Page 12

He knew this place well. The shelves were slick with the fine green film that grew wherever the water ran shallow, and they ended without warning. Beneath the last of them, the full weight of the river poured down through a deep, narrow channel carved into the rock, dark and fast and cold. He had cleared that channel himself, many times. He knew exactly how strong the current was where it plunged into the dark.

The female stopped at the edge of the water and looked across the chamber. On the far side, the path continued along the wall. On this side, it ended at the stream.

He saw her make the decision. He saw her square her small shoulders and tighten the straps of her bag.

No, he thought desperately. Not there. There is a way around, along the far wall, if you climb.

But she didn’t know that, and he had no way to tell her. She stepped cautiously into the shallows and began to wade across, testing each step before she trusted it, her light pointed down at the water. He moved closer, his heart pounding.

She made it safely halfway across. The water was barely above her ankles there, rippling around her boots, and she was moving carefully. He began to think she might make it after all. Then she reached the edge of the second shelf, where the green film grew thickest, and put her foot down on the stone. It slid out from under her.

She went down heavily with a sharp cry, arms flailing, and hit the water hard. For a moment she was on her hands and knees on the shelf, gasping. Then the current caught her pack like a hand and dragged her sideways, towards the edge.

He was already moving.

He saw her scrabble for a hold on the slick rock and find nothing. He saw her slide over the lip of the shelf. He saw her light flash once, bright and wild, as the dark water in the channel closed over her head. Then he was diving after her.

The channel was black and roaring and cold, but he didn’t need to see. He felt the water pouring around him and knew every turn of the stone, every place where the current twisted and dragged. And he felt her. A small, warm, struggling weight tumbling ahead of him in the dark, the pack on her back pulling her down and the current pulling her forward.

He drove himself after her with long, powerful sweeps of his tail, faster than he had ever swum. The channel narrowed ahead, where the water squeezed between two great teeth of rock before it dropped into the deep pool beyond. If she hit those rocks, she would break. He caught her barely a moment before she reached them.

His arm went around her waist and he twisted in the water, turning his back to the rocks so that it was his shoulder that struck the stone and not her. The blow was hard enough to drive the breath from him, but he didn’t let go. He braced his feet against the rock and pushed upwards, dragging her with him, until his head broke the surface and hers did too.

She was coughing and choking, her hands clawing at his arm. He hauled her swiftly towards the side of the channel where a low shelf of rock ran along the wall and lifted her onto it with one arm. Then he climbed out after her and knelt beside her on the stone.

She was on her hands and knees, water streaming from her hair and her clothes, coughing so hard her body shook. The light on her head had gone out. The only glow came from the moss on the walls, soft and blue and dim. Her mask had been knocked aside, pushed up across one cheek so that her nose was bare.

She was gasping for air, and it wasn’t enough. Each breath was shallower and faster than the last, harsh and wet and desperate.

He had seen her do this before, when she pulled the mask away for only a moment, and he knew what it meant. He reached out and caught the mask in his fingers. It was light and fragile in his hand, and he was afraid he would break it. Then he eased it back into place over her nose and held it there, his palm cupped against her cheek.

“Breathe,” he wanted to say. But he didn’t have the word, so he just held the mask and waited.

She dragged in a long, shuddering breath, and then another. He felt her lungs working, felt the rasp of the air easing as the mask did whatever it did. Her hands stopped clawing at the rock. Her coughing slowed and quieted. And then, slowly, she lifted her head and looked at him.

Her eyes went wide, and he knew that she was seeing him. He was soaked, the water still streaming from his hair and his shoulders. In the dim blue light his scales would be shimmering the way they always did when they were wet. They would be blue and green along his arms and his shoulders and the long curve of his tail where it lay on the rock behind him. His hand was on her face. His claws were only a whisker away from her skin.

She made a sound, a high, thin gasp, and jerked backwards out of his grasp. He let her go at once.

She scrambled frantically away from him across the rock, still on her hands and knees, until her back hit the wall of the passage. She pressed herself against it, one hand clutching the mask to her face, and stared at him. In the faint glow of the moss, her eyes looked huge and dark. He could hear her heart hammering, so loud and so fast that it frightened him.

“Don’t,” she gasped. Her voice was hoarse and shaking. “Don’t. Don’t come any closer.”

He didn’t move. He wanted desperately to go to her. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her until she stopped shaking, the way he had held her in the water. But she was afraid of him. It was as clear as the water in the basin, and it hurt more than the blow to his shoulder had.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He sank down slowly onto his haunches and drew his arms in close against his body. He lowered his head until he was looking up at her instead of down, and he curled his tail tightly around his feet. He made himself as small as he could. It wasn’t very small, and he knew that. But it was the best he could do.

“Closer,” he said softly. It was one of the sounds she had made, and it was the only one he could think to give back to her.

She stared at him, and for a long moment she didn’t say anything.

“No,” she said at last, and her voice cracked in the middle of the word. “No, that’s the opposite of what I said.”

He didn’t understand her, but something in her voice had changed. It was still shaking, but it wasn’t quite so high and thin anymore. And her eyes had moved from his claws to his face, and they were searching it. He wondered what she saw there, and if she could see that he was shaking too.

He hadn’t realized it until that moment, but he was. His hands were trembling against his knees. His tail was twitching restlessly around his feet, and there was a tight, painful ache in his chest that had nothing to do with the cold or the blow to his shoulder. He had almost lost her. He had watched her go over the edge of the shelf and disappear into the black water. For one terrible moment he had thought he would be too late.

She was watching him warily. Her breathing was slowing now, the harsh rasp of it easing, and her heart was beginning to quiet. She was still pressed against the wall. But she hadn’t tried to run.