The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(81)

Finally he released me, and stood alone on unsteady legs. I clenched my fist a few times; my skin tingled, but the sharp pain had already faded to a dull ache. Then Lin pulled the bottle of mercury from the pocket of my cloak and anointed my arm with a few drops of quicksilver; soon enough, even the ache had faded. When we opened the door, the crew turned to look at me. Bee smiled tightly. “Did you flinch?”

Slate put his hand on my shoulder. “She didn’t.”

I took a deep breath of the fresh cold air. It cleared my head. I felt galvanized, strong—but the greatest challenge was still ahead. Morning was not far off. Twilight struggled through dark clouds. The tide had risen; the water licked up the wall. Farther out to sea, the storm was building; the Fool had closed in on Ker-Ys. Could the flood be far behind?

I made my way toward the bow, as far as I could get from Crowhurst, from the city—from Kashmir. But I would be going farther still. I’d studied the marble map closely. Still, I’d never Navigated without the ship propelling me through the Margins, and I did not want to have the time to hesitate, to think of what I might be leaving behind. So I stood on the beak of the prow. Below me, the red-haired figurehead gazed with wooden eyes over the foam-flecked surface of the Iroise: a starry midnight, endlessly deep. The wind cut through my thin shirt, and the sea swirled like a galaxy between the ship and the wall, dashing itself into spray. But I did not look back, and the mist began to glitter in the air like frost.

“Where are you going?” Crowhurst called as the fog rolled in. “You can’t leave! You can’t!”

Ignoring his frantic cries, I faced the wilderness of the sea. Nothing could hold me here. Not even Kashmir. I had to leave everything behind. Everything, everyone. I stared at the dark horizon until my eyes watered; I took a deep breath, and another. The mist was thick enough to choke me; I drew it close as a shawl—or a noose—until I could no longer feel the cold of the northern sea.

On Parnassus, the white lime was shining in the heat of the Mediterranean sun. On the breeze, was that the iron tang of the sirocco? The shush of the waves had faded to the sound of wind in the laurel leaves.

I closed my eyes and dove off the edge of the ship.





CHAPTER THIRTY


I fell.

And kept falling, much farther than the distance from the deck to the water.

I had half a moment to worry that I’d fall forever, but then, in a burst of bright white light, I hit the ground.

My shoulder connected first, with a clumsy crunch. I tried to roll forward, like Kash would have, but something in my neck twanged and I would have screamed if I had the air. Instead, I grunted as I flopped onto my back. But I was still falling—sliding in a shower of pebbles down a hillside. I scrabbled at the soil, tearing a nail on a rough stone, digging my fingers into the gravel, and finally grinding to a stop with my hip against a shrub made almost entirely of thorns.

I lay there, panting in the sudden warmth, my eyes turned to the faultless blue sky. Stones still rattled down the slope below me. Finally they found their rest, and there was silence. I coughed as the dust settled at the back of my throat. The heavy air was herbal and syrupy on my tongue, from the plants I’d crushed, and something dead nearby. Far above me, a pale buzzard floated on the updraft. To my right, a tiny amphisbaena encircled an anthill, two tongues flicking out of both heads.

I sat up slowly. My shoulder throbbed and my palms were bloody; good thing Slate hadn’t drawn the ship on my hands.

The ship. With a start that sent another trickle of stones skittering, I pushed back my torn and filthy sleeve, but the tattoo was intact. Next I patted my pocket—the canteen I’d brought was still there. I rolled the shirt back down, letting my hand linger over the ink as I tried to get my bearings.

The slope was dry and steep; bees hummed in pockets of dusty thyme, and where there was grass, it was short and sparse. Behind me, the ground rose toward towering cliffs the color of chalk, shining in the relentless sun. Down below, the slope ended in a copse of green trees from which flowed a silver ribbon of water. In the valley, the Herkyna unspooled through a town where the priests of the oracle presided at the temple and over the pits, where the bones of the sacrificial animals were cast down.

But the pools were in the woods, somewhere near Trophonius’s cave. Gingerly, I pushed myself to unsteady feet and started down the slope.

It was hard not to hurry, even though I knew that time was not passing in Ker-Ys. I took careful steps on a meandering path around scree and scrub, my eyes half on the shifting ground, and half on my surroundings. Where was Crowhurst? If he was nearby, he must have seen the dust and the gravel of my dramatic arrival, but although there was no cover on the mountainside, I could not see him anywhere.

Perhaps I would not see him. Perhaps he’d only seen me and run. Part of me hoped so as I made my way down the rocky slope.

But why was I afraid of him? When had he begun to loom so large in my thoughts? Here and now, at the beginning of our story, I might finally know more than he did.

The sun rode heavy on my shoulders; I bent under the weight of it, like Atlas under the pillar of the sky. Sweat trickled down my neck and burned in the raw skin on my palms as I slid and stumbled to the bottom, dust still rising around me. Finally I reached the shade of the trees, and the cool air felt like forgiveness.

I slipped between the twisted silver trunks, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dim. The thin light shivered in the leaves above my head, and the earth here was sewn with roots and studded with acorns. My feet fell softly on the loam, and I could smell the water, clean as mint.