MORNING SERIAL
IT is the shattering force of Anton’s shoulder breaching the surface, his arm thrashing like a salmon, that breaks the moment.
She lurches towards the place where the water split open and his shape burst through in a shower of glistening drops and runs, ungainly and clumsily, through the shallows, reaching and pulling at the weight of the water with open hands.
The riverbed falls away beneath her and she lunges and swims, gasping as the cold water squeezes the breath out of her lungs. She feels something slither past her leg, plunges beneath the surface and opens her eyes, catches a flash of pale flesh behind the silty churn of the water and reaches out. Her fingers hook on cloth. She clenches her fist around the scrap of fabric and tugs, but the river is tugging too and she is pulled a few feet before she can brace her heels against a rock and haul her catch sideways, out of the slipstream. The tension eases and her fingers throb, readjust and tighten their grip. She moves herself carefully, drawing her prize towards her until she can slip her free hand beneath Anton’s chin, dig her fingers deep into the fuzzy flesh of his jaw and raise his face out of the water.
She holds him, waiting for the gasp.
He is still.
‘Anton?’
She squeezes his jaw hard until his lips part, his mouth a miniature rock pool of teeth and purpling gums, full to the brim with liquid.
She takes a deep breath of her own and hauls at his weight. Buoyed by the water it moves easily at first, but as soon as the pebbles rise to meet his body she has to drag him, hands under his armpits, his head lolling back, as far as she can onto the bank.
As she rolls him to drain out whatever fluid she can, his feet are still in the water, so white with cold, the blood bleached out, that he could already be dead.
She flips him onto his back and tilts his head back, almost pressing her ear against his lips to listen for breathing.
The Half Life of Snails by Philippa Holloway is published by Parthian at £15