Chapter Fourteen

AYRIE

The wind was getting stronger than I had imagined possible. I had to adjust my flight speed to account for the forces buffeting us around. I needed to flap my wings more often than in calm air. Once I reached the point where continuous pumping was required, I would only have enough strength to keep going for a few minutes before I fell out of the sky from exhaustion. And that was if I only had to worry about supporting myself.

I tried to use my wings as little as possible, using the air currents to guide us.

I needed to stop overthinking things. I would talk us out of the sky in a couple of minutes with negative thoughts like those. An important part of remaining airborne was having the right mindset.

Instead of wondering what was going to happen, I forced myself to think about something else. When we had first learned how to fly, instructors trained us on visualization techniques where we imagined we were as light as balloons, floating effortlessly in the sky. Our scientists had found doing mental tricks could extend our time in the air by thirty to forty minutes. I hoped it would still work if I was carrying someone on my back.

We couldn’t stop ourselves from watching the approaching storm. The dark, gray clouds looked threatening as lightning flashed, illuminating the sky around us.

The waterspouts frightened Elle the most. Every time we saw one rise from the ocean, she would clutch me more tightly and bury her head down on my shoulder to hide her eyes.

When I wasn’t keeping an eye on the storm, I was scanning the horizon. I was certain there had to be land nearby. If there wasn’t, we were doomed. I thought I saw a dark land mass far off on the horizon, but I might have been imagining things.

Rain started to fall, and our visibility dropped to nothing. I was able to fly steadily, but I was blind and struggling to keep our heading without being blown off course. I had nothing to gauge our direction when black clouds hid the sun.

We were drenched in seconds. Elle started shivering, and I felt her wet shirt pressed tightly against my back. I couldn’t help her her. All I could do was keep us in the air until I collapsed. I was now certain we were going to fall into the sea. It was only a question of when.

A new problem was that we had flown out over the open ocean where we would be on the animal side of The Barrier. We were going to be in danger from water monsters as soon as we hit the sea. Considering this, I realized everything was going to end for us in the water. If the wildlife didn’t kill us, we would drown.

I tried to be efficient with my wings to stave off our doom. With luck, we could outfly the storm. I didn’t say anything to Elle. She was scared enough already without the additional burden of our impending deaths on her shoulders. It was going to be a bad way to die.

I could have been happy on that island forever with Elle. We should never have left. It would have been better for Elle to get sick there and risk death than to come out here and die for certain. I hadn’t thought about the consequences of our decisions. I should have known better, and now we were both going to pay the price with our lives.

Minutes passed and the storm grew worse. The rain drove into us and felt like a thousand nails hitting our exposed skin. The wind started to come in gusts. It was worse than a steady headwind because I couldn’t anticipate where the air currents would come from. I had to be vigilant and on guard. The stress was tiring out my mind just like the flight was wearing down my body.

We passed into the thickest, darkest clouds I had ever seen. Lightning flashed all around us every few seconds. I flew around two waterspouts - they didn’t suck us into them.

Through it all, Elle never said a word.

The only thought I could keep in my head now was to keep fighting. I wasn’t going to give in to the fatigue beginning to creep into my flying muscles. I would outfly the storm if I had to.

Every beat of my wings was hurting now. Lactic acid filled my muscles.

I had to keep flying. The thought beat through my mind like a drum. But repeating a mantra couldn’t change reality. A gust of wind blew into us when a waterspout formed and pushed us around. I lost my balance and Elle fell off my back. Her arms were too tired to hold onto me through the violent shaking.

I managed to grab hold of her arm as she fell, but I couldn’t pull her up to me. Instead, she was dragging me into the ocean with her. I didn’t care. I was tired too. There was no point in going on if we weren’t together. If she ended up the ocean, I would be by her side. It was better to die with Elle than live without her.

The thought shocked me but was instantly driven from my mind when we hit. The water felt like liquid ice against my skin. It was nothing like the warm shallow water near the island. I released Elle’s hand as soon as I dipped beneath the surface. If I couldn’t pull in my wings, I was going to drown, and I didn’t want her to die with me. I managed to drag enough of my head out of the water to pull in a deep breath before I went under again. My waterlogged wings were dragging me down.

I heard Elle scream my name before my head sank beneath the waves again. I didn’t know if I could pull in my wings when I was underwater, exhausted, and out of breath. But I had to try. If I failed, Elle would be all by herself.

I tried to pull them in three times, but the water was stopping me, and I was running out of breath. I felt small, firm hands yanking on my arms and pulling my head out of the water. I gasped, breathing in sweet air and unable to think of anything except oxygen.

“What’s happening to you?” She sounded scared, but there was a determination in her voice. She was stronger than she thought.

“It’s my wings.”

Elle was pumping her legs and dragging me to the surface whenever my head sank under the water. She was a great help, but I could tell the effort was becoming too much for her.

“You have to put them away, don’t you?”

“Yes. I can’t do it under water.”

“You can use me. I’ll lift you up.”

She rolled onto her back and tried to position her tiny body in a way that would support me. I had to put my full weight on her. I rolled onto my stomach and lifted my wings out of the water. Elle had taken a deep breath before her head went under the waves. She was still trying as hard as she could to support me.

It wouldn’t do either one of us any good if I started to panic now. I avoided thinking about the possibility of Elle drowning to save me and focused on retracting my wings. It took two tries, but I finally did it, screaming as they came back into my body.

I hoped it wasn’t more than a few seconds but seeing Elle in danger and being the cause of it made the time feel like a million years. I yanked her to the surface, hoping she could still breathe.

“You did it!”

I didn’t have the strength to respond to her. The agony of my wings was more painful than ever before because my body was so exhausted. The water wasn’t an ideal environment for suffering.

Elle saw I couldn’t swim while I was recovering. She wrapped her arms securely around me while using her legs to keep us both afloat.

Huge waves started to roll over the ocean now. We were trying to stay together, but the seas seemed determined to tear us apart. Sometimes we were in the troughs, and other times we found ourselves in the peaks. As I recovered, I broke away from her and started to swim on my own. I wondered what creatures lurked beneath us and were thinking about us for dinner.

Elle had to yell to make herself heard above the noise of the storm. “I think I saw a ship out there.”

I managed to give her a weak smile. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a sailing vessel? We could die in a watery grave together in the storm. I knew she hadn’t seen anything real. People who were close to death often saw what they wanted to see.

“It was probably a hallucination.”

Something brushed against my foot. I twisted away in the water, looking down to see a dark shape swimming beneath us. It wasn’t alone, either. A pack of creatures must have thought we looked like dinner. I hoped we wouldn’t suffer.

Elle was starting to drift away again. “Ayrie!” She reached her hand in my direction. I stretched toward her and kicked my feet, hitting something in the water that felt like it had teeth. It was scary enough to make me start swimming frantically in her direction.

“I saw something in the water.”

I nodded. I didn’t have enough energy to speak. Did it even matter if I said anything? The creatures in the water were going to eat us, and the only thing I wanted right now was a chance to tell Elle how much I cared about her. I had wasted all the time we spent together.

“Ayrie?” She sounded terrified, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I could feel myself starting to slip beneath the water. Something pushed into my body. I knew everything would be over soon.

I couldn’t hear Elle screaming my name anymore.