Chapter 8 — A Spark

Where in the world am I? Xiaohe thought to herself as she stood at the coastline, staring into the horizon. It would be night soon. They would have to start a fire to keep them warm through the night and start thinking up strategies to get off this island. 

She turned her head to the left and glanced at the prince, who sat in the sand further down the beach. They had just finished burying Old Bi Yu. The prince was silent as he helped Xiaohe dig a grave for the Diviner, which proved difficult since the island was more sand than dirt. It posed the risk that wind or water might blow the sand off and expose the body to the elements. Xiaohe searched the island for stones to pile on top to remedy the problem. By the time they had a grave deep enough to lower a body into, their hands were worn and blistered, dirt had lodged itself under their fingernails. Through it all, the prince didn’t utter a word. 

Xiaohe almost felt bad that she wasn’t more sympathetic, but she was too busy trying to find a way off the island. She had stood beside him staring down at the stones piled on top of the grave, and Xiaohe hesitated reminding the prince that it wouldn’t do to mourn at this time. Grief was a paralytic, and at a time like this, they needed to be steadfast and focused. Especially if they planned on surviving. 

Ten more minutes, she thought to herself. Ten more minutes and then she would walk over and interrupt his cry-fest. He had pulled his knees up to his chest and hid his face. He had just lost everything, and Xiaohe decided to give him a bit of privacy.

She looked back at the distant horizon and sighed. Wherever civilization and salvation was, it was so far. Xiaohe began to take inventory of all the tools they had at their disposal. The island was small but it had no shortage of trees, dry grass, things they could burn to make a fire. Palm trees meant coconuts, so they would be able to eat. At her hip, there hung the sword the Captain of the Guard had given her. And there was the lifeboat. 

If they had extra clothing, they could have used the shirts to make sails. If help did not come fast enough, they could always take to the ocean again in the lifeboat. But she was left with just the one shirt she was wearing, and discarding it was not an option. She narrowed her eyes at the prince again. 

Although he knew her secret now, she was comforted by the fact that he wasn’t a very big man. And he was royal, meaning he had been pampered and spoiled all his life and Xiaohe was confident that she could take him in a fight if the need ever arose. But there was no way she was going back to chest-binding after it nearly killed her. She was taken out of her thoughts when the waves lapped up against her ankles.

Xiaohe jumped back, surprised by the sudden cold against her feet. She didn’t know the waves reached that far up the beach. But then the thought came to her that if the waves could reach her ankles, then they could probably also reach—

“The lifeboat,” she whispered to herself. She looked to the right, at the lifeboat stuck in the sand. The tide was rising. If they didn’t pull the boat further away from the water, it would just drift away. And they needed that boat.

Xiaohe ran toward the boat and started trying to tug it further up the beach. But the damned thing was too big and too heavy and too stuck for her to move on her own. She grabbed onto the sides and pulled as hard as she could, her arm muscles taut and her feet sinking into the sand. But the boat wouldn’t budge. 

“Your Highness!” she shouted down the beach. Another wave washed onto the sand, reaching farther up the beach. It was up to Xiaohe’s calves. The boat lifted for a moment with the wave and Xiaohe tugged on it again. But rather than pulling it up the beach, the riptide pulled it even further into the sea. Xiaohe shouted again.

“Hey!” she yelled down the beach, trying to get the prince’s attention. He didn’t so much as lift his head. She groaned in irritation.

“Hey! Help me!” she shouted. The tide came in again, and a second time, the boat was too heavy for her to pull. It was getting in with every wave. “Damn this boat! Hey! Your Highness! Woah—!”

Xiaohe’s hands slipped off the side of the boat as another powerful current swept her off her feet and the boat was lifted from its sandy resting place. Xiaohe scrambled to grab onto it again, but she couldn’t grab a hold of the lifeboat without plunging into the deep end of the water and getting into the ocean along with it. 

“Damn it!” she cursed as the boat was out sea and began drifting away. Xiaohe groaned and grit her teeth. Damn it! There goes their chance at escape. She looked down the beach and found the prince still curled up and moping away. She was furious.

When she got out of the water, Xiaohe marched down the beach, right up to where Yixing was hunched over and hiding his face. She kicked the sand at him, and when his head shot up, his eyes were red and swollen. He looked at the sand she had kicked at him and then into her fuming eyes.

