as she tugs on the boat again; it doesn't budge. I grip the edge of the boat, and then, digging our heels deeply in the sand, we manage to drag it up, up, up and onto the shore, just out of reach of the incoming tide.

  And then we collapse onto the beach, all three of us, worn out body and soul.

  Despite the thunder and the deluge of rain, the three of us fall asleep right on the sand.

  Chapter Three

  My very first thought upon waking: Oh, my God, I've never been more sore in my life.

  My second thought? Holy crap, is this real?

  I shake my head, squinting, as I press my palms against the gritty, crumbling sand beneath me and sit up, blinking back the grit of salt in my eyes as I try to take in what's right in front of me.

  I'm lying in the sunshine on a beach. And it's not just wan sunshine, beams fighting out from behind dark, ominous clouds. This is the type of golden sunshine that usually accompanies cheerful commercials about vacation destinations.

  And speaking of vacation destinations... Right now, I look like I'm seated in the middle of a postcard for a tropical paradise.

  The ocean, stretching endlessly out in front of me, is such a clear, joyous blue that it's actually too bright for my eyes. I shield them with my hand as I glance down the beach at the blinding white sands reflecting the sunlight. The beach stretches out in front of me, and up and to the left, it blends with the dazzling green from the forest that borders the beach. Big palm trees flap their fronds in the light breeze from the sea with a gentle shushing sound.

  All of this is so beautiful, the definition of beautiful, and for a moment, I just stare at the scene in front of me, breathing raggedly from swallowing sea water yesterday.

  I can't believe I'm alive.

  We're alive. At least...that's what I remember. Ivy, Charity and I escaped a near-death experience with our lives intact. But when I sit up and look around, I realize that only Charity is within my sight. Ivy is missing.

  I glance up at the sunlight again; it's pouring upon me from directly overhead. So it's probably noon. How long have I been asleep? Or...unconscious?

  Suddenly nervous, I inspect myself, patting various parts of my body to make certain that everything is where it's supposed to be. All of this ache I'm currently experiencing is just a general you've-been-through-a-shipwreck ache, I determine, not a you've-lost-a-limb-to-the-sea kind of ache, which I certainly appreciate. What I appreciate even more is the fact that, when I look down at myself, my fingers instinctively curl around the place where the strap from my camera bag should be...

  And the strap is there. My camera bag strap...that leads down from my shoulder.

  No way.

  In utter shock, my fingers follow that well-worn strap to its inevitable conclusion: my camera bag. I stare down at my beloved camera bag with wide eyes, disbelieving. Even as hope blossoms in my heart, I swallow it down. Yes, the camera bag is still slung across my chest, but I have to be realistic: this bag almost drowned with me... There's no way that my camera, zipped inside, is going to be anything other than a waterlogged paperweight now.

  But when I unzip the bag, expecting it to be full of salt water, there's not a single drop of water in sight. The lining of the bag is perfectly dry, and as I bring out my camera, examining it in the bright light of day, I realize that my camera is perfectly dry, too.

  I paid a ridiculous amount of money to own “the best waterproof camera bag” on the market, but there were customer reviews on the product's site claiming that the bag had been dropped in a toilet, in a duck pond, and in a kid's baptismal fount, and every single time it had been soaked through, and the lenses or camera body were rendered unusable.

  If I ever get out of this, I'll have to leave the bag manufacturer a really glowing review. Camera bag, and camera bag contents, survive a near drowning.

  Thank God for small, awesome favors.

  I resist the urge to put the lens and hood on the camera and start taking pictures right now of every beautiful thing that I see. I will take pictures of this beauty, but I have to figure out exactly what's going on—and exactly what we need to do to survive until help is on the way.

  I mean, for all I know, we didn't end up on the deserted island that Brendan was going to turn into the new hotel resort. We might have landed on a different, inhabited island—in which case, food and water could be a mere five-minute walk away.

  Food...fresh water... Yeah. I really like the sound of that.

