Author’s Note: This is the ninth part of a series about Farren’s journey through a limbo world where everyone is trying to reach the peak of a mountain but have a rope tied to their ankle. Catch up by reading Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8
Farren leaned over the side of the boat as Gesa tread water with a rope harness wrapped over her shoulders and under her arms.
“I don’t think I can do it,” Gesa shouted so Farren could hear her over the waves.
Farren gave her a slight frown, “Why not? Is it too deep?” He was balancing on the small ship cluttered with a few dozen balls. The only open space the two had to share was a corner of the dark hull and a small area for sitting on the top level.
Gesa shook her head. “I’m too slow swimming down, and my armpits are starting to ache. I think if I use the tether rope instead of swimming that might help.”
She dove down again, and Farren waited. This dive would be her third or fourth attempt, Farren was beginning to lose count.
When she emerged initially Gesa cursed the gods for burying the rock so deep under the water. Farren had attempted to point out that the gods merely attached her leg to the boulder and the knot he had to untie was much deeper, but she didn’t want to hear it. Now he was merely trying to help her in any way he could.
Gesa and Farren were both worried about her drowning. Thinking through the situation, Gesa realized that she would have to spend half her time swimming back for air unless she could swim up faster than she went down. To help her return to the surface quicker, Gesa created a harness out of some of her rope. With the harness, Farren could help pull her up when she was close to out of breath.
The first time they tested it out the rope wasn’t evenly distributed, and the force Farren pulled with hurt Gesa more than it helped. To solve the problem, Gesa added more cord around her shoulders so that she would be pulled up vertically instead of by her waist. Farren pointed out that the downside was her arms were limited in how much they could move, but both agreed it was a reasonable trade-off for not drowning and having to face the black void.
The line Farren held that connected to her harness went taught a few times then began to go slack. Gesa was swimming back. He pulled the rope in as fast as he could to help her get to the surface fast enough.
Gesa broke the surface and gasped for air. Farren tied the rope off as she caught her breath, so she didn’t have to work as hard to stay above water. “Any luck?” He called out.
She shook her head still breathing heavy. She was shivering a bit despite the warm sun beating down on them. “Do you want to come back up here?” Farren offered.
“No, I think I was close. Give me one more shot.”
Once she caught her breath, Farren gave her some slack, and she dived into the water again. Farren felt like it took less time for her to tug for his help and he began pulling her up. Moments later she had climbed the rope ladder to get out of the water and was laying on the deck with her white linens soaked and absorbing as much heat from the sun as she could.
“I think I was really close on that last one?”
“How could you tell?” Farren asked not being able to add up the timeline in his head. Unless she had learned to swim faster, he didn’t see how she might have gotten closer. “Did you see the rock or something?”
“No, I just kind of felt like I was closer,” She gave him a light shrug. “And it felt like I swam for longer.”
Farren shrugged.
“You don’t think so?” She asked offended.
“Neither of us has a watch so we can’t tell for sure,” Farren responded trying to avoid an argument. “I just feel like you’re going to have to do something to get yourself down there faster.” He failed to mention the option of doing something crazy as he did and drown himself for a month. He hoped her rock wasn’t stuck so tightly that she’d have to do that.
“I don’t want to be drowned for a month,” she said in a meek tone. “I simply want to go down, unjam my rock, and come up in the same breath. Is that too hard to ask?”
Farren was unsure of who she might be asking. “If we had my rock or any rock, you could hold it and sink to the bottom to get it.” He suggested.
“Or we could just throw a ball of rope off the deck. Sacrifice a few months of progress so I can get to the ocean floor in one breath.” She cracked a smile at her own jest.
“You know that’s not the worst idea.”
Gesa laughed a deep laugh that juxtaposed her sour mood. “You think throwing all this rope off the boat would help?”
“Yeah, at least some of it. It sinks, and you need to go down faster.”
“Yeah it would help but what happens when it gets knotted at the bottom, or I get stuck under it, or we run out of balls to throw over?”
Farren didn’t have an answer, and he suspected that this was why he wound up in so many challenging situations.
The next morning they tried the rope ball idea. Gesa stood at the edge of the boat holding a ball of rope the size of her wingspan. “I hope this thing doesn’t unravel on the way down.”
“There are about a dozen things I’m hoping don’t go wrong on your way down,” Farren said as he checked that the knot holding the harness on Gesa was tight enough. “But the only way we’ll find out if this will work is if we do it.”
“As soon as I go over the edge it’s in the hands of the gods,” Gesa said.
Farren turned her around to face him. The ball of rope came between them, but he held eye contact with her. “Gesa, whatever happens down there, up here, all around,” he gestured the sea and the horizon. “It all is under your control. You can either control what happens to you, or you control how you react.
“But don’t go down into that water thinking it’s not up to you. If you do, then you’ve already lost. I love you, and I want to see you free, I want to see you next to your boulder. So that at least, at a minimum, I know this crazy scheme of tracing your rope back to your rock has a snowballs’ chance in hell, or where ever we are, of working.”
“Ok, thanks,” Gesa said in a flat tone. She turned her back on him, took a deep breath, and stepped off the side of the boat.
As Farren watched her slack run off the side of the boat, he had to admit it was moving faster than it had before. He also thought of a dozen other things he could have said to her that would have been less harsh and more helpful to her before she stepped off the side of the boat. Then the rope stopped flying off the deck. He picked it up in his hands and waited for the tug.
