Three times during the day I saw helicopters or planes pass overhead, and I waved and shouted as I had at the cruise ship, but I’d flown in an airplane over these same waters before. I knew how unlikely it was that anybody up there would be able to spot a person in the water. I wondered if all the air traffic had anything to do with me. Had Rusty reported his boat missing?

Two large clouds parted and a column of sunlight lit up a small circle of ocean not far from me. It reminded me of those paintings of angels or Jesus, where they stood in a shaft of celestial light. Maybe this was a sign, maybe a miracle was about to take place, another boat would appear, and I would be plucked from the sea. I waited, allowing myself a tiny bit of hope. The lovely shaft of light broadened as the clouds drifted apart, and soon the whole sky was flecked with spots of blue. No boat appeared, and I beat my hands against the surface of the sea, splashing my own face, angry at myself for wanting to believe.

When the sunlight finally reached my part of the ocean, I could feel the temperature change. I closed my eyes, pointed my face to the sun, and let the heat soak into my skin. I leaned the top of my head back, and my feet floated right to the surface. I began to feel some warmth, even in my legs.

For a time, I actually dozed off into real sleep. That bit of late afternoon sunny warmth reenergized me, and when I woke, I remembered that I had those candy bars in my pocket. The saltwater had not penetrated the vacuum foil wrapper, so when I tore it open with my teeth, the chocolate bar inside was squished but dry. I usually complained about the chalky taste of those health food store protein bars when B.J. offered me one, but this one tasted so good, I nearly gobbled down the second as well. I pulled it out of my pocket but then stuck it back, thinking that night was coming, and it would take every bit of energy I had to survive through those long dark hours.

Night came on as quickly as the cruise ship had passed. It seemed as though one minute there was sun, then a flamboyant red sky had melted into a million stars. The sky was not as dark as it had been the night before. Out of reach of all the mainland lights, there were so many stars there was little black sky left. I couldn’t ever remember having seen so many stars.

No, that’s not true, I thought. There was that time, down in the Dry Tortugas with Neal, my former boyfriend. Neal, who had shown me the stars, named the constellations, and made love to me on the sand of an island that disappeared at high tide.

Was Neal waiting for me at the Crossroads, along with my mother and Red and my dear friend Elysia and Margot and all the others I had not saved?

The skin on my fingers had lost all sensation. When I touched my fingers to my dry cheeks, it felt like I was pressing slimy sea creatures to my skin. I put a finger in my mouth, and it was more like a cold thin pickle than a part of me.

Sleep was the enemy, and I battled against it by singing songs I’d learned as a child, songs like “This Land Is Your Land” and “America, the Beautiful,” by gliding my hands through the water and watching the blue green contrails of bioluminescence sparking off my fingertips, by naming the stars and constellations I could remember: Orion, Betelgeuse, Altair, Sirius.

Just in case there really was some kind of search-and-rescue effort happening out there, I turned on my little strobe light. It had a big pin on one side, and I had attached it to one of the straps on my buoyancy compensator. As I adjusted the straps on the BC, I felt Racine’s pouch float up under my chin. I grasped it tight in my fist and stared upward, but the bright flashes of my strobe blinded my night vision, ruining my view of the stars. I was way beyond caring what seemed rational and what did not. I called her name out loud, La Sirene, and I told her that I didn’t believe, but if she wanted to help me anyway, I wouldn’t turn down the offer. That made me smile, and I wondered if it would be the last time.

It didn’t take long once it was dark for the cold to set in. I tried curling my body into a ball, swimming, rubbing my limbs, but nothing worked. A part of me welcomed the numbness because it stopped the aches in my body and the pain in my head. At one moment, I was sure I heard my mother’s voice, and we had quite a long conversation. She told me drowning really wasn’t so bad. “Sey, dear, when you’ve really had enough, just breathe the water. Simply put your head under and breathe.”

“Mother,” I said as I kicked my legs, spinning my body around looking over the waves. “Mother, where are you?” She wouldn’t answer me, and I was so cold. And so sleepy. I would never do as she said, never breathe in water, but it would be nice to stop struggling and sleep for a little while. Maybe, just maybe, the darkness and cold would be gone if I could only sleep through the night. Yes, sleep.

XXIX

I was down in a deep, dark cave where the cold and damp got into your bones. Waiting, but for what, I wasn’t sure. Then I saw a shaft of light shining in the cave, just like the light I had seen at the surface. And she was there, crying, asking me to hurry, please. I pushed back the strands of my long black hair that were floating in the water, waving about my head as she reached out to me. Help me, I heard her say inside my head, just like that first day I’d found her. Help me. You promised. I called out to her, Where are you? I could see her, but I could not reach her. When she answered, she asked, Who are you? and I told her, La Sirene.

A hand grabbed hold of my clothing and started pulling me up toward the surface. I struggled, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Then I heard the voice of a man speaking Creole, and I knew I was not going to let them take me away from Solange again.

“No,” I cried out, and swung my fists at the arms that grasped my clothes. I was dragged into the bottom of a boat, and a plastic tarp was thrown over me. I felt the weight of several people lying on top of me. I stopped struggling because if they didn’t get off me, I would soon suffocate.

The corner of the tarp lifted. My strobe light was still flashing in my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything. A hand reached in and turned off the light. Red lights continued to dance in my vision.

“Lady?” someone said. It was a young man’s voice, and the accent was distinctly Haitian. Maybe this was another of Malheur’s henchmen. “You okay, lady?”

I tried to blink away the red spots. My eyes began to focus on the person nearest me, a woman. Her skin was very dark, and she was wearing a headscarf. She was the one sitting on my midriff. The young man was behind her, and there were other faces behind them, more and more as my eyes started to see better.

“What—” I tried to speak, but with the woman sitting on my diaphragm, it was difficult to get enough air. Then I looked up, above all their faces, and I saw the sail. It was made of flour sacks and other odd bits of fabric. It puffed out, round-bellied and pulling hard in the strong night winds. I looked back at the woman sitting on me. “Can I get up?” My voice sounded strange even to me.

A puzzled look crossed her face, and she looked over her shoulder at the young man. He smiled and nodded, saying something to her in Creole. She laughed and wiggled her way to a stance.

When I tried to stand, I discovered my legs could not support me, and I collapsed back to the deck of their boat. In the moment I had tried to rise, however, I had seen that the boat I was on was only about thirty-five feet long. People were packed into every square inch of space. They had squeezed even closer together to make space to pull me aboard. There, where I collapsed on the deck, exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, the lady who had been sitting on me took over and began to undress me.