“Your brother’s…arm?”

  Lucy echoed those words with grave unease, in contrast to how Cole had spoken them without a hint of hesitation. Her mind was quick to latch onto a train of thought moving at mach speed:

  Dreams were known to manifest past memories of a person’s life.

  In a nightmare, which this Dream very likely was, those past memories would often be linked to traumatic experiences.

  If those arms were the manifestation of a traumatic memory of Cole’s brother, then given that those arms were all poking out of the water and constantly trying to grab onto something…

  Lucy’s breath hitched as she took a step back involuntarily. From what she’d seen while swinging her sword at the arms, the detail on the palms, fingers, and their movements were rich with minute detail. And if Cole’s memory was vivid enough to recreate all that, that must have meant that he was up close and had a clear view of his brother when he…

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  Cole’s scream burst forth the same time thunder crashed over the boat from a distant lightning strike. The boat swayed from the sudden tide that came with it, but though Lucy had to shift her knees’ weight to keep balance, Cole was unfazed, staying still as a lighthouse as he glared down at the water, fists trembling.

  “It was dark,” he said, voice loud but thin, his gaze still fixed on the ink-black water. “Water was ice-cold, couldn’t feel my fingers—couldn’t get the damned oar off me—how was I supposed to reach out? I wanted to. I swear, I wanted to. But…”

  “Hold on,” said Lucy, trying to keep the panic and confusion from showing in her voice. “Please, just slow down. I’m here, I’ll listen to everything, so please—”

  As she said this, she put her hand on Cole’s shoulder, but he jerked back and distanced himself with wild eyes.

  “Stay away!” he screamed. “Go back to whatever hell-hole you came from!”

  “What?” Lucy’s quiet question was understatement as far as she was feeling. They had been getting onto good terms with each other only sa minutes ago—so how could it have crumbled into this so quickly? “Cole, I know you’re overwhelmed right now, but I’m still here to help you. I’m still the one who drove those…arms away. I’m still here to get you away from them!”

  “Shut up!” Thunder burst, seemingly from every direction, as Cole shouted. He glared at Lucy. “You keep spouting all this crap about trusting you. Because you want to ‘help’ me. But that makes no sense. I know what you are, and I ain’t falling for that trap!”

  “I…”

  Lucy was dead-set on upholding her confident image, knowing that if she went against it that he would be in even worse condition, but now she couldn’t help but want to cry. She’d done everything she could up until now, reassuring him, staying with him, even fending off the monsters that came after him, and yet the bitter resentment in Cole’s words just now were as if they came from some alternate-reality matter where none of the prior events existed. And this stung more than Lucy was expecting.

  The only thing keeping her from falling into frustration and despair was her own incredulity. Cole’s words had been biting and unforgiving—what could drive him to think in such ways that led to those words? Perhaps, Lucy realized, Understanding could also be used in a more critical, inquisitive way.

  She looked at him, eyes stern but not accusatory, and said: “Why doesn’t it make sense?”

  “Because,” Cole said immediately, as if he had already prepared an answer to that question, “it makes no sense to help me. It makes no sense that I should be saved.”

  He said all this in a calmer tone, but not necessarily a peaceful one, like the surface of waters just before they were disturbed by an emergence from the depths. Lucy was worried that she knew were this was leading, but still she asked:

  “Why is that?”

  “Because…”

  Cole’s voice faded. A large cluster of the darkest storm clouds invaded the sky, casting the lightless seas into even deeper shadow. Then, in a near-whisper that somehow travelled through the howling wind:

  “It should have been me.”

  Cole’s quiet words were followed by the sound of rushing water, which had always been persistent in the background, rising in volume to an almost deafening degree. The boat swayed hard to one side, knocking Lucy and Cole down on their faces onto the boat’s surface.

  Lucy scrambled to get up onto her hands and knees, thankful that the boat hadn’t capsized, but the terror hadn’t left her as there was still the question of what had caused all that. Crawling over to the edge, and hoping that another wave wouldn’t throw her off-balance again, she peered across the seawater and felt her heart sink.

  Across what used to be dark, obsidian-black waves, the frothy white of sea-foam was gathering, crowding in all from directions, and swirling about in an enormous circular motion. At its centre was a pitch-black circle, darker than the waters, darker than anything Lucy had seen in this Dream overrun by shadows, as if it had swallowed the few remnants of light whole.

  And it would swallow the boat and Lucy and Cole, too, if nothing were done about it.

  Lucy drew a sharp breath, realizing that her chest was heaving, and cursed herself for panicking so quickly. Now was not the time to be glancing around wildly and aimlessly—what had happened to the focus she should have as one aligned with Understanding? Her eyes flitted all about the massive whirlpool threatening to consume them, including the edge closest to the boat—which the boat wasn’t touching, being about a hundred yards away. The boat was moving slowly in that direction, carried no doubt by the smaller inward forces drawing water toward the whirlpool, but if they could get the boat away before it actually made contact with that raging and swirling edge…

  “Cole!” Lucy shouted at him. “Get to the oars!”

  She was already dashing off to the pair of oars on the further end of the boat, intending to be the one to lead, when Cole said: “That’s pointless!”

