Chapter Six
Jules
Water crashes over my head, pushing me into a spinning vortex. My neck flares with intense pain. I’m pumping my arms. I don’t know why. I’m stopping.
My arm is yanked, and it feels as though it’s been pulled clean out of the socket. Everything goes black.
The nightmare softens.
I’m lying down. My heels are gritty, as if someone lined the heels of my shoes with sandpaper. It’s cold. Murmuring voices mix with the howling wind and the steady drum of rain.
A dream cups my face, warms my skin. I peel open my eyes. Someone is leaning over me, their pale face haloed by dark hair. They have grey eyes and a beautiful mouth, set in a hard line.
Seán joins them.
I’m flat on my back. The silhouettes of broad-leaved trees float above me and other faces, too far to distinguish, linger by. The sky is grey, spitting out a light drizzle.
“Seán?” It takes a long time to get the word out. Someone lined my throat with sandpaper too.
The tension around that beautiful mouth softens. It’s Cillian.
“Glad to hear your voice,” Seán says.
Cillian leans in. “Does your head hurt?”
“Every part of everyone hurts,” someone points out. Darren, I think.
“Not everyone fell out of the sky,” Cillian says curtly. “Did they?”
Humming insects are the only answer. Things become soft around the edges of my vision.
“Does your head hurt? Answer me, Jules.”
When I wake again, it’s dark, and I hear the soft hiss of rain hitting sand. People are lying on either side of me. The shivering is uncomfortable, and the chattering hurts my teeth. I turn my head and my neck aches. I groan.
A second later, Cillian leans over me. “Jules?”
“My neck’s killing me.”
I slide my foot, and sand digs into my heel. Why am I outside? The yacht disappearing into the distance flies through my mind, followed by the image of it getting closer, inch by inch. “I undid the harness buckles.”
Cillian breathes out hard. “That was really, really smart.”
“My hands were numb.”
“You did a great job.” Cillian places his hand on my arm, squeezing softly. “How does your head feel? Are you sick to your stomach?”
The two bodies on either side of me stir. I feel long hair against my neck. Willow and Mary.
“I have a headache, and my throat hurts.”
“We all swallowed seawater.”
The comment brings my attention back to my surroundings. It’s nighttime. The air is cold. We’re all lying on the ground, under trees, in the rain. A knot tightens in my stomach.
“We wrecked?”
The hand resting on my arm squeezes again. “You swam in with us. You don’t remember?”
“I had a nightmare about being inside a washing machine.”
A choked sound that might have been a laugh in another scenario comes from Cillian. “That’s an accurate description of what happened. We can’t do anything until it’s light, so try to sleep, okay?”
I begin to form a response about how impossible that will be. We’re outdoors, my neck is killing me, I’m cold, and whatever I’m lying on is far from comfortable.
Suddenly I’m waking to voices and daylight.
My body quivers in outrage as I sit up. I bury a curse in my soul, twisting my entire torso to avoid bending my neck, and I scan my surroundings.
We’re at the point where the beach meets thick jungle, beneath the canopy of the outermost trees.
Further in, trees, shrubs and thick undergrowth weave together to form a solid wall.
In the other direction is a beach of pristine white sand.
Tall waves crash into the shoreline, the sound of their impact a soft clap. I flinch at each break.
I see our yacht sitting in the water, half-submerged.
“We’re on an island,” Mary says. I turn my entire body to face her.
She’s leaning against a palm tree, knees pulled to her chest. She’s got on a tank top and shorts, and goosebumps all over her skin.
“Everyone’s having a look around, seeing if there’s anybody here.
” There are streaks of blood on her shirt, a wrap on her arm, another on her ankle.
Mary follows my gaze. “It’s sprained. The glass in my arm fell out in all the chaos, but Seán said the cut isn’t too deep. We cleaned the wound out as best we could.”
Glass in her arm?
I try to recall what happened. Nothing concrete surfaces after that initial wall of wind, only snapshots of moments. Getting back on the yacht… I can’t pin down the memory.
I get to my feet, wobbling once I’m vertical. “I’m going to have a look.”
I walk down the beach, getting away from the treeline.
The tropical trees form a thick, unbroken line.
The land curves inwards after what I estimate is a mile in either direction.
There’s a large green hill in the centre of the island, similar to Isle Arun.
Unlike Isle Arun, there’s no sign of civilisation.
I turn to the yacht. There must be a shoal or a reef. In Ireland, a boat that far out would have plenty of clearance. The sound of the waves crashing is louder here. It makes me queasy.
I hear voices and turn to see Charles and Willow returning to Mary. I join them.
Charles has two black eyes, and Willow’s arms are mottled blue. We’re all wearing swim shorts and shirts, and we’re all shivering. The rain has stopped, but the wind is cold.
“Is everyone okay?” I ask.
I’ve seen Seán, Cillian, Mary and Willow. I’ve heard Darren.
“ ‘Okay’ is debatable,” Willow says. “But we all made it in.”
I let out a breath, deflating.
Cillian and Mathieu appear from one direction, Seán, Darren and Yasop from the other. Seán’s arm is in a sling made of the windbreaker he was wearing yesterday. Yasop goes straight to Willow, putting his arm around her shoulders, careful of her bruises.
Mathieu comes to my side. His curls are damp and weighed down, reaching well past his ears.
