Page 41 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
Which was not the answer I was expecting. “Oh, but you do. You are.To me.”
“This isn’t speaking,” he said. “I’ve novoice.Not for a long time.”
“But I canhearyou.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not actually talking?”
“No.”
Which would explain why his mouth didn’t move. “Then how?—”
Alistair came to an abrupt stop, his body arching back with a pained hiss and wagging his head from side to side, as though something had walloped him across the face.
My feet slipped and skittered, fighting for balance. The coarse scrape of his scales and nubbly ends of his spikes slashed at my heels, making my eyes water. The death grip I had on his horn was the only thing that kept me from plummeting off him.
“I’m sorry,” he grunted breathlessly as he stilled, giving me a chance to right myself. “But I can go no further. Your dockis there.”
I squinted. But through the curdling fog and revolving hills of water, I couldn’t see anything. We might’ve been feet away from the dock. Or miles away from it.
And the way he’d stopped—so suddenly, and with that hiss of pain…It was like he’d smacked into a wall. Or maybe not even something as solid as a wall, more like those electric fences that zapped the bejesus out of dogs when they got too close.
I ran my hand over Alistair’s horn. “Are you okay?”
Alistair made a noncommittal warble. “I can go no further,” he repeated.
Acidic ice plopped into my belly. This was what Caleb had meant. When he said the Loch Ness Monster wascontrolledwith runes and magic.I thought it’d sounded cruel then. But now that I’d seen his pain…
“You should go.” Alistair lowered his head, dunking his nose into the surf, bringing me closer to the water.
I recoiled.
“The water will only get more angry.” He prodded gently. “Right now, it’s still f-forgiving. It will carry you most of the way.”
Icy water slashed at my back as the sea swelled, preparing to spit a series of massive waves at the isle. And I meantmassive—those waves rose to staggering heights.
BANG!
Thunder bellowed overhead.
Zzzzaaappp.
For one second, one mercifully brief, terrifying second, lightning speared through the fog, casting a wide ray of illumination over the sea.
It lookedevil.
Brutish black waters leapt for the heavens, hissing when the skies spat them back down to earth. Jilted and wrathful, they turned their rage toward land.
The dock, only a few feet away, was barely,barely,high enough to avoid the waves’ snapping teeth.
I shrank back, clinging to Alistair’s horn.
“Pippi…” A wave swallowed Alistair’s face, making him sputter. He exhaled, blowing a fountain of water out of his nostrils, and murmured, “Go.”
“Are you going to be alright? With the storm?”
Why on earthhad I asked thatquestion? Helivedin the sea!
