Chapter 30: The Gyre Part 4
"Are you all right?" Cal nodded but that set the world to spinning again. She closed her eyes for a moment and leaned forward. When she opened her eyes, she saw the sketch of Sam. Water had splashed on it as if it wanted to claim even this drawing of the man. She looked over the side, hoping to see him come to the surface, but nothing disturbed the black surface of the water.
He was gone.
Cal's heart wrenched and tears flowed from her eyes. She ruthlessly pushed away the sobs which threatened to incapacitate her.
"We'd better get back to the ship." Cal winced at the cold, even words coming from her mouth. Prof. Orthin nodded and they clumsily took the oars and rowed back toward the Peregrine. The oars blistered her hands within minutes. She welcomed the pain as a distraction from the greater pain within her. If she'd been faster, if she hadn't borrowed the knife. If she hadn't been focused on drawing pictures.
Why had she come? Her heart ached the way it had when her mother succumbed to fever, leaving Cal alone overnight. Alive and talking in the evening, cold and stiff when Cal went to wake her in the morning. Cal didn't know how long she tried to wake her mother before a servant found Cal and carried her screaming out of the room. Even after all these years, the memory reduced Cal to sobs. She didn't know if she wept for her mother, or Sam, or her own broken heart.
The boat bumped into the Peregrine. The crew caught the ropes and winched them up to where her father could lift her out of the boat and hold her tight while her tears soaked through his shirt and sobs wracked her body.
***
Cal woke in her berth, head wrapped in soft cloth. The gentlest of swells rocked her as light poured in the porthole. For the first time she could remember, her fingers didn't itch to draw something. Sam's death had done something to her. It was worse than that engineer's death. She'd eaten with Sam, played cards. He alone of the crew had always called her Cal.
They were friends.
Something unseen had taken him away, perhaps the thing they'd come to find. Despite the sailors' reservations, she'd been naïve. Cal hadn't thought of the expedition as dangerous. The eagerness for knowledge took on a different shape.
Was what they were doing worth the death of a friend? His knife lay in her bag. None of the crew wanted it. No one but Cal thought she might have prevented the tragedy.
"We're at sea, these things happen." Captain Cully said when she'd tried to apologize. It didn't help the guilt and grief eating at her heart. The if only's ate at her soul, the way they had with her mother. Even now, Cal wondered if she'd just stayed with her mother through the night. If only she were faster, smarter, more capable.
Cal stared at the ceiling of her berth and fought the tears leaking out of her eyes. Sobs shook her again and she curled up to give herself over to them. Through the day she cried until she felt hollow.
She wanted to go home. If she could have hitched a ride on an albatross she would have.
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