25. Nightmare
Clutching the side of his face, Jacob twisted away in an attempt to escape. But his knees buckled beneath him, and the sand rushed up to meet his face as he collapsed on the beach. Red lines striped his hand as he drew it away from his face to support his attempt to stand again, and he inhaled harshly when a heel slammed into his back, plunging him into a mouthful of sand. His chest heaved as he choked against it and whimpered slightly like an animal crying for rescue from some predator.
"You can't kill me," he gasped, fingers curling to clench grains of sand like Esau clenched his teeth whenever Jacob said anything at all.
Glaring at his fallen brother, Esau flushed with rage and stomped on the pale fingers. "I don't want to kill you, Jacob." The most brazen lie he could utter, but the boy would never know. He probably couldn't hear anyway with that ear-splitting moan, the rushed breath, the strangled sob.
"Please…just leave me alone." The shameless begging made Esau's blood boil; he would forever wonder why Mother even bothered to settle for placing this child in charge of anything at all. "I did nothing—"
"Nothing today, Jacob. Nothing yet."
"I was outside, walking—that's all—"
"Don't try to hide it! You're bringing more people here, aren't you. I saw you planning it."
"All right, all right, maybe I just wanted to try it again. But they're—"
"I never said you could get up!" Shifting into the monster, he wrapped around Jacob and thrust him into the ocean like a discarded plaything.
His face stung fiercely where Esau had punched him, and Jacob sputtered up blood and water, desperately shoving against the current as it tried to swallow him. His arms throbbed as he threw all of his strength into just keeping his head above the water, and he wondered, could he drown? It didn't seem possible. But the Island had always worked like that, taking the possible and turning it inside-out until he couldn't begin to guess the outcome. When it came down to betting on the Island, that made him long for the shore more than ever.
Esau watched his brother flail, hopelessly struggling against powers beyond the both of them. Though Jacob couldn't suspect it, Esau was asking himself the same question. If some way existed for the Island's protector to use that power to keep themselves from dying in any way, Jacob clearly didn't know it yet. And when a full minute passed, and Jacob's head was still under water, Esau decided that if he had to be trapped on the damn Island, he didn't want to be alone, either. Not when he didn't have the slightest idea how to leave yet.
In his smoke form, he plummeted towards the waves where Jacob had slipped under, and dove in with his old body. Wrapping an arm around Jacob, who didn't fight or even move anymore, Esau dragged him to the surface. He was stronger now, with the monster, even when he didn't take its shape, and he summoned every ounce of the strength Jacob had so kindly given him in order to save Jacob.
Before, Esau was always the one who had to step in and save his neck, either from Mother when she was unhappy with him or once when the humans discovered Jacob spying on them. When he lay outstretched on the beach, wet skin gleaming in the sun against the pale sand, he looked so hardly different from a child—Esau perched over him, calling his name, like when he wanted to wake Jacob from a nightmare. Things had changed so much since that time, and yet here they were again, Esau guarding his brother as his brother guarded the Island.