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A larger wave hit them. Etta lost the sand under her feet for an instant, then found herself stumbling as the wave passed.

She clung to Wintrow, trying not to fall.

Just as she was recovering her feet, another wave took them all.

She heard Kennit’s yell, then she was holding frantically to Wintrow’s arm as she went under.

The water that flooded her nose and mouth was thick with sand.

She came up gasping and treading water. She blinked sandy water from her eyes.

She saw Kennit’s crutch float past her. Instinctively she snatched at it.

Kennit was on the other end. He came hand-over-hand towards her, and then gripped her arm hard.

‘Make for the shore!’ he commanded them, but she was disoriented.

She flung her head around wildly, but saw only the sheer black cliffs, the foaming water at the base of them, and a few chunks of floating Other.

The serpent was gone, the beach was gone.

They would either be pounded against the rocks, or pulled out to sea and drowned.

She clung desperately to Kennit. Wintrow was little more than a dead weight she towed. He struggled faintly in the water.

‘Vivacia,’ Kennit said beside her.

A wave lifted them higher. She saw the crescent beach.

How had they come to be so far from it, so fast?

‘That way!’ she cried. She felt trapped between the two of them.

She leaned towards the shore and kicked frantically, but the waves drew them inexorably away.

‘We’ll never make it!’ she cried out in frustration.

A wave struck her face, and for a moment, she gasped for air.

When she could see again, she faced the beach.

‘That way, Kennit! That way! There is the shore!’

‘No,’ he corrected her. There was incredulous joy in his face. ‘That way. The ship is that way. Vivacia! Here! We are here!’

Wearily Etta turned her head. The liveship came driving towards them through the pouring rain. She could already see the hands on the deck struggling to get a boat into the water. ‘They’ll never get to us,’ she despaired.

‘Trust the luck, my dear. Trust the luck!’ Kennit rebuked her. With his free hand, he began to paddle determinedly towards the ship.

He was dimly aware of his rescue. It annoyed him tremendously.

He was so alive, so full of memory and sensory recall, he just wished to be still and absorb it.

Instead, they kept clutching at him. The woman kept shaking him and shrilling at him to stay awake, stay awake.

There was a man’s voice. He kept yelling at the woman to keep his face up, keep his face out of the water, he’s drowning, can’t you see?

Wintrow wished they would both shut up and leave him alone.

He remembered so much. He remembered his destiny, as well as recalling all the lives he had led before this one.

Suddenly it was all so clear. He had been hatched to be the repository of all memory for all serpents.

He would contain them until such time as each was ready to come to her, and with a touch renew their rightful heritage.

He would be the one to guide them home, to the place far up the river where they would find both safety and the special soil from which to create their cases.

There would be guides awaiting them at the river, to protect them on their journey upstream and to stand watch over them as they awaited their metamorphosis.

It had been so long, but she was free now, and all would be well.

‘Get Wintrow in first. He’s unconscious.’

That was the man’s voice, exhausted but still commanding. A new voice shouted, ‘Sa’s breath! There’s a serpent! Right under them, get them aboard, quick, quick!’

‘It brushed him. Get the boy in, quick!’

A confusion of movement, and then pain. His body had forgotten how to bend; it was too swollen.

They bent him anyway, seizing him tightly by his limbs as they pulled him from the Plenty into the Lack.

They dropped him onto something hard and uneven.

He lay gasping, hoping his gills would not dry out before he could escape.

‘What is that stuff on him? It stung my hands!’

‘Wash him off. Get that stuff off him,’ someone advised.

‘Let’s get him to the ship first.’

‘I don’t think he’ll last that long. At least get it off his face.’

Someone scrubbed at his face. It hurt. He opened his jaws and tried to roar at them. He willed toxins, but his mane would not stand. It was too painful. He slipped back from this life, into the previous one.

He spread his wings wide and soared. Scarlet wings, blue sky.

Below, green fields, fat white sheep to feed on.

In the distance, the shining towers of a city gleamed.

He could hunt, or he could go to the city and be fed.

