Chapter Five: Marooned

For some reason, water spirits actually had to train before they could start saving people. And even after weeks of perfecting her aquatic acrobatics, "water whispering," and even generating a little light in her hand, Malia apparently still wasn't ready.

Until one day, when she finally managed to expand the orb of light to the size of a golf ball.

"There!" Malia exclaimed, shoving her hand in Beatrice's frowning face. "That's pretty good yeah?"

"It's flickering," Beatrice said, unimpressed. "And a match would shine brighter than that."

Malia frowned as she let the energy from the light dissipate back into the sea. "Did they even have matches in England a thousand years ago? Or are you just borrowing a line that someone else used before?"

In response, Beatrice sighed softly and redirected her gaze.

"So when can I start saving people?" Malia continued when Beatrice remained silent. "What else could you possibly have to teach me? If anything, wouldn't it be better to learn on the job?"

"You sure do talk a lot," Beatrice said.

Before Malia could retort, Beatrice floated off the sandy park floor and glided past Malia, heading out into the open waters. When she didn't stop after several seconds, Malia hurried to catch up.

As expected, they swam in silence, Beatrice remaining her unaffected self, and Malia expending most of her energy to match her pace. Thankfully, they only traveled for less than ten minutes before they stopped in front of a large mound of rocks and sand.

It was an island—or it used to be, at least. Underwater, the mountain seemed strong and relentless, rising towards the top of the illuminated waters with confidence. But before it reached the air, it was capped with a layer of soft sand that shyly peaked above the surface of the sea.

"It's a former island," Beatrice explained. "And it's your final test. If you can expose the top of it, you can start saving mortals."

Malia frowned. "No offense, but what does messing with the ecosystem have to do with saving people? That seems to be counterproductive actually, at least in the long run."

Beatrice's sigh, after weeks of practice, was long and restrained. "You're pretending it's a sinking ship. It's simple: we don't want the ship to be underwater, so we don't want the top of the island to be underwater."

Malia narrowed her eyes. "You want me to move all of that water? You want me to split the seas or something while I'm at it?"

"You can't do it?"

"I didn't say that."

When Beatrice replied with nothing but raised eyebrows, Malia clenched her jaw and turned to the task at hand.

She had moved water before, but that only resulted in small waves, and even that was a challenge. Still, she couldn't let that stop her. Not only was her future at stake, but she could feel Beatrice's condescending stare at her back, and Malia was itching to prove her wrong.

At first, she was pretty confident in herself. She could feel the water around the island and how she could push and pull it gently against and away from land. But all that did was create kiddie pool waves on the surface; she needed to try harder.

So she did. She narrowed her eyes and steeled her focus, as if she was willing one of her experiments to produce the results she wanted. For a moment, she felt like it was working, and all of that water was just within her grasp, like loosening a joint that was only one nudge away from coming free. Even though Malia could feel a headache growing through her tensed facial muscles, she persisted, not willing to lose the fight.

Until she did, and the water sloshed over the remaining sand, likely drowning it more than before.

Malia couldn't fully hide her bitter grunt. As she stared at the remaining sand through the surface of the water, she could feel her anger boiling within her chest. The only saving grace was that Beatrice refrained from making any snide comments. Malia was sure that a single sassy remark would make her rage explode; perhaps if that happened, it would make a volcano to rebuild the island again.

Suddenly, Malia had a thought.

"What'd you say I have to do?" Malia asked, turning to Beatrice and ignoring her slight smirk. "To save the sinking ship or whatever?"

"Expose it," Beatrice said, her expression unchanging. "It can't be underwater."

Malia paused, then nodded. "Okay."

With that, Malia returned her focus to the water. But this time, instead of trying to move the ocean away from the surface of the land, she turned her attention downwards to the sandy sea floor.

As Malia began to guide a cloudy stream of sand through the water and to the top of the island, she heard Beatrice sigh loudly behind her. Malia ignored her; it wasn't her fault that the woman didn't specify technique.

