Two and Twenty Dark Tales

by Georgia McBride

  Miranda sat up as Nodfarker leaned over the side of the boat and dragged the net through the water. Soon he had two lively, silver herring. He dropped them on top of the supply box and slit them open before their tails stopped flipping.

  She turned her head. Whoever mentions sashimi to me when this is over, dies.

  “Here. Your share.” Nodfarker held out a chunk of grayish fish.

  The smell churned her stomach, but she took the piece between her thumb and forefinger. She held her breath, and swallowed it whole.

  He nibbled at the edges of his portion, taking his time as if he had a juicy Big Mac.

  Her stomach growled, demanding more food, at the same time bile rose into her throat. Lurching over the side, she cast the chunk of herring back into the sea.

  When she turned around, no one seemed to have noticed she’d hurled precious food. Winker averted his gaze. The guy whose name began with a B had his eyes rolled to Heaven, mumbling. Nodfarker was chewing with his eyes closed.

  “Where did the name Nodfarker come from?” she asked.

  “Say what?” He opened his eyes and fixed them on her.

  “Nodfarker. Your name.”

  Winker doubled over in laughter, and the other one stopped mumbling long enough to manage a pale smile.

  “It’s Ned Parker,” he said, slicing the second herring into fours. “Your ears must’ve been plugged with saltwater when I pulled you into the boat and said ‘hi.’”

  Miranda flinched, remembering her plunge into the sea. She’d felt queasy and left her friends below to go on deck. As she’d stood looking over the railing, the ferry had suddenly rolled, pitching her headfirst into the water. She’d kicked frantically, but it was as though thousands of fingers clutched at her, dragging her deeper. That’s when a single hand descended from above, grasped hers, and pulled her out of the water. Ned had saved her life.

  He passed her another sliver of fish.

  She took it, but this time she didn’t put it in her mouth. She studied him, doling out the herring to the others, making the portions equal.

  He wasn’t really that creepy. He was about her age, maybe a couple of years older. Nineteen? His dark hair had a boyish way of curling across his forehead and his chestnut-colored eyes were steady when he looked at her. Maybe it had been that wretched name that had made him seem so disagreeable.

  “So how’d you get on that ferry?” Miranda asked.

  “We wanted to see Milaou before heading home.” Ned shrugged. “We were down to our last few bucks, so we stowed away in this lifeboat.”

  “Bad decision.” Miranda bit off a small bite of fish. She’d try nibbling and hope she could keep it down this time.

  “No,” Ned said, tossing fish entrails overboard. “We got away. I don’t think anybody else escaped being sucked under when the ferry capsized.”

  He held out the bottle of water and the cap. “Three capfuls each, okay? That gives us four more days, and then we do a rain dance.”

  For almost a week they’d huddled under the tarp, wishing the rain would stop, bailing fresh water into the salty sea to stay afloat, and drinking from the sky. They’d filled their one container, and now they already needed to ration every drop.

  She sipped her last capful, handed it to Winker, and closed her eyes. It was too hard to stare over the endless water knowing only four days’ supply was between them and thirsty death.

  “We’ll head south.” Ned held up the compass. “Try to find a shipping lane.”

  “Why south?” Miranda asked, opening her eyes and focusing on his face.

  “Warmer weather. More chance for a cruise ship.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing.” He reached for the oars and dug them into the choppy sea. “Time to work out.”

  Miranda slowly gnawed at the herring and distracted herself by admiring the way his biceps rippled under his skin. After about twenty minutes, he stood, unzipped his fly, and sent an arc of pee over the side before he zipped up and leaned back against the side of the boat, resting.

  Until now, she’d managed bathroom privacy at night when the others were asleep. But now she couldn’t wait that long.

  When the other two turned their backs and followed Ned’s example, she clenched her jaw, then asked. “How do I pee on this pleasure cruise?”

  Ned grinned. “Guess it’s over the side for you.” He faced away. “Yell when you want us to pull you in.”

