The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(22)

This time he grabs the bulb and takes it into his mouth himself. She tugs the bulb free, touches it to his lips, and squeezes. “Slowly,” she says.

As she resops, so slowly, a frenzy takes him. Shaking, he works free the crosspiece guide and hauls in the rudder. It splashes in nearly an inch of water. It can’t all be fresh, but enough is, and the rain is picking up. He wrenches his shirt off, mops it across the bottom, and squeezes the water over his face. Still too slow. He flings himself down and drinks directly from the dinghy. He slurps and waits for her to pull him away, except she’s beside him on all fours now, lapping and gagging, the frenzy in her too. Once the boat is empty, he will suck her long hair dry.

The rain falls in great fans faster than they can drink it, and the sea rises high enough to stuff it back into the clouds. Only the drops lancing their skin let them know which way is up.

A wave nearly jounces them from the boat. Jeryon yells in the poth’s ear, “Blade!” She stares at him. He yells again. She searches through her pockets for it. Did she lose it? Jeryon feels around in the boat. She finds it in the pocket behind her smock’s brocade and gives it to him. He saws through the strand attaching his wrist to the rudder, pockets the blade, and ties the strand to her left wrist with a child’s knot. “Float,” he says.

He notices something odd on his left wrist. A tiny cut seeps blood. A bruise blooms around it. He wonders how it got there.

A wave rolls the dinghy mere seconds from the righting moment, pushing her on top of him, before it settles back. She grabs his wrists. A wave flips them the other way. Another gushes over the gunwale, half filling the dinghy. Jeryon slips under the poth so she can keep her head above the water. The rudder floats beside them, clacking against the remaining pieces of her paddle.

Something scrapes the hull, the dinghy shudders, and a strake cracks. Water spits through the hull then disappears as more waves fill the boat, and the poth lets go of his wrists. Splashing for purchase, she floats away from him. The rudder is tossed overboard, dragging her half over the gunwale. He grabs her collar and hauls her back in. She hooks her free arm around his neck. He folds her smock’s brocade into his fist and tucks her against his body. They’re more afloat than the dinghy. He wraps a leg around her thigh to weigh her down. A huge wave rises astern, dawning black above the transom.

His eyes tell her what’s coming. Hers plead, Don’t die. His say, You can’t.

A mat of fresh palm leaves sloshes by and vanishes. In disbelief they look around for it, and obligingly it returns to moor in the lagoon between their chests. A tiny white horned crab shakes its claws at them and scuttles off its raft into the dinghy. The wave crest bubbles white and reaches for them.

The dinghy rises slowly, stern first. Jeryon throws out his feet to catch his sandals on the boat’s ribs. Water pours over the bow, pulling them forward toward the sea. The remains of the poth’s paddle slide past them and disappear into the sea. The toes of Jeryon’s sandals slip to the next rib, then the next.

The crest curls over them like his father’s hand. It rises, strikes, holds them inside its fist, squeezes, and shoots the dinghy through its foamy fingers across the sea.

Everlyn screams because she knows they’re going to live until the bow is stoved in. Water blasts through it like a gout of dragon flame. It slices her from Jeryon’s grasp, and the boat pitches over their heads. The last thing Everlyn sees is him reaching for her as they soar into a sky of water.





CHAPTER THREE


The Beach


1



* * *



Jeryon tumbles through the gray, getting nowhere. Sometimes his face is thrust into a huge bubble, and he gobbles air before he’s pulled out. He sees a flash of pale skin and kicks for it. His hands grab only sand.

Jeryon pushes off the sandy ridge, his head breaks the surface, and he sees a beach before a wave drives him under again. When his feet hit the bottom, he springs forward with what strength he has. He bobs up. He flings his arms, trying to ride a wave in, but an undertow holds him in place. He can’t stay on the surface much longer. He drops under again and lunges to his right. There’s another ridge there. Rich sand. Jagged rocks. Coral.

He grabs it and presses his knees beneath himself. That’s enough for him to poke his face above the waves before the next wave drives him again into the gray.

Desire leaves his body: for food, for water, for breath. His will uncoils. His body relaxes. All sounds fade. His shoulder scrapes against the bottom. He’s pushed along it until he can’t rise anymore. One last roll and he’s on his back, anchored by his outstretched arms and legs, sucking air, drinking the rain. Waves flood his ear. The darkness just is.

Then it’s not. The tide has receded, but not the rain. Where is the poth? A line of black rocks extends from the shore, ending at three skinny stacks, which the dinghy must have hit. Is that an arm waving? Something is floating beside them. Jeryon lifts his arm.

He floats awake, engulfed in blue; a rich, unchanging, endless blue. Somehow that’s more terrifying than black. A gull flies overhead, and his weight returns. Sand skitters across his cheeks and pushes at his back. His lips are so parched he wants to chew them off. Something is touching his foot.

A white horned crab a foot wide with legs three feet long and a split mouth as big as his face stands over his foot. It holds his big toe lightly with a broad, toothy claw. Its eyestalks sway around the toe, its split mouth ruminating, as if the crab is measuring his toe with calipers. The crab brings out its other, thinner claw, which has needlelike teeth. It taps the end of his toe here, there, then snips the pad. Jeryon jerks his foot, but his foot ignores him. The crab snips again. Blood appears.