PoraBora

Chapter Seventy-One

Pe lifted the steering board to find it gone. No surprise. She'd known it wouldn't stand up to a storm. A maelstrom of oil and sea? No surprise. But met expectations didn't hurt any less. She let it drop back down.

She was the luckiest of them. Noikoa's fleet was missing entire ships, their pieces floating with the bodies, between and among streams of oil. The fires had gone out, but the damage was not undone.

But it didn't make her lucky. The capsize had sent Noikoa's supplies to the sea, and her cooler with them, and her cup, and much of her eatery. It was a miracle the stinger was still attached, but the motor well had not been so lucky.

Pe kicked the railing where it had once been attached, and was glad Hui and Tua weren't on the boat to look at her. The two were in the water, looking for survivors, looking for koa, but finding and helping Akapuans all the same.

The jellyfish had left with the night, and morning tried to make something familiar of the day. Familiarity did not find the sea. It had yet to settle, visibility so low Pe worried about every shape that floated by, and only more so the ones she knew she couldn't see.

The sharks had come back. She could see their fins in the water, and they pushed her back to the center of her hull, where her leg twisted with pain. She clutched the wood tightly.

The last standing ships called to each other. Several met in the waters, surveying the damage but still stunned into inaction. There weren't many left. Most of the giants had been capsized, most of the swift, wooden boats burned into skeletons. Their crews slipped under the water, and Pe wondered if it wasn't Bora, getting them.

She remembered the waves, and the explosion. The fires had raced up to the sky, riding the rivulets of oil that came down until they hit the cloud. Boom. Her head still felt like it was ringing.

And the tsunami, and the bird, standing on the water, now standing on the manta, and the flushing of the water all around her. And she'd survived it all.

No hagfish for her, she thought sullenly, but that was all behind her now, and with them Makaia and Noikoa and Ikaika. The bat ray had gone down, and the hammerhead, and even Noikoa's eel. She'd watched him motor away through her monoscope, though, chasing after the god, and tried to imagine being dumb enough to keep trying.

Ikaika, she didn't see, and she wasn't keen on looking.

She wanted only one more thing, now. And it was down there, in the water.

Pe picked her lure, hung her line, and searched for the right bait.

She didn't have her firelock, or her saw-tooth blade, but she did still have her knife, and Bora still couldn't breathe in the air. Now's not the time! she could hear Hui say. You can't risk damaging your boat more than it already is, she heard Tua. She supposed that meant she thought both those things.

Now's the only time, she responded.

She had no bait. It had gone with the capsizing and every salting shark below had probably already engorged themselves with it. But she saw a body and cast her line as near to it as she could. It was one of the dead ones. She could tell because he was face down and missing half his chest.

Come and get it, Bora.

He didn't bite, but fishing was a patience game, and Pe had waited three years already.

The sun blued the sea and sky with color. The crater did not enjoy the same hues. It was still sickly dark and covered and dead, as if it had come up from the deepest waters. Just like Pora's island.