Marina Coralwise's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Marina tried to stand. Her legs shook and folded. She caught the table's edge and sat back down hard. The name burned in her hand, but her body would not carry her to find the man who owned it. Salt still scorched her throat. Every breath came shallow. If she walked the island now, she would drop somewhere in the brush and find no one. Caspian steadied her shoulder. "You can't search like this. You'll collapse before you reach the trees." "He's here," she said. "I've waited three years." "Then wait one more hour." He crouched in front of her. "Tell me the name. I'll go while you rest." She looked at his brown eyes. He had pulled her from the closing temple. He had gone down when she stopped moving. But the name was her mother's last secret. She could not give it away. Not yet. "No," she said. "I have to be the one." Caspian did not argue. He rose and crossed to the shelf. He pulled down fruit and a coconut, then knelt at the cold hearth. He struck a spark into dry moss. The moss caught. As the flame grew, a small lizard slid out from the woodpile, its scales a bright hot pink that glowed like the fire itself. It flicked its tail and darted along the wall. Caspian watched it a moment, then turned back to the fire. "Eat," he said. "Drink. Sleep if you can. You're no use to anyone dead." Marina ate the fruit he pressed on her. She drank the coconut water in long swallows. The warmth from the hearth reached her cold legs, where her mother's green scales caught the light. Slowly her breath came easier. Her hands stopped shaking. Outside, a blazing bird with red and orange wings landed on the sill, watched them, then lifted away. She slept. When she woke, gray light had softened to gold. Caspian sat by the door, whittling a strip of driftwood. He looked up. "Better?" Marina stood. Her legs held. She took one step, then another, across the whole floor. No shaking. No fold. The weakness was gone. "I can walk," she said. "Then walk." He set the driftwood down and stood. "But I'm coming. Not for the name. For you." She did not stop him this time. She folded the oiled cloth and pushed it into her waistband of palm leaves. She stepped out of the cabin onto solid ground. The island stretched ahead, all brush and rock and hidden paths. Somewhere in it lived the man her mother had chosen to trust. "This way," Marina said, though she did not yet know the way. She only knew she could move now, and that was enough to begin. Caspian fell in beside her. Together they left the shore behind and started inland to find him.