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.What do you want with them?“Food!” I cried, aghast.“What do you mean, they’re only food?”Those others.In the water.They’re not like you.“Those others in the water,” I cried, crawling closer to dry land, “are every bit like me.You must help them all, if you have any love for me.First, bring me my friend.And if there are others like you that can help, call to them!”The great serpent hesitated.You will stay, won’t you?“I won’t leave this beach.”It turned its great head back toward the sea and leaped under the surface, the rest of its length rippling after, flashing before disappearing from view.The next moments were some of the worst I ever spent.I was wet, with freezing winds buffeting me.I wanted badly to lie down, even if the waves did wash the sand away and take me with it.Walk, I told myself.Walk and warm your body.But needles of pain shot through every muscle.I was alive, but how many were dead? I fell forward into the sand, striking my knee on a rock, and lay there crying.A movement caught my eye, and I looked to see a human form crawling up out of the waves.It wasn’t Aidan.One of the lucky sailors, it seemed, who knew how to swim, though even an adept swimmer would likely have succumbed to the waves and rocks.He reached a pebbly place and collapsed, facedown, heaving up water.I went toward him but stopped, seeing another form wash ashore.A more urgent case.It was a passenger.I rolled him onto his front.A spume of water issued from his mouth and he began to breathe.It was still too dark to see much, but I stumbled about, treading upon ship debris and bodies.Miracle upon miracle, every body I encountered was alive.Barely.But alive.Something small and dark washed ashore at my feet.I picked it up.Aidan’s hat.I put it on.Gradually the sea grew calm.The rain changed from a pelting torrent to a gentle shower.Survivors washed ashore like falling leaves blowing against a fence.My body warmed itself as I moved about to help, but my heart was elsewhere.All the while I searched for the serpent.Could I have imagined it? Had I washed ashore like the rest of these?Yet I clung to the serpent in hopes it would bring Aidan.There were so many survivors! Could the creature have played a part? And if they lived, could I still hope?The three-legged cat appeared, wet and miserable, its claws sunk into a piece of decking.The trim woman appeared, and soon after her the monkey tamer, with the cold wet monkey clinging pitiably to his neck.The two of them quickly left the rest of us and headed inland.The rain ceased, and the winds that had blown the storm in so suddenly blew it away.Stars poked through the thinning clouds, and the moon painted a stripe of light across the water.Survivors from the shipwreck gathered wood and planking that had washed ashore and stacked it into a fire mound, and a crew of them argued about how to light wet tinder.I wished they’d hurry and figure it out.We all needed warmth, and fire would act as a beacon to anyone who might, by enormous luck, still be alive in the water.Luck.Foolish girl, to believe in luck.I trained all my thoughts on Aidan, alive, smiling, walking the path that led from his house to ours.If thinking of someone could keep him alive, he’d come walking over the water to me.The faintest hint of a sunrise began to lighten the sky behind me, where now the hills of Pylander came into view.The long night was nearly over.Any hope now must be utterly vain.Mistress.I jumped up, trying to understand which way the inner voice was beckoning.Mistress!He was all the way down at the end of the beach.Close by, an orange glow illuminated the center of the bonfire.Good.That would divert attention.I picked my way over the rocks toward the serpent, hoping no one would take special notice of me.It was hard not to hurry.I found the serpent uncoiling himself behind a large rock.It deposited Aidan at my feet, then backed away, its head held low.One look at him confirmed my fears.Chapter 19Salt water could never sting my eyes as much as this sight.I wanted to scream, to cry, to fall apart.But that was not my way.Not the physician’s way.And it would never help Aidan.I sank onto the sand next to him and placed my head over his heart.There was nothing.No sound, no movement.Or was there?I tipped him onto his belly.It wasn’t easy.Water poured out as from a cup, but not enough to make a difference.He was so wet, so cold, so pale and bruised in the predawn light.I slapped his cheeks.I struggled to elevate his waist as best I could, thinking perhaps the slope would make water gush from his lungs and then he would wake.I applied pressure to his abdomen.It made no difference.Not the faintest flicker of life animated his cold body.The sky grew gradually brighter, but that made me see Aidan’s still form more clearly.The schoolgirl in me wondered what other survivors would think when they looked along the beach and saw a thirty-foot sea serpent.I cared little for the schoolgirl or her thoughts now.So cold, so cold and still, Aidan, my friend, my neighbor, and now, my heart.If you were warm, would your eyes smile at me?I lay down beside him, tucking my body close to his.Perhaps there was some warmth in me that I could share with him.My gaze stretched out over the sea, and I thought of his mother, short, fiery Widow Moreau, who ruled Maundley with her tongue [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]