Page 27 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

giving him all too clear a view of the breeches snugly clinging to her arse.

“As you said, where there’s water, a waterfall’s sure to be nearby.” She glanced at him, and her lips curled into a knowing smirk when she caught him ogling her aforementioned arse.

Heavy moist heat pressed down on him, held close by the surrounding branches and vines. He’d grown up in the Caribbean, knew

jungle islands like this one well, but this particular island kept its thick heat, held tighter by the dense foliage around

him. Sweat slicked his skin. He sipped from the skin of water he carried.

Alys paused. “There’s a speedier way to find water than stumbling through the jungle like a fool.”

She used the toe of her boot to clear bracken from the earth at her feet, then dug the tip of her blade into the dark loamy

soil. Her steel drew wavy lines in the dirt.

He frowned with confusion as she knelt beside the waves she’d drawn. She bent down, putting her face close to the inscription.

Her lips formed inaudible words.

As she spoke, noises emerged from the jungle, the low sound of several voices in conversation. He couldn’t make out the words

they said, but some of them chuckled as if secretly amused.

Alarm shot down his back. “Give me your blade.”

“The hell she will,” the quartermaster snapped.

“The creatures,” he growled.

When no one took up a defensive position, Ben glanced around sharply. He snapped a thick branch off a tree and brandished

it like a club.

“Be at ease, Sailing Master,” Alys said as she got to her feet. “Nothing’s coming for us.”

“I hear them,” he snarled. “Can’t you?”

There was no alarm in her, no fear. It was damned foolish when they were obviously outnumbered.

“It’s the water,” she explained with forced patience. “The spell I cast amplifies its voices.”

He shook his head. “Water doesn’t possess a voice.”

She laughed, and the sound joined the chuckling that tumbled out of the forest. “Of course, water has a voice. Everything in nature has a voice. Trees, earth, sky. It speaks all the time. You only have to listen.”

Susannah clicked her tongue. “No surprise he doesn’t think so. Men stomp around and speak so loudly they drown out everything

else but themselves.”

“You’ve been at sea most of your life,” Alys said to him, “and yet you’ve never heard it speak?”

Slowly, he lowered his club. “With fair winds and clear skies, the waves... murmur.”

“And when there’s a storm?”

“It shouts.”

She held up her hand, the answer obvious.

“I didn’t truly know,” he said. “Not until now.”

“To think that a naval man can actually be taught something,” the second-in-command said tartly. “What a miraculous day this

has turned out to be.”

“He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” Alys answered, wry.

“He’s also standing here and sees no need for you to speak of him in the third person.” Ben pointed with his club. “The voices

sound as though they’re coming from that direction.”

Alys took up the lead again. The group continued onward, up a long gradual incline that made the muscles of his legs burn

satisfyingly after several days of idleness. Thick vines drooped from tree branches, whose roots were as wide as a man’s torso,

as if bodies were only partially buried. Sunlight pierced the canopy here and there, casting verdant light onto the pirate

captain’s hair and glittering on her shoulders. She glowed like a ruby in the midst of a sea of emeralds.

Animal cries and songs stilled as they walked and remained quiet. Doubtless everything here was unused to the noises made by humans. Even a quartet of people attempting to move lightly through the forest must seem like a jarring cacophony compared to the peace this island had known for a long time.

A low branch caught on Ben’s coat, snagging a button and sending it flying into the dense underbrush. There would be no finding

it amongst the thick foliage. Perhaps back on the ship, he’d find a spare button to replace it. He had some skill with a needle,

and could ask Fresia if they had one he could borrow.

Perhaps they’d be in a generous mood if the landing party returned to the ship in triumph, having found the fail-safe?

But if he located the fail-safe here, he’d destroy it.

He wouldn’t make it back to the Sea Witch alive.

Straightening his shoulders, he pressed forward, following Alys. She chopped away the dense vegetation and they continued

on.

She came to a stop, and held out her arm in warning. “Come to where I’m standing, but go slowly.”

