Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,53
against the cliffs. She could lose control of the water and swamp it. Or the hull could be impaled on an unseen, rocky outcropping lurking beneath the surface.
She clenches her fists. There is no more time. She focuses her gift on the water around the boat, working it and shifting its currents to slide the small craft toward the shore. She calls too much wind, and the boat jumps forward like a spooked horse.
“Goddess,” Mirabella says, teeth clenched, “guide my hand.”
The boat pitches sloppily back and forth. The boom wags like a dog’s tail, and the sailor makes a grab for it. He misses, and the boom catches him clean across the back. He falls over the side and into the sea.
“No!” Mirabella shouts.
She uses her gift to sift through the water, separating it down deep. She has never done anything like this before. The ocean’s layers, its currents, and cold and churning sand move as she commands. It is not easy, but the water obeys.
The boy breaks the surface, cradled in the current she has created. He is smaller than the boat and easier to manage.
When he strikes the beach, his body rolls hard onto the wet sand. She did not know how to be gentle. She has probably broken all his bones.
Mirabella scrambles down the steep path. She slips and crabs her way, cutting her palms bloody against the sharp rocks. She runs across the sand to the boy and presses her torn hands to his chest.
Water drains from his mouth. He is so pale, lying on the edge of the surf. He could be any other sea creature, spit out of the waves belly up.
“Breathe!” she shouts, but she cannot put wind into his lungs. She is no healer. She does not know what to do.
He coughs. He begins to shiver, violently, but that is better than being dead.
“Where am I?” he asks.
“I do not know,” she says. “Somewhere near Trignor, I think.”
She takes off her cloak and drapes it over him. It will not be enough. She will have to get him warm, but as far as she can see there is no cover.
“This was,” she says, and shakes him by the shoulder when he seems to again lose consciousness. “This was not the best place to come ashore!”
To her surprise, the boy laughs. He is about her age, with thick, dark hair. His eyes, when they meet hers, are like the storm. Perhaps he is not a boy at all, but some elemental thing, made by the crashing water and the endless thunder.
“Can you walk?” she asks, but he slips away again, shivering so hard his teeth clack. She cannot carry him. Not up the trail and not down the long stretch of beach that might lie between them and the next town.
Where the cliffs cut in toward the road, they slant so that the opening is narrower at the top than the bottom. It is not a cave. It is barely an overhang, but it will have to do.
Mirabella slips her arm beneath him and pulls him across her shoulders, dragging him, waterlogged and limp. The sand sucks at her boots. Her already-weary legs burn in protest, but they manage to reach the cover of the cliffs.
“I have to find wood to keep a fire,” she says. He lies on his side, shaking. Even if she gets him warm, he may not survive the night. He may have swallowed too much of the sea.
Pieces of dark, wet driftwood and blown-down sticks from the trees above litter the beach. Mirabella gathers them and arranges them under the cover of the cliffs into a great heaping mess, threaded through with seaweed and errant shells and pebbles.
She is shaking too. Her gift is close to exhausted.
When she calls fire to the wood, none comes.
Mirabella kneels and rubs her hands together. Next to the lightning, fire is her favorite. To have it ignore her is like watching a most loved pet turn tail and run away.
The boy’s lips have turned blue.
“Please,” she says, and pushes her gift as hard as she can.
At first, there is nothing. Then slowly, a tendril of smoke rises from the pile. Soon, flames warm their cheeks and begin to dry their clothes. The fire sizzles and spits when the rain from the Shannon Storm hits it, but there is nothing to be done about that. She is too tired to order the clouds away. The storm will pass when it passes.