The Keeper of Dawn (19 page)

We stared at him in disbelief. Water trapped in rock pockets
foamed and hissed. Roland tried to speak, his throat working up and down like a
gull swallowing a fish.

Chris was the first to find his voice.

“You lucky son of a bitch.”

When Roland cracked a smile, we laughed like we had just
been told the funniest joke of our lives.

“How do you feel?” I asked him after we had climbed to the
Anvil’s highest point.

He looked at me, confused. “Alive,” he said finally.

We had all gotten wet. Roland was more wet than dry, and my
right leg was soaked. The back of Chris’ jeans were wet, and Derek was damp
around the collar.

 “How’s our escape route looking?” Chris asked me,
retrieving a soaked pack of cigarettes.

“Tide is still low,” I reported, surveying the chain of
steppingstones.

Chris nodded, his eyes returning to his roommate. Roland was
studying the waves around the archway. Focus had crept into his expression, his
eyes drawn to where the immensity of the open horizon funneled into a
bottleneck of land and sea.

“I never want to see this place again,” he said, his face a
canvas of mixed emotion. Perhaps we had been waiting for him to reach this
conclusion, for we each started down the trail.

My wet clothes took away what little warmth the rising sun
provided. Overhead a plane passed through the cloudless sky. When I looked back
at the archway, something near the water caught my eye. It was Roland’s
flashlight. The waves must have kicked it ashore.

“Hey, your flashlight!” I called to him.

The others were ahead of me. When Roland looked back, I went
to the edge and pointed to where his flashlight was lodged in the rocks fifteen
feet below.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he replied, and continued down the
trail.

The water around the Anvil had calmed, as if the ocean
needed time to summon another great wave. The silence was so complete I could
hear the plane overhead. It was heading due east across the ocean. I watched as
it inched its way across the sky, leaving a thin white trail in its wake. If
anyone up there were to look out the window, they would probably only see a
speck of land; certainly nothing to hold their attention for long.

Still looking up, I was surprised when the plane suddenly
reversed directions. Now it was going west, back toward land. An instant later
it was spinning in a tight circle going nowhere at all. By the time my hands
started to tremble, it was too late to look away. There was too much space
above me, too much depth in the clear blue sky. The weakness in my hands spread
down to my knees. My vision swam. Somewhere far below, the waves were
whispering. There was a voice, a music almost, in that sound.

Everything was happening as I knew it would: the dizziness
swept over me; the ground tilted beneath my feet as if the rocks on which I
stood had been removed.

The vertigo had me again. And it wasn’t letting go.

The plane was gone, the sky was gone, and the sun had begun
to pivot, spinning from east to west, slowly at first, but eventually with such
speed that a bright circle of light shined down from all directions. Though I
couldn’t remember looking down, I was somehow facing the flashlight wedged into
the shore. I only thought to close my eyes the instant before I plunged into
the ocean.

When I yelled, the sound carried with me underwater,
becoming a smothered, bottled-up noise inside my head. I went in twisted
sideways, and in this regard the vertigo saved me, for the water was shallow,
and if I had gone in straight I would have struck my head on the rocks. The
water was like ice, and it shocked me as if I had stuck my finger in an electrical
outlet. I was in a current, something infinitely stronger than myself, and it
went all the way through me, through my teeth and into my brain, shattering the
vertigo so suddenly I became aware of everything at once.

I tried to feel my way along the bottom, but everything was
in motion. One second my hands were immersed in slick vegetation, and then
everything beneath me vanished, the ocean floor yanked from under me like a
rug. But it was me that was moving. Something had me by the legs and was pulling
me backwards, away from the place I had fallen in. The rocks returned briefly—I
slid along them as if falling sideways down a cliff, helpless to slow my
descent.

Then, quite suddenly, it stopped. It was calm in this new
place, and it felt like I had traveled a great distance to get there. When I
stretched my legs and didn’t touch bottom, I knew I had left the shore behind. I
could feel the deep stretching beneath me. But I wasn’t afraid—fear had frozen
deep inside me in a place I couldn’t reach. There was strength in this fear,
and I knew I would need it to reach the surface. Unable to breathe, panic began
to gnaw through the cold and get to me. It was like a flame—the only warmth I
knew—and once ignited, it spread rapidly, burning through all the numbness and
indecision until only one thought flashed brightly in my head.

I kicked with all my strength and rose up. I threw my head,
trying unsuccessfully to clear the surface. I kicked again and again. My arms
grew heavy. The burning in my lungs intensified. A terror went through me that
I was swimming down instead of up, but when I kicked a final time, sunlight
exploded in my face.

An empty horizon lay before me. The Anvil had disappeared. But
it was only that I had gotten turned around, and I was surprised at how close I
was to shore. The waves had gotten larger, or maybe it was only that I was in
them now. I bobbed up and down on the surface, spitting out saltwater that
seeped in through clenched teeth. Wind swept across the water freezing my face,
the air so cold I almost considered going back under.

