Page 32 of Dare

For a moment, it became quiet enough to concentrate.

Snow fell outside an infirmary window. A signet ring glinted from a trembling male hand, while the pallid fingers of a woman held it fast.

Snow fell outside a bedroom window. My grandaunts entered, knelt before my small frame, and asked if I’d like to be a king someday.

Snow fell outside a university window. The hour tolled midnight as I rolled up my sleeves and poured through the pages of an anatomy textbook.

The water heaved me up. With a great shove, it thrust me onto a coarse periphery. A surface that felt very much like sand.

13

Flare

My eyes peeled open. Water licked my chin as I lay on my back, with my head twisted to the side and fire scalding my throat. Groggy, I lugged myself halfway up. The hem of my chemise was torn, both straps frayed and blazing red cuts marring the knob of one knee.

Hellfire. My hip throbbed like a son of a bitch.

The breeze stirred, bringing with it the echo of shivering leaves. The scent of brine mingled with a strange floral whiff I didn’t recognize. I slumped atop a bed of sand—brilliant, white sand that abutted a blue-green ocean tide, the color reminding me of an aquamarine.

While the lazy sea dragged back and forth across the shore, a globe of light blazed over the horizon and splashed gold onto the breakers. I wobbled to my feet and stumbled in the orb’s direction. Submerged to my calves, I gawked at the sun, which glowed like a medallion, baking the world in heat and light.

I had washed up … where?

Despite being a Summer coastline, the ocean’s rumble sounded deeper, longer, and fiercer. The sights were richer in hue and exaggerated in shape, lush and overlapping. The crescent beach stretched far, a cove with no inkling of life, no footprints or docked ships. Fern trees crouched low and extended their slender necks over the jeweled water, while other foreign trees rose to a single wooded peak behind me, the thick canopy painted in too many shades of green to count, and fog coiled like a python between the treetops.

A rainforest. It was a rainforest.

I remembered. The Summer lyrics had formed a map, and that map had displayed a path within the sky’s rays. I’d been escaping, then fighting the villain prince, then combating a storm. I’d seen the beams of sun and followed them while Summer’s castle shrank, disappearing behind a filmy curtain. Afterward, the clouds had parted to unveil another landmass.

Seek not, find not, this Phantom Wild.

Divine Seasons! Laughter sprang from my lips. I covered my mouth and keeled over, my shoulders quaking with mirth. My giddy heels stomped the water, the disturbance scattering trumpet-nosed fish.

Quickly, my humor dissolved into relieved sobs, and I sank to my knees. Overcome, I crawled out of the ocean, slogged across the sand, and stamped my head there. I dug my nails into the ground and clung to the grainy surface, then pressed my palms against the earth like I’d imagined doing endless times. My lips brushed a kiss against the shore and muttered a prayer of gratitude.

“I’m here,” I whispered. “I heard you calling, and I came, and we’re together.”

And I was free.

Yet my happiness died a swift death. What about the prince? Had he landed elsewhere, or had the sea taken him? I’d tried to save us both, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I tried? I’d grabbed his loathsome hand and thrown us into the waves, but maybe I’d flung him into the crags by accident. When the tidefarer smashed into—

The tidefarer!

I shot to my feet and whirled, my desperate gaze vaulting across the tide. Boulders jutted from the sea, and chunks of marigold-painted wood littered the shore to my right, while the rest of the slain vessel had either sunk or floated away.

With a cry, I dashed into the waves. I leaped over a stingray, its translucent body resembling a sheer scarf. After dunking my head beneath the surface, I forced my eyes open despite the sting of salt. Under and over I went, plunging and rising.

For the next hour, I salvaged what I could. Over multiple trips, I towed ashore my parents’ spear, though its tip was shattered, plus rigging lines, a water net, a sand net, Poet’s dagger and sheath from the ocean floor, a canteen, a front sail, part of the mainsail, and shiplap planks from the upper cabin.

My haul grew larger, which I dumped beneath a fern tree. All that had been lost flashed through my head, including the stuff I’d forgotten we owned like pails and sand hooks and stone weights for the water nets, boning and hacking knives, chests loaded with compasses, cutlery, blankets, and clothes. I hadn’t recovered the boat’s third sail or my parents’ machete—things I needed and things that had belonged to my family.

I mourned. Sand drifters knew how to find essentials, but I couldn’t locate them if the rainforest didn’t want me to, if this realm had a different fate in mind.

Thirst parched my throat. Licking my cracked lips, I peered at the misty wall of trees. In the rainforest, there would be blessed springs and creeks. Not least of all, I might encounter ethereal creatures, dark treasures, and otherworldly dangers the Summer song hadn’t warned me about.

But inside, I would also find the key to my fate. My purpose, my calling, my mission for born souls.

After ripping long strips of the sail cloth, I wrapped the bands around my feet. Although my toes and heels remained exposed, the cloth protected the rest of my soles.

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