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It was so overwhelming that it bent the mind, resulting in a sensation very much like pain. I gasped at the creature who had just leaned over the side of the great beast, feeling as if I had been struck in the solar plexus and left breathless and disarmed. And enchanted, possibly literally, although I wasn’t sure that I cared any more.
The rider was a woman, but not like any I had ever seen. She was framed against the huge, orange moon as if haloed by it, but she didn’t need the help. The moon paled into insignificance in comparison.
Virtually anything would have.
Her thick, dark hair, which appeared to be as long or longer than her body, seemed to have a life of its own. It spread out wildly, blocking half of the moon’s light, like the branches of a very strange tree. It appeared to move on the wind the way hair usually does in water, wafting about as if on unseen currents.
Her face was almost too beautiful to look upon. Her eyes were a turbulent blue-gray that nearly matched the color of her strange steed, and her lips appeared to be greenish-blue as did the blush on her cheeks. Although perhaps that was due to cosmetics or to the strange light she seemed to give off.
She was wearing some kind of diaphanous, blue-gray-green robes that boiled around her like chiffon or, more accurately, like waves of seafoam. Only I had never seen anyone wear seafoam before. I did not know that I was seeing it now, but I was no longer annoyed.
I was grateful to see this, even as an illusion.
I was grateful.
“What
?” she called down. “Speak up!”
“I said that you are beautiful!” I shouted, wondering if I had gone mad.
“Yes, I know.” She sounded peevish. “That is not what I asked.”
And, suddenly, without warning, I found myself rising off of the rocks, but not under my own power. And not to my feet. My useless legs dangled beneath me as my dripping form was levitated into the air, until I was roughly even with the astounding creature sitting on a coral saddle.
It appeared to have grown organically around the seahorses’ giant belly, then upward, before smoothing out to provide her with a delicate orange perch. There were no reins, but then, I doubted that she needed them. Her mount seemed perfectly in tune with the wishes of its mistress, moving one of its great fins aside so that her power could bring me closer, for inspection.
“What are you?” she demanded again, as I stared into the loveliest face I had ever seen.
“I . . . am Dorina,” I whispered.
“And what is that?”
“It is . . . my name?”
This answer did not seem to satisfy her. “I did not ask for your name; I asked what you are.” But, this time, she did not give me a chance to answer. Her beautiful brow knit. “Not human, although you speak their tongue. Not fey, not demon—”
“I am not a demon?” I asked hopefully.
The beautiful eyes narrowed. “You do not know?”
I shook my head.
“Well, you are not,” she said, frowning. “I know their stench, and it is not upon you.”
My body began slowly rotating, giving me a view of the flooded embankment and of Ray’s frozen, screaming face. I hoped that she would not remember him, as I did not yet know if she was a threat or not, and she did not seem to. Instead, she was glaring at me when I came back around again.
“You are in my waters—”
“I am very sorry—”
“Do not interrupt me!”
“I’m sorry—”
“That is an interruption!”
I closed my mouth.