His tan has an ashen quality to it, and a bruise circles his right eye, along with swelling.
“I’m okay,” he says. “Just some bruising. You’re okay?
Are you steady? Should you be standing?” He looks at Cillian for an answer.
Cillian scans me from head to toe. His hair looks longer too, waves weighed down. His white cap is gone.
“I’m alright,” I say.
“Sit,” Cillian says. “Everyone,” he adds.
Mathieu presses against my side, guiding me towards one of the tree trunks.
Everyone does the same, assembling in a loose half-circle in the canopy’s shade.
Our ripped clothes and rat’s nest hair blend well with the hanging vines.
Dew glints on spiderwebs amongst the trees, though their owners are invisible.
A heavy silence settles over us. Nobody seems willing to break it.
“Did you guys find anything?” I ask.
“There’s another island,” Mathieu says. “It’s within swimming distance, but it looks just as uninhabited as this one. That is, if this entire island is empty. Did you guys see anything in your direction?”
“Nothing our way either,” Seán says. “Except wilderness.”
“When will rescue get here?” I ask. “After the wind settles?”
Plants rustle as Seán shifts position. “I sent out an SOS, but I don’t know if it got through. I wasn’t getting anything but static.”
Alarm shoots across Willow’s face. “I heard you talking to Cillian on the radio.”
“Those were handheld radios they only work over short distances. That storm rolled in so fast, it was on us before I could call out.” Seán rubs his hand down his face. “I was changing the SD card in the camera while we were stopped for the changeover. I didn’t see it coming in.”
“Rescue services don’t know we need help?” Darren asks. He’s on the farthest edge of the semicircle. Scrapes cover his arms and legs, and a dark bruise dapples his jaw. I think about his difficulty while we were snorkelling yesterday. Half a kilometre is a long distance for a poor swimmer.
“We’ll have been reported missing when we didn’t arrive yesterday,” I point out.
Seán shifts again but immediately stops with a wince. He cups his injured shoulder. “Since we decided to spend the night at the resort again, I radioed the mainland to let them know we’re not arriving until tomorrow—today. We won’t be reported missing until tonight.”
“Won’t it be the resort reporting us missing then?” I ask.
Seán shakes his head. “It was an open invitation. I hadn’t radioed them.”
“Nobody knows we’re shipwrecked?” Willow asks.
“It depends if the SOS got through,” Seán says.
A breeze rustles the leaves. There’s a flutter of wing beats as two little brown birds fly by.
Cillian leans forward. “It would be best to assume that we’ll be reported missing tonight, and that’s when the search will begin.”
“How long will that take?” Darren asks.
“I don’t know,” Cillian says.
“There’s an emergency beacon on the yacht,” Seán adds. “It should have released and activated automatically when the yacht rolled, but—”
“So rescuers do know we’re missing,” Darren says.
“I’m not certain it deployed. The way the yacht is sitting, it would be above the waterline.
I don’t know if there was enough time in the roll to trigger it.
Either way, we won’t be hard to find. Rescue could be here the minute the wind settles.
In the meantime, Cillian and I have a lot of camping experience.
We’ll get a shelter rigged up and see what food and water we can scrounge up. ”
“There are coconut trees the way Cillian and I walked,” Mathieu says.
“Our way too,” Seán says. “They should be in season right about now. The shells can double up as water collectors.” He eyes the grey clouds in the distance. “The wind is bringing those right for us.”
Seán gets up, and I find myself on my feet too. Cillian lightly touches my arm. “You need to take it easy,” he says. “Wait here with Mary.”
“I can help look for food.”
Mathieu hops to his feet, and he takes hold of my other elbow. His wrist is circled by a vicious-looking bruise. “You’ve been in and out of it, and you’ve got this really big bump on the back of your head. You need to rest here. We’ll bring you back coconuts, promise.”
I’m bullied into sitting next to Mary, and everyone heads off in different directions. Making the best of the situation, I tuck myself against Mary’s side and try to get warmed up.
Her eyes are swollen and red as though she’s been crying, but her voice comes out steady. “I was scared you weren’t going to wake up.”
“I’m not the one who got stabbed with a piece of glass. Is it sore?”
Up close, I can see the wrap is the same orange and white as Seán’s windbreaker. They must have torn a strip off it. “It feels like someone punched me,” Mary says.
She rests her head on my shoulder and twines her fingers with mine. They’re cold at first, but gradually warm up. The pressure behind my eyes fades. I take a firm hold of that glimmer of good and drag it towards me.
“Did you enjoy Cillian tightening the straps on the harness?” I ask.
Mary giggles and weakly slaps my knee. “Oh stop, don’t start about that. Charles will fashion a harness out of those fronds and insist I wear it so that he can tighten them.”
I smile. “I feel bad. Cillian’s only here because I asked Seán to bring his hot cousin for eye candy.”
A giggle becomes a laugh. “Jules!”
“Darren broke up with me. I’m single. Why shouldn’t I get to ogle hot men?”
“Why shouldn’t you have them tighten straps on your body?” Mary plays along.
“I’m a rebel.”
We both laugh, somewhat deliriously.
“You wanting eye candy saved our lives,” Mary says, sobering. “Cillian got us all out of the cabin when the ship rolled, and he got us all onto the shore.”
I think again of the yacht falling away. Of Cillian staying outside as waves crashed over the deck instead of getting inside to safety.