  I glance down at Charity, still sleeping soundly, and I worry for a moment about her fair complexion acquiring the worst sunburn of her life... But it's too late: she's sunburned already. We've been lying in the sun for hours at this point. So I decide to let her sleep a little while longer. She's breathing evenly and steadily, so she's probably just as fine as me. I quietly rise to my feet.

  I'm desperately curious. What if there's a highway just beyond those trees, a fast-food joint, a hospital? I want to have a look around, see what's to be seen of this place.

  And, if I'm being honest, I want to make certain that Ivy is all right, too. She's not here, so she must be okay, walking around. Maybe she wanted to explore; maybe she's as curious about the island as I am. But I'm still worried about her, butterflies fluttering in my belly as I remember her hauling me up and out of the water, her strong arms around my shoulders as she tore me from death and dragged me back into life.

  I wet my lips with a dry tongue and clear my throat as I stand up, shaking some of the sand off of the legs of my pants. I leave my camera bag zipped up on the ground beside Charity, and I set off down the shore to see what I can find.

  I lived in Florida all of my life, but I'm sad to say that I never ventured to any of the nearby islands before. I knew they were beautiful, don't get me wrong, but I had other priorities, like college, and then trying to get my career on track—and then trying to get my career back on track when I started working for Coyne Hotels. Most of my life has been comprised of my trying to make something—anything—of myself, and I didn't devote much time to savoring the beauty of the world. Well, not unless I was behind my camera lens. But here and now, I have to admit...the beauty of this place is making my heart tremble.

  It helps, I think, that I almost died yesterday. Because almost dying has a tendency to put life into perspective.

  I walk along the edge, where the ocean meets the land, letting my feet get wet from the little waves lapping on the shore, and I sigh with happiness when the cold water washes over my hot feet. The crystal blue of the ocean, stretching away to infinity, is jaw-droppingly beautiful. I can't help but stare at it, drinking the scene in. The surface of the ocean is nearly as smooth as a stone now, as if the storm that sank the Swan Song never happened at all.

  The palm trees start to become more crowded along the shore, and that's when I hear it, over the sound of the ocean's small waves: a pretty babbling, like that of a littl
e stream. And there, ahead of me, winding out from the forest and down to the sea, is a thin stream carving a little valley into the beach.

  I walk up to the stream and crouch down, wincing at my aching legs. I reach out and let the water pour into my hands. For a brief moment, I'm worried that the water will be salty, or, you know, filled with deadly bacteria. But then my overwhelming thirst overpowers all of my other concerns, and I lift my hand to my mouth and drink.

  The first thing I notice is how cold the water is. I'm so overheated that the shock of the cool water dribbling into my mouth and down the back of my throat makes me shudder with pure delight. The second thing I notice is that the water is not salt water but good, mineral-rich drinking water, the kind that you'd probably buy for five bucks a bottle back home.

  I take up another handful and drink it down, and then another, and then I just lean forward, bending my head down to the surface of the stream, and I start to drink directly from that trickle in the sand. There's a deep enough spot that, when I lower my face to the water, I'm able to drink deeply, just as if it were a water fountain rather than a brook on an island.

  I drink and drink and drink until I'm full, and then I lean back, sighing in relief, my lips and face wet and cool. I wipe my mouth on the back of my arm, and then I stare down at myself. My clothes are dry, but they're as stiff as a board with sand and salt water; they chafe uncomfortably against my skin. I glance up the stream toward the woods and realize that there's a deeper pool up there, where the water I drank originated from.

  The stream keeps on flowing at a steady pace, so if I get into that large pool and wash myself and my clothes, try to remove the grit and salt out of the fabric and from my skin, the dirty water will flow down to the sea, and Charity and Ivy will still be able to drink out of this stream.

  I struggle upright, cursing my sore muscles, and make my way up the beach to the edge of the forest-bordered pool.

  I stare down at the water with my hands on my hips and sigh. Now that I'm looking at it, the pool is much more shallow than I expected it to be. Well... I sigh again. At the very least, I'll be able to wash away the dirt and sand from my legs.