I keep my chin above the glowing water, with Beckett’s hand on my head, and for the first time consider that we really are going to drown. That the boat could fill and sink. That this tunnel will become nothing but water and leave us no surface to float on at all, a pipe we can never find the end of.
The boat lurches, we take another dousing spray, and then I leave my stomach behind me as we fall. Beckett grips my hair and I hear Jillian shriek once, clinging to my legs. We hit bottom, my face is underwater, bright behind my closed eyes, and then I am up, gasping, and the boat is shooting forward, smooth, making two plumes of white spray. The roar dulls, the boat slows, the current from the waterfall we’ve just ridden pushing us across a calm pool. Once again the ceiling is far above us, natural red light filtering down from an opening somewhere that I can’t see. We bump into a shoreline, stuck, the back end of the boat turning just a little in the remaining flow.
I look at Beckett, his hand still full of my hair, the glasses speckled with dripping water. He uses his other hand to lift them from his face, dark eyes wide and surprised, and I watch the smile come, not even a little guilty this time.
He says, “Does anybody want to do that again?”
And then I am laughing, and so is he, echoing over the noise of the short waterfall.
Beckett sits up, shakes the water from his head, Jillian on her knees while the boat rocks, dripping like the rest of us. She frowns, looks down, and says, “Beckett, you drowned our lights.”
We all laugh this time, and I think the sound is relief. I scramble to find the jars while Jillian and Beckett try to rescue the remaining glowworms. The boat is stuck on a muddy, pebbly beach, and farther down, in the dim redness of the cavern light, I can see two more boats tied to stakes in the shore. Then I remember my pack.
I give the light jars to Beckett and snatch it out of the water, stepping lightly up the length of the boat to the shore, leaping out over the waterline to the firmer stony ground. The pack is soaked through, but the book is dry, protected by the blanket. I sigh with relief, and then I hear a splash and look up. Jillian has jumped over the side into the shallow water, heading toward the shore. But she’s gone still, her blue eyes large.
“Beck?” she says, voice small. And then she screams.
I hear Jillian yell my name at the same time Samara shouts, “Hold her!”
I drop the jar of light and wish I hadn’t, because the redness coming in from the ceiling hole is dim and Jill is in shadow. But what I can see is that she’s up to her chest in water, when I thought the level should have been barely above her knees. Then I understand. Jill is sinking. Sinking sand.
I nearly tip the boat getting to her. The front end is grounded on the shore rocks while the back has floated away, out of Jillian’s reach. But my arms are longer than hers. I stretch out, get her hand, and she is so stuck the boat actually comes to her when I pull. I hook my arms below hers while she clings to my neck, feel her shallow, frightened breaths.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, I’ve got you … ”
But I don’t have her. Not really. I can feel the force I’m working against, sucking her down. I pull again, and it’s not enough. More than not enough. My arms are in the water now, too, little ripples lapping her neck. I look in her eyes. She’s going to panic, and if she panics, I may not be able to keep my grip.
“Hold tight,” I whisper. “Pull with me … ”
“Beck … ” Jill whispers, then she hisses. “Something moved! Against my leg. There’s something in here!”
I tug Jill again, and feel arms go around my middle. Samara.
“Together,” she says. I heave backward, Samara adding her weight, and a little more of Jill comes out of the water. I readjust my grip, and we do it again. Jill’s body is rising up, and up, and then she screams again, flails so hard I nearly lose my hold, and slides downward.
“It bit me! Something bit me!”
I don’t see how anything could have bitten her, not through the jumpsuit. But that really doesn’t matter if she doesn’t hang on.
“Jill! Listen! You’ve got to pull with me. Lift up your legs! Ready? One, two … ”
I can feel Samara’s locked hands digging into my chest. She’s giving it all she’s got and so am I. Jill’s face is screwed up with effort. I feel when one of her legs comes free, then the other, and Samara and I lose our balance backward, rocking the boat, though I’ve still got a handful of Jill’s jumpsuit.
“Do not put your feet down,” Samara warns her, jumping over the bow to the dry part of the shore, tugging on the boat before it comes loose and we take another ride to who knows where. I get Jill back in one leg at a time. I think she has tears running down her face somewhere in all the dripping water, and her boots are gone. But where the leg of her suit is pushed up there’s a single puncture mark, blood running pink and watery down her leg. She leans over to look at it, then starts up her expert cussing, though soft this time, I think only for herself. Or me.
“Can you walk?”
She nods, and I help her to the safe ground, where she collapses onto the pebbles. The suit is mud-stained to her waist. Samara kneels down, examining the wound on Jill’s calf with the same sort of focused expression she gave my ankle.
“It is deep,” Samara says, “but small. It will not need sewing.”
She’s right about that. Samara may be good, but I’m not about to let her sew Jill’s skin like a handmade shirt.
“There was something in there,” Jill whispers, “something below the sand … ”
Samara looks back over her shoulder, like something might come crawling out of that pool, which is disturbing. I look through the glasses and can’t find a thing. But the place where Jill was sinking is such a perfect blend of water and sand it’s hard to see through. Then I look at Jill again. Her cussing has turned to murmuring. Like she’s falling asleep.
“Jill?” Her eyes flutter closed. “There’s something wrong with her,” I say, but Samara is already examining Jill’s face. Her eyes have gone red and a little puffy, I thought from crying but now I’m not so sure. I turn over Jill’s leg. The puncture mark is swelling so fast I can almost watch it rise. Then Jill coughs, gasps. Like she can’t breathe.
“Samara! What lives in there?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t Know … ”
“Quick! Is it poisonous?”
But Samara just closes her amber eyes, serene, kneeling at Jill’s side as if she were carved from stone. And she’s gone. Perfect.
I run for the boat at the same time I go to the database of the glasses, searching. Poison. What do we have for poison when we don’t know what the poison is? I grab Jill’s pack from the water while I scan the information, get the medical kit in my hands, and drop to my knees at her side again. She’s wheezing now, gasping, her face reddening and swelling. She can’t get air. She’s not going to be able to breathe. I change the search in the database, looking for something, anything. Jill can’t die. That cannot happen.
“It’s not poison,” Samara says suddenly. She’s back, eyes open, panting like she’s been for a run. “Allergy. She is allergic.”