The vortex was gone.
I was breathing hard. Too hard. All the muscles in my back and legs were cramping. I groaned, unbent myself from shielding the girl, and loosened my hold on her. I felt like I’d run a marathon. I felt like I’d withstood a nuclear blast.
I was exhausted, but I still had a little piece of the string in my hand. I tucked it into my front pocket.
Whatever we had done to close that vortex, it hadn’t beenjustmagic. The taste of it in my mouth was red wine and honey.
“Daddy?” The girl in my arms looked up at me. “Where’s my dad?”
“He’s right here.” Bathin hauled the man up and patted his shoulder, keeping one hand on the dad’s arm while he spit sand and shook his head.
I let go of the girl and she rushed right over to her father, hugging him around his middle.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. Are you okay?”
She nodded into his jacket and the man gazed blurrily around. “I thought…what happened?”
“What do you remember?” I asked.
“We came down here to look at the rocks. And then…I don’t know.” He brushed absently at his daughter’s sandy back. “Did we get hit by a wave?”
“Micro burst,” I said. “Sometimes the wind just picks a random spot and hits with almost tornado force. It knocked you and your daughter out. We were in the area and saw you go down. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, um. Good? Yeah, good. I don’t think…do you think we hit our heads? I don’t remember getting hit. Don’t remember waking up either. Did someone lose a pony?”
I glanced over. Than was standing there, with what was left of the toilet mouth—really, mostly just the floppy tongue—looped over Xtelle’s neck.
She did not look pleased about it.
Bathin coughed into his fist, and I could tell he was trying to keep from chortling over her predicament.
She held statue still, except for her tail that swished and her ears that swiveled back to lay almost flat against her head.
“No,” Than said.
“Oh,” the man answered. “I just thought. Okay.”
“It’s a miniature horse,” I added, not sure quite where to go with this, still reeling from theI see youthing with yellow eyes in the vortex.
“My daughter likes horses, don’t you, honey?” the dad said.
His daughter shook her head and clung to him even more tightly. I was beginning to worry that she might have some memories of what had happened.
“Can I ask your daughter a question?”
“Sure. Hailey, the officer wants to ask you something.” He rubbed reassuring circles on her back and, after a second or two, she turned her head so her ear rested against his stomach. Her wide brown eyes fastened on me.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Do you remember falling?”
She shook her head.
“Do you remember anything else? Anything scary?”
“No.” Soft, but getting stronger.
