“Where’s Amadei?” I cough, throat hoarse from shouting over the wind, the waves, the frenzied crew, and the flapping sails. I tear off my gloves with my teeth to grip the rope. It slips from my numb fingers, embedding slivers I can’t feel. Despite the chaos, I spin around at the sound of a splash. Flecks of salty water sting my face before freezing, but I strain my eyes to penetrate the liquid ebony of ocean and night. The mist shimmers golden as lightning illuminates it for a moment…there!

“Are you crazy? Help!” No one hears, so I snatch up the rope and whip it out, slashing the water in front of him. Amadei swims out to grab something in the water before stuffing it into his mouth and grasping the rope. I tumble to the deck as the ship lurches, but I don’t let go of the rope even as its fibers scrape the skin from my hands.

Lightning flashes again, and the light glistens for a moment on the thing in his mouth. Why can I see the water if I’m not looking over the railing? But I am. I’m still on the deck, yes, but the railing is beneath me and the black water is becoming brown like the wood as it seeps up—

Silence—or rather, a pause in time—falls over the ship.

“Everyone jump!” The first mate’s voice rings through the storm, vibrating through the floorboards and up my spine as the mast becomes very, very bright.

My heart pulses through my entire body, making my fingers and toes tingle with every beat. It’s not that I don’t feel anything, it’s that it’s so intense and overwhelming I don’t know what it’s called. It hurts—it stings and seeps in through my clothing, and my chest feels…uncomfortable. It’s an excruciating tightness that numbs my mind and body, oozing darkness…

I gasp and sputter and cough and gasp again, inhaling without waiting to fully exhale. The sweet feeling of life and breath is stronger than the salty cold burning my throat and nostrils.

“Andante? Are you okay?” I look across the board I’m clutching. Amadei squeezes my hand, but I only feel it’s coldness through a veil of numbness. My spine tingles. I thought love is supposed to make you warm; for me, it’s cold and breathless and wet—or maybe this isn’t love, after all.


The light is blinding. It’s not sunlight, but the bleak sheen of winter accompanied by stinging cold. But I’m alive, because neither heaven nor hell is reputed to be this way. I sit up, cutting my hand on the rocky sand.

I abandoned our ship.

I can’t fully grasp the significance yet, but I know I did something desperate, unforgivable, irreversible when I left her there in the water to die so I could live. So I could have...what? Just this guilt, this light that isn’t hope-inspiring and this temperature that sustains a life so miserable that death might be better.

“Felix? Mama, Papa…”

I turn my head and something cracks in my neck. Amadei is white as the wintry sky.

“We left our brothers and families home,” I say. “To be here, remember?” I smile and brush his hair from his forehead.

“Brother…I promised to succeed and come home…” He furrows his brows without opening his eyes. His folder full of notes is beside him; that must be what he was trying to save last night, so he could become a great scientist on this expedition…for his brother. I was like a sister to him through all our childhood, and even though I wanted to become a painter, I studied and worked and trained to be with him. Yet he doesn’t think of me—why would he? I never told him I gave up my dreams and home for him, never told him I liked him in that way. And I never will unless I do it now.

I lean over and my shadow darkens his face, so I can pretend he still has the tan and rosy complexion of Sorrento. I try to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I don’t know if kisses are supposed to be this way, so cold and hopeless. His lips quiver a bit—or maybe that’s me—and his breath doesn’t freeze in the air because we share our warmth. His breathing becomes less ragged.

Perfectly still, in fact. The air around us cools as the warmth of his lips drains away. The warm humidity of my own breath hovers in the air before clinging to my face and freezing there. A dark, chilling tightness seizes my ribs and spreads through my body as warm liquid rolls down my cheek.

I feel colder after the kiss than I did before.

And thirsty, too. Breathing hurts my throat, and I realize how chapped my lips are as I run my tongue over them, trying to catch any lingering taste and warmth of Amadei Muzio. I gaze across the glassy surface of the ocean, silkily rippling with the wind, and distorting the reflections of picturesque islands carpeted with rock and ice. In a way, I’ve arrived at our destination—a land near the arctic unexplored, uncharted, and untainted by mankind. And it’s beautiful. The ocean is the Devil’s well; it takes sailors anywhere they wish, but only by succumbing to its power.

The waters lilt and lap against the shore, singing.

“You want water? Look about you! Strike a deal with our master and drink all you want; just pay him a visit soon!” It’s tantalizing.

I sigh and open Amadei’s notebook. We used to make fun of him for covering it with a plastic bag; but otherwise, it would have been destroyed by the water long ago. Even now, the ink is illegible in places and the pages are yellow and wrinkled.

I’ll have to burn this, the results of months of voyaging and research, maybe the only remaining evidence that we ever existed and ever tried to accomplish something great for mankind. There’s nothing else I could use for a fire here, and I think a surviving crew member would be better than a waterlogged notebook here where no one will ever find it; better than dying beside its author, even if that is the only dream I have left now. Why wasn’t it me? Why wasn’t he the one who kissed me, the way faerie-tales and dreams are supposed to go? Looking at him now, I try to remember all our years together; the happy times, you know. Just to let myself be nostalgic, to cry a bit. To let go of his life before going back to holding onto mine at all costs. But I can’t; I guess the cold has numbed my mind and heart as well. It’s erased all those memories, and frozen his still form in their place. I need to protect myself from this cold. I don’t want it to take away my warmth for Amadei, my passion for life.
I blow on my hands and rub them together before retrieving a lighter from my pocket. How strange, that I am already thinking of how to save myself after the love of my life just died. I swallow and blame the cold as I tremble. I can’t break now—I have to live, so that someone remembers our existence and our work, so I can tell his family what happened and tell my grandchildren about the silly crush their grandmother once had in the foolishness of youth. So I can bring mankind to develop and own this land, full of resources to exploit to our advantage, to feed our engines and luxuries when what we have already polluted becomes too much so for us to use.
Smoke curls in the air as a corner becomes black, wilts, and disappears. If man is the fire and nature is the paper, what happens when the fire burns all the paper?
The flame flickers out, vanishing as if it had never existed. The breeze whips my hair out of my hood and into my eyes before leaving the world as it was a moment ago—except that the flame is no longer burning, and that the far corner of the paper remains unscathed. I could light it again and keep burning no matter what; any more persevering, hopeful, strong person would do so. But I can stop now—eventually I will run out of paper, of energy, and the fire will die, anyways. The only difference between giving up now or later will be how much, if any, paper is spared. I’ll die someday, anyways. Someday, not even the sun will keep rising, and then mankind will not matter. So why should I keep trying?
The deal with the Devil doesn’t seem so bad. I crumple the remaining pages and stuff them into Amadei’s pockets before gingerly pushing his body into the water. I wade in after him, grinding my teeth as the cold freezes my legs. I look back at the shore, gray and rocky and lifeless, before diving in and swimming until I try to touch but only tread the ocean. Robinson Crusoe at least got a tropical island, suspiciously like all the other shipwrecked, stranded, and marooned characters in stories. And that’s because they’re the only ones who could possibly survive. There’s no water to drink, no food, no shelter here.
Someday, another ship full of other hopeful, talented people will find this place and conquer it. But for once, later is better than sooner; and I will not be at fault for ruining one of the last natural lands of Earth.
I dive down, down into the murky cold. The bubbles and murmurs of the ocean cloud my hearing, leading me to this well’s master. When I desperately try to go back to light and air and life, my limbs are too numb, too cold, too weak, and the world I knew is too far away. I hope the currents that carried us here will bring us home. But now that I’m in the Devil’s well, who am I?
That is how it should be; man powerless in nature, and not the other way around.