“I need pepper,” Kiela said. It was the first kitchen item she thought of. “I didn’t have any, but the remedy will be more effective with it.”
Jumping to his feet, Larran shouted, “Radane, can you get the bottle of pepper? Third shelf to the left of the sink. Please, hurry!” He squatted again and stroked Sian’s mane.
Well, that didn’t work.And now she’d have to wait for Radane to return, or Larran would suspect she’d lied. Worse, the woman would probably come out onto the jetty, and then Kiela would have two witnesses.
“Also, rosebuds. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to gather them.” She pointed to the top of the cliff, where the bushes hugged the edge. “I’ll need six.”
He turned back to the house to call to Radane again, but she had already gone inside. He took a breath to shout to Caz, and she interrupted him. “He doesn’t have thumbs,” Kiela said.
“What?”
“No opposable thumbs. It’s hard for him to pick roses.”
“But I’ve seen—”
“Also, it’s against his ethics to harm other plants.” That wasn’t true. He’d delivered the verisad leaves to her, after all, as well as multiple other ingredients. But it sounded plausible. “He wouldn’t forgive himself if he harmed a rosebush, even to save a life. Could you please—”
“Of course.” He bounded down the jetty.
When he was far enough away, Kiela knelt beside Sian. The merhorse was breathing shakily, each inhalation causing her entire body to ripple. Her tail was flapping weakly against the rocks.
Quickly, Kiela smeared the remedy along Sian’s spine. She hoped they’d made enough. Sian was quite a bit larger than the merbaby, and it had been longer since the storm before treatment—more time for the sickness to spread and worsen.
This has to work.She’d promised Larran.
Taking a deep breath, she unfolded the spell and softly, insistently, read the syllables.
She waited a moment.
Behind her, from the beach, she heard Larran’s footsteps on the stairs as he ran up them to retrieve the rosebuds. Waves crashed against the rocks of the jetty. She kept all her focus on Sian. “Come on, you can do it,” she whispered. “You’ll be okay.”
She read the spell again, louder this time.
The purple streaks between the scales began to pulse.
Please, let this work!
Kiela wrapped an arm around Sian’s neck and spoke the words a third time, directly into Sian’s ear. Her other hand shook as she held the paper with the spell.Please, please, please.She pronounced each word as clearly as she could.
Suddenly, the merhorse convulsed in her arms. Her back arched, and her tail slapped the rocks. Kiela heard Larran cry, “Sian!”
He was close.
How close? What did he see? What did he hear?It didn’t matter. Only Sian mattered right now. Kiela stared into the merhorse’s eyes. “Come on. Be okay. Please.”
Like the clouds draining from the sky after the storm, the milky white cleared from Sian’s eyes. They deepened back into their rich blue, and the lightning vanished. The color of her scales spread like a sunrise, the gold overwhelming the purple streaks.
Sian stuck her muzzle in Kiela’s hair and snorted.
Kiela laughed and released the horse-fish, who promptly inhaled the uneaten tomato. Pushing off the rocks with her front hooves, Sian launched herself back into the waves. A smile on her face, Kiela turned to face Larran—
And saw Radane staring at her, only a few feet away.
Caz was at her feet, quivering on the rocks, unable to pull Radane’s attention back to shore. Larran dove into the water. A second later, he surfaced. Sian played in the waves around him.
Holding the paper behind her back, Kiela crumpled the spell and dropped it into the sea. She stood up, hands empty. “Guess it didn’t need the pepper or the rosebuds.”
“Miraculous,” Radane said.
