Lake Silence (The Others #6)(121)

The next wave arrived at the same time that Julian Farrow reached the sand. He ran into the water and grabbed Swinn, playing tug with the Elders who continued to bite and feed as they retreated to the natural shallows. Then Julian let go of what remained of Swinn and fell back, clear of the waterline. But he didn’t leave, didn’t move farther out of reach of the Elders. Instead, he stared at something stuck in the wet sand.

Had Julian found a shiny? She couldn’t see what he had found, so she flew down to the beach. Coins sometimes fell out of torn pockets. Julian might share if there were several coins on the sand.

But it wasn’t coins that held the human’s interest. It was the gun. Did he need the gun? Why?

Another wave washed over the beach, higher than the usual waterline. Aggie saw the shape hidden in the water. Before Julian could lunge for the gun—and get in teeth-and-claw kind of trouble—Aggie flutter-hopped to the gun and closed one foot over the trigger guard.

“No!” Julian said, grabbing for the gun.

Water washed around her and Julian like they were rocks—and the Elder who had ridden in on that wave rose partway out of the water and took a swipe at Julian. He would have torn up Julian’s arm, but Cougar smacked the human, knocking Julian out of the way.

<He’s Miss Vicki’s friend!> Aggie said, trying to tug the gun out of the sand and away from the water.

The Elder stared at her with those strange eyes before thrashing his tail and returning to the lake with the receding wave.

Cougar came up beside her and pawed at the gun.

“Wait.” Julian’s shaking hand closed over the gun.

Aggie pecked him. He was too close to the water. It wasn’t safe to be human until the Elders stopped being angry.

“Have to put the safety on,” Julian panted, his hand moving over the gun. “Can’t have it go off by accident and hit someone.”

Yes. That was smart. Since she didn’t know how to do the safety thing, she stopped pecking him.

“Okay,” he panted. “Okay.” He let go of the gun and crawled up the beach until he touched the grassy edge. Then he looked at the lake. “Vicki! Vicki!”

No answer.

<Miss Vicki is in the water,> Eddie reported.

Nothing the Crowgard could do for her there.

Aggie shifted to human form, picked up the gun, and ran to where Julian lay on the wet sand. She set the gun beside him, remembering from stories to point it away from him, then shifted back to Crow and studied the human. Water leaked from his closed eyes. He was not paying attention. That wasn’t smart with so many of the terra indigene feeling angry toward humans.

Did she care? Did it matter?

He was Miss Vicki’s friend. And so was she.

Perched on Julian Farrow’s raised knee, Aggie cleaned her feathers while she kept watch.





CHAPTER 76





Vicki


Watersday, Sumor 8

It didn’t matter if I wanted to go back to The Jumble’s beach or go on to Silence Lodge. I had reached the point of no return. I was done, exhausted—and hurt. My side felt strange, but I was too scared to touch it and find out why.

A wave caught me in the face, and I thought my side would rip as I coughed up the water I’d swallowed.

Then I saw the shapes coming toward me, saw a delicate dorsal fin, the flick of a tail. They surfaced all around me. If I hadn’t been so brutally tired, I would have been terrified.

Imagine a creature whose ancestors had been a giant piranha that had mated with a lake-dwelling species of human. They had a humanlike torso that ended in that kind of tail shown in sketches of mermaids. The backs of their bodies were a blue-black that changed to a silvery-gray front. Big fish eyes. And triangular, interlocking teeth that could tear flesh from bone, easily stripping a carcass in minutes.

Elders. The long-standing, or long-swimming, residents of Lake Silence.

They raised their heads above the water, bobbing to keep the gills in their necks wet.

“I can’t swim anymore,” I said. I didn’t know if I was asking for help or telling them that this prey didn’t have the strength to fight them.

Two of them bobbed under the water on either side of me. When they surfaced, my arms were around their narrow shoulders, holding me up. I wasn’t much help, but they maneuvered until we faced the shoreline near Silence Lodge.

An undulation of water lifted all of us, as if we were all riding on the back of something that had risen from deep in the lake to become a long, gentle swell. An arched back that rose and went back down. But the motion had brought all of us noticeably closer to the shore.

The third time that undulation occurred, I imagined I saw a giant head and shoulders right in front of me—a body that was never separate from the lake but still distinct.

We were in sight of the shore faster than I would have thought possible. Silence Lodge didn’t have my nice beach. Dark pebbles, maybe shale. Shale had sharp edges. Landing on it would hurt. Not that I had a choice. I wasn’t sure my companions understood human speech, and they weren’t likely to spend their time pondering the preferences of shoreline material.

My vision blurred. The Elders who had been holding me up dropped away. And I rode that last undulation to the shore alone.





CHAPTER 77