  They kept their backs to her as she stripped from the waist down and slipped into the water. She clung to the side, peeing and feeling lonely on the outside of the boat while they sat inside waiting, smug in their maleness.

  “I’m finished,” she yelled, and Ned and Winker hauled her in. They went to their places, still keeping their eyes averted as she dried and dressed.

  Once she’d sat in her usual spot, Ned nudged Blakie. “Hey, entertain us.” He looked at Miranda. “Give him any math problem and he’ll solve it in his head. He does it all day.”

  “And Blakie?” She cocked her head so he’d know how dumb the name was to her.

  “That’s how his mom called him for dinner when we were kids.”

  “What about Winker? That’s unusual, as names go.” She hadn’t meant to say that.

  They stared at her, and she had no way to cover her embarrassment at being so rude. She shifted her gaze, but Winker broke the tension and pointed to his jumpy cheek. “Obvious, right?”

  Ned smiled and Miranda felt grateful for being forgiven so easily. “Winker’s my word guy,” he said. “So I got things covered. One solves my math problems; the other one gets me through English.”

  It became the routine, then, that each morning Ned portioned out the fish and the remaining rations from the wretched box of stale supplies. Blakie amazed them by doing high-level math problems. They’d spend hours trying to prove him wrong, but he never was. He gave answers to problems like ten to the square root of 675.444 the way Miranda solved “two plus two.”

  “Blakie does it again,” Ned said, returning their pencil to the supply box for safekeeping. “Damned kid was always a genius.”

  A genius maybe, Miranda thought, but as remarkable as the inside of his head had to be, he was one hundred percent unremarkable on the outside. His brown hair hung limp to his shoulders and matched his eyes in color and texture. Miranda pictured him as he would look in clothes other than the Santa Cruz Slugs tee he’d chosen to wear the day of the ferry disaster. She imagined him with a wrinkled shirt, not quite white, with a flip phone in one pocket and pens in the other. One pen would, of course, have leaked blue, but he wouldn’t have noticed.

  He had a gentleness to him. Some girl might want to save him from that not-quite-white and wrinkled shirt. She might find his exterior appealing because she loved his genius and wanted to free him from common concerns like fashion. She hoped Blakie would find a companion, but he had to get rid of that nickname.

  On the fourth day, when Ned passed the bottle to her, she said she’d wait. They all voted to wait. Without saying so, they’d agreed to give the heavens more time to send fresh water. But that night, thirst overcame them, and they drank their portions under the clear sky and full moon. There was no rain the next day either, and the moon flooded the ocean with brightness, taunting them day and night with water they couldn’t drink.

  “Eskimos wish on the moon to bring them back to life.” Winker, who never said much, sat and stared up, his cheek still for a change.

  Miranda drew in her knees. “Eskimos make wishes like that?”

  “Prayers maybe,” Winker said. “I can’t remember. I read about it when I did a report on Alaska in eighth grade.”

  “What happens when it’s dark of the moon? How do they… wish for it to bring them back then?”

  Winker’s tic kicked into high gear. “Uh… don’t… know. But when it’s not up there,” he pointed skyward, “it’s… supposed to be… gathering souls… taking them to earth again.”

  She pulled the blanket over her head, shut
ting out the moon and trying not to listen to the ruffling waves against the boat. When she felt a tug on her blanket, she stuck her head out and stared at Winker.

  “S… sorry I said… that.”

  His eyes, shaped like teardrops, made him look as if he suffered from perpetual melancholy, and Miranda had an urge to touch his cheek. She thought maybe she could smooth the nervous tic away, but she held back. Touching seemed too intimate for someone she barely knew; besides, he didn’t invite it. This was their first real talk.

  “I’m not hiding because of what you said.” But that wasn’t true. The minute he’d told her the myth, something caught inside her, and she didn’t want to see the moon. She didn’t want the temptation to wish on it to bring her back from death. If she did, she’d be giving up on the hope of rescue and life. She couldn’t do that. Ever.

  She shivered in the sudden wind that seemed colder than the nights before.

