Page 57 of The Sea Witch
“I didn’t—” He cleared his throat. If anything happened to her, he’d lose his only advocate aboard the ship. Naturally, he’d protected her.
“Eris says we are not to go that way,” the quartermaster said as her magpie twittered into her ear.
“The creatures?” Susannah asked with a worried frown.
“Their den, with young ones.”
“There’s no choice,” Ben pointed out. “If we take the other route, we’re up against the crevasse.”
“We make our own choices, Sailing Master,” Alys answered.
She turned back to the ravine. Once again, everyone gathered at the edge, yet it looked just as impassable as before.
“That can be our bridge.” Ben nodded to a fallen tree, now velvety with moss. “I could attempt to rig some vines into pulleys, but I’ll have to find some means of gettingthemacross the crevasse, and then angling the trunk so that it will lie in just the right place. If I had pen and paper, I could calculate the angles and make a diagram—”
Alys pointed at the vines hanging from the trees on the other side of the ravine. “We’ll use those. Weave a bridge from them to get across.”
“How?” the quartermaster asked.
“Think of them like...” Alys rubbed her chin. “Like strands of kelp, weaving together as they sway in the current. Can you do that?”
There was a hesitant pause, and then both the second-in-command and Susannah nodded.
“We should join hands.” Alys held hers out, but when Ben moved to take it, she said, “Unless you’ve suddenly developed a gift for magic, Sailing Master, this is for witches only.”
“Right.” Abashed, Ben stepped back.
The quartermaster grasped Alys’s hand, and Susannah took hers. The three women faced the crevasse.
“Think of that kelp,” Alys murmured to the other witches. “How strong it is, how it plaits with the other strands, growing even stronger.”
The other two women also wore intense looks of absorption as they directed their attention toward the vines. Ben glanced back and forth between the trio of pirates and the objects of their attention.
“Nothing’s—”
“Shh,” Alys hissed.
A glow appeared around the vines, like will-o’-the-wisps. Faintly, at first. And then it gathered and grew, hovering around the vines. Until dozens of them were bathed in light.
Ben bit back an exclamation of shock when they rustled. They moved slightly, then subsided, settling back into place.
The quartermaster cursed and Susannah frowned in disappointment.
“Keep at it, my beauties,” Alys urged.
The women continued to fix their attention on the vines, and the glow surrounding them intensified. They slithered like snakes, shifting, sliding.
Ben held his breath as the vines moved, serpentine. They glided across the chasm. As they did so, they wove together asthough invisible hands braided them. At first, they were slow. Yet as Alys and the other witches fixed their attention on them, the woody vines moved with more speed.
He glanced at Alys and the other witches. Sweat glossed their skin and their linked hands shook. All this time, he’d believed magic came swiftly and easily to them, as it did with the naval mages he’d encountered, but the effort to create this spell taxed the trio of women.
At last, the vines formed a bridge. It stretched across the ravine. Each end glowed, anchored by magic.
Yet it shuddered. A few pebbles shook loose, tumbling down the crevasse. They bounced from rock to rock before slamming into the ground below.
The women let go of each other’s hands, exhaling shakily. Alys dragged her sleeve across her forehead. Her strain was tactile, pulling on him. Yet there was satisfaction, too.
“It’s not going to hold for long,” she said, nodding at the bridge they had created. “Across, quickly.”
