Marina Coralwise's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The next low tide came at dawn. Marina carried the barrel down to the water and set it on the wet rock. Then she saw the trouble. Rocks had slid across the doorway in the night. A heap of them now blocked the gap. She pried at the top stones. They shifted, rolled, and settled again, heavier than before. The tide was already turning. She had one hour, maybe less, to clear the passage alone. She could not. "You'll drown doing that." Marina spun. A man stood on the shore behind her. His clothes hung in torn strips. Salt dried white on his chiseled chest. His brown eyes fixed on the barrel, then on her scaled legs, and did not flinch. He was a stranger, washed in from the sea, and he had watched her fight the rocks without offering a hand until now. "Then help me," Marina said. "Caspian," he said. "My ship broke on the reef last night." He looked at the heap. "Those won't move by pulling." He walked past her along the shore. A battered cargo ship sat half-sunk in the shallows, its hull cracked, its rusted hooks and ropes still hanging from broken arms. Caspian waded to it and dragged a coil of rope free. He tied one end to the largest doorway stone. "Now we pull together," he said. They hauled. The stone dragged an inch, then stuck. Marina's hands slipped on the wet rope. The tide crept up her ankles. "It's not enough," she said. "The water's rising." Caspian dropped the rope. He looked at the wreck, then at a small pink lizard sunning on a rock nearby. Its body glowed like a live coal. He grabbed a shard of dry driftwood and pressed it near the lizard. The wood caught a flame. "Fire won't crack stone," Marina said. "No," he said. "But heat and cold do." He wedged the burning wood against the stuck stone. The rock hissed. Then he splashed cold seawater over it. A crack split down the middle. The stone broke in two. They rolled the halves aside. The black doorway showed through, dark and open. Marina's breath caught. Her father had carved that stone. The way in stood clear at last. But the tide was at her knees now. The gap would seal in minutes. "I have to go now," she said. She sank the barrel and gripped the mouthpiece. Caspian caught her wrist. "You don't know what's down there." "I know exactly what's down there," she said. "Proof of who I am." She pulled free and dropped into the black water. The doorway swallowed her. Behind her, on the shore, a stranger she had known for one hour stood guard over a passage that would close before she returned. She had reached her mother's door. Now she was inside it, alone, with a man above who had every reason to be gone when she came back up.