Read Online Water by Peter Dickinson, Robin McKinley - Free Book Online

wrath, and
    not say my curse.
    “No one has set human foot on this bridge for many a long year, now. You are the first
    “And I cannot drown you. If this is a loss of honour for me, then so be it I am no longer young,
    and I have learned about things other than honour, or perhaps I have learned something about
    honour that has less to do with pride. Mount up your mare and ride home, and let the weariness
    and sorrow of this sea-king go with you, and be driven into the dry ground by your horse’s
    hoofs.”
    She stood, staring, her mind numb with trying not to beg, and her body numb with the cold of the
    night and a drenching in sea-water.
    “Go!” he said again. “Mount and ride! And ride quickly, for the land-people, I now remember,
    cannot bear the touch of the sea, and grow sick from it, and I see by your trembling that this
    sickness touches you already. It is something I have no charm for. Go!”
    But as she scrabbled at her mare’s stirrup, she was shaking too badly, and could not get her foot
    in; and even when she had her foot in place, she had not the strength to pull herself into the
    saddle. The sea-king took two steps towards her, and seized her by the waist, and lifted her into
    the saddle. As he released her, one of his webbed hands touched hers, and she felt a shock, and
    before her eyes rose up a glamour of sea-palaces and a land beneath the sea where the people of
    this king lived, and it was very beautiful. But perhaps it was only fever, for by the time her mare
    brought her home to her desperate parents, she was deep in delirium, babbling about waves and
    sea-men and moonlight on strangely iridescent skin, and no word at all of Robert, and her parents
    did not know what to think. For they remembered the curse, and the smell of sea-water was
    strongly on her, and they wondered if perhaps the curse had changed, and that now the sea-king
    for his vengeance took only the minds of those who crossed him, and not the lives.
    But the fever broke, and the delirium shrank back like a tide on the ebb, and did not return. Jenny
    lay blinking at her familiar ceiling, with the familiar quilt under her fingers, and when she turned
    her head on the pillow, she saw her mother sitting there, watching her. She asked what day it
    was. Her mother hesitated, and then said, “You have been sick for seventeen days.” She could
    see her daughter counting, and saw the relief on her face when she counted past her wedding day
    and knew that it was past; and that told her mother what she wanted to know, and she too was
    relieved. But then the full reality of the conversation broke upon her, and she burst into tears and
    ran out of her daughter’s bedroom and into her own, where she woke up her husband to tell him
    the news, for they had taken it in turns never to leave Jenny’s bedside for the last seventeen days.
    And the news was better for him than seventeen nights of good sleep would have been.
    The youngest maid servant was in the upstairs hall when Jenny’s mother rushed across it, and
    heard her mistress crying, and for a dizzy, awful moment half-guessed the worst. But she
    couldn’t bear the thought of being the messenger of such ill tidings, so she tiptoed closer till she
    could hear the joy in her mistress’ voice as she spoke to the master, and then fled downstairs
    herself to spread the glorious news to the rest of the household.
    Jenny recovered only slowly. It was another week before she set foot outside her bedroom, yet
    another week before she ventured out of the house, and then only as far as the kitchen garden.
    The day after she had taken her first steps out of doors, her mother told her that Robert had been
    asking for her. He had come several times when she was ill, the first time the very day after she
    had come home wet and delirious, and he had been most anxious to speak to her. Her mother and
    father had been polite to him, but they were sorely preoccupied with Jenny s health, and thought
    nothing