The Paper Sword Read Online Free PDF Page B

stop and ask her right now. Why did you say that? But she had never been one to answer direct questions directly. Not since the first day he’d known her.
    He would never forget that day. Anya had slapped him full in the face and he had called her a hag and almost struck her back. He left the tower tree in a rage, fully intending to never return. But when he got down the mountain as far as the river crossing he discovered a second river had come careening down the side of Mount Ulde, crashing into River Ilde from the side, doubling and tripling its width. He’d had to walk much farther along the bank to find another spot to cross. That was when he first saw her about a hundred yards upstream. All he saw was a flash of long black hair stretched out on the torrent before she rolled under the rapidly moving surface and disappeared.
    Many long seconds passed by pierced by the shrieking of seabirds and the hissing of spray before she came up again just ahead of where he stood searching. He didn’t know if she was dead or alive but he dived into the thick, cold waters to save her. Farther than he’d ever swum in the thinner version of the river he swam now deep into the middle of the torrent. He couldn’t see in the muddy water, but somehow he managed to grab hold of her hair and pull her closer so that he could hold on to her with one arm and swim with the other. Her face was turned away, toward the falls, but he could tell by the limpness of her body that she was unconscious. Also, he saw that her left wrist was tightly bound to her side by a thick rope that trailed behind her. Thrashing with his one free arm, he strove to drag her across the current to the opposite shore, but the two of them were caught up in the rapids and quickly swept into the oxbow where the second river collided with the first. He barely managed to hold on to her as the conflicting currents buffeted and spun them. Then they were swept into the torrent that sped toward the falls. Normally the river ran along the bottom of a deep gorge here. But the volume of the water had increased so much it now filled the gorge almost to the top. And the precipice wasn’t far off.
    â€œHelp me!” he shouted as the power of the water, compressed between the walls of the narrow gorge, welled about them deeper and quieter and quicker. He tightened his arm around her and gave her a quick, hard squeeze. There was a cough and a cry and then he felt a shudder of energy through her body. She lifted her head and her one free arm shot out of the waters and began to drive powerfully against the current. Gasping, thrashing at the rapids, the two of them, each with one arm, struggled like two halves of a bird against a gale. Beside the falls, the willow atop the ridge that was normally forty feet above the water was now literally in the river. The thin soil that held it there was almost completely washed away so that it’s long roots flipped and waved like suddenly released tentacles in the roaring waters. With everything he had left in him Xemion lunged, trying to catch the end of one of those roots. He felt the scrape of one of them in his desperate palm, but before he could close his fist the might of the water dragged both the root and the girl out of his grip and he was swept along the last few feet toward the falls and certain death below. Even as he came to the great curve of the waterfall and saw thousands of feet beneath him the jagged rocks he would die upon, he was thinking I’ve lost her.
    But just then something gripped him tight about the chest and yanked him back. The girl. The rope. Somehow it had wrapped itself about him in the oxbow and the other end was still attached to her wrist and her waist. She must have grabbed one of the willow roots with the other hand. The water tugged and battered at him. He tried to shout and tell her to release him but she didn’t or couldn’t let go. With a strength that belied the slenderness