A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,226

shirt. We actually call it sleeving. And what you want to do is focus on moving your center in the direction you want to go.”

“What, I just think about it and it happens?”

She pinched her fingers close together and squinted. “There’s a little more to it than that. Control takes lots of practice. But generating thrust, pulling and pushing water around? That’s mostly visualization and commitment now that water is your element.”

“Visualization and commitment?”

“It takes some energy on your part, just like treading water does. You’ll get tired after a while. Let’s try it. We’ll start with a fountain.” She pointed to her left, and a tight geyser of water jetted up from the surface of the ocean and continued. “See how there’s a little swirly depression around the base? That’s me pulling the water down, and then it pushes up in the center. Now you. Pick a place, visualize what you want and concentrate, pull the water down, and redirect it up.”

Still not believing that this was possible for me, I chose a spot off to my left and pictured the same sort of fountain that Nara had made, willing the water to form a whirlpool and then fountain up in the center. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and Nara encouraged me to keep trying, to be very clear with my visualization. And then something did happen, but on a larger scale than Nara’s petite fountain. The seawater circled and sucked down in a funnel the circumference of my head.

“Good! Now force the center up instead of down!” Nara said.

She made it sound so easy, but what happened instead was that the whirlpool collapsed and resulted in a sloppy splash instead of a tightly controlled jet.

“That was excellent!”

“It looked miserable.”

“I told you the control takes a lot of practice, and you’ll need to work on that. But now that you know it can be done, you can probably do it better, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Great. So now you’re going to go much bigger, much stronger. You’re going to make yourself the focus of the energy and move through the water purely on the strength of your kenning. Visualize your center as a sphere just below your ribs but above your hips. That’s what you want to move. You’re going to pull the water down all around you and then push it up from underneath so that you rise up out of the water, like this.”

The gerstad spread her arms out flat on the surface of the ocean, and the water abruptly sucked down in a circle with her elbows marking the circumference. I could feel the water churning nearby, and then my jaw dropped open as a column of water shot her up bodily out of the ocean. She arched her back and flipped over, gracefully diving back into the water. When she resurfaced, we were both smiling.

“That was great,” I said.

“Now it’s your turn.”

“Oh, no…”

“You can do it. Your first attempt was quite strong, you know. You have a good visual mind. Keep your feet together, heels flat, and make the water propel you from there.”

It did look like fun, and I felt flattered that she thought I was ready so quickly. I spread out my arms, focused on imitating Nara’s feat, and tried to commit, as she put it, my energy to executing the maneuver. It happened more slowly at first, but once the water began to sink and swirl around my body, I was encouraged and committed even more strongly. I remembered to put my feet together just as the water gushed up and shot me high into the air, much higher than I wished to be: about ten lengths.

Panicked instead of graceful, I splayed my legs and waved my arms and remembered how very, very nude I was and that Nara was looking. I flailed and thrashed, but it was too late to gain some kind of form, and I hit the water far closer to the horizontal axis than the vertical. The expected sting of a belly flop didn’t happen, though. While there was definitely a slap of impact on the surface, the water felt like a cushion and a welcome and there was no pain. Another bonus of being blessed by the god of the sea.

When I resurfaced, Nara was laughing unabashedly.

“That was amazing!” she gasped. “Oh, I love my job sometimes.”

“You did that on purpose!”

“Yes, I did. Nothing better than the newly blessed who can’t control themselves.”

Wounded, I said, “Isn’t that kind