Cold . . . very cold . . . very cold and wet . . . why
would she be wet? Her skin felt sticky, too. Why was she laying out like this?
She must get into the shade, get warm. Perhaps she would build a fire. Why
couldn't she move? Why did her wrists hurt? What was wrong with her ankles?
She opened her eyes, but had to squint against the bright
sun overhead. She tried to shade her eyes, but could not move her hands. They
were bound with strong leather cords, secure from the first, but since getting
wet they had shrunk, and now bit into her wrists painfully. Her ankles were
bound to the small raft in a similar fashion. All around her was wide-open sea.
She saw the white shapes of gulls on the water, but she could not hear their
cries. She could do nothing to protect herself from the water, the sun, or any
other calamity that might befall her. She could not feed herself, and anyway,
there was nothing to eat or drink.
They had intended her to die. Of course she must; after all,
she was The Curse.
[…]
A bold seagull landed on Melanie's chest and jolted her out
of her reverie. She wriggled as much as she could, and seagull flew away. Her
mouth was dry, so dry! She must have water. She recalled what Lucasta had
taught her about Ashtan. He was a kind god, and just. Because he was a spirit,
Lucasta said, he could understand thoughts just as clearly as Melanie could
understand signs. Lucasta said Ashtan would be faithful to provide for anyone
who asked.
Ashtan! Ashtan!
Melanie's thoughts exploded in her head. Would he pay any attention to a Curse
such as her? Ashtan! Great god! Please, I would like some water! Melanie's head swam, and she began to feel feverish.
The sun, formerly overhead, now shone a little behind her head. So
I'm heading east, she thought. By tipping
her head up as far as she could, Melanie could see a vast stretch of land on
the horizon. She wondered what land it was.
Melanie smelled a shift in the wind as she laid her head
back down. It blew strong, from the northeast. There had been gulls settled on
the water, but they now took to their wings. The atmosphere felt heavy as
Melanie breathed it, a sure sign of a storm. Clouds appeared, billowing and
blackening, blotting out the sun. Something struck Melanie on the forehead and
trickled into her hair. A flash of lightning tore a gash in the clouds, and the
sky poured rain! Melanie opened her mouth wide, trying to catch all the rain
she could. Perhaps Ashtan was the good god Lucasta described him as, after all.
With an unexpected jerk, the raft to which Melanie was bound flipped on its
left edge as the storm stirred not only the wind and the rain, but the sea as
well. Melanie did not even have the chance to close her mouth before the huge wave
crashed over her and flipped the raft upside-down. Now she couldn't breathe.
She was going to drown under the raft. There was no way she could escape.
Ashtan was a just god, and not a forgiving one. He probably didn't exist, or if
he did, he most likely caused the wave, and not the rain. Melanie's lungs
burned. She had to get air!
Ashtan! Her thoughts
yelled. The waters beneath her heaved, and she was face up in the rain once
more. The sea still surged, crashing over her, tossing and spinning the raft to
and fro, but never again did it flip over. Then something jerked at her feet.
Melanie could only gaze in frozen horror as the biggest wave she had ever seen
rose up next to her, curling over her and crashing upon her with tons and tons
of water. The sheer weight of it all knocked her completely senseless . . .
~o0o~
A seagull flew over the Atlantic coast. There was a strange
rock in the water. The gull landed upon this new, tan-colored rock. It was
softer than most rocks, and almost looked like the huge, wingless creatures that
flocked to the beach on clear days like this one. The rock jerked beneath the
gull's feet, startling the bird. How was this? The gull flew away to find a
more stable setting place as Melanie—choking and gasping on the water she'd
swallowed—opened her eyes.
She was alive! The morning sun shone on her right, and the
land that she had seen approaching yesterday was now behind her. Somehow, she
had gone from one side of the huge island to the other, most likely by some
waterway of some sort. The sea was calmer now, and Melanie's raft rode a
northbound current. The girl wondered what she would see next.
Her skin itched from the dried seawater, and more splashed
over her from time to time. As Melanie floated, hunger such as she had never
known even on the island she called home wrenched at her frail frame. She
gasped at the horrible pain, but there was absolutely nothing she could do
about it. She shut her eyes against the agony, hoping sleep would help her
forget the void in her middle.
A shadow fell across her face, and Melanie opened her eyes
just in time to see the black, sloped underside of the bow on a huge white boat
before it slid right over the top of the small raft and its prisoner.
~o0o~
Susan Pevensie stood on the lowest deck of the Florida
Day-Cruise ship as it rounded the tip of the state. While her father gave
lectures in Orlando, Susan and her mother occupied themselves seeing the sights
of such a beautiful place. The day-cruise boat was a large paddle-boat.
Half the size of the Splendor Hyaline, and not quite so nice, Susan sighed
as she remembered fondly the happy jaunts she and her siblings would take in
Narnia. A small part of her still pined for those days, but knew she needed to
put such memories behind her, for they would never happen again.
Still, it was rather jolly to stare into the moving water
and allow her mind to return to Narnia and become Queen Susan again. She stared
at the ethereal trail of bubbles that floated up from underneath the boat and
wondered semi-consciously what sort of creature made those bubbles, if any did.
Susan jolted out of her musings and screamed in shock.
Instantly, a deck hand appeared at her side, "What's wrong?"
Susan—speechless with shock—could only point: a body, tied
to a crude raft with leather thongs, had floated up from beneath the water. It
was a girl, and her face, arms, and legs were red-striped with scratches, most
likely from the underside of the hull.
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