Above the city, a funnel of dragons circled like bright fish caught in a whirlpool.

He could join them. The people of the city would turn out to greet him, singing songs, so pleased he had honoured them with a visit.

Such simple creatures, living scarcely for more than a few breaths.

Which pleasure was more tempting? He could not decide.

He hovered, catching the wind under his wings and sliding up the sky.

‘Wintrow. Wintrow. Wintrow.’

A man’s voice, beating against his dream and breaking it into pieces. He stirred reluctantly.

‘Wintrow. He hears us, he moved. Wintrow!’ The woman added her voice to the man’s.

That most ancient of magics, the binding of a man by the use of his name, gripped him. He was Wintrow Vestrit, merely a human, and he hurt, he hurt so badly. Someone touched him, making the pain sharper. He could not escape them now.

‘Can you hear me, boy? We’re nearly to the ship. Soon we can ease the pain. Stay awake. Don’t give up.’

The ship. Vivacia. He recoiled in sudden horror. If the Others were Abomination, what was she? He drew in a breath. It was hard to take in air, and harder to push it out as words. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘No.’

‘We’ll be on Vivacia soon. She’ll help you.’

He could not speak. His tongue was too swollen in his mouth.

He could not beg them not to return him to the ship.

A part of him still loved her, despite knowing what she was.

How could he bear it? Could he keep what he knew from her?

For so long, she had believed she was truly alive.

He must not let her know that she was dead.

The sea had never opposed them as it did now.

Etta crouched in the stern with Wintrow’s sodden body in her arms. The four sailors on the oars fought them.

The whites showed all around their eyes as they struggled.

There seemed to be one current for Vivacia to contend with, and another that gripped the small boat and tugged at it like a dog with a bone.

The rain lashed down and the wind added its push to the water’s pull.

Kennit huddled in the bow. His crutch had been lost when they hauled him from the water.

Etta could scarcely see him for the rain that sheeted down between them.

Kennit’s hair was sleeked to his skull and his moustache had straightened completely in the wet.

In one breathless break in the rain, Etta thought she glimpsed the Marietta far off shore.

Her sails hung limp from her spars and sunlight glinted off her decks.

In the next breath, Etta blinked the rain from her lashes.

She told herself that what she had seen was impossible.

Wintrow was a heavy weight upon her legs.

If she bent her head over his face, she could hear breath hiss in and out of him.

‘Wintrow. Wintrow, keep breathing. Keep breathing.’ If she had come upon his body anywhere else, she would not have known him.

His fat, shapeless lips moved vaguely, but if he spoke it was without sound.

She lifted her eyes. She could not bear to look at him.

Kennit had come into her life and taught her how to be loved.

He had given her Wintrow, and she had learned to be a friend.

Now the damn serpent was going to steal that from her, just as she had discovered it.

Her salt-tears blended with the rain running down her face.

She could not bear it. Had she learned to feel again, only to have to feel this?

Could any amount of love ever be worth the pain of losing it?

She could not even hold him as he died, for the slime still on him ate into her clothes and the abrasion of her touch wiped away his skin.

She cradled him as loosely as she could, while the ship’s boat rocked and reared wildly and never seemed to get any closer to the Vivacia.

She lifted her face and peered through the storm. She found Kennit staring at her. ‘Don’t let him die!’ he commanded her loudly.

She felt impotent. She could not even tell him how helpless she felt.

She saw him crouch and thought he would crawl through the boat to help her somehow.

Instead he suddenly stood, peg and foot braced.

He turned his back on her and the rowers and faced into the storm that opposed them.

He threw back his head to it. The wind flapped his white shirtsleeves against his arms and streamed his black, black hair out behind him.

‘NO!’ he roared into it. ‘Not now! Not when I am so close! You can’t have me and you can’t have my ship!

By Sa, by El, by Eda, by the God of Fishes, by every god nameless and not, I swear you shall not have me nor mine!

’ He held out his hands, his fingers like claws, as if he would grapple with the wind that defied them.

‘KENNIT!’