Page 347

She undulated past him, length after coiled length of her spilling out of the imprisoning pool like thread unwinding from a spool.

As she passed, he was aware of the tremendous effort it took for her to move her cramped and distorted body.

This was an act of desperation. She was not sure if she fled to freedom or death. But she knew she left captivity behind.

‘Yes. Sorry to have killed you.’

‘It’s all right,’ he muttered. He was not even sure if he was dead.

He was outside himself. No. Bigger than himself.

It was like the trances at the monastery, when he worked his stained glass, but bigger, much bigger.

The pain of his scalded flesh was no more significant than an annoying splinter in the heel.

‘Ah,’ he sighed. ‘Now I see you clearly. You were there all along. The serpents and the dragons in my windows, in all my art. How did you know I’d come to you? ’

‘How did you know to come to me?’ she wondered in reply.

But she did not wait for an answer. She spilled out of the fissure.

He braced himself, unwilling to hear the impact of her heavy body on the rocks below.

But her very size saved her that. Her length reached from the floor of the cave to the beach below.

She lowered her fore-section until it met the beach, and then drew the rest of her body down after herself in undulations like an inchworm.

Strange. He was no longer touching her but was still aware of her.

The hot sun shone down on her. Sand clung to her.

She rolled helplessly on the barnacle-coated rocks.

The last of her strength was spent. She needed the water to take up her weight; she needed to moisten her gills.

The incoming tide just kissed against her belly.

It wasn’t enough. She had striven so hard, just to die on the beach.

So hard a battle, only to become food for crabs and seagulls.

Something was happening to Wintrow. His entire body was reacting now.

His eyes were puffing shut, while his breath whistled in and out of his thickened throat.

His eyes and nose streamed, his skin felt stripped.

Yet he was standing, and staggering to the edge of the fissure.

His useless tattered shirt still wrapped one of his hands.

He could see the green-gold body of the serpent on the beach below him.

He could feel her baking in the heat. He would go down to her.

The narrow path defied him. On his third edging step, he simply fell backwards off the cliff-face.

He landed on the serpent’s yielding body.

She broke his fall, but it was all the comfort of falling into a sizzling frying pan.

He shrieked in pain. Too much, she was too much to know, and whatever coated her skin was eating his away.

He rolled away from her, to land on barnacle-crusted rocks.

A wave rushed in, licked tentatively at his face, and rushed away.

The cool of the water was a blessing, the salt a stinging curse against his raw flesh.

‘The Plenty.’

All the longing of an immortal heart was encapsulated in that single word.

His shirt was still wrapped about his out-flung arm.

The ragged fabric was heavy with seawater.

He gathered it to his chest and crawled to her.

The world was so dim, yet the afternoon sun still beat hot on him.

Or was it hot on her? He managed to shake out the remnants of his wet shirt.

He flung it over one of her gills. It covered such a small part of her head.

‘It eases me, nonetheless. We all thank you.’

‘We?’ He mouthed the word, but did not think that was how she shared his thought.

‘My kind. I am the last who can save them. I am She Who Remembers. Even now, it may be too late. But if I am not too late, and I can save them, we will remember you. Always. Take comfort in that, creature of a few breaths.’

‘Wintrow. My name is Wintrow.’

The next wave reached them, lapping a trifle higher.

She thrashed feebly in its touch and managed to heave herself a bit closer to the water.

It was not enough. Selfishly he wondered if he could roll far enough away from her to stop sharing her pain.

His own was quite enough. Then it all seemed like far too much trouble.

He lay still and waited for the next wave to lift him so he could swim away to join his kind.

At the first scream, Kennit halted in his tracks. ‘What is that?’ he demanded.

The sound had echoed oddly. ‘I don’t know,’ Etta had replied uneasily.

She glanced wide-eyed around them. She suddenly felt very small and exposed.

The path and the sheltering forest had been left far behind them.

Here was only open sand and rock, glaring sun and the endless water.

On the horizon, she glimpsed black clouds.

