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There! It turned! He pulls the door. It opens slowly, as if in a dream.

There’s the grate behind it. Damn! Dozens of hands stretch through it, reaching toward Ignatov, seizing at the bars, and shaking them. Water is pouring into the hold through the grate, swiftly, relentlessly.

The door handle slips out of his fingers. Ignatov wants to catch it and reaches out, his muscles straining, but the force of the water hurls him aside. He sees wide-open eyes and wide-open mouths through a green layer of water behind the grate.

“A-a-a-a-a-h!” are their low, scared cries, and thousands of large bubbles surround Ignatov, sliding along his body, licking his chest, neck, and face.

In each bubble, an “A-a-a-a-a-h.”

Dozens of hands reach, reach toward him through the grate, wiggling their fingers. They sway like a huge sheaf of grain. They’re going deeper, deeper. Vanishing into the dark.

The water twists and tosses Ignatov in various directions, finally hurling him out, up to the surface.

“Aaaah!” he howls at the low sky, where shaggy clouds are billowing. “Aaaaaaah!”

Rain lashes at his open mouth.

Ee! Ee!” answer the gulls.

Zuleikha is carried off somewhere below, through layers of water. Her eyes grow heavy as its thick greenness dissolves into them, darkening her view. A blizzard of bubbles spirals around her, beating at her face.

She’s clenching her teeth: Stay still, don’t breathe.

A faint light dances, flashing, sometimes below, sometimes to her side. It dwindles. Large, dark silhouettes are swimming in the distance – maybe they’re above, maybe below. Wreckage? People? Fish?

She presses her arms to her chest and pulls up her legs. Her braids are knotted around her neck.

All-powerful Allah, all is at Your will.

She is spun, somersaulted, and hurled side-first into something hard.

Allah heard your prayers and decided to cut short your life’s journey, so that you vanish without a trace in the waters of the Angara.

In the name of God, the Lord of mercy…

Water begins flooding her mouth. It’s a little bitter and her teeth crunch on sand.

Thanks be to God, Lord of heaven and earth…

Maybe she swallowed that water or maybe she breathed it. Her body has begun twitching, dancing.

Amen… Amen…

Her body jerks once more and goes still. Her arms hang like whips and her legs slacken. Her braids stretch upward, swaying slowly, like water plants. Zuleikha is sinking, her face down, her braids up. Lower, even lower, to the very bottom. The soles of her feet drop into soft silt, raising a lazy, murky black cloud around her. Ankles. Knees. Belly.

The child wakes up sharply, abruptly. Beating with its little feet, a second time, a third. Squirming with its little hands, turning its head and fidgeting. Zuleikha’s belly quivers from the small heels pounding inside.

Zuleikha’s legs shudder in response. Again. And again. They push off from the bottom. Tighten and slacken. Her arms tighten and slacken, too.

She kicks toward the surface. From an agitated and swaying silty cloud toward a distant light ripple. Up, higher and higher, through the malachite layers.

She thrashes harder with her arms and legs, and rises faster. Some sort of cool, buoyant current catches and carries her up.

A blinding wall of white light hits her eyes. Zuleikha batters the water with her arms, shouts, and coughs. There’s a sharp pain in her throat, from her nose to her very innards. Wind bites at her face and she hears gulls shrieking and waves pounding her ears. She catches sight of a shred of vivid blue sky. Could she really have swum up?

Water roils around her, buffeting, slipping through her fingers. There’s nothing to grasp. Zuleikha doesn’t know how to swim. Her feet are pulling her downward again. Is she really going back to the bottom? The horizon keels and ducks as her head goes under. Allah

Hands pull her up by the braids.

“Lie on the water!” says a familiar voice next to her. “Belly on top!”

Ignatov!

Zuleikha attempts to wriggle free, to catch onto him with her hands, and at least grasp hold of something.

“You’ll drown us both!” Ignatov pushes away but doesn’t let go of her braids. “Lie back, you fool!”

She coughs and wails; she can barely hear. But she’s trying and she turns over so her belly’s on top and she’s lying on the water. Her belly rises above the surface like an island. Waves whip her face, as does rain falling from above.

“Legs and arms extended, make a star with them! A star! Do what I tell you!” Ignatov’s face is right next to her but she can’t figure out where. “There you go! Good job, you fool.”

Zuleikha extends her arms and legs and rocks like a jellyfish. She has an unbearable urge to cough but holds back. She’s breathing loudly, convulsively. If only she could get enough air to breathe, if only there were enough.

“I’m holding you,” says the voice next to her. “I’m holding your braids.”

The baby has calmed in her belly and isn’t bothering her. The waves are subsiding little by little, too, diminishing. The lightning is creeping away beyond the horizon, and a small wedge of blue sky is widening and growing. The clouds are dispersing in various directions.

“Are you here?” Zuleikha is afraid to turn her head; she doesn’t want to gulp down water.

“I’m here,” says the voice next to her. “How could I get away from you now?”

At first Ignatov wants to swim to shore but Zuleikha can’t. And so they toss around in the channel, drifting with the current. They’re fished out a couple of hours later, chilled through, their lips inky-blue. Kuznets’s nimble launch had come tearing along to meet the Clara but had found only her survivors. Other than Zuleikha and Ignatov, just a handful of sailors have been saved. Including the barefoot one – the one who kept talking about his grandfather. Apparently his time had not yet come.

When all of them – weakened and shaking from the cold – have been safely settled on the deck of the launch and ordered to remove and hand over their wet clothes for drying, Zuleikha shoves her hand in her pocket for the sugar. She pulls out only a handful of white sludge. She straightens her fingers and the goop immediately drains through them. She puts her hand over the side and the milky white drops flow off into the Angara.

The home brew glugs cheerfully as it’s poured from a tall, round green bottle into a crooked tin mug. Ignatov’s standing in the middle of the crew quarters, naked but for the burlap sacking he’s holding to his chest with his hand; there are still bits of river plants in his wet hair. He’s gazing evenly, unblinking, at that steady, cloudy stream. He grabs the mug without waiting for the last drops to fall from the bottle’s mouth and tips it into his gullet. Alcohol burns his larynx, plops into his stomach, and spreads to his head in a slow, warm wave. Green sparks instantly explode before his eyes. Home-brewed liquor’s strong, it’s good. He exhales slowly and quietly, and looks up at Kuznets. Kuznets’s eyes are mean, like a dog’s, and his mouth is a straight line.

“She was rusty, like” – Ignatov squeezes the burlap in his fists, kneading at it – “like…”

Kuznets takes the mug from Ignatov’s hands and refills it.

“I can’t!”

“Drink!”

The tin rim clinks against Ignatov’s strong teeth: he’s grasping at the mug and drinking. The home brew pours in as easily and smoothly as if it were oil. The green sparks in front of his eyes fuse, flow, and beckon. So what now? Get soused, completely blotto? He’s never once in his life been genuinely drunk, blacking out, falling down. Feeling regret, Ignatov takes the empty mug from his mouth and breathes out. His eyelids grow heavy, closing.