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Charybdis, where’s your sister,
A mouth so wide and hungry,
Chewing on the ships,
And screaming to the sky.
A hide so thick, to not be pierced,
One strike to a broken heart,
Between Scylla and Charybdis,
Swallowed reach the part.
“Swallowed reach the part,” I whispered, frowning. The poem had made no sense to a child, but I remembered it all the same.
“Maeve?” Shay eyed the water as the whirlpool began to rise, neither of us desperate to move toward certain death.
“My mother told me a poem about Charybdis,” I told him before reciting it.
As soon as I breathed the last syllable, the whirlpool upended, rising with a tsunami-like wave to reveal a hundred sharp teeth. Eyes circled the whirlpool, blinking out of time. The whirlpool was a mouth sucking in lake water.
“I've never heard that poem before.” Shay looked down at his knife. “Do you think it’s a prophecy? Like the one about the lake creeds?”
“Sounds like instructions.” I laughed nervously. “Her hide is too thick to pierce with a knife.”
“But swallowed, you’ll reach the part.” Shay recited before cursing and looking back at the tent. I knew what he was thinking. Shay Mac Eoin was chieftain. Between a rock and a hard place. He needed to lead his people, but he also needed to keep them safe.
Charybdis lurched forward, and a dozen tendrils curled out of the water, giving the illusion that the hideous mouth was crawling toward us.
She’d be on us in seconds.
I snatched the knife from Shay’s
hand and took off at a run.
Chapter Ten
I ran to the water's edge, and the lake pulled back, breathing in as Charybdis gulped the lake's contents into her toothy mouth. Larger than Cruinn Castle, no doubt able to swallow it whole, the beast reared out of the water, eclipsing the fat moon over the lake, stealing the light momentarily before she flopped back into the water.
Charybdis was drinking the lake, suckling down the water like an endless pit. I could dive in and swim to her, but I didn’t want to be at her mercy. I had some control over the currents, but while the lake was a friend, it was also a separate entity. I could ask it to help, but I wasn’t entirely sure it would do my bidding.
Every time I used the lake, I was angry. Full of rage and lashing out with everything in my arsenal. I didn’t feel angry at Charybdis; all I felt was fear.
Fear that she would make it onto shore, to the younglings that couldn’t protect themselves, and to the elderly—to my mates that sat at that dining table, waiting for me to return.
I didn’t want Shay to face Charybdis.
I knew she wouldn’t kill me, just as Cormac’s blade had failed to kill me.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t scared.
Every instinct screamed at me to avoid danger; every hair on my body lifted, and my teeth chattered as my feet pelted the water but did not sink under the surface.
I begged the lake to hold my weight as I ran toward the beast as if the water were made of ice.
Shay screamed my name.
