Could seagulls sigh?
He flew off the counter and landed on the groynes at the edge of the sand a few feet away.
“That all the emotional support I get for the day?”
He sighed again, so I guessed that was a thing seagulls could do, then flipped his head back and forth toward the water.
Like he wanted me to follow him.
“Taking orders from a flying rat. What else is new?”
I leapt over the counter, and he took off.
I ran after him, letting it drive all the tears away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Selena
El Soldado ledme in circles for a while, until my heart was like a jackhammer against my ribs and I didn’t feel like crying anymore. Every time I tried to stop, he’d swoop down and peck at my ankles.
After I physically couldn’t go any farther, I collapsed onto the sand. He landed beside me, hopping back and forth.
“Too exhausted to cry, you happy now?”
He ruffled his feathers and tugged on my shoelace.
“Puta madre, cabrón. Leave me be.”
He didn’t like that. He flapped his wings until sand stung my eyes and shrieked at an ear-shattering volume.
I scrambled up to grab him, and he easily flapped away, landing on a rock outcropping a few feet away.
I stared at him. He stared at me, then pecked a sea star that had gotten stuck outside its tide pool.
“Córtala!” I stumbled over to the rocks, and he once again flapped out of reach, leaving the sea star behind.
“Don’t I know you? Always stuck on something.”
It was wedged between two rocks, one arm curled the wrong way.
I prepared myself for the slow process of coaxing it back into the pool, but now magic hummed beneath my skin, ready to go. Ididn’t have to put my hands in the water and whisper to it and wait for the slow trickle that used to take me five minutes on a good day. I just reached out, and the sea star reached back.
It was a small, bright pulse made of hundreds of tiny moving parts. It climbed onto my palm, and I set it in the deeper pool on the other side of the rocks. The whole thing took eleven seconds.
That rescue used to be my whole morning ritual. Now it was almost as easy as breathing, my magic full and soft, not erratic and chaotic.
El Soldado watched me from atop a rock.
“If this was some kind of point you were making?—”
He shrieked again, and it felt more urgent. And not aimed at me.
I glanced around the small grouping of tide pools. Everything looked as it normally did, but an uneasy feeling lingered, holding me back. The sea star, which was fine now, had already suctioned to a rock just below the waterline, but its little pulse of life was different now. Like it had dimmed and been filled with static.
I put my hand in the water, and this time I really listened.
The water was wrong. Not polluted exactly—I’d felt that before, the dull, greasy deadness of runoff after a storm.
