Empire

Four: Frenzy (pt 2)

The boys were perhaps an hour out, well past the harbor wall, when the fisherman's warning proved true.

The wind came on faster than any of them expected. The grey sky darkened within minutes, and the sea beneath them changed from a gentle rock to a hard, uneven chop that sent the boat pitching violently.

"Pull the nets in!" Martins shouted over the rising wind, his easy grin gone, replaced by a pale, fierce focus. "Now! All of you—leave the rest. Just pull!"

Cole, who had spent most of the morning lounging against the gunwale and making jokes, was silent now, hauling rope alongside Tom with none of his earlier ease. Luke worked beside Pete, his hands already raw, salt spray stinging his eyes as the boat lurched beneath him. Every violent pitch made his earlier fantasies of the open sea feel suddenly, sickeningly foolish.

The wave that took them came without warning.

A hard, sideways swell caught the boat broadside just as they were nearly finished hauling the nets. Luke felt his feet leave the deck as the world tipped sharply. Then the cold hit him—all at once, shocking and total—as the sea closed over his head.

He surfaced gasping, salt water burning his throat.

Chaos surrounded him. The boat had capsized and was drifting a short distance away. Tom was already clinging to its overturned hull, while Pete flailed several yards off. Cole surfaced nearby, coughing violently with a shallow gash torn along his forearm where the splintering mast had caught him as the boat went over. Blood curled briefly into the churning grey water before the waves scattered it.

"Martins!" Luke's voice tore through the wind.

Martins surfaced a moment later, sputtering but whole. "Here! Get to the boat—all of you! Get to the boat!"

One by one, hands hauled each other up and over the slick, overturned hull—Tom first, then Pete, then Cole clutching his bleeding arm against his chest, and finally Luke and Martins together. All five of them hung there, soaked, shaking, and gasping, while the storm raged around them for what felt like hours.

Then, gradually, the storm began to ease.

The wind dropped. The black clouds broke apart, allowing pale, watery sunlight to spill through in patches, settling the swell into something almost gentle. Relief passed through them.

"We're alive," Cole said, half laughing, half disbelieving. He winced as he shifted his bleeding arm. "By God, we're actually alive."

"Don't celebrate yet." Tom scanned the empty horizon in every direction. No shore. No sails. No other boats. "We're still a long way from anywhere."

Far beneath the boat's overturned hull, drawn from a distance by the faint trail of blood still curling from Cole's arm, something had begun, slowly and patiently, to circle.

It moved without hurry—a massive grey shape gliding just beneath the surface, unseen by the boys who sat exhausted above it. It passed once beneath the hull's shadow, unhurried and assessing. It circled wide, then tight.

"Do you think anyone's noticed we're missing yet?" Pete asked, attempting humor, though his voice still shook.

"My father will have my hide," Martins said, managing a weak grin. "Assuming we ever make it back to shore for him to give it to me."

They all laughed. It was a small, exhausted sound that came from boys alive and relieved in the middle of an empty sea, utterly unaware of the shape moving steadily closer beneath them.

Cole, shifting his weight to ease the pain in his arm, let his legs drift down a little too far below the hull's edge as the water beneath him went briefly, unnaturally still.

And then it exploded.

*******

Meanwhile, in town, midday came and went at the shop the way it always did, though the silence inside felt heavier than usual.

Behind the counter, Edward stayed bent over a bolt of cloth, his measuring tape snapping softly against the wood, while Edmund sat at the desk with the account books. Half his mind was on the neat columns of figures in front of him; the other half was anchored to the front door, waiting for Luke to return.

By early afternoon, a persistent itch of irritation began to work its way into Edmund. The wool and thread Luke had been sent for still hadn't arrived.

"Has your brother come by with the cloth yet?" Edward asked, not looking up from his work.

"Not yet."

"He's likely gotten himself distracted somewhere." Edward spoke easily, with the tired surrender of a father used to his son's wandering attention. "Send him straight up to me when he does."

Edmund nodded, though the irritation refused to settle. By mid-afternoon, it had curdled into a faint, sickly unease behind his ribs.

He stood at the shop window, looking out at Cutler's Row. He thought of their conversation in Luke's room—the promise he had managed to get from Luke, even though he knew the boy was lying, he still wanted to believe Luke had changed.

By late afternoon, Edmund set down his pen. "I'll go see what's kept him," he said, reaching for his coat.