  “What are you talking about?” Lucy wished she could hide the frustration in her voice, but she had made her stop just before she could sit down and grab hold of the oars, herself being mindful that every second wasted was another several yards closer to their doom.

  “It ain’t gonna move!” Cole shouted. “Every time that thing shows up—no matter how hard I row—the boat doesn’t move shit!”

  “What…?” Lucy froze. That didn’t make any sense; her mother, who was smaller and leaner than Cole, could row a kayak of this size all on her own on waters that were moving more rapidly. But this was a Dream with its own laws of physics, and Cole didn’t sound as though he was lying.

  There had to be some way. If she applied her Understanding, surely she would come to know something that would show them a way out. But what more was there to know? Cole had given her the information that he had tried rowing, back when this whirlpool had appeared previously, and that was futile. Their one avenue of escape was crushed to hopelessness, no matter how she looked at it.

  But what if that isn’t the only avenue?

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  Other possibilities, other ways of seeing things—Ideation. It might not have been Lucy’s primary alignment, but that had to be the axis she needed to rely on in this moment. Perhaps there was something about the situation, or the boat itself, she hadn’t noticed or considered yet due to tunnel vision. She glanced around, trying as hard as she could not to fixate on the closing distance between the boat and the whirlpool, until her glance landed on some markings along the surface of the boat.

  There were green lines, starting from each of the oars, and leading off to the oar on the same side of the boat but on the other set set of oars. So a line ran from Cole’s left oar to Lucy’s left oar, and the same pattern was reflected on the right side. It had been hard to see these markings in the dark and with Lucy and Cole’s bodies obscuring some of them, but now that Lucy could see it, it looked unnatural and, frankly, very conspicuous. As if it were a sign meant to explain something.

  “Cole,” Lucy said, “let’s row together. If we do it together, the boat’ll move.”

  “You got a screw loose?” he shouted back. “I just told you—”

  “I know!” Lucy’s voice cut through Cole’s voice, the thunder, the swirling—everything, as if it were a knife cleaving through the thick wall of noise between the two of them. Lucy was caught off-guard, wondering if this could be a manifestation of her Rebellion alignment, but ruminating on that had to wait until later. “I know,” she said in a calmer voice. “But please, trust me. It’ll be different with both of us rowing.”

  Cole continued looking at her incredulously, then glanced back over the edge of the boat, looked back at Lucy with panicked but cooperative eyes and nodded. Lucy had wished that it was her words, rather than just fear, that had spurred Cole into action, but she had to take any positive development regardless of reason with only a few precious seconds left between them and the horrific ocean maw.

  Cole ran to the further set of oars, sat down hastily, and grabbed both oars in his hands. Lucy did the same and, wasting no time, rowed as steadily as she could based on her memory of the few times she had gone kayaking with her mother.

  She remembered it being quite strenuous on her arms and chest, but to her surprise she felt no strain or fatigue after a handful of rows with these oars. She looked back over her shoulder, seeing Cole doing the same, and behind him she could see that the distance between the boat and the whirlpool was steadily increasing.

  “We’re moving!” Lucy exclaimed.

  Cole didn’t respond, likely too busy catching his breath and rowing, but her words seemed to light a fire in him as he rowed more strongly and rapidly. Following his example, Lucy resumed rowing with more gusto.

  And yet, despite their redoubled efforts, Lucy could see, from the boat’s relative distance to faraway waves, that they were no longer moving.

  “Wh-what’s happening?” Cole shouted.

  “I don’t know!” Lucy shouted, gritting her teeth at how whiny and panicked her voice sounded then, but did it matter? They were stuck, doomed to drown in that raging whirlpool that consumed all, in spite of all that she had to keep everything together.

  Out of absent-mindedness, or the instinct to show her guilt toward Cole for failing him, or to feel some sort of empathy looking at his expression as they both shared in their hopeless plight, Lucy looked back over her shoulder at him. Despite having noticed that the boat wasn’t budging, he was still giving it his all, rowing with powerful strokes, each one moving as fast as he was able.

  And, when Lucy looked forward again and saw her own rowing, a hunch hit her.

  “Cole!” she said, shouting over her shoulder. “Slow down a bit! Match my speed!”

  “What? But…”

  Lucy stopped rowing, which caused Cole to reflexively stop rowing as well. Whether that was out of shock or because an unspoken connection had formed between the two of them, Lucy couldn’t tell, but she sincerely hoped it was the latter. Then she began rowing again, a bit slower than how she was doing so previously, focusing on making sure she kept a steady rhythm.

  In order to keep her tempo even, she had to keep looking forward, as her inexperience with rowing meant she couldn’t multi-task and watch Cole at the same time. For a long while, she seemed to be the only one rowing; was Cole watching and waiting, too dumbstruck to act, or maybe just given up entirely?

  There came the sound of splashing and dipping behind her, and she felt the spray of nearby splashes of water landing on her back and hair, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her satisfaction doubled when she saw the boat moving once more.

  “We—we got it!” she yelled, still keeping her head pointed forward and rowing rhythmically.

