by Patricia Bow
They passed through the dark pillars of the woods and on up the mountainside. A gate swung open, and they floated into a wide hall with no roof but the sky.
This was where the music came from. They hovered at the edge of a blur of dancers. The lamps of dawn and moonlight picked out a silken elbow here, a laughing mouth there and over there a crown of living flowers.
Would it be so bad never to go home again? Camrose wondered. Was there anything at home as good as this?
She sank toward the floor, and Mark sank with her.
But in that moment another sound flickered through the music. It slipped past so quickly her ear almost missed it. A cold sound, a whisper like wind in a stony place.
Use your eyes, said a nagging voice in the back of her mind.
She looked again. Darkness veiled the back of the hall. She looked harder, and there stood two rows of seven guards with golden helmets in the shapes of hawks and lions, and all their swords drawn. And beyond them stood the door that had so terrified Miranda.
But now the guards were not standing in front of the door, barring the way. They were lined up on either side, making a pathway like a guard of honor.
And the door stood open. Past the threshold and filling the doorway was nothing. Nothing at all.
The dancers froze. The music fell silent. Heads turned, eyes glittered at Camrose. She looked around and saw Terence standing two paces away, smiling at her. The emptiness in the doorway grew thicker, blacker, began to reach …
“No.” The word echoed. A shiver ran through the crowd. She said it again, louder: “No! I see it, and you can’t make us.”
At that, they were back in the boat. Mark was still blank-faced, still gazing toward the blue and gold mountains.
Camrose pulled one of the oars free of its pins, stuck the paddle end in the sand and pushed. The boat came loose with a jerk that nearly toppled her out of it.
She sat down quickly and pushed with the oar until the boat was floating in deep water. Then she crammed it back in the oarlock, heaved at it to bring the boat around with its bow pointing away from the land and set to work with both oars.
For a few minutes they seemed to make no headway. No matter how hard she rowed, the current pushed the boat back toward shore. When Mark crawled forward and tried to take the oar from her left hand, she held on tight.
“Mark, I’m sorry. But I guess you didn’t see what I saw.”
“I saw.”
She looked at him. The stunned look was gone.
“Let me help.”
She shifted along the thwart to give him room.
With the two of them rowing, the ivory shore drew farther away. The green-blue land melted into a glowing mist, then dwindled to a bright line on the water that winked out, and at last they were rowing in the dark.
Reach and pull, reach and pull. The oarlocks creaked and the water slapped the side of the boat, and there were no other sounds except their breathing. Camrose never knew how long they rowed. She began to think this would be Gwyn’s real revenge, to keep them laboring in the dark forever, their only light a memory of the Otherworld.
Then Mark stopped rowing. “Smell that?” he said.
She felt it first: a cold wind on her back. It smelled of the spongy wood that collects on the beach after storms, of lime–stone and beached fish and pine trees.
Mark reached with his oar again, and Camrose reached, and they pulled together. The darkness turned gray, then silver and warmed to the glassy pale gold of early morning. Across the river eastward, the hills of Quebec stood black against the morning sky.
Their keel grated on pebbles. Camrose jumped out with a splash and Mark followed her. Towing the boat behind them, they set foot once more upon the shores of home.