“No need to gloom and doom about it,” Luke said lightly. “A year is a long time, and who knows what we’ll be doing by then? One thingI’msure of, though, is that wherever you go, I’m going with you.”
“Mmmm.” She leaned in to kiss him, and they didn’t come up for air for a while.
“Where did the animals go?” Luke asked, breaking the liplock.
“Uh ... I’m not sure. We should probably go find them.”
The hillside was quiet and to all appearances deserted, flowers bobbing in the afternoon sun. They wandered along the path to the spring, and Inga crouched down to scoop up a drink of cool water.
“Hey,” Luke said suddenly. “Has that always been like that?”
He pointed to the rocks above the spring. Inga turned to look. For a number of years, the gargoyle statue her dad had acquired from Mace had crouched at the head of the spring as if to guard it.
Now it was quite a ways higher up the hill, and had its wings half-spread.
“Uh, no. I don’t think it was always like that. You think the ones up here can come to life, too?”
“I’m choosing not to think about it,” Luke said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that if I believe Mace’s statues are staring at me or moving when I’m not looking, I’m going to end up a paranoid wreck.”
They climbed up the hill, hand in hand, through knee-high flowers. When they got to the top, Inga smiled reminiscently at the place where they had made love for the first time. Somehow, it seemed that all their firsts were tied up in this place. Their first meal together, their first kiss, the first time they made love ...
“What do you think of getting married here?” she asked.
Luke gave her a look of alarm. “What, now?”
Inga shoved him playfully. “No, not now. Who’s going to perform the ceremony, the dog? He’s smart, but I don’t think reading vows is in his skill set. I just think that if we do, you know, do the deed somewhere, I’d like it to be here.”
“I think that it feels right,” Luke said slowly. He had been doing that more, she’d noticed—consulting with the instinctive animal side of himself. Then his nose wrinkled and he grinned. “Do the deed?”
“You know what I mean?—”
A sudden, distant bark echoed through the warm afternoon air. They both hurried along the top of the hill until they could look down. The wrinkled coastline undulated in and out here, and Rogue was apparently down on the rocky shore somewhere behind the jutting point of land that sheltered the small cove where the cabin was located.
“Rogue!” Luke bellowed, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Get up here!” He whistled, the shrill sound cutting through the air, then shook his head. “No good. He must want us to come down there.”
“We’d better be careful,” Inga said, looking down the steep rocks dubiously. “Some of us can’t phase out our bodies if we get in trouble.”
They scrambled down the hill, and she found herself glorying in the pleasure of using unaccustomed muscles. Rogue was soon visible, as well as the two griffins who seemed to be having fun scampering all over some kind of ... structure? Object? Or wasit a shipwreck ...? She let out a delighted cry when she realized what it actually was.
“Luke! That’s the Dingboat!”
“The what?”
“My missing boat! It washed all the way up the coast here.”
The boat had been driven high on the rocks by the storm. It was overturned, but as far as Inga could tell after an examination, although it had developed some new dents and there was no telling if the motor would work, it was still seaworthy.
Rogue danced around happily. Luke scruffed his ears. “Nice job, fella.” He looked over at Inga, who was crouched to examine the motor. It was definitely going to need a thorough overhaul. “How are we going to get it anywhere? I don’t know if even a couple of shifters can carry something up a hill that steep without using ropes.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s a boat. It floats. At least, it had better float, and if it doesn’t, it’s not going to be much good as a boat anyway.”
Working together, they flipped it over and maneuvered it into the edge of the rolling waves. It did float. Inga tried to start the motor several times and failed.
“This, on the other hand, is going to need tools I don’t have with me. And it’s lost the oars. You know what, you may have a point.”
“No,” Luke said. “Youhave a point. Get in. You too, Rogue.”
Inga cautiously climbed into the bobbing skiff, holding fast to a rock to keep herself from being washed out to sea, boat and all. “What are you planning?”
