Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost Page A

freed from servitude.
    Sodden with fish blood, she left the cavern and followed a small path south of the house, past Dymphana’s garden, and up over a few weedy dunes to the far side of a low promontory there. His claim on the land ended with the dunes, where the grass turned quickly into brush too thorny to cut down and the beach beyond narrowed to a footpath. The brush might have been a wall to fend off invaders from the sea—it was that thick. But if one continued along the strip of beach to the far side of them, the shore made an abrupt hook, creating a natural jetty of rock that doubled back upon the promontory like an index finger almost pressing against a thumb. When the tide was out, finger and thumb did close completely, and the small isolated inlet became a lagoon for a while. Even with the tide up and the waves coming across the hook, it remained free of strong currents and riptides, a hidden stillness. The dunes hid the lagoon from view on Gousier’s side, and the rocky hook rose inland like a low wall, as if a failed span had once upon a time attempted to push up out of the island, producing finally nothing but the thorny wildwood. No one had any use for it, and no one else ever went there.
    On the sheltered strip of beach she peeled off the foul clothes. Underneath, ruddy patches marked her skin where the blood had soaked through. She immersed the clothes in the shallow water, and like coral smoke the blood swirled lazily out of them.
    She left them soaking in the shallows and waded past them into the depths of the lagoon. Untied, her red hair fanned all the way to her waist.
    Tiny creatures nipped at her toes, and she yelped and dove in, swimming out to the far rim of rocks, locating in them the gouge through which she could slip into the deeper water. She plunged headlong beneath the waves, kicked back up to the surface, and broke free with a gasp, in imitation of the sea dragons. She liked to play at being a dragon, at wriggling through the water with her feet together like a tail.
    She had been born swimming, she thought.
     . . . . . 
    The lagoon had been her private retreat for more than a year. She kept this secret even from Tastion; and, anyway, he was always out fishing or else working the fields on the distant side of the village when she went there, so there was no reason for him to know. She wanted—she needed—something to be hers alone. Even the puppets she had to share with Soter. And with the ghost of her father.
    That day as on most days after swimming, she lay sunning herself, warm and muzzy and so nearly asleep that she didn’t hear any approaching footsteps. She had the impression of a sharp intake of breath, and then a voice poked through the membrane of dream with a single word: “Witch!” So loud and so near that she didn’t think it was real at all until she opened one eye and found him standing right beside her. He stepped up and his shadow blocked the sunlight.
    She screeched and rolled away across the sand, scrambling for her wet clothing, draping the tunic over her budding figure before she turned to confront the intruder.
    No one was there.
    She roughly brushed the sand from her face, thinking she’d dreamed it all. But in the sand were his footprints, clear and cautious impressions in approach, wild gouges upon retreat. He’d fled past the wildwood and right up the rocks. She ran to them and climbed up high enough to look over the rise and saw him far away, still running in the shallows, not even daring to look back, his arms flailing ahead of him. A moment later he had disappeared around the curve of the beach.
    She’d only glimpsed him for an instant—an impression of tangled, matted gray hair and ragged clothes. And that word—that word lined with horror.
Witch.
    She dressed in the sandy, sodden clothes then and ran to her uncle’s house. Dymphana was outdoors, digging corms from her garden.
    Her aunt’s features pulled tight with concern at the sight of her.