“What do you want?” he demanded. Xiaohe’s forehead creased in annoyance.

“Get up,” she said. Yixing scoffed at her but did not move. 

“Look!” Xiaohe pointed at the lifeboat bobbing in the water, a too-far distance away from shore and getting farther away. 

“Isn’t that… our lifeboat?” Yixing asked. Xiaohe groaned.

“Yes!” she said. “The tide was coming in, it got swept up in the rip currents! Are you deaf? What? Didn’t you hear me over there, shouting at you to help me pull it out?”

Yixing had a blank look on his face that made the girl want to punch him right between his puffy, red eyes. 

“No, I didn’t,” he said plainly. He stared hard at the lifeboat that was escaping without them and then he swallowed.

“What’ll we do now?” he asked. Xiaohe crossed her arms over her chest and scoffed. 

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Your Highness,” she said. “You are going to get up and stop moping around. I’m sorry your palace was burned to the ground, I really am—”

“Are you?” Yixing shouted back at her. “Maybe you haven’t been caught up, but I’ve just lost everything! Do you know how many people are out there trying to kill me? My entire family has been murdered, my home burned to the ground, every one who has been close to me is dead.”

“Maybe so,” Xiaohe said. “But at the moment, you and I are still alive! And if you want to keep it that way, you’re going to have to conserve your fluids and help me around here!”

“That’s right, I am alive!” Yixing shouted, angry tears filling his eyes again. “But what for? Why me? Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead, and I will be, too, so what’s the point of fighting it now? I am completely alone in this world!”

Xiaohe scoffed. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The prince might be ready to give up on life, but she wasn’t. She was nowhere near ready. She clenched her fists.

“Fine!” she shouted. “But I, for one, am not going to wait for you and your endless, royal grief to subside anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, we are stranded here! If you want to survive, a level-head will serve you better than your bereavement. Go on! Grieve! Cry your tears, I hope you drown in it! I’m getting off this island!”

She her heel and stalked off before Yixing could say anything in reply. The prince turned away from the retreating girl and looked into the ocean again. The lifeboat was too far out for them to retrieve now. The girl had walked further down the beach, and after a few minutes, her figure was a small dark spot in the distance. Yixing looked out at the horizon again. The sky was turning golden as the sun sank. Darkness would soon be upon them, but Yixing’s body and soul still felt too stone-heavy to move, weighted down by all the deaths. 

—

He’d been wandering around the island for all of ten minutes before the panic began to set in. Yixing had sat on the beach for all of two hours, wallowing in his own sorrow, when it dawned on him that this wasn’t going to go away. Whether he liked it or not, he was stranded on a small island in the middle of the ocean, and he would not survive if he continued to distract himself with his grief. There would be a time to mourn his fallen family and friends, but there would be no one to remember them anymore if he did not first take care of this situation. 

He had shouted for the Cabin Boy again, at first, but then he realized that through the Diviner’s burial, the unbinding of the girl’s chest, and the fiasco with the lifeboat, he had never asked for her name.

The island was small, but the forest was thick. Yixing had walked into it in search of firewood or something, but then he realized that he had no idea how to start a fire anyhow. The sun had sunk beyond the horizon and he had no idea how to find the beach again. By the time he made up his mind to go looking for the young woman, he was lost. 

“Hello?” he shouted. His voiced was swallowed up whole by the thickness of the forestry. The air was cold and damp, and he couldn’t see past his arm’s length. His heart rate sped up as a cold sweat began to collect on his brow.

“Miss?” he tried shouting. What in the world could her name be?

“Hello?” he shouted again. No answer. But there was a rustle in the trees. The prince froze. In the midst of all the panic and worry, he hadn’t even considered that they may not be the only ones on the island. As small as it was, it must be in the middle of the trade route. Anyone could be here along with them, including a variety of wild animals.

Yixing approached the noise carefully, wishing with all his might that he had the reliability of his eyes in the darkness. There was the sound of a broken twig. He whipped his head around. Nothing. He clenched his jaw, started stretching his hands out to grab onto something he could use as a weapon if need be. He was grasping vines from trees, leaves and branches, nothing that would lend itself to his