  Ned took out the compass, then dug the oars into the sea with more force than usual. When he pulled them into the boat, he didn’t look in their direction, even though all eyes were on him, asking if there was a problem.

  “Look,” he said, “it’s getting colder, so we should move closer together, especially at night.” He scooted next to Miranda and Winker. “Come on Blakie, let’s sleep in a pile like Wild Things.” His laugh had a dryness to it.

  So they huddled under the tarp, sharing their body heat and their fear. During the night, Ned’s arm encircled Miranda’s shoulder and pulled her into him. At first she held back, but she was tired and cold and the sound of his heart comforted her with its steady beat.

  When the sun found them, she pushed the tarp away, blinking into the brightness of morning. Ned sat across from her, drawing the oars in steady strokes through the water.

  After an hour, he traded off with Blakie, then Blakie traded off with Winker. Miranda took her turn, too.

  Then Ned checked his compass. “Stop now,” he told her, and she leaned back to stare at the cloudless sky.

  Blakie moved his lips, solving math problems, hiding in a place where numbers added up to perfection and the messy reality of being stranded in a lifeboat didn’t exist. Miranda wished she had an inner place like that to distract herself.

  “We better cover up.” Ned looked at Blakie and Winker, who sat together. “Less sun, less water loss.” Ned tried for a smile. “You’ll have to wait for that suntan until you get back home, Miranda.”

  Back Home. The place she’d wanted to escape for the past two years because her mother had turned into such a bitch. Her father had simply turned and run. The divorce was going to be ugly, and she didn’t want any part of it. She’d already had enough of the nightly fights. This trip with her senior class had come at exactly the right time. She’d withdrawn enough money from her college savings to make it, and she’d relished every moment away from Back Home. Every moment until she’d landed in the sea and all her friends had been sucked underwater… forever.

  “Where’s Back Home for you?” she asked, directing the question to any of the three, trying to erase the images of her drowned classmates.

  Ned answered. “Northern California. A beach town. We’ve surfed together since we could hop on a board. You?”

  “Iowa. Corn-fed and Midwestern, through and through.” For a moment, the taste of hot-buttered corn on the cob filled her mouth, but it vanished almost as quickly as it had come. She licked her lips and found they were sore. Her head ached, too, so she burrowed under the tarp and dreamt of water, of butter and corn and the farm—the real Back Home. When she’d been little, it had been a perfect place. A tire swing at the side of the house. Mom pushing her high into the air. Dad in the kitchen every midday for dinner, his face streaked by sweat and plowed earth, earth that had belonged to the Langlies for three generations. That lifestyle had vanished along with the farm. Poor crops for three years running. Dad sold the land before he lost it to the bank. Then they’d moved to the city where none of them—

  “Blakie!” Ned’s voice shattered her restless sleep, and she scooted from under the tarp.

  Ned knelt over Blakie, pressing Blakie’s wrist between his hands, then shaking his shoulder. He pushed hard on his chest. Again. Again. “Wake up, damn you!”

  Winker looked at Ned, then down at Blakie and the knife lying next to his body. Then Winker fell back and buried his face in his arms.

  A thin, red line trickled from Blakie’s wrist to where Miranda sat. She threw the blanket over it and watched as the red soaked through.

  Ned pulled Blakie onto his lap, swaying back and forth. “You idiot. You effin’ idiot.”

  As the sun settled low, hovering just above the line between sky and sea, Ned released Blakie’s body and began to wrap him in the blanket.

  “Where are you going… and what do you wish?” Winker whispered. “The old moon asked the three. Never… afraid are we. As we sail into the sea of dew.”

  So whether it was a wish or a prayer or just a conversation between human beings and the ancient moon, as Blakie’s body slipped into the choppy water Winker knelt and Ned knelt with him. “Please,” Winker said, “find Blakie. Bring him home.”

  Miranda sought out the darkness under the tarp to avoid the cool white light from overhead, to avoid hearing the entreaties for the dead Blakie, to avoid giving up on life.

