“No.”
“Then why would I?”
Odon squeezed her shoulder with a comforting hand. “Come on then. We won’t be trawling today. The weather’s unfriendly and the water even more so. I don’t care if the obluda isn’t there now. I won’t be risking either of us or the horses.”
They returned home to discover the house filled with women and Frishi in their midst, passing out orders of things to make or bring to the families of the dead. Zigana was made errand girl for her mother and several neighbors, and spent the next hours delivering messages and baskets to various houses. Some of the families had chosen to accept his lordship’s offer of sanctuary at the castle and loaded their carts with some of their possessions. Others planned to move further inland as he suggested while the rest, like Zigana and her parents, chose to stay.
As the sun fell and night encroached, they lit lamps of precious oil in the house. Supper was a quiet affair, and only Odon did more than push his food from one side of his plate to the other. When he finished, he stood and announced “I’m for the barn. I’ll sleep in the loft again. Keep Gitta calm if I can.”
“I’ll check on you through the night,” Zigana promised. “You might need help if both she and Voreg act up.”
The house offered no more protection from the obluda’s song than the barn did, yet it felt to Zigana as if she watched her father plunge into danger the moment he crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him.
“He’ll be fine, Ziga,” Frishi said, her voice calm as she stood looking out the window and wringing her apron with white-knuckled hands.
“I know, Mama.” She lied. She didn’t know.
She traipsed to the barn several times over the next few hours, sometimes alone, sometimes with Frishi to check on Odon and the horses. Gitta nickered each time she saw her. Beyond a restless pawing at the floor, she stood in her stall and welcomed the hugs and caresses Zigana bestowed on her. Not to be left out, Voreg nudged her for the same, and Odon rolled his eyes from his straw bed in the corner of the tack stall.
“They’ll get too used to all that spoiling and start to expect it,” he groused. “Go back to the house and go to bed, Ziga. You’re keeping me and the mares up with all this visiting.”
She returned from her latest trip to find Frishi asleep, head resting on her folded arms as she slumped over the table. Zigana retrieved a blanket from their bedroom and draped it over her mother’s shoulders. She was heavy-eyed herself but unable to sleep, even after the previous night of almost no slumber. Dread churned her gut. Who this time would obey the obluda’s song and its compulsion, wade into the surf and be devoured?
She sat down on the bench next to Frishi and watched the yellow flame in the lamp flicker and stretch in its glass cage. Its glow blurred before her eyes, and her eyelids slid lower with each pulse of the flame.
A loud squeal snapped her awake, and she nearly fell off the bench. Beside her, Frishi slept on, snoring lightly. Her blanket had slid off her shoulders to pool on the floor. Zigana stumbled to her feet, bleary and disoriented. Another angry whinny carried from the barn almost drowning out the rise and fall of the dreaded dirge rolling toward the village from the shore.
Fear chased away drowsiness, and Zigana bolted from the house for the barn. Gitta thrashed in her stall once more, tossing her head to breathe in the smell of threat and to challenge it with a hard kick to her stall door. Beside her, Voreg snorted and snaked her head from side to side, ears pinned flat to her head at her dam’s agitation.
“Papa,” Zigana called, searching him out in the shadows of the tack stall.
Odon was gone.
* * *
The giant marehurtled onto the beach and into the water without pause, her panicked rider shouting until her throat was scraped raw.
“Papa! Odon!” Zigana whistled a command to Gitta, sending her to the right, toward the castle bluff. The light from the lamp she held high illuminated a shimmering path over the tops of white-capped waves. In the other hand, she gripped her father’s harpoon, the only weapon at hand when she tore back into the house and beseeched her terrified mother to stay put.
“Papa! Answer me!”
The mad gallop to the beach yielded nothing. No Odon stumbling down the village road toward the sand dunes. The dunes themselves were empty and so far, so was the Gray.
“Papa!” she screamed until she was hoarse.
The swing of her lamp cast passing light over a shape moving slowly through the water. Odon.
Zigana shouted his name, demanding he stop, commanding he turn back to the shore. She slammed her heels into Gitta’s sides, and the mare heaved toward Odon.
A skeletal shape lurched out of the depths to balance atop the rolling waves on bony hands and knees. The vile dirge spilled from the obluda’s mouth as it crawled toward Odon. Gitta plunged deeper into the water, trumpeting her fury. A wave ripped the lamp out of Zigana’s hand, leaving only thin threads of moonlight to light her way to Odon.
Another equine neigh joined Gitta’s calls. Andras, on his lighter, fast-moving bay, plowed into the water on the other side of Odon.
“Get your father, Ziga!” Andras roared, brandishing a club. “I’ll fend off the obluda.”
The obluda, seeing it had landed more than one potential victim, trilled its triumph.
Zigana shouted at her father to no avail. Like a sleepwalker, he struggled in the waves, entranced by the monster scuttling faster towards him. Gitta reached him before the obluda did. Zigana clutched his shirt and yanked him against the horse’s side.
