Ashes

Chapter 6

Hi bends over the side of the boat, chokes. When he comes back over, his eyes are blue.

Shelton takes one look at Hi and stumbles backwards. Losing his balance due to his hands, which are otherwise occupied with tugging his ears, he falls over, right onto the deck, and gets back up with eyes like ice. 

And me - I close my eyes and wait and wait for it to come, knowing that everyone's eyes are on me - and it doesn't. No fire. No ice. No pain. No wolf.

I blink. They're watching me with narrowed eyes.

Is it my imagination, or do Ben's eyes hold the tiniest trace of smugness?

"Tory, what is it? Why aren't you flaring?" Shelton, ear-tugging like a lunatic. Asking what everyone's been thinking.

Wait, talking of lunatics - 

"The arrow!"

Ben shoots to his feet, stalks round the mast. He practically bristles with strength and speed. Points one way. 

"This way in. From a height."

Hi spins, weirdly graceful for him. Squints into the distance pointed to by Ben.

"A cliff - " the other boys nod, eyes on the stretch of beach way too far away for me to do anything other than fume at.

"With - wait, is that some kind of a shelter on it?"

"Shelton."

Ben is practically growling now. Shelton nods, hurries to the side of the boat. Listens.

"Something...faint. Kind of like a whistling - wait, hold on it's getting-"

"Tory get down!"

I hit the deck as another arrow buries itself in the mast above me. Like lightening, Ben's - over the side?

"Ben! Wait!" But he's gone - and swimming deliberately from the looks of it, so no one knocked him off. Within seconds, he's reached the shore and is scaling the cliff while Shelton steers Sewee towards the coastline and Hi takes the seat at the bow, watching Ben's back. I have no doubt that any warning will be heard and acted on faster than the attacker could blink.

I'm blinking quite a lot myself, actually. Is this what we - what I look like when we're flaring? The speed, the strength, the -oneness?

I don't think I've ever been so jealous in my life.