The Black Star (Book 3) (28 page)

And there was the hand, not twenty feet from him. With a flash of white, it disappeared.

He thrashed toward it, keeping his head above water so he wouldn't lose the spot. Once he'd reached it—or what he thought was it; waves tossed and turned and slapped around; the sturdiest landmark he had was a ball of rust-colored kelp, and that too was swishing around in the currents—he bobbed from the water, filled his lungs with air, added a final gasp to his mouth, and went under.

The burble of water. The churning of his arms and legs. Bubbles trickling past his cheeks and ears. He opened his eyes. He was just a few feet below the surface, but the cloud-diffused sunlight fought to penetrate the heaving seas and screens of bubbles. He kicked deeper, casting about for any glimpse of pale skin. With his breathing exercises, he'd trained himself to go without breath for a couple minutes even while fighting at full force, but that was in open air, not in a cold ocean fighting his every movement. Too soon, he had to resurface. He took three long breaths, held the fourth, and plunged back in.

He swam straight down, turning in a spiral. Something brushed his leg. He shuddered and glanced up. Seaweed. He realigned himself head down, then cried out, gurgling. A pale body was suspended below him.

He kicked down, snagged it by the armpit, swapped his feet for his head, and fought toward the surface. He broke through, surging up and sucking in a deep breath. He pulled the woman up, sinking down as he did so, waves smacking over his nose.

She was hardly a woman. Late teens at best. And quite oddly—in defiance of all rhyme, reason, decorum, or desire to survive—she appeared to be entirely naked.

And at least half dead. Blotched face, blue lips. He rolled on his back, holding her to his chest, and stroked toward shore. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, clacking like the finger-drums of the Clan of Red Sky. It was going to be a fun bit of business hauling the girl all the way back to the caves before he dropped dead of hypothermia.

She spasmed and choked, spewing water into the air. She heaved for breath. With that first taste of air, she grabbed at his body and climbed up him, keeping his head from the water by pushing his under it.

He kicked back up. He had plenty of size and strength on her, but she was in full-blown can't-breathe panic, and she clung to him like the buoy he wasn't. He went under again. Again, he wrestled his way back to the surface. She raked his chest, clawed his shoulder. Bright lines of pain scored his skin.

"Knock it off!" he burbled.

She screamed and pulled at him just as he was going for breath. The first half was air. The second was water. He dropped below the waves and filled his lungs with salt and wet. He kicked wildly, but she was holding him down, using him like a human raft. His sight tightened. Dimmed. Grayed.

Blackness. But he could see different shades of black, vague arms of matter reaching for him, touching his nail-raked skin, merging with the blood floating from his body. A part of him wanted it and it reacted to his want like a hungry lover. He reached for it, and it responded.

Cold lips pressed against his. His chest jerked. He felt so perfectly still, as if even his heart had gone quiet, and then his body stiffened like a plank and he coughed saltwater and he was lying on a gritty beach with a naked girl blowing air into his mouth. He gagged and jackknifed to a sitting position, drooling all over his chest, hacking and spitting. The brackish taste would not leave his mouth. The girl whacked him on the back. In sudden fury, he cocked his fist, coiled his muscles, and stopped. She wasn't attacking him. She was saving him.

"What?" he wheezed.

"You went under," she said.

"I had help." He stopped and coughed some more. He was shivering and chattering. "Who are you?"

"Hellen," she said, words chopped up by her clattering teeth. "Can you stand up? We have to get warm."

He lurched to his feet. He wobbled and she grabbed his arm, exposing her small breasts. Despite his shock and pain and cold, he immediately felt supremely awkward. He averted his eyes and tottered toward the cliffs. His sodden smallclothes streamed water to the sand.

"Where are you going?" she called.

He didn't answer, just wobbled over to where he'd shed his cloak. He desperately wanted to throw it around his own shoulders, but he wrapped it around her instead.

"Here." He snugged it tight. "L-let's go."

His shoes were there, too, but he was too stiff to go for them. They staggered down the beach, leaning on each other. Gripping his upper arm, her fingers were as cold as stone before sunrise. He couldn't feel the sand grinding under his feet. She tripped and dropped to her knees and stayed there. Praying he wouldn't fall too, he hauled her back up.

