Page 24 of Fated

This place.

My word. WhereamI?

I blink in the blazing sunlight, my eyes tearing at the bright light.

And then I run across the wooden front porch, jump down the three rickety steps, and land in the spiky, short grass growing in hot sand.

The grass tickles, the sun-hot sand burns, and little gnat-like bugs rise from the grass to swarm my bare legs.

Less than thirty feet away, down a short bluff, the sparse grass loses its battle to thrive and gives way to a long stretch of flat white sand. The salt-and-sea smell? The crashing hiss of waves?

Well, I’m not in Geneva. I’m not even in Switzerland. I’m definitely not in Europe. In fact, I’m not sure I’m in the Northern Hemisphere.

The sea stretches before me. Which sea? I don’t know.

The water rolls over the beach, rushing forward in frothy white waves that kick up tiny pink-and-white seashells, tinkling with a musical sound, and then pull back into the shallows. A gull swoops down, its white wings stark against the brilliant blue sky. The water is a stain of every shade of blue I’ve ever seen, all bleeding into one another, forming an endless tapestry of indigo, cerulean, turquoise, and sky-blue. As far as I can see it’s only water.

Water and nothing more.

No boats.

No ocean freighters.

No land in the distance.

The heat, the bright sun, and the roar of the waves crashes over me.

Behind me, back in the tiny ocean cottage weathered by wind and salt, there’s a muffled call—“Becca!”—drowned out by the waves.

In front of me is the endless ocean expanse.

The sun prickles my skin like hot needles poking at my bare flesh. My ankles are starting to itch, the little gnat bugs feasting on my bare legs.

I can’t go back. Not to that house and that man.

I can’t jump in the ocean and swim away—there’s nowhere to swim.

A few seconds have passed since I burst from the house. The realization I’m in trouble wraps around me like a tight fist, making my breath short and desperate.

“Well! She’s naked, isn’t she? I told you she had her breasts done. I told you, Maranda.”

“Be quiet, Essie!”

I swing to my left at the outraged voice of the older woman.

Fifteen feet away, under the dappled shade of a squat tree—one of those thick, succulent-leaved, twisted, grizzled bark trees that thrive on salt air—sit three old women at a folding table. They have a pile of dried palm leaves that they’re twisting and weaving and making into ... fans? Rope? Baskets? I don’t know.

They’re all staring at me as if I’m a rat they found swimming the backstroke in a bowl of sugar.

It’s hard to tell them apart. They’re all shriveled and dry like prunes left out too long in the sun.

The one who spoke, Essie, has thick, swollen knuckles—the kind that come with arthritis and age. Liver spots coat her hands and face. But she’s working hard, the dried palm flashing between her fingers as she stares at me.

“Put that dress on!” the one called Maranda snaps. She’s small, a tiny woman with short white hair, long ears, and dark, nearly black eyes.

“You shoulda raised her better,” says the woman whose name I don’t know. She has salt-and-pepper hair, but I think she’s the oldest of them all, maybe mid-nineties. She has a voice as creaky as a squeaky rocking chair.

“That boy shoulda taught her better,” says Essie. “Seems he can’t control her, don’t it? Running round naked. I never seen breasts that stand up like that.”

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