The wind blew stronger, with a promise of rain in it.

She was not sure what she feared, but knew there was nowhere to hide from it.

She could see nothing threatening; the scream seemed sourceless. An ominous silence followed it.

‘What should we do?’ Etta asked.

Kennit’s pale eyes skimmed the beach in all directions, then glanced up to the tableland behind them. He, too, saw nothing. ‘Continue to the alcove rock,’ he began, and then halted.

Etta followed the direction of his eyes.

The creature she beheld had not been there a moment before.

She was sure of it. There was nowhere it could have concealed itself, and yet now suddenly it was there.

The erect part of it was as tall as Kennit, and a heavier slug-like body trailed behind it.

As she stared at it, it flung out flexible limbs from its upper body.

They were impossibly graceful, bonelessly unfolding, with outstretched long fingered hands at the end.

The fingers were webbed. Its body was grey-green and gleamed damply where it was not covered by a pale yellow cloak.

Its flat eyes glared at them menacingly.

‘Go back!’ it warned them. ‘Go away! She is ours!’ The hissing, thrumming voice was thick with menace.

Even the smell of the creature was frightening, thought Etta, though she could not think why.

She only knew she wanted to get as far away from it as possible.

It was too foreign. Too Other. She seized Kennit’s arm.

‘Let’s get away from here,’ she pleaded, tugging at his arm.

It was like tugging at a statue. He set his muscles and resisted her.

‘No. Stand still, Etta. Listen to me. It’s a magic, a glamour he has cast at us.

He suggests your fear to you. Do not give way to it.

He is not so frightening.’ With a small, superior smile, he tapped the charm at his wrist. ‘I am impervious to it. Trust me.’

She tried to listen to his words but could not.

The wind brought the creature’s stench to her, a smell she instinctively recognized.

Dead and rotting human. It revulsed her, as did the pressure of that flat-eyed stare.

She wanted to cover herself, to be out of reach of those eyes.

‘Please,’ she begged Kennit, but he had locked gazes with the Other.

He shook off her grip with a strength that surprised her.

He had forgotten her. She could run, if she wished.

She did not know where she got the strength to stand still and watch.

Kennit baited the Other with a courage she found unthinkable.

Crutch tucked under his arm, he first stepped towards it.

It raised itself higher, spreading its wormy limbs.

She could see the webbing between its long fingers. ‘Go back!’ it warned him.

Kennit only smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

‘This way,’ he told her and led her towards the trailhead for the forest path.

Relief flooded her. They were leaving. As he trudged towards the path through the shifting sand, she slunk along at his side.

Kennit kept glancing back over his shoulder at the creature.

She did not blame him, but she could not bear to look at it.

Etta caught the edge of his sleeve and he allowed her to cling to him as he stumped along.

He suddenly halted and turned to her, grinning. ‘There. Now we know. And we will beat the Other to it.’

She glanced fearfully over her shoulder. The creature was undulating rapidly over the sand, yet for all its effort, it seemed to move slowly. Again, the wave of terror shook her as the smell of the creature overwhelmed her. She could not still her shaking.

‘Stop being afraid,’ Kennit commanded her uselessly. ‘See how it hastens down the beach, as soon as it thinks we are fleeing. Whatever it seeks to protect is down that way. Come. Help me go as swiftly as we can.’

She closed her eyes in an agony of terror. ‘Kennit, please. It will kill us.’

‘Etta!’ He took her upper arm in a grip like a vice and shook her. ‘Do as I say. I will protect you. Now come.’

He positioned his crutch once more under his arm and then took off down the beach.

He moved like a long-legged creature, swinging on his crutch as he almost ran.

Stone and sand shifted under him, but he compensated.

From behind them came a cry of outrage from the Other.

When it was echoed, Etta glanced back fearfully.

There were more Others. They seemed to rear out of the very earth or ooze up from the sand.

She ran like the wind after Kennit. She stumbled once, her hands skidding on rocks and sand.

She scrabbled to her feet, her palms stinging and her boots full of pebbles. She ran.