The caves were far down the beach. So far. It would be much easier to fall down and lie there. Hot defiance burned up his throat and down his spine. It wasn't time to die. They trudged on.

As they neared the caves, his hands and ankles began to tingle; that was either very good or very bad. Beside the cliffs, a woman in a flapping cloak called out. She ran to them, goggling between the girl and Blays. Shadows flocked to her hands. A trickle of warmth seeped into his skin.

She helped them inside. After the buffeting waves and deafening winds, the silence of the tunnels roared in his ears. His feet slapped the floor. Wan light lurched in his vision. They turned this way and that. He was deposited before a snapping fire. Towels rubbed him, chafing his skin. Someone pulled off his soaked shirt, his smallpants. He was too woozy to protest.

Two more women arrived. One set her hands on his chest while the other tended to the girl. His teeth stopped beating against each other. He took an endless, shuddering breath.

"What happened?" A woman crouched over him, red hair cut close to the scalp except for a strip running down the center of her head.

He tipped his head toward the girl, who was wrapped in three blankets, juddering like a wet dog. "I think she fell in."

"I did not," the girl said. "I was Betweening. Something must have gone wrong. This man pulled me out."

"And in your gratitude, you attempted to kill me."

Her pale face flushed from chin to scalp. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened."

He closed his eyes. "I've seen it before. When we get close to death we don't think about anything but escaping it. Anyway, you saved me too, didn't you?"

She looked down. "I might have."

"So we're even. We'll share some stew sometime."

The door opened. Minn burst inside, eyes bulging. "Are you all right? What happened?"

"Somebody else tell her," Blays croaked. "I can barely talk."

"Hellen was Between," the red-haired woman said. "Lost it in the waves. Your dog paddled out and retrieved her."

Minn pressed her palms together and held them tight to her mouth. "Is everyone all right?"

"We've warmed them. They're fine. I'll get tea."

Minn paced around while Blays warmed various parts of himself in front of the fire. He toweled off on a blanket and slung it aside. Minn exited. He was suddenly too tired to do more than stare at the flickering orange flames. Minn came back with a spare set of clothes. He hopped into them. The red-haired woman returned with tea.

Blays gargled his, rinsing out the taste of salt. "What's Between?"

Minn turned to the woman. "Maybe you'd take Hellen to get dressed."

The woman laughed. "Enjoy yourself."

She helped the girl stand, then walked her out. Minn closed the paper-thin door and spoke in a low tone. "Thank you for saving her."

"Wouldn't you have done the same?" he said. "Or would that interfere with the People's 'save yourself' ethos? By the way, I'm fairly out of it, yet I've managed to notice you persist in ducking my question. What was Hellen doing in the water? What is Between?"

Minn was quiet a moment. "Worlds."

"Worlds?"

"Between worlds. It's a process we discovered long ago. When we find outsiders and bring them here to become People, they must place themselves between life and death."

"Like, for fun?" Blays gargled another mouthful of tea and spat it at the fire; the salt was impossible to wash out, as if it had marinated him.

"To become one of us."

"You think the best way to add to your numbers is to convince recruits to kill themselves?"

"Betweening is voluntary."

"And what happens if they don't take part?"

Minn took his cup and refilled it. Bitter steam wafted from the dark liquid. "They're sent home."

"Throw yourself into the waves, or be exiled?" He laughed harshly, then choked. He soothed his throat with more tea. "No wonder you're all so grim."

"You don't understand. We go Between to make ourselves stronger. When there is nothing left but you, your heartbeat, and death, the nether comes so close a child could touch it. There is no better way to train those who can't yet do what we do."

Blays blinked. "Well, that would explain what just happened to me. When I was drowning, I saw it melt. I could melt it again right now."

"You can?" She moved close enough to feel the heat of her skin. "How?"

"By wanting it."

"Show me."

He set his tea on the mantel and focused on the nether in her. He saw it. Touched it. Wanted it. It became liquid, reaching back at him.