  That night, as the air chilled, the pile of three slept under the tarp, but not well. Winker bolted upright, screaming about the moon. Ned curled around her back, and Miranda found his hand and held it. This hand had saved her once; she prayed it would save her again. Before the sun arrived, she slept, believing that it would.

  Rain didn’t come the next day, but a thick mist did. They made a catch basin from the tarp, spreading it across the end of the boat and funneling one end into the empty container. By noon they had half a cup of water, and they each took one small capful onto their tongues, holding it in their mouths, not wanting to swallow.

  It wasn’t enough to stop Miranda’s head from throbbing or her lips from cracking. When she looked at Winker, he looked back at her with sunken eyes. His cheek hadn’t twitched since the day they’d sent Blakie into the sea, but now it began again.

  “When did this start?” Miranda stroked his cheek as if it were something she’d always done. Now, touching him seemed right. The way he looked at her with his teardrop-shaped eyes invited her to do it.

  Winker didn’t pull back, but took his time before answering. “After my mom died.” He drew his tongue over his teeth. “My dad took it hard. Spent lots of days drunk.” He swiped his hand over his face. “I read and surfed… the rest of the time.” Winker looked at Ned. “He and Blakie… got me through.”

  The rest of that day they slept. Woke with starts. Slept again.

  After that, Miranda lost count of the days. Now, she only counted the drops of water Ned placed on her tongue. It gave her comfort to watch how he held the cap. How he measured water, then presented it to her, and then to Winker before recapping the container and returning it to the supply box. This ritual helped her forget the half cup of water was nearly gone.

  Miranda thought about those first days together here and realized she missed them because of all those rituals Ned didn’t perform anymore. He didn’t paddle or check the compass or talk about keeping them headed south. He didn’t net herring and serve her small slivers. Since Blakie had gone, there was nothing to distract them from the slowness of time, and it was as if Winker was sinking into himself a bit more each time she looked at him. All any of them did was sleep, and hopelessness spread like a contagion.

  Then one night, when the sky had cast a silver net of stars overhead, after they’d taken water and after the sun had disappeared, Ned didn’t roll over and sleep. “We should set up a watch,” he said.

  Miranda felt a surge of renewed hope, and when she looked at Winker, his eyes were focused on Ned and her as if he really saw them.

  Winker raised a hand. “I’ll take… early watch.
Sunrise to mid… morning.”

  “Midmorning to when the sun passes overhead—about two. Okay, Miranda?” Ned asked.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll take it until sunset,” he said.

  “We’re not catching a southern current, are we?” Winker asked, but it sounded more like a statement of fact.

  Ned shook his head. “No. It’s getting colder,” he swallowed, “and dryer every day.”

  He was having trouble talking. Miranda was, too. Her tongue didn’t fit inside her mouth like it should. It had thickened, and rubbed against the roof and the sides like a rasp.

  The next day she lay under the tarp, shivering because the sun seemed to have lost its heat. When she felt a tug on her foot, she struggled to sit.

  “Your turn,” Winker said. He stretched out and slept before she could get to the side of the boat.

  Before noon, Miranda couldn’t stay awake. Her head jerked forward or lolled back, bringing her again to her watch. If any ship passed, she knew she’d miss it. She couldn’t do that. She was desperate to yell, “Throw us a line. Give us water.”

  She no longer needed to pee. That humiliation of going over the side of the boat half-naked had ended some days ago, but she knew what that meant. She remembered the humiliation with some longing.

  Ned relieved her from her watch, but she sat at his side and didn’t return to the tarp.

  “If a ship…” She tried to swallow, but she had no saliva. “How do we signal?”

  He pointed to the supply box. “Flare gun.”

  They were using few words, saving energy, avoiding the pain of cracked lips.

  The supplies in that box had to be years old. The crackers had been stale, the tins slightly bulging and filled with odd-tasting fruit. She let her eyelids scrape across her irises and slept, sitting there next to Ned, hoping that her first thoughts about the flare gun were not the right ones. It would work. It had to.

  Then one day, Winker didn’t wake her for her midmorning watch, and she knew it was because he’d fallen asleep. She crawled to him, shook him, and took her place.