But his words were muted and my vision was blurred. I closed my eyes again…
And was back in the cove. Rexim’s pinched smile. Vercha’s delight. The writhing water. The oncoming tumult. I remembered that unnaturalceasingI’d felt…but I knew that this time, giving up would mean death.
“Hey,” I heard Llir shout, “stay with me.”
But now I flashed back to the tidal wave. That terrible roaring. The dark wall of water. I’d failed then and knew I would fail now, too. Archwater was far too feral to be tamed, at least by me. We would both drown here.
I felt Llir shift. We were closer now. The cold seemed to have reached the core of my being.
Another memory came to me, this one much calmer. One I’d thought back to a few times before: Zennia’s profile, her hand rising into the air. Rhama staring at us, blank faced, across the lecture hall.
“Tidespeakers,” I mumbled, the word lost in the sea’s rushing.
As though through thick glass, I heard Llir answer, “What?”
“Tidespeakers,” I said again, opening my eyes. They stung, and I dragged my wrist across them. “We used to be called Tidespeakers. Before the Revolt.”
He gazed at me. Water dripped from his sodden hair. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I’ve read the histories. See? You weremadeto do this. Iknowyou can.”
His words swam together in my mind.Made to. You can.
“Remember what you taught me?” he called over the tumult.
I did remember teaching him my trick up on the tower. And I recalled, now, the progress I’d made in the cove. When I squeezed my eyes shut, Zennia’s face swam in the darkness.
“You, Corith. You’re what this job needed.”
I had to do something. And not just for her but for him now, too. For Llir. For his family.
A new image burst into my mind’s eye: my red ball. I’d never seen the lightning so bright, so swollen. All my panic, all my despair, streaking out like flames: a great pyre of emotion.
I cracked my eyes open, gripped by renewed fear. “It’s too much,” I spluttered. “I can’t shrink it. Not this time.”
“You can.” Llir pressed his forehead against mine. Another wavelifted us, bearing us skyward, but his green gaze was steady, an anchor in the maelstrom.
I closed my eyes again, saw that red blaze burning.
And slowly, methodically, I began to squeeze it down.
All my shame, all my anger at House Crake. All my regret at deceiving the siblings. My disgust at the Cormorants. My fear for my life. My frustration at my weakness, and my heart-swelling hope…It was all there, and I let myselfbathein it briefly before squashing it, shrinking it, forcing it inward.
Slowly a preternatural serenity came over me. The ball got smaller, the lightning less frantic. It was an egg now, smoother. Then a nut. Then a pea. And finally, with one last monumental effort, I pinched it into a pinprick: a star in the night sky.
“Stop, now,” I said to the water tiredly. I took a deep breath, lips stinging with salt. “You’ll let us pass. You’ll give us safe passage. You’ll carry us east.”
I opened my eyes.
My senses zinged with a new awareness of the tide, amutualawareness. It was finally listening. All that work I’d put in down by the cove…the ocean remembered me, had deigned to pay attention.
We were dipping, the wave beneath us diminishing. Llir drew away, staring around us in surprise.
In a perfect circle, ten feet in diameter, a stillness had descended, like the eye of a storm. The waves lapped peacefully, the violent currents gone. As we floated, the sea gently buffeted us eastward.
“Come on!” Llir had struck away from me already. I could see from the fevered glint in his eyes that all his thoughts were bent toward his siblings. He took up his loping front crawl again, and I followed, trying to block out the pain, the fatigue.
The island loomed larger but was still frighteningly far off. Outsideour bubble, the waves reared, crashing down angrily. I didn’t know how long they would give us.
A shape in the distance caught my attention: two humped figures on a…boat? No, a raft. One was waving both arms in the air, but I couldn’t make them out through the spray and thin fog.