Minn's eyebrows shot up. "Welcome to Summer."

"Thank you," he said. "Now please explain why you throw girls into the ocean naked, but treat me like I can't be trusted with anything sharper than a spoon?"

She folded her arms. "You weren't vetted."

"Do you think I'm no good? Too weak? That I can never be one of you?"

"It doesn't matter what
I
think. And if I cared what they think, I wouldn't have put my lee on the line to take you in."

"'Lee'?" Blays sighed. "Do you expect me to know what that is?"

"It's..." She rolled her hand through the air. "My reputation. My standing. My place as a part of Pocket Cove. They didn't want you here. I did."

"Why?"

"I already told you—because we all deserve to be free."

"No more bullshit." He picked up his mug and slugged it down. It tasted like spirits without the burn, like food for the soul. "Take off the kid gloves. Tell me what to do and I'll do it."

She stared him down. "You have no standing to make demands of me. I'm the only reason you're allowed to stay."

"I think I can do more. That I can complete the same trials the rest of you endure. Do you think I'm wrong?"

"I can't know that until we try." She held her ground, but her gaze softened. "I'll discuss it with Ro."

"Wonderful." He pushed his palms into the small of his back, stretching his spine until he thought the bits might pop. "Now why don't you tell me what Hellen's training to do?"

"To move earth."

"I know that. Which is why you think it's safe to tell me that. So why don't you tell me the rest? How do you go unseen?"

Minn laughed and shook her head. "Just because I'm embarrassed and humbled doesn't mean you can bully me into blabbing."

"How about if I ask you, nicely, as someone who just risked his life to save one of your people? People who look at me like I'm a farm dog of questionable housetraining?"

"Shadowalk."

He threw off his blanket. "Is that their name for me?"

"That's what we do. We shadowalk. Move through the places others can't see."

"What does that involve? Besides words that sound like a foreign language?"

"Exactly what it sounds like." Her eyes ticked between his. "We walk through the shadows. We move like the nether, invisible, silent. And you'll never know we're there."

"Okay," he said. "I'm going to need you to teach me that right now."

Minn shook her head. "Summer first, dog. You've seen, reached, melted. Now you learn to move it. In summer, people want to slow down, to rest. It's too hot. But the rest of nature wants to grow. To move upward. The nether does, too. Can you make the darkness grow?"

"You know, my friend didn't have to pass through a mystical gantlet. All he had to do was read an old book."

"The
Cycle
?"

"That's the one." Blays bit his lip. "How'd you know that? I thought you guys isolated yourselves from earthly affairs."

"We haven't always been so isolated." She shifted her weight, then moved to a pile of pillows in the corner and sat down. "The
Cycle
is a tool for people who don't require this depth of training. Exposure to it is enough."

"Whereas for people like me it requires suicide attempts."

"And you may never be all that good." Minn smiled. "But you're more dedicated than most. Whatever your limitations, that helps."

"So how do I bring Summer to fruition?"

"Give it three days."

He laughed. "That's it?"

"I mean I'm commanding you to take three days off. Lyle's balls, an hour ago you nearly drowned. Now you want to skip right through the last Season?"

"Well, all right. But in return, I demand more tea."

He thought she was babying him, but whatever the redheaded woman had done to push death from his shoulders, it wasn't complete. He was soon tired, and after that he was so weak he could do no more than wander back through the halls (with Minn's guidance) to his bed. He slept until he felt good. That took two days.

Once he'd relieved his bladder—the tunnels had water closets with holes in the ground, cunningly wrought to drain moisture from the plateau down through them and wash it out to sea; they even had valves to rinse yourself with—he ate what must have been an entire flounder.

"Finished?" Minn said once he'd flopped into a heap of his blankets. "Then let's go see Ro."

Clutching his bloated stomach, he righted himself and followed her down the tunnels. Ro's room was thick with the smell of singed wintrel leaves. The woman combed her fingers through her gray-streaked hair and shifted on her cushion of blankets.

"What are you doing here?"

Blays covered his mouth to suppress a belch. "My master is taking me for a walk. Arf?"