Page 55 of The Sea Witch
“Don’t you take offense to that?” Ben asked Alys, even though she wasn’t affronted.
She only shrugged. “I’m seldom witty without a mug of rum in me. Enough chattering. Now, we walk.”
Alys took the lead, using a long wide blade to cut a path through the thickly wooded terrain. Ben followed her, and behind him was the quartermaster, doubtless ready with her pistol to send him to blazes. Another member of the crew, a Black woman introduced to him as Susannah, brought up the rear. She had pulled her many small braids back, out of her round umber face.
All four of them marched onward, the jungle dense and tall surrounding them. He moved in short quick steps. Then caught himself—he wasn’t shackled anymore. He could move as freely as he pleased. And by God, did it please him. His whole body pulsed with energy finally released.
Ben tilted his head, listening.
“Something’s out there.” He peered into the shadows within the trees. “Many things.”
“The people have gone,” Alys answered. “But that doesn’t mean no one lives here.”
“Creatures,” the second-in-command said. “Human eyes have not seen them in centuries, and they keep themselves hidden now. They are... shy.”
“Should we fear them?” Ben searched for a weapon.
“Only if we rile them,” the Greek woman replied.
“That doesn’t console me.”
The second-in-command shrugged, clearly unconcerned whether or not Ben was consoled.
Alys motioned for everyone to keep walking. As they did, Ben continued to glance around, wary. Yet whatever dwelt on this island seemed just as guarded and reluctant to engage.
“Best way to find a waterfall is to find its source,” Ben said to Alys’s back. Or rather, hetriedto address his comments to her back, but as she moved, twisting this way and that, the skirts of her long coat kept shifting, 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 benearby.” 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.”
