They stopped once along the way to relieve themselves and eat some of the provisions they’d brought for lunch. As the sun got lower in the sky, Ena thought the air started to smell…different. It was fresher somehow, and salty. A more significant breeze was blowing through the trees now, whipping her hood back so she had to pull it up constantly.
Then she heard it before she saw it: the smooth crash of waves in the distance. At first, it sounded like the wind, but as they got closer, she could distinctly hear the persistent ebb and flow of water on sand, louder and more constant than anything she’d heard from the River Wry.
One step, the forest looked normal, and the next, as the trees gradually began to thin, she suddenly saw nothing but blue beyond them.
As if this world abruptly ended, and a new one began.
Ena sat forward in the saddle, excitement gripping her. She’d never seen the ocean before, never seen where the land ended. A loud, large white bird that she’d never seen before flew overhead, squawking. She felt the breeze whipping against her cloak as they reached the end of the forest.
And that’s exactly what it was—the end. The trees simply stopped, and the land dropped down into a sandy cliff. Below, Ena could see rolling dunes of light-brown sand, decorated with tufts of grass and scraggly, beach-dwelling plants.
And beyond that was endless blue.
The ocean was huge, bigger than she could possibly have imagined. Staring at it, she couldn’t see where it ended, or discern if it ever did.
She stared at it in awe. She’d seen it at a distance, of course, from the top of the gorge near her village, but its presence in person surrounded her. Overwhelmed her. The waves crashed into her very being, her Knowing inundated with new signs and intentions. There was so muchlifehere. Staring at it gave her the same feeling she had looking out at the mountains that dwarfed her: like she was a part of it, and it was a part of her.
She looked over to find Ty studying her from atop his horse, his face unreadable as always. But was that, possibly, a hint of tenderness she saw?
He turned away before she could figure it out, snapping instantaneously back into his role as commander.
“We’ll leave the horses here,” he said to the others.
Ena dismounted, as did the others, and then they loosely tethered the horses to separate trees so they could graze while they were gone. One by one, Ena and the daemons slid and scrambled down the sandy cliff onto the beach.
By the time she reached the bottom, Ena’s boots were already filled with sand. She wanted to stop and dump them out, but Ty barely waited for her to stand up before leading them on downthe beach, and she struggled to keep up. She didn’t realize how difficult walking through the deep sand would be; it was as if a heavy child clung to each of her legs, dragging her down with each step. But she’d never let Ty and the others know it, so she trudged on in silence, breathing heavily.
The group kept to the forest line, navigating between the dunes of sand to keep them hidden. Between dunes, Ena caught glimpses of the water. She longed to take off her sandy boots and walk into it, to feel the water and the sand squish on her toes as the ocean rushed back and forth, back and forth. But she wouldn’t go too far, because the violence of the crashing waves was intense in its consistency, pounding water onto the shore in a never-ending rhythm. The Endless Ocean was a vast and beautiful unknown, and just like so many others, it both terrified and enthralled her.
It wasn’t until they got closer to the Occidens village that Ena’s fascination with the ocean turned into intense anxiety about what was to come.
She knew the plan; they’d discussed and debated it at length the day prior. They’d leave their horses hidden at the edge of the forest, and walk along the coastline hidden in the dunes. Once they got closer to the village and the house from Ena’s vision, Ty would use hisvenatorto see who was in the house and where. Steig and Turner had scoped out the house briefly when they posed as traders visiting the village to obtain a potion to cure warts, and they’d seen three women regularly coming and going from it.
There was much debate as to whether they should wait for the three witches to be asleep before going in, but Steig insisted it was less suspicious if they were to be seen walking around the village in the early evening, rather than the dead of night. Besides, Ena had never used her Gift on a sleeping person before, and apparently, according to Ty, Powers of the mindoften worked differently on people who were asleep because they were unable to see or hear in a normal way. Hervisanismight only be able to impact their dreams, and not their real actions.
Only once Ty discerned where the witches were in the house would they move in, and Ena would incapacitate them one by one, allowing the four of them to search the house for the amulet.
Yes, Ena knew the plan well, but it hadn’t felt real until this very moment.
As the sun was setting, they came to the edge of the village. Crouching low behind a dune, they watched it from afar. It was large—larger even than her own village. The land flattened here, with a less drastic cliff between the edge of the forest and the sandy beach. The houses were wooden, not stone, and looked far more wind-beaten than the ones back home. Their windows were rounded instead of square, with far less moss growing on the wooden shingles that made their roofs. Ena could see various fenced-in gardens tucked behind them, partially inside the safety of the forest. But some of the houses, those closer to the water, were gardenless and raised up on stilts.
Not for the first time, she wondered what had caused the rift between the Covens, and why they had required a treaty to keep them divided in the first place, because aside from some aesthetic differences, nothing about this village indicated that these witches were significantly different from those in her own Coven, and the thought deepened Ena’s dread.
“We believe the house from Ena’s vision is just down there,” Steig spoke quietly, pointing to the largest house Ena could see from their vantage point. It was tucked closer to the forest and wasn’t raised up, and she could see from here that it was well-maintained compared to some of the other houses. It had a second story, and what looked to be a brand-new roof. Ithad large, rounded windows and a stone chimney with smoke curling out.
There was no doubt; it was indeed the house from her vision.
All of a sudden, Ena felt like she might throw up.
This was really happening. She was going to have to break into that peaceful house with these daemons and find the amulet.
The Occidens Coven were their rivals. But, while she knew all this in theory, she didn’t have anything against these witches personally, and now she was about to steal from them.
Taking two or three deep breaths, she tried to calm herself.
These daemons were going in no matter what, and she needed to get that amulet before they did—both for the sake of these witches, and herself, because if the daemons got it first, Gaia only knew what they planned to do with it. Ena had tried to ferret that out, but the three of them had been extremely close-lipped about it. The best indication she’d gotten was what she’d overheard between Steig and Ty—that somehow, they thought this amulet could make things better for daemons. And what Ty had said about finding it not being a mission from Iblis. That could mean any number of things, and likely did not bode well for mortals or witches.
She didn’t like it—in fact, she was close to panicking at the thought—but this was the only course of action she could take.