Following her instructions, Ben stood beside her, with the quartermaster and Susannah also lining up next to her. The second-in-command

let out a low whistle.

They stood at the edge of a deep rugged crevasse. It had been created when an ancient flow of lava had collapsed. It yawned

below them, easily a dozen yards across and thirty feet deep, lined with rocks and tenacious ferns. A dank green smell emanated

from the chasm. Far at the bottom, jagged stones poked up like teeth. Dense jungle continued on the other side of the ravine

with thick vines hanging from the tree branches.

“Jumping the distance is impossible,” Ben said lowly.

“Can’t climb up and then down,” Alys noted. “The rocks don’t offer good handholds, and if we slip, it’s a painful fall and

sure death.”

“How do we cross it?” the quartermaster asked, impatient.

“We find another way to the water.” Alys turned on her heel and headed in a different direction.

A shriek sounded, and the leaves exploded as something shot from the foliage.

Ben immediately darted forward, shoving Alys behind him as he raised his makeshift club.

“Hold,” she barked as he lifted it high to strike whatever attacked them. “It’s only Eris.”

The magpie circled before settling on the quartermaster’s shoulder. She stroked the bird’s throat, and Ben fought against

feeling like ten varieties of foolishness. Merely a bird, and a tame one at that.

He looked back at Alys.

“No need to serve as my guardian, Sailing Master,” she said sardonically.

“I didn’t—” He cleared his throat. If anything happened to her, he’d lose his only advocate aboard the ship. Naturally, he’d

protected her.

“Eris says we are not to go that way,” the quartermaster said as her magpie twittered into her ear.

“The creatures?” Susannah asked with a worried frown.

“Their den, with young ones.”

“There’s no choice,” Ben pointed out. “If we take the other route, we’re up against the crevasse.”

“We make our own choices, Sailing Master,” Alys answered.

She turned back to the ravine. Once again, everyone gathered at the edge, yet it looked just as impassable as before.

“That can be our bridge.” Ben nodded to a fallen tree, now velvety with moss. “I could attempt to rig some vines into pulleys,

but I’ll have to find some means of getting them across the crevasse, and then angling the trunk so that it will lie in just the right place. If I had pen and paper, I could

calculate the angles and make a diagram—”

Alys pointed at the vines hanging from the trees on the other side of the ravine. “We’ll use those. Weave a bridge from them

to get across.”

“How?” the quartermaster asked.

“Think of them like...” Alys rubbed her chin. “Like strands of kelp, weaving together as they sway in the current. Can

you do that?”

There was a hesitant pause, and then both the second-in-command and Susannah nodded.

“We should join hands.” Alys held hers out, but when Ben moved to take it, she said, “Unless you’ve suddenly developed a gift

for magic, Sailing Master, this is for witches only.”

“Right.” Abashed, Ben stepped back.

The quartermaster grasped Alys’s hand, and Susannah took hers. The three women faced the crevasse.

“Think of that kelp,” Alys murmured to the other witches. “How strong it is, how it plaits with the other strands, growing

even stronger.”

The other two women also wore intense looks of absorption as they directed their attention toward the vines. Ben glanced back

and forth between the trio of pirates and the objects of their attention.

“Nothing’s—”

“Shh,” Alys hissed.

A glow appeared around the vines, like will-o’-the-wisps. Faintly, at first. And then it gathered and grew, hovering around

the vines. Until dozens of them were bathed in light.

Ben bit back an exclamation of shock when they rustled. They moved slightly, then subsided, settling back into place.

The quartermaster cursed and Susannah frowned in disappointment.

“Keep at it, my beauties,” Alys urged.

The women continued to fix their attention on the vines, and the glow surrounding them intensified. They slithered like snakes,

shifting, sliding.

Ben held his breath as the vines moved, serpentine. They glided across the chasm. As they did so, they wove together as though invisible hands braided them. At first, they were slow. Yet as Alys and the other witches fixed their attention on them, the woody vines moved with more speed.

