فصل 95

emilia

A whitecap tossed us beyond a cluster of rafts, most of them empty. Less than an hour had passed since the ship was torpedoed. Thousands of dead bodies, eyes wide, floated frozen in life vests. In the darkness, closer to the sinking ship, I thought I could make out the silhouette of lifeboats. We were much farther from the ship than the others. The sailor was sick into the water. I pulled the pack from his arm. He thanked me and leaned farther over the edge of the raft.

I had the knight’s pack.

The knight had the baby.

The knight would want his pack.

I wanted my baby.

Pain ripped through my chest. I wanted her. I wanted my baby.

A deep popping came from the ship. Its bones were snapping, breaking from the contortion pressure. The rounded stern sloped vertically toward the sky. People dangled from the railings, screaming. Others plummeted backward to their death. An explosion detonated from within the boat under the water. Suddenly, the entire ship lit up. A blaze of glittering lights brightly illuminated the water and the grotesque scene. I stared at the massive twinkling ship. A groan, like a deep yawn, sent echoes across the waves into my face. And then the lights vanished. The boat disappeared into the black. The huge steel city—and thousands trapped inside—was sinking to the bottom of the sea.

A momentary quiet followed, leaving nothing but the sound of the wind and waves. We bobbed up and back, up and back, waves lapping and curling, the sound of crying filtering through the dark.

Next to me in the water, a young woman floated silently in a life vest. Her skirt rose up in a perfect circle around her. She turned in slow pirouette, dead arms outstretched, snow dusting her dark hair like powdered sugar. A set of false teeth drifted by on a piece of wood and faded into the darkness.

The lifeboats were too far away to yell. I didn’t have an oar. I scanned the water for something to row with. Bobbing all around us were tiny children. The weight of their heads, the heaviest part of their bodies, had flipped them over in their life vests. With each wave, small corpses knocked against my raft. I was surrounded by hundreds of drowned children, heads in the water, their little feet in the air.

All the little duckies, with their heads in the water

Heads in the water.

It was my punishment. Honor lost. Everything lost.

Shame is a hunter.

My shame was all around me now.