Kaori stared in shock as Ma?l was being yanked off the deck by the tearing sail and thrown down the pit below. Time slowed to a crawl. The sail unfurled, snapped. The top rope ripped free from the mast, flying off into the ocean, dragging Ma?l along. He held his balance for a fraction of a second before falling backward, away from the tenuous safety of the deck and in the watery chasm below.

  She screamed, but couldn’t hear her own voice within the storm. She held onto the now useless helm, as useless as she was. She felt numb. She had killed a sweet man by negligence and incompetence. Soon she would join him into the abyss, as the ship tipped over a wave and fell straight down, only to be caught by the next one.

  The torn sail was pulled tight into the sea, but no longer threatened to overturn the ship, the catamaran’s low profile slicing through the wind. It now bounced with the waves, up and down and sideways, but always upright. Assuming the hull didn’t break, it would stay afloat, maybe.

  As if in a dream, she heard a guttural scream. Could it be… She turned her head, her eyes running along the sail. At the end of it, half submerged within the waves was the source of the scream. Ma?l! His arm must have been caught in the halyard and he was being dragged behind the ship like a lure at the end of a trolling line. There was nothing she could do but watch. His body plunged into the water, silencing the scream, but he resurfaced a few yards away. He was still alive. That wouldn’t last.

  Kaori wrapped her waist with a rope and secured herself to a rung of the flybridge ladder. She looked again at Ma?l. Incredibly, he seemed to be dragging himself forward on the halyard as if climbing a rope, his body streamlined, carving a groove into the waves behind him like a surfer. His grip slipped but his tangled arm kept him tethered to the torn sail. Near the mast, the broken top rope of the main sail was stuck on a railing. If only she could reach it and pull him back in? It was impossible and she knew it, but she crawled her way to the rope anyway. At least, she could reach that rope, she almost had it. That wasn’t the hard part though.

  Pulling it back would require the force of a dozen men. No one was that strong, not even the strongest man in the world… A winch! She had a winch! She seized the rope, wrapped herself around the mast and stuck the rope inside of the spool of the winch. She began cranking on the winch handle. Slowly, one foot at a time, the sail moved toward her. The winch was designed to pull the sail under load. Its pulling force was measured in tons. A loose sail stuck in the water was nothing special, and Ma?l’s weight made no difference at all.

  The ship bounced like a cork in the waves, but she couldn’t care less. Latched as she was to the mast, she was going nowhere. She kept cranking the winch. Her arms were on fire. She didn’t care about that either. Push, pull, push again… after what seemed an eternity, she heard a soft thud on the deck. Ma?l was back on board. Alive. His left arm was bleeding, still caught into the rope but he was clinging to it. He crawled to her feet and pulled himself upright against the mast. She circled the mast one more time, securing him with her rope.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The ship could dance as it wished, they weren’t going anywhere. He looked into her eyes and violently vomited all the seawater he had swallowed.

  Oh, the glamour of a young love!

  She held him tight anyway. The pouring rain washed away the grime along with the last few shreds of her pretty cocktail dress. His clothes were also long gone, ripped by the waves. They were as naked as the day they were born, hugging each other for survival. They felt no shame, no embarrassment, not even a blush.

  Ma?l sat down, sliding against the mast, pulling Kaori onto his lap. His arms held her tight. She did the same. He pressed his face against hers, smiled, and passed out.

  That didn’t last long. The ship lurched over the crest of the wave, hanging in the air for a terrifying second and collapsed down the trough with a smash. The rope dug into their flesh, forcing Kaori to yell in pain. Ma?l jolted back awake. Around them the storm raged, lightning breaking the dark sky into fragments and illuminating briefly the waves towering above them like crumbling walls, before disappearing into the abyss in a flash of greenish light. Water poured over the deck, trying to wash them away.

  The ship began to climb once more to the top. They were still clinging to each other. Lightning struck the mast with a deafening CRACK-BOOM! It was louder than a cannon shot. A searing flash of bright blue light blinded them for a second. The air scintillated with electricity. They were dazed, ears ringing, but otherwise unharmed. The mast’s shielding—a massive copper cable running down inside the core of the mast—had held.

  As he regained his vision, Ma?l saw Kaori’s face a breath away from his, her eyes frozen in terror and exhaustion. A surge of rage and power tore within him and he stood up holding her in his arms. He howled to the storm in defiance, a primal scream that shock his entire being and hers, challenging the storms and Gods above. He had fought for his life before, but this wasn’t it, it was… more. He was done being a puppet in the hands of fate, thrown about. He laughed his heart out into the storm. He couldn’t be broken. They couldn’t be broken. He could not. He would not. They might go under, but they would do so on their feet, fighting. He hurled jeers and mockeries onto the heavens.

  “Is this all? Come on, show me your power, coward!”

  All around them, the storm kept raging, but he paid it no mind. From below, another roar of defiance answered his own. He looked at Kaori and they burst out in maniacal laughter. Win or lose, live or die, it made no difference.

  They were one.