Odd, Erik thought, muddled though his mind was by both sleep and form. He hadn’t felt any change in the wind. The sea could be strange like that.
A shout went up from the ship: despair, not triumph. Erik opened his eyes, afraid that the mast had snapped—though he thought he’d have heard that—or that the wood covering the holes had come off. What he saw instead was theHawksitting only a few yards out to sea, its sail pinned back against the mast by a wind going precisely the wrong direction. Men stood with their heads turned upward, staring at the sail and babbling, until Toinette raised her hands and yelled for quiet.
This time, the wind carried off many of her words, but Erik could see her gesture. The men went to work accordingly, hauling on ropes and turning wheels. TheHawkshifted in the water, the sail angled to catch the wind, and she began making headway toward the open sea—
And then, abruptly, the wind reversed itself, pushing the ship back toward the island.
Erik heard oaths in many languages. Some were angry. Most were scared. He caught a glimpse of Marcus facing down one of the other men, and of Toinette shaking her head, shoulders stiff. “…God-cursedbreezekeep us here,” he heard her say, and then she raised her voice to call him.
Even if she hadn’t, he’d have known what she was about when she jumped over the rail and transformed.
After the restful warmth of the beach, the cold water was an unpleasant shock back to wakefulness. Erik hissed his displeasure, sending steam curling up above the waves, much to the apparent alarm of Raoul and John.The sooner you do this, the sooner you can be back ashore, he told himself, and swam out to theHawk, taking a position on the opposite side from Toinette.
The men furled the sail, that the wind might not be a hindrance to the dragons’ efforts, and then Toinette and Erik began to push.
By rights, the undertaking should have been far easier than it had been on the night of the storm. For one thing, the tide was with them. For another, they were both in much better condition. Erik, for all he’d been doing that morning, hadn’t been struggling to rope down cargo in the midst of a storm, nor holding the ship steady through a gale. They’d had many nights of rest and many meals at least as good as they’d managed on shipboard. It shouldn’t have taken them much time at all to find a good angle for the wind, nor to push theHawkout far enough to find a fair current.
Yet the island pulled.
Erik thought the feeling began as soon as he started pushing theHawk, but thinking back, it might have happened earlier. Had the water honestly been that cold and unwelcoming, his muscles so resistant? Or had he explained the weighty feeling in his limbs using the first tools that came to hand? He couldn’t be certain.
Whichever the case was, the true situation quickly became clear. Force like a team of oxen, slow but stubborn, tugged Erik backward toward the island, growing greater the harder he struggled with legs, wings, and tail. That alone he might have broken through, but the island drew the ship backward as well, and the weight of it took him along. Panting, he raised his head to look around and found that they were no farther from land than they’d ever been.
Around him, the tide kept running carelessly out to sea. Neither theHawknor his body seemed to recognize that—nor, when he met her gaze around the ship’s hull, did Toinette’s frame. She was panting as much as him, her eyes glassy from the struggle.
The alarm on deck when the wind changed was nothing to the hubbub now. One of the men was screaming. One was simply uttering steady denials. Others were shouting suggestions, or perhaps only shouting. Erik couldn’t make out many words.
Eventually Marcus’s voice rose above the din. “Enough!” He strode to the railing and shouted over. “Take us back. No use in keeping on right now.”
Seventeen
“Whatis out there?” Marcus flung a hand out toward the waves. They rolled in as calmly as ever, giving no sign of the disruption of Nature itself not far beyond the line where they broke. “You’re the uncanny one, you and my lord. You tell me, Captain.”
Toinette had barely managed to resume her human form before finding Marcus in front of her, demanding answers. If disembarking from theHawkhadn’t taken time, she likely wouldn’t have managed that much. She’d seen wrath in his face before, but never directed at her.
The sarcasm that laced both syllables ofmy lordand the glance he bent on Erik were fully acidic, but it was the uninflected phrase beforehand that truly stung.You’re the uncannyone.Marcus likely hadn’t even been trying to insult her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s magic. It must be, but…” She whispered the words of invocation, but as in the storm, her vision didn’t shift at all. “But I can’t see it. The spirits of vision don’t answer me here. I couldn’t tell you why or how this works.”
At the end, she felt her voice cracking alarmingly, and cleared her throat. Losing control of herself wouldn’t help anything. She looked at the man who’d been her closest companion for ten years, watched him regard her as he might a horse trader of dubious honesty, and waited.
“Nor could I,” said Erik. His thick burr, stronger than usual, fell into the empty gulf between Toinette and Marcus. “I’d guess it’s verra powerful indeed. Salt water washes away magic, as a rule. That’s likely why the waves are no’ drawn to the island all the time, but keep their normal tides. For the spell to work on us, and on theHawk, it’d be a mighty thing.”
“Did you know about this when you hired us? Any of it?” Marcus asked. His eyes lashed over Erik, then snapped back across Toinette’s face. “Didyou?”
“No,” she snarled back. It was so easy to fall into anger, even when she knew she aimed at the wrong target entirely. “I’d never have come if I did. And I surely wouldn’t have brought anyone else.”
“I’d no notion,” Erik said, and clasped one hand over his heart. “I swear it. By God, and Mary, and by any of the saints you choose.”
The crew were largely off theHawknow, and heading toward the three of them. “…doomed, I tell you,” Franz was muttering in a broken voice, and many of the men were quiet, listening to him. Sence didn’t look to be, but his face was stony, even more so as he looked at Toinette.
She couldn’t let herself flinch. That, she knew, would have begun the end of things between her and her crew, if there was anything left to save there.
Marcus looked over his shoulder, then shook his head. “You’d both best go,” he said to Toinette and Erik. “Find a safe place and stay away for a few hours. I think I’ll have calmed them down by sunset, but it’ll be far easier if you’re not here.”
Once again, he likely didn’t mean anything by what he said.
* * *
