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"Stay here," I said. "I'm going to find a stream or a pond or… or some dew. Something for us to drink." I glared at him. "You probably need it more than me, and I've fallen out of sail rigging once today."
I stalked away from him before he could say anything, up to the treeline. When I figured I was far enough away I chanced a glance back at the fire, and there he was, yanking on his boots to follow me. Fantastic.
Still, I waited for him.
He leaned against a tree to steady himself.
"You ain't going to make it," I said.
"I'm fine." He wobbled a little in place. "And I'll be worse if you go off on your own. We shouldn't… We shouldn't stay too long–"
"Naji, we're stranded here!"
I took off deeper into the green shadows. The air was damp and cold and wrapped around me like an old wet shawl. Everywhere I stepped I made noise, branches snapping, pine needles crackling. But so did Naji, and he was usually as graceful as a Saelini dancer and twice as silent.
We walked for twenty minutes when I heard pattering up in the tops of the trees, distant and soft. I cursed. All rain would get us was wet – we didn't have nothing to collect it in.
"We gotta head back," I said. "I don't want to lose our fi–"
I stopped. Naji was leaning up against a pine tree, his skin waxy like he had a fever.
"Kaol's starfish," I said. "You look like you're dying."
He moaned a little and rubbed at his forehead. "I'm not sure I can go on. I was hoping the spell would lead me to Eirnin, but…" His voice trailed away.
I glared at him, not wanting to think about his spell, the whole reason we were go
"I used the last of my magic to bring us on land," he said mournfully. "It's run out."
"Good," I snapped. "If only it'd run out when we were on board the Revenge." Then I turned and stalked away from him, blood pounding in my ears.
"Ana
"I understand plenty. You stranded us here without any kind of protection." I whirled around to face him. He looked shrunken and old. "That's what you're going to tell me, isn't it? You can't do your protection spells?"
He didn't have to say anything to answer.
"At least you were able to get us on land before the ocean sucked us down." I dug the heels of my palm into my eyes. I was exhausted and in truth all I wanted was to lay out by the fire and sleep. But I knew I couldn't.
"Give me your sword," I said, "and go back to the fire."
He tried to stare me down, but he was too weak. So he just handed me his sword, nodded, and turned away.
I picked my way through the woods. The rain misted across my hair and the tops of my shoulders and set me to shivering, and the forest pressed up against me, impossibly tall trees and thick green cover and ropy vines. I kept the sword out, although I wasn't sure if a sword could stop whatever creatures the island had hidden.
Every now and then I stopped and listened for the bubbling of a river. But there were just forest sounds, leaves rustling and water dropping off the tree branches and critters scurrying around in the underbrush, and beyond that, a distant chiming sound like some weird far-off music. I didn't trust it. Didn't trust the normalcy of it. That's when magic's the most dangerous: when it feels like the untouched world.
The woods grew darker from the rain, and mist started rising up from the forest floor, gray and cold and wet. I tightened my grip on the sword, trying my best to ignore the panic rioting around my chest. I got a flash of pirate's intuition: I wasn't safe in the forest.
I should go back to the beach.
My left hand peeled itself away from the sword and found Naji's charm still looped around my neck. I thought about him leaning up against the tree, rubbing his forehead, pale from exertion. He was probably in pain now, all on account of me. I wondered if it was keeping him from healing.
But if we didn't have water, we'd die of dehydration within a couple of days. And even magic-tainted water was better than that.
So I kept walking.
After a while, the forest brightened a little, not from the sun peeking out behind the rain clouds but because the trees were different, tall and ski
That was when I heard the faintest murmur of water. It was hard to make out over the chiming, but I listened closely and wandered about, trying to find its source. I don't know how long it took me, but I finally stumbled over a spring bubbling up underneath a big normal-looking pine tree, the water clear and cleanlooking. I plunged my hands in and scooped it up to drink without thinking. Water was splashing down my chest when I remembered that I was on the Isles of the Sky, that this water could destroy me.
I fell back and stared at the spring, waiting for something to happen, for something to change. Nothing did that I could feel. And although I still didn't trust this normalcy, I allowed myself a bit more of that sweettasting water, and I prayed to Kaol and E'mko to keep me safe from the spirits.
The rain stopped, and I sat beside the spring, listening to the chiming from the trees, half-waiting for the mist to form again, to come creeping along the forest floor. But nothing happened. And after a while I started thinking on Naji, thinking on his curse. He cast a spell so strong it wiped out his magic, and we didn't even know if we could cure his curse. Hell, we didn't know if the Wizard Eirnin was even on this rock.
Maybe he'd die out there on the beach and I'd be free of the curse just long enough to get swallowed by the Isles of the Sky.
Maybe I shouldn't have left him alone after all.
So I ripped some strips of fabric off my trousers – they were soaked through with rainwater anyway – and knotted them in the tree branches as I made my way back to the beach.