The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig

Author:Francesca Haig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books

chapter 17

The instinct that had pushed me to leave that night had been a good one: the weather held fine and the moon’s light was so strong that we could see the land behind us even hours after setting off. Later, beyond the sight of land, the swell rose waist height above the boat, but it was steady and regular. We found that if we kept the boat facing head-on to the swell and didn’t let ourselves turn sideways, we could negotiate the waves well enough. After some grappling we managed to raise the sail and learned to steer a zigzag course to travel against the wind. Kip kept glancing back at the absent shore, but he seemed reassured by my certainty as I guided us. At one point, an hour or so before the first hint of dawn, I cautioned him to slow the boat. “There’s an outcrop of rock here, not far—we don’t want to go aground on it.” I could feel it, like an eyelash in my eye, or a piece of gravel in my shoe: small but impossible to ignore.

Even by the moon’s constant light we couldn’t see anything, straining our necks in all directions while trying to keep the boat head-on to the mounting swell. Then I shouted at him to throw the tiller hard left and dug my oar in, too, for added traction. As the boat shuddered to the right, we saw it, not two feet from the other side of the boat: the different shade of darkness among the black water. It was swallowed by the subsequent wave, but in the next trough we could see, again, the saw-bladed silhouette of rock.

After that, Kip stopped asking me how far I thought it would be and left me to my squinting concentration. We endured the whole day, rationing the water in meager sips. When night came it gave us respite, though the sea around us seemed to expand with the gathering darkness. The last dregs of the water were gone now, but the moon, at least, was bright enough to see by, just. When dawn had begun to break and the swell was lower, we tried to take shifts at sleeping. I went first but couldn’t manage even my allotted spell. I’d hoped that sleep might distract me from my thirst, but when I closed my eyes my mouth felt drier than ever, my tongue too large for my mouth.

When he took his turn, Kip fared no better, shifting awkwardly in the bottom of the boat where he’d tried to stretch out. “Even the worst of the swamps and rocks we’ve slept on since we escaped didn’t bounce about like this,” he said. “I can hardly stay awake, but damned if I can sleep, either. Move over.” So he resumed his spot next to me and we pushed onward, the sun continuing to rise behind us.

It was well after noon on the second day, the salt spray making my lips raw, when we came to the reef.

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