pierced her calm bubble, and she tangled her hands in the soft linen of her chemise. The storm had blown up so suddenly there had been no time to dress. To prepare to meet the saints Isabella loved so much.
I’m only twenty, Maria thought sadly. There should have been so much more to life.
Isabella opened her eyes, meeting Maria’s stare. In her brown eyes, the same color and shape as Maria’s own, there was no sadness or dread. None of the shrieking terror of the other maids. There was only exultation.
“God is calling to us, Maria,” she said, holding out her hand. Her ruby betrothal ring gleamed like fresh blood on her white finger. “Can you not feel it?”
All Maria could feel was the terrible cold of the water. She shivered, and Isabella quickly swung her own velvet cloak around Maria’s shoulders. She also removed her necklace, a heavy emerald cross on a gold chain, and looped it around Maria’s neck.
“There is nothing to fear,” Isabella said. She stood up, clad only in her own white silk chemise, and held up her arms as if to greet a lover.
At that moment, a deafening cracking noise sounded all around them, like a cannon shot. Maria clapped her hands to her ears, screaming as the ship broke up beneath them. All the terror her frozen calm had kept at bay swept over her.
They all plunged into the sea, the stormy waves sucking them down and down, into the black depths.
For an instant she could think of nothing. The water hit her like a hundred swords. But then she heard a voice in her head. Not God or the saints, but her father. A sailor who had died when she was a child.
“Never fear the water, Maria mia,” he said, from somewhere deep in her memory. “Work with it—make it your friend. Move through the waves, kicking your legs and moving your arms, like a frog. Let yourself just float free.”
Maria wrenched herself free of the heavy cloak, kicking up toward the faint light above her head. She broke free, into the violent world of foamy waves, driving rain, the splintered wreckage of the ship.
The screams of the dying.
Gulping in a deep breath, she kept kicking, kept moving, until she could latch on to a large floating plank. She dragged herself up onto its surface, wrapping her arms tightly around its rough length, and holding on as the sea raged around her.
She felt the emerald cross press against her breastbone. “Help me,” she whispered. “Please, I want to live!”
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