Farren didn’t have to wait long, and if he hadn’t been paying attention, he would have missed it. The line went taught briefly then it went slack.
Farren pulled hand over hand but could barely keep up. He could imagine how furious Gesa was kicking to reach the surface. The only thing Farren felt like he was doing at first was keeping the rope taught.
Then the weight on the line got heavier. The rope required more effort to pull. Farren knew she was getting tired now.
Seconds later he could see her as a white splotch under the surface of the water. He pulled harder making her features more distinct. With a finally heave her body broke the surface of the water, and she took a gasp of air immediately followed by a wet cough.
Farren tied off the line to help Gesa stay above the surface as she caught her breath. Then he went to the line that the rock was attached to. He pulled on it, felt something move at the bottom, but then the stone stopped moving as was caught again. She hadn’t made any progress despite the extra time and energy down there.
He sat on the edge of the boat to talk with her as he heard the coughing and heavy breathing stop.
She broke the silence between them first, “I think I made a little progress, but I need to go back down and finish pushing one rock out of the way.”
Farren’s face went pale realizing what he had just done.
“What’s wrong?” Gesa asked from the water.
“I think I messed it up.”
Slowly Gesa asked, “What do you mean you messed it up?”
“I tried to pull up the rock, and it shifted a bit but it got stuck again.”
“It wasn’t ready to be pulled!” Gesa yelled.
“I know that now,” Farren responded ashamed.
Gesa climbed up on deck, and Farren could see her knuckles turn white as she clutched the rope ladder. She didn’t look at him or accept his help as she got to the top.
Finally, when she’d planted her feet firmly on the deck, she said, “I don’t even know why I try. As soon as I make any progress, it gets taken away from me.”
“I’m sorry,” Farren said, his ears were red with embarrassment. “I just thought it would be awesome if your rock was up here sooner rather than later.”
Gesa bent over to pick up a big ball of rope. “It’s fine. I’ll just go down and risk my life… again. Like you always say, it’s not the gods’ fault; it’s mine. it’s always mine.” The sound of air cutting sharply into her lungs she took a deep breath punctuating her sentiment.
“That’s not what I,” but before he could get the rest of his response out she had stepped off the deck of the boat.
Farren watched the rope slide off the deck as Gesa sank to the bottom of the ocean floor. He berated himself as he thought of a dozen things that he could have said instead. The rope stopped sliding off of the deck, and he picked it up waiting for her to tug on it.
After minutes of waiting Farren began to get anxious about the amount of time she was spending down there. They had found out early on that Gesa’s rock was in shallower water than Farren’s knot had been. Farren wondered if he should pull her up because of the duration she’d been down there. He quickly realized it would be another instance of sabotaging work when she was making progress. However, there was always the possibility that Farren would be saving her life. Reaching a compromise with himself, he began to count backward from one hundred.
At 45 he felt a tug on the rope. It was a small one, and he almost missed it as he focused on the order of his numbers. He pulled the rope hand over hand making sure to be quick but not
When her dead body surfaced in the ocean waves, he cursed himself for not pulling her up sooner. Gesa was facing the empty void that had tortured him so many months ago. He heaved her body onto the boat nearly sending a ball of rope overboard in the process.
Gesa’s body was cumbersome in its inability to move of its own accord. It was essential to Farren that he was gentle with her though. He didn’t want her waking up with more bumps or bruises than she had when she’d first gone under.
When she was laid on deck lifeless, and dripping wet Farren realized he had no idea how to resuscitate her. He didn’t want to wait until the next morning for her to come back to life naturally. However, he was afraid any attempts to resuscitate her would cause more problems.
He pushed down on her chest with his hands but had no luck. He breathed into her mouth, but there was no room in her lungs for more air. The air he did push in didn’t do any good. He pressed on her stomach trying to force her diaphragm to move her lungs. Switching between these three options and anything else that came to mind he worked to bring her back to life. In his heart, he felt like he wasn’t making any progress.
Then all of a sudden she began to cough up water. She groaned and retched seawater onto the deck as Farren had months ago. Her eyes were far off staring past the world and into something else. In an attempt to help he patted her back. He didn’t know if it was doing her any good, but it was nice to see life in her body again.
When she finished coughing all she said was, “There was nothing, absolutely nothing.” Then she fell asleep on the deck in exhaustion.
Gesa’s body was cumbersome in its inability to move of its own accord. It was essential to Farren that he was gentle with her though. He didn’t want her waking up with more bumps or bruises than she had when she’d first gone under.
When she was laid on deck lifeless, and dripping wet Farren realized he had no idea how to resuscitate her. He didn’t want to wait until the next morning for her to come back to life naturally. However, he was afraid any attempts to resuscitate her would cause more problems.
He pushed down on her chest with his hands but had no luck. He breathed into her mouth, but there was no room in her lungs for more air. The air he did push in didn’t do any good. He pressed on her stomach trying to force her diaphragm to move her lungs. Switching between these three options and anything else that came to mind he worked to bring her back to life. In his heart, he felt like he wasn’t making any progress.
Then all of a sudden she began to cough up water. She groaned and retched seawater onto the deck as Farren had months ago. Her eyes were far off staring past the world and into something else. In an attempt to help he patted her back. He didn’t know if it was doing her any good, but it was nice to see life in her body again.
When she finished coughing all she said was, “There was nothing, absolutely nothing.” Then she fell asleep on the deck in exhaustion.
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