Captain Richard's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

Seabreeze carried Richard under the dark water and out past the rocks. The kelpie surfaced into pale morning light. Richard kept low against the blue neck and let the creature swim. Ahead, a strip of golden sand curved against a wall of green trees. Kovu stood at the waterline, ears up. Alexis stood beside the wolf with one hand on his back. The kelpie's hooves struck sand. Richard slid down and his boots sank into the wet shore. Alexis did not run to him. She walked. The scarred wolf came at her heel. Richard met her at a large driftwood log bleached white by the sun, half buried where the trees began. He set his hand flat on the wood. She set hers beside it. Their fingers did not touch. They did not need to. "It's closed," Richard said. "The shaft. The cove. No one comes through that way." Alexis nodded once. She looked past him at the blue horse standing in the surf, mane heavy with seawater. "He needs somewhere to rest," she said. "He can't stay in the salt all night." Richard followed her eyes up the shore to where the trees opened around a low stone arch — a cave mouth in the rock, dark and quiet, vines hanging from its lip. Inside, fed by some spring, a round pool sat clean and still. The moon would sit in it later. Seabreeze could lie there. Richard walked the kelpie up the sand himself. The creature followed Alexis's voice into the cave and lowered into the pool without sound. Kovu took a place at the cave mouth and sat. Richard stepped back out into the light and felt the weight in his chest shift. Not gone. Moved. They were ashore. The four of them. The man who paid the watcher did not know this beach. Not yet. Richard turned to Alexis and found her already watching him. "We sleep here tonight," he said. She nodded. The driftwood log behind them marked the place — the first ground all of them had stood on together. Tomorrow he would start the work of making it a sanctuary. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, he was home.