The Explorer's Apprentice

76:Open Gates

Abby Bronte

The woman has finally left, convinced by Abby’s bizarre knowledge, and the water has risen.  With each breath she takes, it rises ever so slightly higher, and the water spills into her room with overwhelming speed.  She can nearly feel the boat tipped to its side.  It reminds her of how she feels on airplanes when they take sharp turns.  This always made Luke most concerned.  “Why are we tipping?” he had asked, almost unknowingly gripping to his big sister’s hand each time.  Even as he grew to be older, it spooked him, almost unnaturally.  “It isn’t right,” he would insist when Abby tried to explain physics, something she doesn’t fully understand herself, to him, brushing off whatever facts she threw in his face.

Abby snatches the bulky white life jacket that was left at the edge of her bunk by the kind woman, and slides her arms through.  The ice cold ocean water has almost reached the top of her bunk, and she curses Charlotte for staying for so long.  She could be somewhere above, to the highest point she could get before she’s locked in, so that she wouldn’t have to wade through the water.

                        Instinctively, Abby holds her breath.  It’s a habit of hers whenever she’s about to do something she’d prefer not to, like dip her finger into freezing cold water that over a thousand people will soon be completely submerged in.  The thought alone is sickening, but being a part of it makes it ten times worse.

Abby’s about to dip her finger in, but immediately thinks better of it.  She might as well jump right in.  Either way, she’s going to end up beneath the ocean.  The water’s rising too quickly to think.  Currently, she just has to do, and not think.

She takes a deep breath and crawls to the edge of her bunk.  It shakes nervously beneath her in a combination of her weight and the pounding paves.  

Refusing to think of the actions she’s about to take, Abby submerges nearly her entire body into the ocean.

It’s frigid, like pins and needles.  She remembers one time, she and Isabelle sat by a frozen over lake when they went to Colorado on a vacation together, taking turns sticking their feet into it.  They would pull off their socks and shoes, and leave them next to them with a rag in their other hand so the dripping water wouldn’t leek into their winter boots.  The girls would look at each other, and without even having to say anything, would simultaneously shove their foot into the water.  It would only ever last a few seconds, until one of them started screaming about frostbite, or threatened to push the other (being Isabelle in most cases) in.  This water reminds her terribly of that, except this time it’s not a game, and taking her feet out isn’t really an option.

                        Wincing, she steps to the ground.  Her entire body goes into shock, prepared to shut down to the intense icy water.  She doesn’t want to move.  It’s too cold.  Much, much too cold.

                        All those times Abby watched scenes from the movie, or read articles about the 28 degree water, how it’s a miracle even those seven people survived the ocean, she never fully understood it.  She remembers thinking about how cold it was, technically speaking.  Below freezing, she had observed, was much too cold to sit in for longer than a second.  But she didn’t possibly imagine that it could be this cold.  She’s half expecting it to freeze around her, trapping her here forever.

Abby grimaces, and begins to force her way through the rushing water. It pounds against her as she makes her way out into the hall, as quickly as she can.  She’s already trembling from the cold, and she’s sure that she’s going to be blue before she can reach a higher level.