  “No…way…” Cole’s voice came in an incredulous murmur, but from the way his breathing heaved and was accompanied by the dipping and splashing sounds of the oars, he was still focused on rowing, which Lucy was thankful for.

  “Does it go away, eventually?” Lucy asked.

  “Don’t know! It always…got me.”

  At Cole’s fading and weakening voice, Lucy immediately pictured him losing strength and falling behind in the rowing, and this preemptively led her to call out: “Sorry! Sorry! That makes sense. Let’s focus on going. We’ve already made it far; we’ll get away from it soon, trust me.”

  Cole was silent, but from what Lucy could hear behind her, his rowing maintained its consistency. They kept at this for some time, Lucy’s world consisting of no more than water soaking her face from the wind and the splashing of her own oars, the relentless wind and distant thunder and churning swish of the water spiralling far behind them (she hoped it was far, now), and the splashing and breathing of Cole behind her. Many times, she had wanted to stop, to look behind her and see if they were out of danger’s way, but the desire to be as far away as possible kept her in that perpetual state of adrenaline and inertia. From Cole’s tireless grunts and rowing, she chanced that he probably felt the same, and in this she felt some small spark of relief in knowing that in this the two were united.

  At some point, Lucy quieted her breathing, and it became apparent that one of the sources of impenetrable noise had faded away: the swirling rush of great swathes of water. Her chest prepared to heave a great sigh of relief, but first she called out over her shoulder: “Let’s stop for a moment. I think we’ve gotten far enough now that it’s gone.”

  Cole was breathing too hard to speak a response, but he nodded his head vigorously several times and let his arms rest. Following Lucy’s gaze, he looked over his shoulder as the two of them observed the waters behind them.

  The waves were tumultuous, as usual, with waves cresting and descending restlessly without pattern, but there was no hint of any swirling or spiraling water flow.

  “Thank god,” Cole said, slumping back so that he rested on the boat’s surface.

  Lucy let go of her oars, breathed out the sigh of relief she’d been holding, but otherwise didn’t feel as spent as Cole was evidently feeling. Perhaps this unusually high stamina was another effect of her alignment in Understanding? Regardless of where it originated, Lucy was grateful, for this meant she could maintain her energy in trying to understand her situation and, somehow, some way, find a solution to it all.

  After giving Cole a minute or so of reprieve, she said: “That whirlpool…this isn’t the first time it’s shown up?”

  Cole shook his head, rather too vigorously. “Lotsa times. If those arms don’t get me, it does instead.”

  “But unlike the arms,” said Lucy, “there’s no way to fight against it.”

  “I try…” Cole began, his voice quickly fading. He sniffled, coughed a bit as his body shivered in the damp cold, and said: “I try my hardest not to give in. ’Cause if I do, that’s when it comes.”

  Lucy nodded to show her understanding, though she was in fact a little perplexed. He was being vague about “giving in”, but despite her need to know, she didn’t pry any further, given that his words implied a connection between his mental state and the whirlpool’s emergence. Still, she could chance a good guess at what he meant, as she remembered with deafening clarity the words that Cole had muttered just before the waves began swirling into the all-consuming maw:

  It should have been me.

  Lucy swallowed, her throat aching from both dread and sympathy. On one hand, this only made her mission more difficult, having both of their fates tied to the mindset of an individual who was clearly in distress and highly unstable because of it. But, on the other hand, this meant that upholding Cole’s drive and motivation were of the utmost importance for her. After all of the rowing he did, born from a newfound trust in her, the same trust that had gotten him to finally begin relaying information like this, Lucy felt that this was one duty she had a good likelihood of fulfilling.

  To that end, she undid her azure cape, knelt down beside Cole, and wrapped it around his shivering shoulders.

  After a few moments of rapid breathing that calmed down just a tad, Cole said, “Thank you.” He looked at her, then added: “Thank you, Lucy.”

  He bit his lip, which quivered, and then he was sitting hunched over and sobbing into his hands. The storm and the waves calmed to a startling silence, so that all that rung through the air were the cries of Cole’s own voice. Although Lucy couldn’t hope to grasp all of the emotions running through him in this moment, she felt something strongly reverberating in the emptiness that amplified his cries, in the loneliness therein.

  She sat down at his side, resting her hand on his shoulder as he wept. She looked at him all the while, meaning to say “I’m here with you,” though she kept this unsaid for she knew her own voice would come out tremulous and unintelligible. Just her presence was enough, she hoped.

  Soon, there came only the sound of the waves coming and going, and then Cole breathed a few times heavily and sniffled. Lucy patted him on the back a few times before pulling her hand away. He wiped at his eyes roughly, almost with a hint of frustration, and stood back up. Lucy followed suit and he locked eyes with her, eyes still red and puffy but more focused than Lucy had seen before, like the newly-formed eye of a storm.

  “You said you’d get me away from all this crap?” Cole said.

  “Yes.” Lucy placed her hand on the sword handle at her hip, standing tall. She wasn’t sure where Cole was going by asking that question yet again, but she had a good feeling about this. “And I still stand by that.”

  “Well then,” Cole said with a wicked grin, “Let’s give ‘em hell.”