Page 43 of The Black Table
Left, right, left, right?—
I’m seesawing now from side to side, not keeping myself flat like I know I should, but I’m fighting my instincts. My body wants to contract, to shiver. To warm up the blood flow in those organs.
And I can’t. Not if I want to move forward. I can’t indulge a moment of care for myself. I have to push, I have to?—
I slip under.
For a second, it’s so calm. Still. A weightless, breathless silence. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing but the sensation of my hair fanning out around me like a spectral mermaid.
No.
The word flashes in my mind’s eye like a firework, like a sudden vision.
No, I can’t. I can’t give that to Elena, to my mother, to the rest of them.
No. No. No.
I may not be brave, but I am angry. And that will have to be enough.
The chill presses in on me as I claw upward. I pinwheel my arms above me, ineptly pushing and scratching my way to the surface, to the light I can just barely barely make out, even with my eyes open and gritty with the silt of the lake.
And when I open my eyes, I see it.
A shimmer just beyond the silt and dark.
Pale hair undulating like streamers, face still and luminous in the water, her eyes open and trained on me. Glimmering—glowing.
A human. A woman, in a flowing dress of unearthly greenish white, her eyes black voids, her face placid.
Vivian.
I don’t know how I know it’s her. Lack of oxygen, a panic response, another mental break. Who knows, who cares.
It’s her. I know it’s her.
Shining. Protecting. Beautiful and unreal and probablynotreal.
But she’s not going to let me drown.
Except then I blink, and she’s gone.
The water is just water, not glowing. And just as quickly as my resolve had appeared, another thought takes its place.
Too late.
I waited too long. I sank too deep. I’m not going to be able to make it on my own.
I pushed too far, and this is the consequence.
Yet just as I’m thinking it, something firm and warm wraps around my waist…
…and then I’m rising, pulled irresistibly upward like I weigh nothing. Soaring and surging upward until?—
Crash.I,we, break the surface of the lake. My burning throat and lungs gulp for air as my panicked vision swims in search of focus.
“I’ve got you,” a male voice says. “Don’t panic. Don’t flail.”
It’s not Elena. It’s?—
