Salt water sadness

Anybody up for a backstory?

Ákos clutched his baby sister in his arms as the ship sank, looking around in vain for his parents. The couple was nowhere in sight, and the last place the boy had seen them was the brig. The two children were cowering on the deck of the crippled ship, and Ákos tried to comfort his sister as panicked crew members raced past.

The water began to reach the top of the boat. Ákos remembered what his father had told him about sinking ships. If it went under completely, anyone near it would get sucked under as well. Ákos sent one last furtive glance at the stairs, but no familiar faces appeared.

Luckily, the boy knew how to swim, so he strapped a life vest onto his sister and jumped into the water. It was horribly cold, but he shook off the chill and kept the baby above the water best he could. The waves were tall and fierce; the boy struggled to stay afloat as he was buffeted by the storm raging around them.

Just as his strength was waning, a hand gripped his shirt collar and they were hoisted onto a lifeboat. He spluttered, hastily checking to make sure his sister was okay. She squalled, but the little one was just fine. Someone was shaking him, yelling something, but it took him a second to register what he was saying.

“Hey… Hey kid, you okay? Kid? Where are your parents? What happened to the ship, did you see? Hey kid, can you hear me?” Ákos blinked salt water out of his eyes and blearily shook his head.

“The ship… the ship s-sank. My parents were on board but I couldn’t… find them. We hit… a rock or something. I had to get out before it sank.” The boy answered, pausing for gasping breaths when he had to. He spotted a blanket on the edge of the boat and wrapped his sister in it, pulling her into his lap and looking at the other occupants.

There was the cook and a few ship hands in the little life boat, but no officials who would notice that the kids hadn’t been paying customers on the ship.  Ákos knew that was good, no one would realize they were stowaways.

The storm crashed around them and the boat pitched violently back and forth. The baby whimpered in Ákos’s arms and he held her tight, feeling exhausted. The younger fell asleep first, but the boy soon followed, rocking back and forth in the midst of a storm on the Adriatic Sea.

They woke as orphans the next day. The boat had washed up in Albania, and the ship had been searched for while the children still slept. Minus the handful of people in the life boat, there were no survivors. Nobody was certain what had cost the ship to wreck, but a rumor began to pass that the captain had drunkenly steered them into rocks.

With no family to turn to, and no families nearby willing to take on two hungry mouths people began to talk of splitting the children up. When he heard this, Ákos picked up his baby sister and set out while the investigators’ backs were turned. He figured that he could take care of her better than they could anyway.  With a heavy heart, he mourned his parents as he walked. He decided that they should head back for Hungary, where his parents were born. Perhaps he could find work there and get paid enough to take care of them both.

He carried his sister on his back and kept walking, never looking back at the little town they’d left.

“Don’t worry,” He told the baby that was now his to care for, “We’ll be okay. I’ll protect you forever, Ildiko.” 

~~Kels