The spray and sea foam creature wailed as part of it was torn away, scattered by the ocean breeze.
‘-by-’
Another cry as more of the figure broke apart.
‘-piece-’
Steven breathed deep, summoning reserves of energy he could never have imagined, power unlike anything he had wielded, even in his battle with Nerak. ‘Now-’ He reached for the creature again, taking a few strides down the strand to get closer. The translucent figure was in a panic; its army was being swallowed by the very ground it had hoped to conquer, and it itself was being slashed and broken into harmless spores by the raging magician coming at it through the shallows. It swirled and spun and searched for an escape, but the only place to hide was inside the Fold, which was rapidly sealing itself. It couldn’t retreat across the water; the maniacal sorcerer would surely follow it, and to flee onto land would be inviting destruction. Instead, it hurried back and forth along the line of dead and dying warriors. Some shrieked and reached for it, their fingers passing harmlessly through its smoky limbs.
‘Now,’ Steven said again, ‘it is time for you to go.’ He gestured towards the figure and it burst apart, the sea foam and spray dissipating, falling harmlessly like rain, while wisps of smoke blew inland across the dunes.
The beach swallowed the last of the soldiers. Some still reached skywards through the sand, hoping for a lifeline, while others simply sank away, still chuckling at whatever had been so funny countless Twinmoons earlier. Those swallowed by the sea did more than drown; they were lost inside the Fold, carried into the void by the chilly waters of the North Atlantic. And as the ragged hole closed for ever, Steven caught a final glimpse of Welstar Palace, where mayhem raged as thousands of soldiers disappeared headlong into the muddy banks of the Welstar River. With them sank the smoothly polished granite spell table, still half-encased in its wooden packing crate.
Jones Beach was empty. Only the waves and the breeze muffled the sounds of a little girl, doggedly paddling through the surf and dragging something along with her.
Garec Haile, the Bringer of Death, sat up, helped by Hannah and Jennifer Sorenson. He was confounded; he had cheated death by the slimmest of margins, but how, he had no idea. He couldn’t begin to guess why the soldiers tearing him apart had stopped so suddenly.
When he saw Milla, he forgot how much his head ached or how his arm felt as if it had been broken in a dozen places. He ran down the beach, splashed through the shallow waves and dived into the deeper water. It was cripplingly cold, but Garec welcomed the numbness.
Mrs Winter wandered down the strand and knelt where Gilmour’s body had fallen; she was visibly upset as she touched the ground gingerly with one hand. Nothing was left but a crimson stain that would fade with the next tide; the broken limbs and torn flesh had all been swallowed up with the Malakasian divisions.
Steven was dumbstruck at what he had done. Now he wanted to comfort Mrs Winter. He wanted to help Garec, to be with Hannah and Jennifer as they carried Milla to warmth and safety, but he stood rooted in place, his boots half-buried in the sand. He recalled an autumn day, a decade earlier, when he had awakened with a paralysing hangover after a fraternity party and some barman’s atrocity called Hapsburg Piss, an unappetising concoction made from hazelnut liqueur and plum schnapps. He had thought about skipping class and staying in bed until the coffee was hot and the opiates had quieted the ruthless, thudding pain in his head. But he hadn’t; instead, Steven had rolled out of bed, dragged his listless self into the maths building and sat through one of Professor Linnen’s lectures on functions and the area under the curve. Now, ten years later, he thought back to the countless undergraduates, and all the times they had complained that they would never need calculus in the real world, and Steven Taylor laughed to himself.
Hannah broke his reverie with a shriek; she stood frozen, her hands clasped together as Garec, staggering from the surf, waved wildly at him further down the beach, while Jennifer sat numbly in the foamy splash of the breakers. They each, in turn, shouted something he couldn’t hear. Then Garec cupped his hands over his mouth and bellowed, ‘It’s Mark!’
Steven stood in stunned silence, staring mutely as Garec helped a muscular black man to his feet. It didn’t look like Mark, but when he grinned and waved, Steven knew his roommate was back.
The sounds and smells of the ocean, the feel of the sand and the chill on the breeze, all of it came back to Steven in a rush. It was fundamentally human, and real, an affirmation of everything he had been trying to do since the first time he picked up the hickory staff, that long-ago night in Rona. His stomach roiled painfully; his knees gave way and Steven started to cry.
PEACHES AND TEA
‘I didn’t see Alen go down,’ Garec said, huddling close to the kerosene heater. They were gathered around a Formica table in the sunny dining room of the Windward Restaurant in the Central Mall. A soda machine, unplugged, stood in one corner beside a red and yellow popcorn wagon and a portable ice cream cart with two flat tyres. Bright pictures of sundry deep-fried food adorned the wall behind the service counter in a fifteen-foot cholesterol frieze.
The kitchen was closed for the season and thankfully, no one, not even a security guard, had turned up for work that morning. From the pantry, Mrs Winter had pillaged some big cans of peaches, some warm cola and a few bottles of water. Those with a stomach for food ate from paper plates with the plastic spoons Steven had found behind the register. Jennifer brewed a pot of tea on a gas stove in the kitchen.
‘He must have given in to the cold,’ Garec said. ‘He looked to be swimming strongly when he went out after-’ He stopped himself. Milla was upset enough that Alen hadn’t come ashore; there was nothing to be gained by belabouring it now.
‘It wasn’t the cold,’ Steven said, ‘it was the Fold. He didn’t see it – couldn’t see it.’
‘He swam right in,’ Milla sniffed. ‘I didn’t want anyone to follow me. That’s why I ran off when you all were talking.’
‘How did you know where Mark would be, Pepperweed?’ Hannah asked. ‘We still don’t know what happened out there.’
‘He was dreaming about it,’ Milla said. ‘Gilmour and Alen asked if I could get into Mark’s dreams and I told them-’
‘Only if he went to sleep,’ Steven finished for her.
‘That’s right.’ Mark Jenkins, trapped in the body of Redrick Shen, the burly seaman from Rona’s South Coast, had torn down a rack of heavy curtains and had wrapped one around himself as he sat shivering beside Garec. ‘I- it hadn’t slept since we left the glen. I never imagined I could go to sleep, until it told me to.’
‘And you dreamed of the beach?’ Steven was reeling from the loss of both Gilmour and Alen. He hadn’t known Alen – Kantu – well, but that made little difference: two of Eldarn’s greatest heroes had perished that morning.
‘I did,’ Mark said, ‘the same dream of the same day, here at the beach when I was a kid. My parents used to erect a yellow umbrella, about a hundred feet from where you dragged me ashore. I saw Milla in the water. She was drowning, so I went in after her.’
‘And I went in after you,’ Milla said. ‘The other man, the one that was keeping you, he didn’t know I was coming.’
‘How is that, Pepperweed?’
‘Because I went into the water in Mark’s dream.’
‘But I watched you do it,’ Garec said, trying to understand the little girl’s paradox. ‘We all did. Hannah followed you into the waves.’
‘Yes, but the one holding Mark wasn’t here.’
‘Where was he- where was it, Pepperweed?’ Hannah, still confused, cocked an eyebrow at Mark.