Tales of Noreela 04: The Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

was safe. His world—
anyone’s
world—could be opened up and taken apart at any time. He had liked Pavmouth Breaks when he first arrived, and over the years he had grown to love it, but he always knew that safety and contentment were merely thin veneers camouflaging the random cruelties of the world.
    “Kel?” Namior said. She had remained close to him, and now he saw that strange look again, the one the others had not noticed before.
    “What is it, Namior?” Mell said.
    Namior looked at her two friends, then across at the broken window. Raindrops spat in. A dozen people had gone outside, but none of their voices were audible above the storm. “My mother and great-grandmother… they were worried, that’s all.”
    “And you?” Kel asked.
    She shrugged. “I’m still young. Felt nothing. But if they’re worried …”
    “Then so are you,” Mell finished for her. Namior nodded.
    Trakis placed his mug gently on the table. None of them drank.
    Someone burst back into the tavern, her hair made mad by the wind and rain. She wiped water from her face and Kel saw her eyes, the mixture of excitement and fear driving them wide. He’d seen such a look many times, and he knew exactly what it meant: she had seen something she had never seen before.
    “Something’s coming!” the woman said. “Out to sea, something out there, dark and big and fast!”
    “What is it?” Mell asked.
    “Don’t know. Something.”
    “Come on,” Kel said. He grabbed Namior’s hand as the four of them headed for the door, skirting around the woman, who evidently no longer wished to see.
    “The ground’s still moving,” Trakis said as he pulled the door open and stepped outside.
    And it was. Kel paused for a beat and felt the vibration enter his feet and transfer up through his bones, and when he pressed his teeth together it felt as if they could shatter. From behind came the musical rattle of wine bottles clanking together. From ahead, the sounds of the storm, and whatever else it had brought.
    Namior squeezed his hand. She was outside by then, arm outstretched, and he was suddenly desperate not to let go of her.
    “Come on!” she shouted. “They’ve gone up the hill behind the tavern to see better!”
    Kel realized that, other than Neak and the windswept woman, he was the only one still inside the Dog’s Eyes. He stepped out into the storm.
    NAMIOR WAS AWARE of the wildlife that existed in and around the village, and she was also used to seeing most of it only rarely. So when something ran over her foot she squealed, unheard in the gale. And when she looked down, pools of light cast from the Dog’s Eyes’ windows were speckled with dashing shadows. Rats ran uphill; swarm lizards dashed so quickly that they looked like smudges of shadows; a dog growled past. And around her head, what she had thought at first were leaves blown by the wind, were bats, soundless and terrified.
    Namior suddenly wanted to be back at home. Her mother was there, and her great-grandmother, and they had seen something more than the storm—something
absent
. Climbing the steps beside the Dog’s Eyes, and then the steep banking at the rear of the tavern, and finally mounting the flattened observation area where patrons sometimes drank on hot days and Neak occasionally held flat-ball tournaments, it was the absentness that disconcerted Namior the most. If they’d sensed something more, perhaps she would not have been so afraid. More could be dealt with, seen, challenged. But nothing could be done with nothing.
    Mell and Trakis were already up there, leaning on the wall and staring over the harbor and out to sea. Namior held on tight to Kel’s hand, desperate not to let go, and he ran up the steps behind her, drawing close.
    “What is it?” she shouted before they had even reached the wall. She shouldered in between Trakis and Mell, while the watchers shouted words that the wind stole away. Rain wasdriven at them across the rooftops of buildings