Page 62 of Lover from the Waves

But it was too late. The creature was heading straight for her, its body close enough to the surface to create a visible wake.

Something hit the water with a splash to the creature’s left. It turned sharply, bending its long body, and darted to attack, thrashing and splashing before plunging under again. For a few seconds, Kathryn’s chest was so tight that she couldn’t draw breath.

She looked up at Ector. Even from this distance, she could see his shoulders and chest heaving with desperate, ragged breaths. The yellow of his skin seemed even more intense than a few seconds before.

“Do not speak,” he said. “I will distract it as I go. When it attacks—andonlythen—you must move. Do you understand?”

She nodded. As hard as it was to remain calm and keep still, she had no choice if she wanted to make it out of this hole alive.

Ector hurriedly coiled the rope around his arm. As soon as he was done, he bent out of her sight, only to rise a moment later with a branch in hand. He threw it. She watched it fall, mentally bracing herself, until it hit the water’s surface. The creature attacked almost immediately; she forced herself to move for a frantic instant.

She froze when the creature went under again. Despite the exertion her brief but desperate bit of movement had required, Kat’s destination seemed impossibly far away, and she felt like she’d covered almost no distance.

Moving one centimeter at a time with a sea monster right next to me. What a vacation.

Leaves and branches rustled above. She pried her eyes away from the water to see Ector on the move, starting his trek around the ring. He paused to tear up more vegetation and throw it over the side.

She forced herself to wait a second after it hit the water before moving. The creature broke the surface, baring its inward-pointed teeth, and she swung her arms and kicked her legs to push herself a little closer to her goal.

Ector continued to toss objects into the water. The creature, despite getting mouthfuls of leaves and branches, attacked every time something hit the water. Kathryn crept a little closer to her destination every time the creature surfaced. Her whole body ached, and the frantic beating of her heart had become an all-encompassing throbbing. Soon, the water was in constant motion, churning and rolling just like waves on the ocean.

Her heart seized, filling with jagged shards of ice, when something big, slick, and smooth brushed against her leg. Kathryn squeezed her eyes shut. Her body trembled uncontrollably, finally submitting to the cold fear slithering through her veins.

There was a roar from above, followed by another splash and a surge of movement beneath her as the monster sped away.

“Not the sea nor this creature—notanything—will take you,” Ector growled. “Onlyme!”

Kathryn opened her eyes and looked up, meeting Ector’s gaze. His expression was fierce, hard, and resolute, and his skin had gone from yellow to crimson. Any fear he’d displayed before was gone, replaced by a determined rage the likes of which she’d never seen.

And she knew then that if there were some other way out of this hole, he’d have leapt into the water to fight this creature with his bare hands and tentacles.

The thought that had in some ways set this whole trip into motion struck her again in that moment—I’m not dead yet.And there was evenmorefor her to live for now than before she’d left. She still had her friends, her daughters and sons-in-law, and her grandchildren back in The Watch. But she had Ector now, too. She had Ector here, fighting alongside her. Fighting for her. She refused to give up, refused to allow this situation to arrive at that last, terrible resort—Ector joining her in this hole to kill the creature.

Kat clenched her teeth. She wasn’t going to let this creature have her; she was going to get out of this damned hole.

This time when Ector tossed debris into the water, Kathryn pushed herself onward, swimming as fast and as far as she could while the creature was distracted. She finally reached the spot he’d indicated; she couldn’t have moved more than fifteen meters, but it felt like she’d traveled a thousand kilometers to get there. The bare stone loomed ahead of and over her, its mostly smooth surface rising from the water and curving very slightly inward toward its top, creating a lip from which leaves, roots, and branches dangled.

If the distance she’d had to cross to reach that spot had seemed insurmountable, this was something else entirely. For a moment, the top of the hole might as well have been on one of the moons for how impossibly high it looked now. But Kathryn seized hold of that thought and cast it out.

From her new position, she could no longer see Ector—but she could follow his progress based on the amount of noise he was making, the shaking of the plants around him, and the objects that he threw down every few seconds.

If he keeps at it like that, the debris will eventually get so high I’ll just be able to climb out.

Despite everything—including the barely controlled terror still flowing through her veins—she couldn’t help but smirk.

She swam to the rock face, seeking some sort of handhold by which to at least hold herself up, but there was nothing. The wall was as smooth below the water as it was above the surface.

The vegetation directly overhead thrashed and rustled, and loose leaves and twigs rained down into the water. Even through all the noise, it was Ector’s grunts—desperate, tired, but determined sounds—that stood out more than anything.

The rope suddenly tumbled down to dangle ahead of her, just out of arm’s reach. Its end was still almost a meter above the water’s surface.

Kathryn swept her gaze across the pool, but the churning water and increased amount of debris on the surface made it difficult to spot anything—even a creature as large as the one stalking her. As much as the vegetation Ector tossed in had helped, it was suddenly a hindrance.

It won’t matter in a few moments.

She gently pushed herself away from the wall and, keeping her movements as slow and minimal as possible, placed herself beneath the rope. Ector was leaning over the edge of the hole, the rope wrapped around one arm.

Kat reached up, stretching out one hand. Her fingertips brushed the end of the rope. It swayed, but it wasn’t close enough.

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