Unexpected: Day 13

Word Count: 90,094

Summary of Events:

Meinwen woke up shortly before sunrise and was surprised to see an island looming out her window, but had no way of identifying it as the boat sailed on past. Hilton was taken out waterskiing by Kerri's family, but chose to spectate because of his inability to swim and fear of drowning. Just after sunset, Meinwen sighted a second island, on which she saw lights suggesting habitation, but again, had no way of identifying it, nor getting to it. Hilton went out drinking with Kerri, and her brother, who considered Hilton a weakling for having not waterskied that afternoon, and so challenged Hilton to a drinking contest that Hilton quickly became confident he'd win. Meinwen was woken up while it was still dark out and ordered off the boat she'd been in into a rowboat, which carried her down a waterway on the shore of an island that was uninhabited — at least nearby — allowing her to see a spectacularly starry night sky overhead . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Since she didn’t have her cameras — which she trusted were safe in Hilton’s care — Meinwen kept her face upturned, taking in the sky, that she might, in a way, be able to imprint a memory of this starriest of skies on her mind until she might possibly get a chance to see one again with her cameras at hand to photograph.

Part of her startled when a line of blackness obscured the stars from view, but it passed over without too much delay and Meinwen surmised that it must’ve been a bridge.

After the bridge, the boat rowed onward. Trees encroached on either side of Meinwen’s view, making her view just as narrow a ribbon of sky as, she supposed, the water supporting the boat was.

The waterway wound, bent, and seemed to go on for ages. Eventually Meinwen’s neck got sore enough that she had to reluctantly lower her gaze from looking as skyward as it had been.

A desire for the sleep she’d been enjoying started to come over her, but because she was seated on a bench in a boat she didn’t want to tip, she didn’t dare give into the urge to lie down.

Finally the boats were drawn up to the shore and Meinwen was helped out onto the bank, where Bullseye seized about her upper arm solidly and guided her across a grassy plain after Dr. Stiles’ lumbering figure which she could hear ahead better than she could see — although the illumination of such a host of stars as she had was mildly helpful.

Dr. Stiles was moaning, groaning, and complaining like Meinwen hadn’t heard him before ahead of her, and she heard his false bodyguards swearing at him, and even the sound of them striking blows against him for not being quiet, which only seemed to make him complain all the more.

They entered into some trees, which were growing from a slope that rose upward — which didn’t do anything to curtail Dr. Stiles’ griping either — before they emerged at what Meinwen could tell in the starlight was the side of a road.

She saw lights that illuminated another people carrier as the sound of a sliding door as such vehicles possessed was opened.

Dr. Stiles was forced in and Meinwen followed quietly after, grateful for the comfortable — and backed — seat, which would allow her to get some more sleep, she hoped, while the driver drove.

The same cast of kidnappers piled into the people carrier as she’d been travelling with from Puerto Rico, all in the same places — well, as they’d been in Puerto Rico, as the steering wheel was on the left-hand side of the people carrier for the first time since they’d left the Unincorporated Territory — before the engine was started and the people carrier pulled away from the roadside, heading in the direction it had been pointing, whose direction on a compass she didn’t know, considering the darkness.

Lowering her head onto her shoulder, Meinwen closed her eyes, part of her regretting that she’d lacked the energy to have tried to make an escape somewhere along the way, and part of her hoping that she might wake up at the end destination so that she could inform Hilton and get rescued.