Free Lighthouse Bay by Kimberley Freeman Page B

time in their relationship, they are fixed on a common goal: save this wooden chest from being swallowed by the sea.
    She hefts it up the ladder, bumping the walnut chest on every step. Pushes it towards Arthur, who pulls it through the hatch, then offers her his left hand. She is on deck now, and it is chaos. Foaming sea, sails in ribbons, ropes knotted chaotically by the wind, the sky screaming in the rigging.
    “What’s happening?” she asks.
    “Francis is bringing us to the beach. But he needs to get the ship before the wind.”
    Isabella looks around. Rain fills her eyes. The sea surrounds them. “I see no land.”
    “Over there.” Arthur gestures widely. “Somewhere.” He stands with an ankle on either side of the walnut chest.
    Then a man screams. “Breakers! Breakers!”
    Isabella has only a moment to turn her head and see the whitefoaming breakers before the sickening grind of the ship on the rocks vibrates up through her ribs and heart.
    “Abandon ship! Abandon ship!” This is the Captain, standing at the wheel, surrounded by shredded sails and wooden debris. “Every man for himself!”
    All Isabella’s joints turn to water. Arthur is already hefting the chest towards a lifeboat. She scrambles after him amid chaos and noise and salt water and rain. He fumbles with ropes and she helps. People are crawling into lifeboats on the starboard side. She searches faces, looking for Meggy or Mr. Harrow, when a huge wave turns the ship suddenly forty-five degrees and it slams onto the reef again. With a huge plume of foam, the wood disintegrates. Where there were men and movement, now there is only gushing sea. Her heart is too big for her body.
    “Quickly, Arthur!” she shouts. She looks around for the Captain, for Meggy, for anyone. Perhaps there are people still taking the last lifeboat off the prow.
    Arthur lowers their lifeboat and by some miracle they are now both in it and bobbing on the shallow water over the reef. Arthur takes one oar and Isabella the other and they push themselves into deep water, the walnut chest between them. The waves want to keep carrying them back towards the ship, which Isabella can now see has broken in half. She thinks about her jewelry back on board, but cannot feel sorry for its loss. If she lives, she will think herself lucky. If Daniel’s coral bracelet survives too, she will think herself rich beyond measure.
    Then Arthur half-stands to get his oar against a rock and push away. A wave catches their little boat and he tips into the water.
    “Arthur!” Isabella screams. His oar is still sticking out of the water, so she grasps it. He holds the other end tightly, swallowing water and struggling.
    “Pull, you useless woman, pull!” he screams.
    “I am pulling!”
    But then the water is over his face and, pull as she might, she cannot bring him closer. Suddenly, the force is reversed, and she realizes he is pulling her. If he is going to drown, he will take her with him. But before she can register this properly and drop the oar, it flips up. Light. Arthur is gone.
    Isabella feels her own lightness, her own lack of substance. Her death is just over there, an arm’s-length away. A swelling wave beneath her lifts the lifeboat, and pushes it away from the ship. She surfs down it, shouting with fear, unable to hear herself over the storm.
    But now she can see land, and she starts to row.
    In spite of the mad currents.
    In spite of the rocks.
    Because in the chest is the last memory of her son.
    She rows. Through the black water. Through the storm. Through the pelting icy needles of rain. For Daniel.

Seven
    I sabella focuses on one task at a time, because to think of anything beyond the immediate present is to feel searing terror. She must seek shelter, but beyond the vast empty beach is a dark tangle of spiny trees that are black and nightmarish in the dark. The sight of them makes her stomach turn to water. Instead, she drags the lifeboat up the beach to a rocky shelf