Page 64 of Where Broken Wings Fly

No, everything was black.

The water was thick, weighed down with an opaque darkness, stretching as far as the eye could see. And amongst it were floating bodies, some tipped upwards so their last sight was the sun climbing over Saoghal, some were downwards where all we could see from above was the blanket of coal over their backs. A few had managed to get themselves out of the water, dragging slow and contaminated bodies along the shore-line on the Choilltean side, where they either lay with laboured breathing and stiff chests, or ultimately had died.

“Oh my gods,” Niamh cried out as she guided Sonus down towards the land, the others following close behind us. When I spared a look over my shoulder to see what my friends thought of it all, the only one I could focus on was Raegan. Murder was in his eyes as he drew his sword, his teeth gritted and his body rigid as he prepared for a dismount.

There were more living bodies than I expected as I swung off of Sonus, hardly waiting for him to finish landing before I was tripping my way across the infested shore, my eyes pinned on the first body in my sights.

I slammed down next to them, a male pixie who was layered head to toe in the thick gunk, and tried my best to free his mouth, nostrils, and eyes of the contaminant. As my fingers dug into the thickness of it, my fear was confirmed – it was oil.

Trying my best to lift his neck and brace it against a nearby stone, I leant forward and listened for breathing from his nose. It was faint, hardly recognizable, but there.

“Can you hear me?” I muttered just as the others sprinted towards me, horror in their eyes while they scanned the carnage around us.

“Y-yes,” he croaked before letting out a heart-breaking cough.

“What happened here?” Raegan drawled, his anger not for the pixie but apparent nonetheless.

The pixie said nothing. His chest was no longer lifting, no longer falling. Feeling with my fingers around his neck, I let out a sigh when I felt a faint thump against my skin.

“Soap…” I murmured, scanning the world beyond for any evidence of such a thing.

“What?” Shea barked.

“Soap… Dish soap. I think we could help them.”

Raegan seemed to have lost his bed-side manner, not that he had one to begin with. “Not sure what use it would be. If that’s oil, then the iron within it will be absorbing into their skin with every second. They’re being poisoned, slowly and surely.”

“Not helpful, Raegan,” Shea snarled.

“Niamh… Shea… Could you go into the human shops? Ask for dish soap?”

They shot each other a nervous look, the latter more so. But they both nodded, taking to Milis and Sonus without further question and lifting into the sky before I could so much as blink.

“I’m going to try my best to get as many of them out of the water as possible,” I panted as I lifted to my feet, scanning the low tide and the floating bodies. “You two – can you touch them? Or will it poison you, too?”

“No, we can’t–”

Raegan cut Killian off by storming his way into the infested water, his movements jagged and slow as he began to pull at bodies. Killian chased after him, all the while crying out that he was going to get himself killed.

One by one we tried our best to retrieve as many as we could. By the time Shea and Niamh arrived with enough soap to fill the entire ocean — and me not feeling brave enough to ask how they got it — we had hundreds of bodies sprawled out amongst the land.

I dropped back down beside the first one I had seen, and got to work pouring drizzle after drizzle of soap on his body. Even as he wiggled beneath my touch, I scrubbed and massaged it into his face, his chest, and his arms. Anywhere his flesh was showing, I doused in soap and didn’t stop moving my hands until the faint-blue hue of his pixie skin was visible.

Shea and Niamh jumped in, helping the males coat body after body in soap. I made to stand up, to move on to the next one, when the pixie reached out and grabbed my hand. He yanked me back down to his side and coughed up a mouthful of black water.

“T-thank you,” he murmured before turning onto his side and heaving into the sand.

“Don’t mention it.” I tried a smile but my heart was too heavy for such a movement. “What… What happened?”

He tried, and succeeded, at pushing himself up and onto his knees. With a spindly finger he pointed out towards the water. “A tanker flipped.”

I narrowed my eyes, struggling to believe that any tanker would have dared to dock in such treacherous weather. When I finally saw what he was referring to, my hesitation to believe that was confirmed.

The tanker was there, but it wasn’t flipped. Instead, along the length of the tremendous vessel were long, deep slices where the oil had been freed and spilled out.

Amongst them I saw movement. Tiny, perhaps not even real, motion amongst the tanker.

“Raegan!” I shouted out, earning the Prince's attention immediately as he shot up from the body he was working on. Instead of saying anything, I simply pointed out to the tanker. “Someone’s out there!”