Jasper Ridcombe's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Jasper dried out on the shore, his coat back on his shoulders. He had found his friend on the seafloor but could not reach him. His lungs failed him. Each dive down the cold water pushed him back before he touched the sand. And with every wasted try, the current dragged more grit over the body below. He needed to breathe down there. He walked back to the boarding house to think. The old sailors' boarding house sat on the flats, its blue paint peeling, its porch strung with dead lanterns. Jasper climbed the sagging steps. Inside, the men who called him mad hunched over their cups. He did not want their talk. He wanted the storeroom in the back, where the last owner had stacked gear no one claimed. He dug through coiled nets and cracked buoys. In a corner he found it: a rounded pouch of stitched hide, brown and firm. A sealskin bladder. Sailors once filled these with air to float their lines. He pressed it and heard the leather creak. It held. An idea took him. He carried the bladder to the water at dawn. He filled it with his own breath, tied the neck, then loosened it just enough to draw a mouthful when he needed. He swam out to the bent tree on the cliff and lined up his mark. Then he went down. The cold closed over him. He kicked hard, past the depth that had always stopped him. When his chest burned, he set the leather neck to his lips and pulled. Stale air filled his mouth. It was foul and thin, but it was air. He kept sinking. The pale shelf rose out of the dark. The dark shape lay half-buried now, sand heaped along one side. Jasper stretched his hand toward it. His fingers brushed cloth, stiff and cold. He had touched his friend at last. He pulled at the shoulder. The body shifted, then held. The sand had packed heavy around the legs and would not let go. Jasper braced his feet and heaved. He gained nothing. His breath ran out. He sucked at the bladder and got only water. The air was spent. He let go and clawed upward. His lungs screamed. He broke the surface and coughed salt across the swell. The empty bladder floated at his side. Jasper hung in the water and stared down. He had reached the bottom. He had touched him. The breathing bag worked. But one lungful was not enough to free a body from packed sand. He needed longer down there, and he needed hands to dig, or a rope to pull. He swam the deflated bladder back to shore. He knew now that he could get down. Getting his friend up was another problem, and the sand was still rising.