Chapter 14

                                    

                                          


                          
        
                          
First thing I felt when I regained consciousness was panic. Not only did I not remember where I was for a minute, but what had woken me was K screaming my name from the main hatch, telling me he needed me because the boat wasn't responding properly. I was still in a dream. Thought it was quickly turning into a nightmare. 
                          
I hurried back up to the deck, but I got up too fast and faltered at the top of the stairs. K caught me just as the boat was threatening to flip over. "YOUR LIFE VEST, NOW!" He was shouting over the sound of the whistling wind and the roaring of the sea; the boat was gyrating wildly. 
                          
I flew back down the stairs to the cabin, grabbed my lifejacket and threw it on. 
                          
I got back on deck and K grabbed my wrist. I had a split second to notice that the storm had gotten really bad. All I could see ahead were vicious black clouds. I couldn't even tell if it was raining; the water crashing on the boat came in big gushes, wetting me from head to toe in a matter of seconds. 
                          
K was at my side, as calm as ever, and it washed the feeling through me. Still, he had to scream over the ruckus of the ocean for me to hear him: "There's water in the bilge, I opened the hatch and it was filled with water. The electric bilge pump isn't working. I have a manual one, but I can't be up here maneuvering the boat and pumping water out at the same time. Max, there is about 1000 pounds of water in there. You have to pump and never quit until the water is out. Do you understand?"
                          
"Yes...where's...where's the pump?" I felt kind of dizzy and nauseous. Now was not the time to get seasick. I reckoned my face was a lovely shade of green. 
                          
I had to focus to make my way to the bilge with the pump. 
                          
K helped me set it up and then left. I did what I could. 
                          
Time was stretching, and I felt like I had been here for hours. I was starting to get exhausted, but I kept on going. I couldn't help K on deck, so I would at least take this task off his shoulders. 
                          
After a while, I figured we weren't sinking so I must have been doing pretty well. I was wondering if K was doing okay when he showed up to see how I was doing. 
                          
I didn't stop pumping. "I'm fine. How are things up there? Better or worse? Are you doing alright?" I said. 
                          
"Well, you sure kept us afloat. You've done an excellent job. Couldn't have done better myself. And I'm fine, by the way. You can come up now, things are improving a bit. The storm was wild but short; it's slowly dying. I have to get us back on track." 
                          
The storm was dying. I liked the way he had phrased that. When I was pumping the water out, it had almost felt like I was fighting a war to protect our ship. We were like two soldiers fighting together, but separately, to defend our lives. I had never been in real danger before in my life; but this time, if the sea had taken our boat, we would have died. Well, ok, not really die. But even if this was a dream, it was still the first time I'd felt adrenaline this intensely, and I dearly hoped it would never happen again. 
                          
I let out a deep sigh of relief as I climbed back on deck. The wind was abating. 
                          
It was pitch dark and I could feel the heaviness of the humidity and the fog pushing down on us. 
                          
There were lights sparsely built-in the boat's deck, and K had turned them on after the storm had died, and with the moon slowly reappearing behind the clouds, both lights made for a charming ambiance. The waves were still rocking the boat, but the sound of them colliding with it were now more therapeutic than alarming. 
                          
K went on to tacking the boat. He had found our approximate location on a map by "dead reckoning". I wasn't sure how that worked, and I was too tired to ask. I slumped myself on the closest bench. 
                          
I noticed black sports moving everywhere beside me. Curious, I looked closer. There were round creatures with eight little legs. There was something sleek in the way they moved. I lay my hand next to one and it climbed on it. It was about half an inch long, including the legs. I heard K a few feet away from me. "Spiders. Be careful, they bite." But I couldn't believe that this little tiny thing could hurt me. It clearly wasn't a menace; it just stayed there, unmoving in the palm of my hand. 
                          
"How did they survive the storm?" I asked. 
                          
"Those buggers survive everything. I'm surprised you've never seen any." I thought I heard him add: "Lucky you." 
                          
"You want to hold one?" 
                          
"NO! Keep those things away from me." K took a step back and put his hands in front of him as if it would protect him from the spiders. 
                          
"Are you afraid of them? They're so tiny and so fragile." I laughed at him. 
                          
"They just...creep me out, that's all." He turned away when he saw I was muffling another laugh. 
                          
The rest of the trip back was silent.  
                          
We were both really exhausted. I watched K sail the boat with perfect composure and peace. It made me feel comfortable and I rested my head on the side of the boat. 
                          
Time passed, we had spent the night on the boat, and I don't think neither of us was bored with the beauty of the scene. The sun had slowly begun to rise, and the sky was a beautiful shade of pink and purple haze; there was a bit of leftover fog. The boat cut through the calm water silently. We were alone in the middle of open water. I couldn't see a sign of land, civilization or electronics anywhere near, and I'd never felt better, calmer, or more at home. I felt I could stay here forever and never miss my other life. 
                          
A light morning breeze cleared the rest of the fog, and K pointed to the north. At first, I couldn't see what he was pointing towards, but I looked closer. It was land. We were close to arriving, which was a good thing, because I really needed to sleep. Not that I felt physically tired, but it seemed more like I was mentally tired. In fact, what I needed now was to wake up, so I could rest from my sleep. I tried pinching myself, to no avail. It didn't even hurt. 
                          
K started lowering the sails, I went to start the engine and motored into the harbour—apparently I was a natural. 
                          
We finally docked. "Welcome back. Finally." K said, smiling lazily. He planted a kiss in my hair. I returned his smile.
                          
We went for breakfast at K's place. I was out the whole way back. 
                          
After all K had already gone through, he still decided to cook an extensive breakfast. I was trying to tell him that I wasn't hungry, but he ignored me. Things changed though once I'd had a whiff of the mouth-watering smell and heard my stomach grumble. 
                          
We ate quickly, and I wasn't sure if it was because I was so hungry suddenly that the food tasted so good. The only words that were heard while we ate were my compliments to K's cooking skills. It was better than anything I'd ever eaten: the meals delivered to us daily. 
                          
My eyes just darted around his house, or what I could see of the open space. The decoration was surprisingly homey and bright. I wondered if he had done all of it himself. It seemed a great deal of time and thinking had been dedicated to making the house look its best; everything appeared to be in its place. 
                          
There was one thing that had been more important than sleep in the last fifteen minutes: eating. Now that it was done, we had to get a good day of sleep. I had trouble formulating coherent sentences with my scattered thoughts. So K showed me to his guest bedroom and I rolled myself into the thick quilt. "You know you're not supposed to be so confused and tired. You are in a dream after all." He had muttered the last words almost unintelligibly, certain my sleepy mind wouldn't catch them. But it did.
                          
"What? What did you just say?" I was abruptly sitting up, dizzy by the sudden movement, but 100% alert. How did he know I was in a dream?
                          
"I said you're not supposed to be so confused, even if you're tired." He stopped there.
                          
"No, after." I demanded.
                          
"I said...you're going...to sleep, after all," he choked out. This was way too weird for me to let it pass. I opened my mouth to reply, but K just turned around and walked away, mumbling. I threw the covers out of the way and got up to follow him, but my head started spinning wildly.