Winter Tides Read Free Page B

silent now. He swam on silently, too. He smelled salt spray then, and saw that a wave was breaking to the north of them, well in shore.
    “Some day I’ll kill her. That’s why you have to save me.”
    “Why don’t you just keep quiet?” he said, and he felt her giggle.
    Suddenly he was swept with fatigue, and he quit swimming and started to tread water, holding onto her with one arm and sculling with the other. He was shivering with cold, and his arms and legs were so weak that he had to keep up a constant kicking to stay above the surface. A half hour of this was impossible. Ten minutes was impossible.
    We aren’t going to make it….
    He forced the thought away and said, “Here we go,” then started swimming again, letting his head rest on the surface of the ocean, as if he were swimming in a pool. Almost immediately he gasped in a throatful of salt water and jackknifed reflexively forward at the waist, coughing the water back out, holding on tight to the twin. He treaded water hard again, gasping in air. He kicked his feet harder, propelling them forward, trying to smooth things out, to get some glide, some forward momentum, but the power in his legs was gone, and he couldn’t keep it up. His muscles were on fire, and yet he was shivering with cold. He worked to keep his head up out of the chop, but it seemed as if he was settling deeper with each tired stroke, barely making any progress at all, simply kicking himself higher in the water, bobbing like some kind of dying thing, struggling just to stay above it now.
    Alone, I could make it.
    The thought came to him out of nowhere, as if his mind as well as his body had decided to betray him. If he held onto the girl, they would both drown. It was as easy as that. They rose to the top of a swell. The nearly deserted beach was incredibly distant. The mother stood there, still watching. Probably she thought they were all right, that everything was under control. He kept up the tired stroke, getting nowhere now. Surely the girl knew it.
    He envisioned simply letting go—the twin sinking away into the green depths, as easy as falling asleep, and he forced his mind to focus. He was treading water again with a weak scissors kick. His sidestroke was gone. They bobbed up and down, his kick quickening as it got weaker. The ocean was empty out in the vast distances, just the small shape of a ship standing still way off on the horizon. How far from shore were they? A hundred yards?
    He was going to drop her. He knew now with utter certainty that soon, very soon, he wouldn’t be given a choice. When the time came, it wouldn’t be his to decide.
    She stared into his eyes, as if reading his mind, her own face a mask of terror now, her brassy attitude swept away. She kicked her feet with a wild ineffectiveness, thrashing against his legs, gripping his arms, and making small noises in her throat.
    Don’t do it
, he told himself, kicking his legs machinelike, marking time. He was shivering, his shoulders numb from cold and fatigue. As if she knew he was fading, she was suddenly energized by fear, and she let go with her right hand long enough to clutch at his neck, to try to pull herself higher out of the water. He fought to control her, pushing her away at arm’s length, the wild thought entering his head that she was stronger than he was by now, and that she would drag him under and drown him.
I might have to drown her to save myself.
    Another immense swell rolled through, and he nearly sank beneath it. It was powerful, pulling off the ocean bottom, dragging them several useless feet toward shore. Feeling the energy in the wave, he kicked harder, edging them up out of the chop and over the top of the swell. He looked back down into the wave’s trough, surprised at the sheer size of the wave. Seconds later it broke, an avalanche of white water smashing skyward, twice the height of the wave itself, vertical ribbons of water shooting up and falling in long arcs. Farther out into