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Fallon
I felt myself drifting, and it made me feel weightless.
I was weightless, and all around me was black except for above me. At the surface, Julian was splashing and twisting in place under the sun, his legs kicking out from under him. As long as he was at the surface.
This dark and cold ocean was my funeral, my final resting place. And maybe because the curse would be broken, Julian would live. It was all I ever wanted as I was drifting, drifting, drifting.
The sun had these streaks that glinted off the surface of the water. They looked like stars from down here. I wondered if everyone knew the ocean had its own sky, one where Julian was. A sky that was poetry all on its own. I was sure above was warmer than down here, because down here, the cold had already frozen me, but I was prepared this time. I didn’t fight the cold when I wanted death to take me.
And death was so quiet and cold and fierce, like Julian.
Then Julian flipped around and dipped under the waterline, and his head shifted back and forth as he searched the bottom. That was when my calm heart stopped being calm. His wild and panicked eyes locked on mine, and he pushed his arms against the water, swimming down toward me. I shook my head, pointing to the surface, trying to tell him to stop! To leave me be!
I tried to move, sink deeper faster, to put more distance between us. Julian fisted my clothes, yanked me up to him until he had me in his arms. I struggled against him, water bubbles exploding from my mouth. The sea slipped between my lips, filled my chest, my lungs. And my bones, they felt like ice that had shattered inside me with sharp edges cutting into my flesh.
His eyes were strained and desperate as he fought against me, struggling to lift me from the depths before ru
Julian grasped the back of my head, and our desperate and defeated eyes met. His eyes said so many things at that moment. But once he knew I wasn’t going to go with him, that I would fight him every second of the way, his eyes calmed. Okay, his eyes said. I’m not leaving you.
We’re going to die.
Together.
Then they said: I love you, Fallon.
I shook my head, begging for him to let me go and save himself. In a last-ditch effort as my body jerked for air, I tried to pry his body from mine. Julian refused to let go. He only held me tighter.
Then he slipped down his mask, and he pressed his mouth to mine, breathing all of his last breath of warm air into me.
Together, we were sinking, sinking, sinking, just like every other time we kissed. He never stopped fighting, and I loved him.
The thought of it all changed something inside me.
Instead of slowing, it felt as if everything was reversing, heightening, pacing. My blood felt like beams of moonlight. A glacier rushed through my veins. Around me, it was no longer a black abyss, but a soft-white glow lighting up the tinted sea. The bottom of the sea stirred, creating a sandstorm on the ocean floor. Shells and seaweed and sand sifted up and clouded the waters. Julian’s eyes sprang open, darted around. It wasn’t him. It was all coming from me, and a fierce energy was humming inside me.
Something was happening to me. Something magical.
I pulled Julian closer, laid my palms against his chest, and I shoved him with every bit of strength I had until he rocketed up through the waters and broke through the surface above. The blur of his shadow was the last thing I saw. Julian’s muffled cries reached me from another world. From the surface.
I did have magic inside me, and it saved him.
I was going to break the curse, and Julian was going to live. Make a change.
Relief settled in my heart as I closed my eyes and surrendered to Death’s gentle embrace.