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Davies pulled two more strokes, then angrily jammed the oars down into the water. "Very well!" he said, and began working to turn the boat around. "Though I expect we'll wind up as mushroom-heads ourselves, giving wrong directions to the next lot of fools to venture in here."
By the guttering torchlight they found a gap in the mudbank, and Davies reluctantly rowed into it, leaving the wide, steady course behind. The cool white light of a spirit ball or two glowed for a moment in the fog behind them.
The fog was moving downriver thickly now, filtering through the tangled branches and vines like milk dripping into clear water; soon it was solid, and their torch was a diffused, luminous orange stain on the gray-black fabric of the night - but the channel they were in was so narrow that by stretching out his arm Shandy could feel the wet shrubbery on either side.
"It is beginning to quick up a bit," Davies admitted grudgingly.
Shandy nodded. The fog had made the night chilly, and when he began to shiver it occurred to him that Elizabeth was clad only in a light cotton shift. He took off his coat and draped it around her.
Then the boat passed through an arch so narrow that Davies had to draw in the oars, and a moment later the craft had surged out onto the face of a broad expanse of water, and they had left enough of the fog behind in the rain forest so that, after a few dozen more downstream oar-strokes, Shandy was able to see the glow of the three shore fires ahead.
"Hah!" he exclaimed joyfully, slapping Davies on his good shoulder. "Look at that!"
Davies peered around, then turned back with a grin. "And look back there," he said, nodding astern.
Shandy shifted around to look back, and saw, back in the fog, the weak glows of two torches. "The others made it as well," he observed, not very pleased.
Beth was looking back too. "Is ... my father in one of those boats?"
"Yes," Shandy told her, "but I won't let him hurt you."
For several minutes none of them spoke, and the boat began gradually slanting in toward shore as Davies let his burned hand do less work. The pirates on the shore finally noticed the approaching boats and began shouting and blowing horns.
"Did he try to hurt me?" Beth asked.
Shandy looked back at her. "Don't you remember? He ... " Belatedly, it occurred to him that there might be a better time to awaken her recent grisly memories. "Uh ... he made Friend cut your hand," he finished lamely.
She glanced at her hand, then didn't speak until they had drawn in near the fires, and men were wading out to help them ashore. "I remember you holding a knife to my throat," she said distantly.
Shandy bared his teeth in anguished impatience. "It was the dull side, and I never even touched you with it! That was to test him, to see if he still needed you to accomplish this magic, if some of your blood wasn't all he needed! Damn it, I'm trying to protect you! From him!" Several men had splashed up to their boat, and hands gripped the gunwales and began dragging it in toward shore.
"Magic," said Beth.
Shandy had to lean forward to hear her over the excited questions of the pirates. "Like it or not," he said to her loudly, "it's what we're involved in here."
She swung a leg over the side and jumped into the shallow water and looked back at him. The rocking bow-torch had almost expired, but it was bright enough to show the lines of strain in her face. "What you've chosen to become involved in," she said, then turned and began wading up toward the fires.
"You know," Shandy remarked to Davies, "I'm going to get her out of this ... just for the pleasure of showing her one more thing she's all wrong about."
"Are we glad to see you boys!" one of the jostling pirates exclaimed. They had dragged the boat all the way up onto the sand of the mangrove-shorn notch, and Shandy and Davies got out and stood up, stretching. The shouting began to die down.
"Glad to be out of there," Davies said.
"You must be hungry as hell," another man put in. "Or did you find something to eat in there?"
"Didn't have the leisure." Davies turned to watch the progress of the other two boats. "What time is it? Maybe Jack'd throw together some kind of pre-breakfast for us."
"I don't know, Phil, but it ain't late - no more'n an hour or two after sunset."
Shandy and Davies both turned to stare at him. "But we left about an hour after sunset," Shandy said. "And we've been gone at least several hours ... "
The pirate was looking at Shandy blankly, and Davies asked, "How long were we gone upriver?"
"Why ... two days," the man replied in some bewilderment. "Just about precise - dusk to dusk."
"Ah," said Davies, nodding thoughtfully.
"And ashes to ashes," put in Shandy, too tired to bother with making sense. He looked again toward the approaching boats. Idly, for in spite of his deductions all he wanted right now was an authoritative drink and a hammock and twelve hours of sleep, he wondered how he would prevent Hurwood from forcing Beth's soul out of her body so that the ghost of her mother, his wife, could move in.
