Page 62 of The Sea Witch
Abruptly, she let go of his hand, realizing only then that she’d still been holding it. She turned away, ignoring a throb in her chest.
Alys gave her attention to Susannah and Stasia, descending from the cliff. They drifted down, rather than half fell, as Alys and Ben had. Susannah’s braids slipped from the binding that held them back, and floated around her in elegant cursives. Stasia seemed too terrified to concern herself with the fact that her loose trousers fluttered like sails.
Susannah clearly had more practice and skill when it came to flying.
“Steady as she goes, my girls,” Alys called up. “Nearly there.”
“Saynothing...until I am... on the ground,” Stasia growled.
Susannah was silent as she controlled the wind, but as she drew closer to the earth, she appeared joyous, like someone coming home.
Finally, they all stood on the rocks, having reached the bottom of the precipice.
“When the sun turns into a block of ice,” Stasia muttered. “Thatis when I will fly once more.”
Seeing Stasia frightened by anything was a rarity, but in addition to being Alys’s second-in-command, Stasia was also her friend, and so Alys kept any remarks to herself.
They faced the waterfall, which appeared even more towering and thunderous than it had from the top of the precipice. Water sheeted down in a heavy pour, slamming against the rocks that lay at the bottom. It held a cool scent with the fragrance of stone beneath. Since coming to the Caribbean, she’d seen many waterfalls. The first one had dazzled her. Butthisleft her stunned. It was beautiful and terrible and somehow it was the key to Little George’s fail-safe.
Alys recited,
“A golden, holy key you seek to open the stone heart,
But first, you must be penitent.
Bow at the feet of the Weeping Princess
And behind her vale of tears, you will find your way.”
Everyone looked around, taking in the thick jungle that encircled the pool at the base of the waterfall. It was just as densely wooded here as elsewhere on the island. The breeze churned up by the thundering water made the trees dance as if they were revelers honoring the forest gods that made them.
The pool itself appeared about forty feet across, pale green around the edges and then a deep emerald in the middle, revealing that it was quite deep.
“Little George was a wily bastard,” Alys said. “He wouldn’t leave the fail-safe out for just anyone to find.”
“How is it determined who’sjust anyone?” Ben peered into the green shadows surrounding them.
“We’ll split into two groups and search the area. Stasia and Susannah, you take the north quadrant.”
Her crew nodded and, with their hands on the butts of their pistols, marched into their assigned portion of the jungle.
“We’ll search around the waterfall,” she said to Ben.
They walked the perimeter of the pool at the base of the waterfall, searching for some hint or sign of the buried trove.She examined rocks both large and small, toeing some aside or else rolling them away in the hopes of uncovering even the smallest item that might be the fail-safe. Ben did the same, looking beneath the bracken that grew in the dampness.
They went in wider and wider arcs as they investigated. And yet, no matter how intently they searched...
“I’m finding fuck-all,” she said after some time. Crossing her arms over her chest, she added grimly, “Beginning to think Little George was having us on, a final laugh from the depths of hellfire.”
“An infamous pirate like George Partridge isn’t the sort who fails to deliver on his threats, or in this case, clues.”
“And yet there’s nothinghere.”
She sensed his frustration match her own. Together, they glared at the thundering water that fell in a surging misty curtain.
“?‘Behind her vale of tears, you will find your way,’?” she quoted.
They turned to face each other.
