wall dry while still holding back the river. Turning so I could see both the wave and the wall, I slowly began to weave the two songs together.
The drying couldn’t be done too fast; otherwise the wall would crack. That was the trick of it, listening to get the pacing just right. I didn’t rush. Standing in the riverbed, I took my time and let the mortar grow white, grow dry. And then, just as I was all but done, I heard what I’d most dreaded—the faint echo of fury coming from the water.
I waved frantically at Nat. The water was turning on me, and my wave was about to crash down on top of us.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE DROWNED LAND
Nat understood my warning signal right away, but despite the alarm in his eyes, he didn’t rush to the ladder.
What was he waiting for? For me to get out first? Of all the misplaced notions of gallantry! It was my song; I should be last out. He wouldn’t budge, however, and I couldn’t argue while I was singing. So I ran to a ladder—there were several still up—and started to climb.
To my relief, he did as well, and he quickly reached the top. I made slower progress, hampered by skirts and the demands of singing and an ankle that was still giving me twinges. As I grabbed the last rung of the ladder, the water broke loose.
Above the roar of the wave, I heard Nat call out to me. “Lucy!”
His hands reached down, seized me, and hauled me bodily up to solid land. Drenched by the spray, I held fast to him, gasping for breath. Then I looked up into his eyes, and the world dropped away. The wall, the wave, my narrow escape—I forgot them all as we stood there, aware of nothing but each other.
A terrible shouting came from the men. “Watch out!”
As Nat and I sprang apart, I glanced over my shoulder. Three slimy gray snakes were rising from the waters. They lashed at the air, eyeless and as thick around as trees. There were four of them now. No, five . . . six . . .
Half-hypnotized, I stared at the sinuous, bubbled flesh. Snakes? No. They were tentacles. Which meant . . .
With a horrible slurp, the fleshy head surfaced, all gaping mouth and teeth.
“Giant squid!” someone screamed.
“Kraken!”
The tentacles reached for the wall.
As Nat seized the iron-tipped spear he’d brought with him, I saw other men reaching for their weapons. The creature must have seen this too, or perhaps it simply sensed the iron embedded in the wall. It reeled in its tentacles and plunged underwater.
“Hold on,” Nat called out to his men. “Wait till the creature comes up.”
A few of them let loose their spears anyway. The wooden shafts twisted as they hit the water. I heard the sound of the water steering the spears away from the monster—and beneath it, scattered notes from the furious song.
“The water’s protecting it,” I said to Nat. “Just as it protected the others.”
“It’ll have to surface again if it wants to attack us.” Nat scanned the waters, spear at the ready. “And when it does, we’ll get it.”
But he was wrong. At the foot of the wall, the currents of the river were shifting. Small waves appeared, then larger ones. I leaned out over the new bricks, listening. What was happening down there?
And then I had it: “The kraken’s pulling on the pilings!”
Nat paled. We hadn’t put iron down there, only on the brick part of the wall. “How do we stop it?” he asked.
“I’m not sure we can. Tell the men to warn the neighborhood. Get everyone out.”
Nat shouted out the command, and within a minute, the rainy waterfront was all but empty. Only a couple of the younger masons remained, determined to show their courage.
“Let’s see if we can save the wall,” Nat told them. Together they probed the water with their spears, but the river twisted the staves and wrenched them away.
“Nails,” Nat called out. “And the leftover spikes!” We hurled them in, but the water must have carried them off, because the kraken kept pulling at the pilings.
While Nat and his men cast around for other things to try, I sang to the water, pleading with it to turn against the kraken. But I wasn’t surprised when the water ignored me. I put my hands against the wall and felt it tremble.