Chapter 37 #2
The blanket of calm around her shut out the cries, and for the first time, Emmeline didn’t only feel it. She heard it; the shimmering of air as a portal opened. She looked to the side, and there was the ripple, hovering above the railing.
“Theo.” Her voice was weak at first, as if she wasn’t used to talking anymore. “Theo. I did it.”
He glanced past her shoulder, then met her eyes.
Below, water rushed up to meet them.
“Run,” he said, and she grabbed his hand, and they dashed across the platform, metal banging underneath their feet. But the platform ended before the railing, four, five feet—or more.
“Jump!” she yelled, and pulled him with her as she leaped.
In the longest second of her life, she flew in an arc above the swirling dark waves beneath, to the portal.
But the passage—it was strange. No beach, no sunny day, no warm embrace of her room at home.
Only a dull red glow enveloped in the dark, and the faint smell of ash …
Fire.
Stop! She closed her eyes as she reached the ripple; Theo bumped against her, and there was nothing. No land beneath her feet, but no water, either, and no flames. Only a gentle rushing, more like white noise than the ocean threatening to envelop them.
She opened her eyes again. She and Theo were between each side of the portal as the air shimmered around them and a glow bounced within those ripples, like a fractured reflection of the northern lights.
Below them, the ship was gone. The ocean gulped, swallowing its meal, and calmed down.
And they were floating.
***
From a quarter a mile away, Sylvia watched the Titanic disappear underneath the glassy sea.
The boat had already been silent in shock; now, a suffocating terror descended as the ship that should’ve been their shelter blinked out of existence, and they were left alone in the night. Alone with the stars, and alone with cries, dulled by distance, but no less horrible.
Where were the other boats? Did Will and Emmeline make it into one of them?
“Go back,” a weak voice came, and only after a second did she realize it was her own. “Go back. We have to go help them.”
“Yes,” another woman said. “We have enough room left!”
The sailor in charge of the boat looked over his shoulder. “If we get near, they’ll swarm the boat. Then we’ll all go down. Is that what you want?”
“My husband and daughter might still be there!” Sylvia objected, her voice hitching on tears.
“We’re too far away, anyway,” the sailor said. “They’ll all be gone by the time we get there. The boats closer than us can pick them up.”
The other woman quieted, and Sylvia swallowed a lump in her throat.
“Mama,” Tristan peeped, and she pressed him closer to her chest. On her other side, Brendon unmovingly stared at the empty ocean, shock frozen on his face.
Sylvia, too, stared into the dark, into where the ship and all the lights and her memories used to be.
To where Will and Emmeline might still be.
In the place where the stern dipped, a light flickered—a strange little bead, not a star, but not the light of a ship, either.
It was so tiny she could barely see it, and she briefly wondered what it was, before the stream of tears clouded her vision and the gripping fear of her daughter and husband’s fates pushed out all other thoughts.
***
Emmeline wrapped her arms around Theo as he hugged her, and they stayed hovering in the in-between.
On one side, the chill of the arctic night pressed against them; on the other, the heat from the flames engulfing Lady Scarlet’s castle gently fanned them.
Both ways was doom; their only chance was for her to keep the passage going, to keep them stranded in between, as somehow, that kept them afloat in pure air. Out of the fire, out of the ice.
She clenched her teeth and redirected all her forces toward the passage. Don’t let go. Whatever she did, she couldn’t let go. She had to keep them out here, above the water, even as her body locked up and cold ripped into her bones.
They didn’t talk. She didn’t know how long they stayed like this; how long the ocean beneath them flowed silently and stars passed over their heads.
At some point, she closed her eyes. She didn’t even realize she’d done it, but she was so tired and couldn’t look anymore; she needed to focus on the passage.
Keep it going.
Keep it …
“Emmeline,” Theo’s voice came, gentle, as if he was trying to nudge her awake.
Her eyelids were heavy, but with great effort, she raised them.
The darkness was gone. A pinkish-golden dawn glittered on the horizon, turning the sea blue.
In the light of a new day, they were revealed—shards of icebergs, all around them, in all shapes and sizes, a pale, whitish-blue, piercing the sea surface.
And dark against the horizon, a ship. A small steamer with a single smokestack rising up in the sky. Close. Here. Their rescue. Relief flooded her veins, making her realize how exhausted she was.
“You can let go now,” Theo said.
And she could hold no longer, so she did.