I saw them standing where I had been just a moment before. They
looked far away, like spectators in a crowd. I started to swim toward them, but
the closer I got, the farther I was pushed to the right—in the direction of the
archway. All the waves were funneled into this area. Down in the water, the
archway was enormous. It loomed overhead, piercing the Anvil’s side with the
depth of a tunnel.

The archway was what drove me on. Fear of drowning, even the
ice-cold clench of the water, left me. It was this slow, inevitable pull into
the tunnel that felt like death. The rock I was approaching was at the
forefront of a shallow horseshoe of land. The tunnel was positioned at its
center, with the surrounding water all swirls and eddies.

The shoreline was a bulging rock face, its smooth surface
pockmarked from the onslaught of waves. I didn’t step ashore so much as I was
thrown onto it, as if the sea no longer desired me. I pressed my cheek to the
rock and held on. I concentrated on every slant and divot, squirming my feet
and hands in such a way that I came to hug this unforgiving rock, this
frontrunner of an unnamed island, as if it were my savior.

Though I had made it to shore, I wasn’t free of the water. Waves
slapped me hard from behind, traveling up my back and neck, threatening to
reclaim me. Everything was cold to the touch—the wet rock beneath my cheek, my
soaked clothing, the wind that cut like cold steel—and each wave that struck
sucked the breath out of me. All the cold that had built up underwater was now
being released. The slick rock made it difficult to stay in one place for long.
When I braced myself against another wave, I slipped and scraped my knee bad
enough to cut through my jeans.

I heard voices to my left. This gentle sound carried across
the water, threading between the waves. They were calling for me, and I shouted
back to them, something loud and inarticulate. Though obstructed from view, the
tunnel lay to my right. Hearing it without being able to see it only made it
worse.

Another wave struck and nearly pulled me back in. The rock
to either side was too sheer to move along; my only choice was to climb up. Unable
to see above me, my hands led the way. I slowly crept higher, my body pressed
to the rock. As I strained for handholds, a warmth entered my extremities that
had previously been stiff with cold.

When I reached a narrow ledge, I heard a shout to my left. Chris,
Roland and Derek were on the trail across from me. No more than thirty feet
separated us. Despite everything, I smiled.

“Can you climb over?” Chris shouted.

The ledge I was on extended a few feet in either direction. Beyond
this, the rock was vertical. I glanced to my right: the tunnel filled my
vision.

“There’s nothing to hold on to!” I shouted back.

“How about higher up?” Chris shouted. “Can you climb any
higher?”

But it was the same above me. I only needed to go another
five or six feet and I’d be there, but the rock was too smooth to climb.

I shook my head.

“Okay, just stay put! We’ll figure a way to get over to
you!”

I summoned the courage to look down. The waves had
increased. I was maybe eight or ten feet above the water, and from this angle,
the wall was too steep to climb down. Biting back my panic, I looked above me,
and then again to either side. There was nowhere to go. I shook from the cold.

The three of them had stopped. They were looking past me in
the direction of the ocean. The water beneath me had grown quiet. To my right
came the sucking noise of water draining from the tunnel. Though I knew what
was coming, I looked anyway. I only caught a glimpse of it from the corner of
my eye, but it was enough.

“Jake! Jake!” It was Chris. Panic gripped his voice. “Hold
on! You hear me? Hold on as tight as you can! Whatever you do,
don’t let go
!”

I tightened my grip on the wall. But it wouldn’t matter. Having
been in the ocean, I understood it better. All the water was surging into the
tunnel, and I knew that the wave would knock me loose and carry me there. I
could tell they didn’t want to leave, but when I pointed up, they gave me one
last desperate look before scrambling up the trail out of view.

The water beneath me began to drop. I closed my eyes and
waited. It wouldn’t be long. In the remaining seconds, I recalled our first
trip to the beach when Chris had tried to swim to the Anvil. I visualized the
wave exploding in the air, and heard a sound like thunder shoot out of the
archway. Through it all, I watched Chris rise from the water, his dark wings
fluttering in the air.

I have to fly—it’s the only way
.

When the wind picked up, I let my hands fall to my sides. My
feet on the narrow ledge was all I had left, and I dropped into a crouch,
concentrating everything into this tiny space. At the last instant, I summoned
my remaining strength and kicked off the wall.

Water swept past my calves, flipping me head over heels
through the air. There was blue in every direction, and a split-second of
weightlessness before the ocean drove into the right side of my body. I didn’t
land in the water so much as I was sucked into it. I curled myself into a ball
and waited for the impact on the rocks. But it didn’t come. Instead, I was
pushed and pulled at from every direction, the underwater currents jabbing me
in the most unexpected places. Sense of direction was lost—forward, backward,
up and down—were all the same.

I kept spinning through this dark watery void. There was no
end to it. I flailed my arms and legs in a desperate fight for the surface, but
the ocean tossed me about, shrugging away my efforts. Then, suddenly, the sky
burst overhead and was gone, allowing me a quick intake of breath before
pulling me back under.

