Glowly's Arc

Chapter 2 of 16

Six days south, the jungle thinned and the ground turned to salt mud. Glowly smelled the sea before she saw it. Then the trees fell away and the coast opened in front of her. The land she stood on ended at a wide flat of water. Beyond it, low and dark, lay the shore she needed to reach. She dropped her pack and studied the crossing. The water was shallow now, dotted with mud banks and the tops of drowned rocks. But the surface had a line on the far rocks, high above her head. That line was where the tide climbed. She had read the coast wrong. She had packed for the jungle, not for this. She checked her gear again. Rope. Compass. A blanket that would soak and drag. Boots made for climbing, not for wading fast. If the tide came in while she crossed, the water would swallow her before she reached the other side. She needed to move faster than the sea, and nothing in her pack would let her. Glowly walked the edge of the flat and watched the water. It crept toward her, slow and steady. She timed it against her own breath. She had maybe an hour of low water. The crossing would take longer than that on foot, dragging a soaked pack through mud. She needed to float, not walk. She looked back at the jungle behind her. At the tree line grew a thick tangle of vine, twisted and heavy, studded with long thorns. Glowly drew her knife. She cut lengths of the vine and stripped the worst thorns with the blade. The thorns tore her hands anyway. Blood ran between her fingers. She kept cutting. She bound the green coils into a wide bundle, thick enough to hold her weight on the water. Her hands shook now. Not from fear. From the sting of a hundred small cuts. She tied her pack to the top of the bundle so it would ride dry. Then she pushed the raft to the water's edge. The tide had already crept past her first mark. She had less time than she thought. Glowly climbed onto the vine bundle and pushed off with a broken branch. The green coils held. She poled hard across the flat, aiming for a mud bank halfway over. Water rose around the drowned rocks. It covered the low banks she had counted on. She poled faster. The sea reached her knees where she had planned to walk. If she had walked, she would be under it now. Her raft scraped the far mud as the last bank vanished behind her. Glowly dragged herself and her dry pack onto solid ground. She lay flat and breathed. Her hands bled onto the sand. But she had crossed. She stood and looked south. The drowned steps were still days away, and this was only the first tide. She would have to cross worse water than this, and now she knew the sea was hunting her.