He glanced at Alys and the other witches. Sweat glossed their skin and their linked hands shook. All this time, he’d believed

magic came swiftly and easily to them, as it did with the naval mages he’d encountered, but the effort to create this spell

taxed the trio of women.

At last, the vines formed a bridge. It stretched across the ravine. Each end glowed, anchored by magic.

Yet it shuddered. A few pebbles shook loose, tumbling down the crevasse. They bounced from rock to rock before slamming into

the ground below.

The women let go of each other’s hands, exhaling shakily. Alys dragged her sleeve across her forehead. Her strain was tactile,

pulling on him. Yet there was satisfaction, too.

“It’s not going to hold for long,” she said, nodding at the bridge they had created. “Across, quickly.”

He almost suggested that he take the lead, in case the bridge didn’t hold, but Alys shot him a cautioning glance.

Without hesitation, she climbed onto the bridge. His breath came shallowly as he watched her walk across. She darted from

one end of the vine bridge to the other.

A moment later, she was on the far side. Only when the quartermaster looked at him sharply did he realize that he’d let out

a rough, loud exhale.

“Move fast and light,” Alys called across the crevasse. “Don’t give the bridge a chance to throw you off.”

Ben took a step toward the vines, but the second-in-command elbowed him back. Her face was drawn and tight, but she gamely

climbed onto the bridge. She cursed her way across. When she reached the other side, she crouched down on her haunches and

brought a handful of dirt to her lips.

“The bridge is growing less balanced the more people cross it,” Ben said to Susannah. “You go while it’s still stable.”

The woman nodded, and mounted the bridge. It rocked beneath her, and she gripped a vine for balance. Then, before the bridge

could collapse beneath her, she ran its length, and arrived at the other side. Susannah leaned against Alys for a moment,

catching her breath.

It was Ben’s turn.

He strode to the bridge, and as he stepped onto it, it shivered and trembled. The witches on the other side of the ravine

were pale and shone with sweat from the effort of keeping the bridge intact and anchored.

God knew if it would hold him. Far below, the stones at the bottom of the ravine jutted up from green darkness.

It was no different from climbing a mast in a storm. Or so he told himself as he took a step and then another, pulling himself

along by clutching a loose vine. The bridge quaked under him. His boots slipped. He fought to remain standing, even as the

bridge shuddered.

The vines groaned. All three women let out a cry. The glow abruptly disappeared from the anchor point on the near side of

the crevasse.

Ben had just enough time to grab the vine before the bridge swung free, gripping it. As he swung toward the far wall of the

ravine, he braced for impact against the pointed rocks.

Vines knitted around him. They formed a cage, sheltering him, as he slammed into the rocky wall. He grunted from the collision,

yet without the vines surrounding him, he would’ve been smashed to a pulp.

Gripping a thick vine, he hauled himself up. Hand over hand, he pulled himself higher. The lip of the crevasse loomed, and

sweat dripped into his eyes.

Finally, he reached the rim. He grabbed it and heaved himself over the top. A moment later, the bridge collapsed. It fell into the crevasse, landing with a crash that sent birds wheeling into the sky with alarmed cries.

Ben splayed on the ground, panting, clutching the solid earth beneath him as the cage of vines that surrounded him fell away.

Fuck. He’d come close to dying before, but that was during wild storms, when his mind had been too hazed with the need to keep

the ship afloat and on course. This, though, hollowed him out.

Alys, Susannah, and the quartermaster gathered around, peering down at him.

“I’ve never thanked anyone for using magic before,” he rasped.

“Her.” The second-in-command jerked her head toward Alys. “She did it all.”

Ben stared at Alys. Her face was taut, her hazel eyes bright in her ashen face.

“You—”

She held up her hand. “Would’ve done the same for any of my crew. And we’re losing daylight the longer we stay here, kissing

our own arses.”

Beneath her sharp words there was relief, curling like feathers on the wind.

He’d leapt in front of her without thought, protecting her from an unknown threat. And now she’d saved his life. The vines

that had woven across the ravine were less tangled than whatever bound Alys and Ben together. No matter what lay ahead.