It didn't take long for a large mound of sand to be piled on what little was there to begin with, and the resulting "island" was a precarious sand dune at best. But it was technically correct, and Malia couldn't be faulted for that.

"That's not uncovering it, that's burying it," Beatrice said before Malia could even show-off her rule-bending. "You just smothered the ship in sand."

"And you were trying to trick me," Malia snapped. "Be honest, how would you really go about saving a sinking ship?"

In reality, Malia wasn't actually sure that her accusation was true. But when Beatrice didn't deny it, diverting her gaze downwards instead, Malia's suspicions were confirmed.

"I'd... use the water to lift it back to the surface," Beatrice quietly admitted.

Malia scoffed; her proven theory only aggravated her anger. "So what was this? Just some ruse to try to stop me from reaching my goals? Why does everyone seem so hellbent on getting in my way?"

"It's not that," Beatrice said. "The ocean is dangerous, and I didn't think you were ready."

"What's the worst that could happen? We already died once, haven't we?"

Beatrice turned back to Malia with a renewed glare. "And we could die again! We may have the ability to live forever, but we can still die under the right circumstances. And... you're so passionate about your goal! If you die before you can reach it..."

When Beatrice paused to sigh roughly, Malia was too shocked to sneak in a response of her own. And even if she had her wits about her, there were no words that could argue against Beatrice without sounding like a jerk.

"If you died, that would be on me," Beatrice finally finished. "That's my fault. And I don't want to live with that burden because you're too confident to see the danger right in front of you."

Even if Beatrice's last statement was a slight jab, Malia knew it held some truth.

"Then why didn't you just tell me?" Malia asked, her voice slightly strained as she tried to reel in her anger. "You didn't have to be all underhanded like that."

Of course, Beatrice responded with another sigh. But before Malia could even be irritated by her infamous habit, Beatrice turned to the island with her sharp blue eyes.

After a second, a horizontal crack appeared in the island about ten feet below sea level. It made a slight crunching sound that echoed through the water, but it was quieter than Malia expected. She was familiar with the sound rocks made when Beatrice demonstrated how they could be crushed with their abilities, and the island was magnitudes larger; had it actually been broken this whole time?

While Malia's mind reeled through the possibilities, Beatrice kept her focus on the top of the island as it slowly floated away from its base. Malia's sand tower spilled off almost immediately, returning to the water in a thick, billowing cloud. It didn't take long for all of Malia's changes to be undone, and the monstrous rock appeared to be sitting on the sea's surface.

"I said it was a test," Beatrice said, her eyes still staring at the hovering rock. "This 'island' is essentially one rock balanced atop another; it's meant to be separated. It's like our training grounds. There are multiple ways to achieve the goal; I just wanted to see what you would choose."

Malia remained speechless as Beatrice lowered the rock, returning it back to its original place as if it had never moved.

"Your methods were... unconventional," Beatrice said, and after a brief pause, she turned to Malia. "But they worked. You passed. Congratulations."

It took Malia a few more seconds to find her voice.

"It doesn't feel like it," she eventually said, glancing at the infuriating island. Even the sand that she piled on was nowhere in sight, having settled back on the ocean floor during her disbelief.

For a moment, Beatrice stared at her in blank silence. "Why not?"

"Because what I did was stupid," Malia said; her growing self-irritation was itching to spill into her voice. "There was an obvious solution, and I just made it more complicated than it needed to be."

"It's just your way of thinking. You're still learning. You can't fault yourself for that."

A part of Malia wanted to believe her. After all, Beatrice had been a water spirit for a thousand years; Malia had the same abilities for a couple weeks. Still, Malia was supposed to be smart. And even though Beatrice said she passed, in Malia's heart, she utterly failed.

"I guess," Malia forced herself to say.

If Beatrice didn't believe her, she didn't show it, nodding once before leading the way back to Okeanos.

And for the entire journey back, Malia's mind ran through all of her mistakes and how she could never let herself slip up again.

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