Maren Goldweaver's Arc

Chapter 19 of 42

The wall of water hit the ship broadside. The deck tilted hard. Maren's boots slid on wet planks. She grabbed for the cage but her fingers slipped off the iron. There was nothing else within reach. The mast was too far. The rail was too far. Her knees went out from under her. The cage door banged open on its own. The pin had shaken loose in the impact. The cub staggered up onto its feet, wings half-spread, and shoved through the bars just as another lurch threw Maren sideways. Her shoulder hit the deck. She started to slide toward the rail. A wing struck her ribs. Hard. Not a rescue. A shove. The cub's wing hit her again and drove her over the low rail before she could catch anything. The sky spun. She saw sail, then water, then sky. "Maren!" Miller shouted. He lunged after her along the tilting deck, one hand out. His fingers closed on air. He didn't stop. He kept going over the rail after her. Behind him the cub turned on Gisela and hit her the same way, one wing across the chest, driving her off the boards. Kato went next, half-shoved and half-falling. The cub sprang out behind them into open air. Maren braced for cold water. She did not hit water. She hit something broad and firm and warm. Her palms slapped down on a curved surface slick with sea. Barnacles scraped her knee. Under her hand she felt shell, then skin, then the slow rise of something breathing. She lifted her head. She was lying on a back the size of a barn roof. The skin was deep purple, the color of a bruise turning. Starfish clung to it in clusters. Shells grew in ridges along a broad spine. Ten feet away Miller was on his hands and knees, staring at what he'd landed on. Gisela sat up further down. Kato clung to a ridge of shell. "It's the whale," Gisela said. "From under the wave." Behind them the ship groaned. The mast had cracked. Water was already pouring in through the split hull. Kazuki stood at the broken rail, shouting something Maren could not hear. Guards scrambled for boats that were no longer there. The cub landed beside Maren on soft feet. It pressed its head against her arm once, then folded down flat against the whale's skin, spent. The great back beneath them shifted. It began to move. Not out to sea. The whale turned its head toward the dark line of shore and started to swim. Maren looked back once at the sinking ship. She may not have the file, but her sister was beside her. Miller was breathing. Kato was alive. The four of them rode low on the whale's back as it carried them away from Kazuki, away from the guards, away from the water closing over the deck. Shore lay ahead. She did not know what waited on it.