But this new air soon left me, giving way to the burning in
my chest. My breaststroke degenerated into a feeble underwater dogpaddle. My
arms still flailed, but my legs had stopped kicking, and the currents took me
where they would. A blackness settled into the back of my eyes as if I had been
pulled down deeper than before. There was a sense of permanence to the
darkness, to this spot on the ocean floor that convinced me that I would never
look upon the light of day again. All the panic and fear from a moment ago left
me. I was no longer cold, no longer afraid.

When something grabbed hold of my outstretched arm, I
reacted violently. Suddenly I was getting pulled up to a different place where
all the wetness and cold returned. Though it still felt that I was underwater,
I was breathing again, and the blackness in my eyes began to lift.

“Lucky to be alive,” were the first words I heard.

Roland knelt beside me, one side of his body wet from where
he had reached in and pulled me out. Chris and Derek stood behind him.

Roland smiled. “You’re alive,” he said, and then laughed,
not quite believing it himself.

“Can you stand?” Derek asked.

“Not sure,” I said around a good deal of coughing.

“Let’s get him away from the water,” Chris said, helping me
to my feet.

I climbed the path with concentrated steps. Roland followed
close behind, helping me whenever it became steep. There was a hole in my jeans
where I had hit my knee, but the cut didn’t look deep. A strong wind swept
across the rocks, making my teeth chatter.

When we reached level ground, Chris asked if I could keep
going. I clamped my mouth shut and nodded. They seemed to be in a great hurry,
but it didn’t matter to me where we went; one place was as cold as the next. The
cold forced me to look down, to bear witness to my slow, methodical steps. Derek
stopped abruptly at the hickory, causing me to stumble into him.

They stood for a long while facing the water. Why weren’t
they talking? My curiosity eventually forced me to look up.

The tide had risen. Over half of the steppingstones were
submerged.

“Shit,” Derek said, running his hand through his hair.

“Let’s just stay calm,” Roland said. “We have to keep
going.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Chris asked. “I left my
surfboard at home.”

“I don’t know
how
,” Roland said. “I only know we
can’t stay here.”

I looked at where the rocks should have been, and then back
at my feet. I braced myself against the wind coming off the water.

“Wait a sec. Won’t they notice we’re missing?” Derek asked. “Once
they see we aren’t in class, they’ll start looking for us, right? Especially
Chris. They’ll be searching all over for him.”

“I think you’re forgetting where we are.”

“The island’s not that big. Look, you can see the school
from here,” Derek said, pointing at the cliffs.

“No, you can see the top of the lighthouse from here,”
Roland corrected him. “The whole reason for coming down here is that no one
knows it’s here, remember?”

“They’d find us eventually,” Derek insisted.

“Sure, eventually. But how soon do you expect them to go
rappelling down a cliff? No way. We’re on our own.”

“NO, NO, NO!” Chris shouted, pounding his fists against his
legs.

I was having difficulty convincing myself that this wasn’t
my fault. If I hadn’t fallen, we would already be back at the beach. I stood
there and shivered.

“We’ll have to swim,” Derek said regretfully.

“No,” Roland said. “We’ll use the rocks, like before.”

“Here’s a newsflash for ya, Van Belle. The rocks are
underwater.”

“Only some of the time. Look.” Roland pointed at the water. “You
can see them when the waves pull back. We’ll get wet up to the ankles, the
knees at most.”

While Derek thought this over, Chris went down to the water.
He kept his back to us as if unconcerned what was decided.

“I still think we should swim,” Derek said. “It’ll suck
getting wet, but it’s the only way.”

“Actually, we don’t have that option,” said Roland.

“What do you mean?”

“Stay here for a sec, okay Jake?” Roland motioned for Derek
to follow him.

By this time the shivering had spread through my body. Though
they spoke in whispers, I could tell I was the topic of conversation.

“How you feeling, Jake?” Chris asked when they returned.

“F-f-f-fine,” I stammered, which got my teeth chattering. There
was no longer any hope of keeping them quiet.

“It’s probably best if you take those wet clothes off,”
Roland suggested.

“Ok-k-kay.”

Roland helped me with my sweatshirt. My chest and shoulders
were milky white; even the tan on my arms had vanished. Chris and Derek both
stared at me.

“Hey, guys,” Roland said.

“Uh, we were thinking you could wear my sweatshirt,” Derek
said. “It’s practically dry. I don’t even need it.” He pulled it over his head
without waiting for a response.

“Th-th-thanks. Are y-y-you s-s-sure?”

“You bet,” he said, though he looked cold in just his
Anarchy
in the U.K.
T-shirt.

“And you can put mine over it,” Chris offered, taking off
his hooded sweatshirt. “You’ll be sweating in no time.”

When he pulled the hood over my head, our eyes locked. His
face, even his posture, bore the markings of guilt. His sweatshirt was an
offering, and though I stood beside him, I was at a place he could no longer
reach.

“We don’t have much time,” Roland was telling me. “I want
you to stay right behind me.”