He stepped out into the cooling air, maintaining the lie that he would find Luke somewhere ordinary. But when he reached Cobb's stall, the cloth merchant blinked and shook his head. No, he hadn't seen young Yellowsmith since morning, and no, he hadn't sold him any wool today at all.

He hadn't bought the wool.

The realization tightened like a fist in Edmund's chest. He tried Mrs. Fenwick's stall, then the fishmonger's, but each head shake chipped away at his comforting excuses.

He headed for the harbor road. The sky above the water had turned a heavy, and bruised violet, carrying the sharp, iron tang of approaching weather. A young boy sat near the water's edge, tossing pebbles into the shallows.

"You," Edmund called out, striding toward him. "Have you seen my brother today? Luke. Luke Yellowsmith."

The boy looked up slowly. "Tall one? Dark hair?"

"Yes." Edmund's hands curled into fists. "Yes, that's him."

"Saw him this morning. Went out with Martins and some others." The boy gestured vaguely toward the open bay. "On a fishing boat."

Edmund's throat went dry. "When?"

"Early morning." The boy shrugged. "Storm's been bad out that way most of the afternoon, mister. Real bad."

Edmund didn't remember crossing the remaining distance to the harbormaster's post. He remembered only the boy's voice—real bad, mister—echoing against the cold wind, and the sick certainty that none of his warnings had prepared him for losing his brother to the sea.

********

Cole didn't even have time to cry out. One moment his legs were dangling loosely over the edge; the next, something struck him with violent, wrenching force, yanking him half-under before he could register pain. His scream cut off into a strangled gasp as he thrashed wildly against the wood, his fingers locked white-knuckled around a length of frayed rigging.

"COLE!" Tom lunged, grabbing Cole by his collar, straining with everything he had.

The sea around them turned black in the fading light, spidered with a thick bloom of red.

"Pull him up—PULL HIM UP!" Pete shrieked as he grabbed Cole's other shoulder.

Across the hull, Martins scrambled to the high side, leaning his full weight back to keep the boat from flipping under the imbalance. They dragged Cole over the gunwale at last. He collapsed onto the wet wood in a heap, chest heaving.

In the pale twilight, Luke saw the full terror of it: Cole's leg below the knee was torn open, ragged and mangled.

"Oh God—oh God, oh God—" Pete turned deathly white as he pressed both hands over the wound, but the blood surged up between his fingers.

"Keep pressure on it!" Martins yelled, his hands slick with red. He ripped at his shirt, wadding the fabric and jamming it into Pete's hands. "Hold it down, Pete, don't stop!"

Cole's breathing had gone shallow and rapid. "It's... it's under us," he rasped, his voice barely a whisper above the surf. "I felt it... sweeping right under the wood..."

As if summoned by his voice, the hull shifted from a slow, heavy bump from below.

All five boys froze.

Luke stared into the water just beyond the hull's edge. Gliding less than ten feet away, just beneath the murky surface, was a massive grey shadow. It moved unhurriedly, circling wide before sweeping back in—patiently as if knowing they had nowhere to run.

"It's not leaving," Tom said, his voice unnaturally flat. "It isn't going anywhere."

Martins looked up from Cole's leg. Luke watched something cold settle behind his friend's eyes—a final, grim calculation.

"We have to reach shore," Martins said. "Now. I don't care how far it is. We use the loose boards, we don't stop, and nobody—nobody—lets a limb touch that water."

*******

Edmund stood at the edge of the pier beside Halloway, the broad, grey-bearded harbormaster. "Storm came up fast," Halloway said, scanning the darkening water through a spyglass as his men readied a lantern-lit boat. "We'll take her out and sweep the usual currents. If they went over, the tide usually carries things back toward Miller's Point."

"If they went over," Edmund repeated. The words tasted like ash.

"We'll know more within the hour, son. Standing out in the cold won't hurry them."

Edmund stayed anyway, watching the lantern-lit boat push off into the chop until its wavering light was swallowed by the black horizon.

Back at the shop, Edward prepared to close for the day. He returned the bolts of cloth to their shelves and counted the day's coins twice over—though his mind was clearly elsewhere. He turned the key in the front door, locking it, only to unlock it again a moment later. Some part of him simply refused to seal the shop while two of his sons were still out in the dark.

He told himself Edmund was just being thorough. He told himself Luke had simply lost track of the hour. He stood at the window, watching Cutler's Row fade into dusk as the street lamps flickered to life one by one.

And still, neither of his sons had come home.