They were swimming on the side of an enormous wall of water. And they were being swept higher. The white line at the top had grown to a maelstrom of roaring breakers.

They came rapidly closer. In them she could see fish and branches of trees and bits of wood. Her legs drove like pistons but the current grabbed at her, pulling her down and down. Her head was in a vise, her hands grasping water. She was ripped from her father’s arms. It got cold and dark. Great creatures were moving in the deep, their cold flesh sliding against her. Her arms and legs thrashed but still the powerful flow dragged her down. She was being crushed, like the death of stones inflicted on her kind by the Phoenicians.

Something had grabbed her hair. It yanked her so hard she saw flashes. The current lost its hold on her. Even though she knew she was rising—it was getting warmer and lighter—her mouth was going to open in a moment and she was going to breathe water. She would die.

She clamped her jaws shut, finally clapped her hands over her mouth and nose. Perhaps the sea-thing that was dragging her upward would break the surface.

And then she was tumbling in the white water, gasping gulps of wet air, swimming like a demon. She heard her father’s own ragged breath in her ear.

He was the thing that had saved her.

Then she was through the breakers. Before her was a limitless plain of water, rolling gently. She understood that she was now on the back of the enormous wave that had destroyed the ship. On the horizon there stood a vast black pillar of cloud full of red cracks. Enormous tendrils of lightning coursed ceaselessly through it. It grew steadily, a great dark finger poking into the sky.

“Father,” she gasped, trying to point.

She swam in a circle.

The empty waters did not look back.

“Father! Father!”

Please, gods, please, we need him. We have a whole family! Please, gods, we cannot survive without him.

You cannot kill him!

She pounded with her legs and slapped the water with her hands and spun around and around. She screamed for him.

A shadow rolled in a low wave not far away. She dove after the snatch of blue, beside herself with terror and grief.

Then she saw it, the vision that would never leave her again: his face, mouth distended, eyes bulging, disappearing into the abyss.

“Please! Ple-e-ase!”

A wind like a Titan’s breath burst from heaven and the waves came on.

The salt water made her throw up again and again. Her father, her beautiful father—the family’s wisdom and strength—was dying. She dove beneath the waves seeking him as he had sought her, swam deeper and deeper until she felt that ice-cold current—into which he had plunged without regard for his own life, to save his daughter.