The Gift

Chapter 69

Whit

You know those nightmares where you're falling and you're entirely helpless and you wake up with a start? This rush is kind of like that, but not.

It's not, because it's not ending.

There's no control. There's nobody to help. I can't even hope to see Wisty in this powerful, downward-spiraling torrent. All I know is that I'm lodged inside a roar with nothing to hold on to but my useless panic.

Faster, louder, faster, louder, and then-bang.

And then-uhh.

My guppy brain feels as if it's come unattached from the inside of my tiny little fish skull. I think I just did sixty to zero in point two seconds.

And then all is calm.

Calm… and sunlit?

I'm outside?

In one piece? I think so.

Why am I not surprised that the environmentally unfriendly New Order has a sewer that goes directly into a river without any filters or processing facilities that would grind two innocent little guppies into crop fertilizer?

For the first-and hopefully last-time, I'm thankful for their complete lack of morals and civility.

I'm in a lazy bend in the river, and, despite the toilet water that the New Order has clearly been pumping into it, it's still totally beautiful.

Lily pads and their brilliant white flowers float around us lazily. Spiral snails slide along the rocks without a care in the world, and a brilliantly striped turtle slips off a log and glides by like a stubby-legged flying saucer.

Suddenly I realize I'm seeing this with eyes that are above water. I'm floating…

Like a dead fish, or a living human being?

I jolt up onto my feet and realize I'm alive and human again, standing in about three feet of water. The spell must have worn off. I whisper a prayer of thanks to Mom and Dad, who I feel are out there, watching over us somehow. Then I give quick thanks that the spell didn't remove my white Brave New World Center jumpsuit, which is now sopping wet.

I swirl around, looking for Wisty. Thank God-there she is! She's just now hauling herself up the wooded bank of the river. She's dazed, but her eyes light up when she sees me.

"Whit!" she calls. "Wasn't that… wasn't that just the most amazing ride ever?"