Page 56

Not surprisingly Bexley had pulled out his flask.

As he sat in his small boat, red water nearly climbing over the edge, he drank.

He had told me once at the beginning of all of this that he kept that flask on him for emergency situations only.

He lifted it to his mouth with a shaking hand, careful not to spill a drop from the sides of his pursed mouth.

He was struggling to stay steady, and his boat lightly bobbed and glided across the somewhat smooth water.

I realized he was watching something off to the side with sudden interest: Walter and Eletha.

“Oh no,” Anna whispered. “Look!”

Walter and Eletha’s boat had the roughest water.

Eletha had latched on to the boat with both hands while Walter was struggling to hold on to the back.

A large rush of water came and crashed into the bottom of their boat, dropping Walter into the thick red water before the boat glided away with Eletha in it.

“Walter!” I shouted, grabbing my head as shivers of pain shot through it.

“Look!” Anna said as she pointed to Bexley.

Flask still in hand, he had begun to turn the small wooden wheel in his boat toward Walter’s stream of surging water.

I looked at our own boat and quickly realized that Bexley’s boat was the only one with a steering wheel and apparently the only one capable of being directed anywhere by the passenger.

As soon as his small boat hit the water, it rocked and swayed like its main goal was to throw him from the boat.

He called for Walter, who had managed to tread the red liquid fast enough to remain in the stream and not fly away, but he was struggling to keep his head above water.

You could see black shadow things in the water nearby where he struggled, and panic struck Anna and I at the same time.

Bexley moved his boat as close to Walter as he could safely get without being shot down the stream past him to who knows where. Walter flailed his large arms in Bexley’s direction, but with one hand, Bexley was unable to grab ahold and help his new friend.

Anna and I watched as Bexley lifted up his drink and contemplated what to do; the boat was too rickety for him to set his drink anywhere without it going into the crimson waters and being lost for good.

His gaze returned to Walter, who was being pulled under at that exact moment.

Bexley pulled at his hair with his free hand before flinging the flask into the water behind him and reaching both arms out to get Walter.

The water was rushing faster every second, but somehow Bexley managed to pull Walter into his tiny boat.

The boat widened itself enough so it could now fit two as they both dropped to the floor of the boat looking completely exhausted.

Our boat, which had remained still during all of this, began to move, taking a hard right.

“Look, there’s Eletha!” I pointed. Eletha and Walter’s boat, with only her in it, had begun a wide circle, just as our boat had. My head still pounded and the new movement of the boat didn’t help.

‘Cal,’ I cried out, to no response. The water looked like forks in the sea, as if it had parted three ways.

With no answer from Cal or Mendax—just a pulsing feeling of fear and worry coming from all directions—I tried to focus on the only thing I could control: the situation at hand.

We were circling Walter and Bexley until it was apparent that we were moving down in the water.

“What is happening?” I asked, still unable to see straight because of the pain in my head, even though it was beginning to fade, which worried me more.

“You might want to hold on to something,” Anna said. “I think the sea is draining us.”

I moved my body so I could turn and get a better look. Sure enough, the great red ocean had swirled a large vortex in the center of the sea near where Walter and Bexley had struggled. “Where did Walter and Bexley go?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“I don’t know; I can’t find them,” Anna said.

“I see Eletha. She’s fine, but I don’t think they’re in her boat and I can’t see them anywhere else.

I’m gonna be sick,” she said, and I felt her pain.

The ocean had begun to spin us faster and faster until we could see the walls of the deep red sea hovering around us.

Anna and I grabbed on to one another as the spinning continued.

Eventually the spinning blurred in my head, and everything went dark for a moment.

When I opened my eyes again, everything was still dark, causing me to panic.

“I’m right here,” Anna said. “I think we’re in a tunnel or something, but I’m pretty sure we’re still in the boat.

” She was right—I listened more carefully and could hear the slow slap of water against the boat and…

something else. The smell of decay had gone, but a musty, slightly salty sea smell now hung in the air.

It was almost relaxing to feel the slow steady sway of the water.

“Wait, what is this?” Anna said as our boat came to a stop.