The Explorer's Apprentice

89:Never Let Go

I own only the bit of Rose that is Marley

Marley Faulkner

Light begins to appear again.

It’s as if the moon has suddenly gotten ten times brighter than normal, just to say goodbye. Marley’s mouth is dry. Salt lines her throat. “It’s getting quiet.”

 The sounds are so distant that It’s hard to tell if she’s imagining them or not. Screams are hoarse and soft, quieting down to little whimpers.

“We’ve just…gotta wait a couple of minutes for them to…to get the boats organized.” He can hardly talk. His lips tremble. His hair is full of little icicles, like a snow angel. This makes Marley think of Christmas— carols and eggnog and the smell of pine. Christmas is seven months from now, and that’s seven months, 258 days, and 11,145,600 seconds that she’ll never have.

Reason number nineteen: Your hair.

“I don’t know about you,” Jack says, his chest rattling. “But…I intend to…write a strongly worded letter to the white star line about all this.” 

If they were anywhere else in the whole world, Marley would have found the strength to laugh. On a mountain, maybe, full of wildflowers and long, cumulous clouds that litter the sky.

He closes his eyes and rests his head on crossed arms. His eyelashes are long and dark and thick. Marley wants to touch them, but her fingers are too numb.

It’s funny, in a way, how everywhere else in world, things are the same. People are born just as always and new adventures are beginning, people eat dinner just as always, people grocery shop and dance and race and fall in love and get divorces, just as always. To those people, warm and safe in their homes, nothing has changed. They still may have hundreds of years left. Or maybe not. That’s the funny thing with moments. You can never know. If Marley could, she would tell them never to take a moment for granted. Each and every one of them—they need to know while there's still time. But her legs won’t work. She can’t feel them. It’s as if they aren't even there.

Reason number twenty: Moments. You’ve given me the best moments.  

“I love you, Jack.” It feels so good falling off of her cold tongue. She wants him to know it. She wants him to swallow up her words and have them go straight to his heart, for her words to fall off of her tongue and seep into his skin. She wants that to be the last thing she ever says—for his beautiful face to be the very last thing she ever sees.

His eyes shoot open like a spell. Their faces are so close that their noses touch. He lifts his head. “Don’t you do that.”

She stares at him. His blue gaze is penetrating.

“Don’t you say your goodbyes.” His tone is powerful, despite the shakiness of his voice. His eyes are wide with conviction. Marley can’t ever recall ever seeing them like that. “Do you understand me?”

But how, Jack? How could I say anything else? I mean, just look at us. Stranded in the middle of the freezing ocean. We have but minutes. Maybe even seconds. I’d say that saying a goodbye is precisely what we should be doing at a time like this, before it’s too late. I love you. But her lips don’t move, sound isn’t emitted from her mouth and he doesn’t seem to hear her.  I’ll say it again. I’ll scream it. I love you, Jack Dawson. And I'm sorry we'll never be able to get married and live in a house with blue shutters and have four kids and never ever stop holding hands. I'm sorry I won't be able to grow old with you and get away from here and make babies and adventures, and I’m sorry for the iceberg, and for the ocean, and for cold, and for dying. But he doesn’t hear that, either. All she can seem to manage is one sentence—one phrase, and it isn’t nearly enough. A silver tear trickles down her cheek. “But I’m so cold.”