Promethean: Chapter 13
Survival
He woke to the sun burning his brow the next morning. There was no other sleep like it. Outside, under the stars in the sea breeze, rocked by rolling waves, lulled by the flapping wings of gulls and the lapping of ripples on the hull. Nature held him and hummed, comforting his pain and loss. He stretched, yawned, and flopped onto the deck, alerting Abbé, who was aft with a rag polishing the brass handles leading down to his quarters. Knowing the sound of a man who didn’t know how to exit a hammock, Abbé laughed.
“He’s awake!”
“I am,” he replied. “And ready to tackle what’s next.”
“Can you swim?”
“You mean… in the water?”
“No, I meant on the sand. Where else? Jump.”
“But I can’t—”
“Say it again and you won’t. Jump.”
“But—”
“Jump!”
He leaped, splashed, and sank. In followed Abbé, diving after, kicking, reaching for his student’s hand as it flailed. Grabbing his wrist, Abbé turned and swam up, bringing them both to the surface, where, holding him from behind, he lifted his student into the air by the armpits by kicking fast circles in the salt water, turning his feet into propellers.
He gasped and said, “I can’t—”
“Be still, you rock. Breathe!” said Abbé. “The air in your lungs will keep you up here with me. Fill them and feel your natural buoyancy.”
He gulped a mouthful of the harbor as he tried, then coughed, almost dunking himself had Abbé not expected it and exerted his legs more, lifting him higher, keeping his head out of the water.
“I’m doing it!” he said.
“No,” replied Abbé, “I am. You need to calm your nerves. Stop your arms and legs, lie back, breathe in and hold, feel yourself float. I’m letting go.”
“Don’t!”
“Too late,” said Abbé, as they drifted apart. Abbé hooked his feet under his student’s arms. “I’m helping only a bit. Don’t fight the sea, rest in it. Take a deep breath, lie back, relax. Let your feet rise, make this boundary your comfort. It is the first of many, of countless, loving hardships.”
“But Abbé—” he began to say before stopping, feeling himself sink with each word, he interrupted himself to inhale, and felt himself rise. At that, the inside of his brow and the outside of his mouth rose too; his expression saying what his mouth could not, for it was tasked with a more important job: keeping air in his chest and his body afloat.
“In through the nose,” said Abbé, breathing in, “and slowly out through the mouth,” as he exhaled.
Floating on his back, he did as Abbé said, listening while Abbé talked, struggling to form a thought other than sinking to the bottom, where moments before he had seen crabs walking, searching for food that he would be lest he learned how to breathe.
“Now you cannot interrupt with your lack of confidence and fear,” Abbé said.
“I remember—” he said before his mouth dipped below the surface, making his arms and legs flail and splash. Pushing his head to the sky as he kicked, he sucked in all the air he could and held it as he rolled to his back and said, “At Weaver’s theater—” The words came out, causing him to sink down. He kicked and pulled, reaching for another breath. He took it, held it, and lay back again.
“Concentrate on what you’re doing, and by doing that, you will learn how to do much else; hard to get anything done when you’re afraid of drowning. Harder for me to instruct when your self-doubt is interrupting. Now that you know how to float, imagine yourself as a bird, don’t remember the lying lights of the world—fly above them by flapping your arms like them,” said Abbé, pointing to a patrolling pelican with wide wings skimming the sea, looking for something to eat.
With his head still, he moved his eyes and watched the bird fly by. Then he pushed his arms out to sweep them to his sides, backstroking away from Abbé. After a short exhalation, he breathed again, followed by another sweeping motion. Smiling as his arms propelled him, his mind momentarily returned to the civilization he had left, in whose theater a false memory of swimming had been implanted. He froze, gasped, then sank but kicked again and surfaced once more, capturing a breath that he used to say, “Weaver’s was nothing like this!” Then he sank again.
Abbé grabbed him, lifting him once more and replied, “Of course not—you were still, sitting, watching, not moving… dying. Shown what it was like to be what you weren’t: a body doing, acting, going—being! In a moment, convincing that you had so that you never would. Those dancing lights gave you a false sense of ability, so that you never could. But in the face of death, you have truly begun to live. All it took was movement, for that’s all we are. Without it, we usher our destruction—so act. Do! Be! Your first creation and the last, that thing you will never see without moving, hands, feet, heart, a medium: water. At the same time, all that you are. Flowing. Reflecting. That thing inside you lives here, so here you must be so that you can live too.”
Releasing him, Abbé said, “Breathe and fly!” He filled his lungs and flapped his wings, swimming on his back away from his teacher, toward the open sea. “Not too far now!” shouted Abbé, “Your legs are weak and soon will seize.”
“Ah!” he screamed as he sank.
Abbé dove and took his hand, lifting him once more to the surface. “We’ll go to the dock and rest. Today, you will harvest materials to construct your ship. But first, you’ll learn to fish.”