Page 60 of The Sea Witch
There were nods all around, and they trekked along the creek’s rocky bank. They hadn’t gone far before everyone came to a halt to behold a fresh spring bubbling up from the rocks. The voices Alys had conjured quieted.
“We have our source.” Alys planted her hands on her hips. “Nothing more.”
“Back the way we came,” Ben said decisively.
Stasia growled, “I think you areenjoyingyourself, navy man.”
“We’realleager to find Little George’s fail-safe,” he answered. “And tramping around a rugged island jungle has far more merits than sitting idly on my ar—er, behind.”
“Call an arse an arse,” Alys said. “I’d hate to think of yours doing nothing all day but looking pretty.”
He blinked. “That might be the first time anyone’s called my buttockspretty.”
“You haven’t been keeping the right company,” she replied.
“Shall wego?” snapped Stasia.
Turning, they went back the way they’d come, following the creek as it wended its way down the mountain. It widened and roughened, until it turned from a gentle stream into a broad, surging river. The sound beat against their ears after the quiet of the jungle.
Then, suddenly, the river dropped off into nothingness, the open sky spreading beyond it. There was a loud booming noise.
Alys edged her way forward until she reached the lip of a precipice. The river spilled over the edge, becoming a huge roaring waterfall. Sheets of white foam rushed downward with monstrous force. Just as she’d seen it in Ben’s dream.
The toe of her boot dislodged a stone and it went tumbling downward. She followed its trajectory as it spun through the air, until she could no longer see it. Likely, it was lost somewhere in the churning spray far, far below.
“Behold, the Weeping Princess,” she said over her shoulder.
Ben, Stasia, and Susannah all cautiously approached and peered over the edge, and Stasia swore in Greek. It was easily two hundred feet down to the base of the waterfall, which plunged along a sheer rocky cliff. Large boulders were strewn at the base. At one point in the past, part of the mountain slopehad broken free, exposing countless rocks to crash to the ground below, where water now churned and foamed.
“We’ve a climb ahead of us,” Ben said gravely. “I’ll take the lead down.”
“The hell you will,” Alys countered.
He rolled his eyes. “Only a madman would use a massive, sheer drop as a means of escaping. Besides,” he added before she could object, “this island isn’t known to anyone, and marooning myself here without a knife or firearm is a certain way to die slowly.”
She regarded him suspiciously.
“And,” he went on, “if I’m in the lead and you fall, I can catch you.”
It was her turn to roll her eyes. “Strong you may be, but if I’m falling, you aren’t going to pluck me out of the air and cradle me to your manly bosom.I’mgoing first. However,” she added, stroking her chin as a thought leapt into her mind, “we don’t have to climb.”
“There’s no other way down,” Ben said.
“Forsomepeople,” Alys countered. “We aren’tsomepeople.”
Susannah held up a hand and it was wreathed with warm gold light.
Ben said, dryly, “Not all of us. Climbing’s my only option.”
And have him possibly slip and fall an even greater distance than back at the ravine?
“I’ve enough magic for the both of us,” Alys said. When he only sent her a doubting look, she added, “We’ll go down together. If you fall, so do I. My neck’s too pretty to snap.”
Hopefully, her words held more faith than she felt. Though over the past year she had been working more on understanding her magic, never before had she tried to use it in this way. She’d conjured the wind to help her fly from St. Gertrude, but she had only needed to makeherselfsoar. Ben was not only another person, he was a tall man with muscle.
He also wouldn’t simply wait for them at the top of the waterfall, and he’d stubbornly insisted on climbing, leaving her with only one option.
Turning to Stasia and Susannah, she said, “I’ve done this before. We summon winds to hold us as we go down. Can you do that?”
